I just “stole” this image from Gizmodo that is commenting live on the Apple event. The new iPod nano looks A LOT like the first 2 generations. The third generation was clearly the dark sheep with regards to the design and I have to admit… I’m pleased they went back to the original design, it’s much better, IMHO.
Initially Nokia announced the decision of using the webKit browser in their mobile devices in the S60 series and they called it S60 Browser (running on the S60WebKit). That was already a landmark, I think.
Apple of course boosted the users of webKit and Safari releasing the windows version of Safari and then Safari in the iPhone.
Google followed announcing webKit in Android and now with Chrome.
MOTOMAGX is a linux platform by Motorola. They use it for some of their PDA’s. The other day I received their newsletter that among the other things mentioned widgets for MOTOMAGX and guess what? The official browser is the webkit.
A lot of big companies are jumping on the webKit band-wagon, but I think my original question still stands, Will Apple share ownership of the webKit? It’ll be especially interesting to see how Google will contribute and try to take control of the platform as now they have a lot of interest in making sure it goes in the right direction. So far it looks like Nokia did not have much voice in the project, at least from what I see.
More open questions:
About half of my applications suddenly started “beachballing”, when trying to shut them down they did not. I killed them and could not restart them. Looking at the logs I saw this:
May 20 11:51:47 TwinPower diskarbitrationd[146]: iCal [8351]:26247 not responding.
May 20 11:51:47 TwinPower diskarbitrationd[146]: RescueTime [29391]:34011 not responding.
May 20 11:51:47 TwinPower diskarbitrationd[146]: Safari [29406]:23663 not responding.
May 20 11:51:47 TwinPower diskarbitrationd[146]: Quicksilver [302]:24079 not responding.
May 20 11:51:47 TwinPower diskarbitrationd[146]: Groupcal Daemon [308]:23043 not responding.
It doesn’t look like a good sign…
I just read this article on appleinsider.
Wouldn’t it be great to have native support for syncML, maybe via Funambol?
PS: If I could also have my iCal and Addressbook to synchronize with a central server (and LDAP), I’d be even happier
Apple’s iTunes has been massively successful for two reasons, I think. First of all it got popular thanks to the iPod, of course, but also it did sell well because of a very simple pricing model that Apple could enforce on the content providers. I think most customers loved this (except for linux users that did not like the idea of being locked into a proprietary solution, of course).
On the other hand, according to rumors, the TV shows and movie side of iTunes never took off and I believe the reason was that Apple wanted to enforce a certain pricing model and most likely studios were not so happy. The result of this is the NBC is out of the game, the Apple TV never took off and while I enjoy from time to time to watch video podcasts, having shows would be better. Also, did I mention that in countries other than the US most movies and shows are not available?
Now Amazon’s music download service (Amazon MP3)is not yet selling as good as iTunes, but they have been able to sign all the major labels to provide un-protected music and they are using MP3 that while less efficient than AAC it’s still a good format and is supported by all portable music players. Looks like Amazon is suddendly a few steps ahead of Apple and I can’t think why the next step should not be to sell movies and shows.
Apple still has one advantage, the iPod and the Apple TV, but they need the content. The iPod was successful prior to the iTunes store because people could load their own music, the store was a subsequence.
If Apple wants to keep up with Amazon, they need to become less rigid and think about the business they can build around iTunes and not only on selling the hardware. If they can make iPods and Apple TV’s and iTunes store complementary, they can probably stay ahead of the competition.
I was reading this article that does not seem to be huge news in itself as it mentions Apple will lower the prices in the UK in iTunes to match the price applied in the other European countries where the service is available.
What is interesting, though, is that Apple is saying that it wants to have a pan-European view for the content it provides and the pricing that is applied.
I live in Italy and most films and shows are dubbed, nevertheless sometimes I’d love to watch them in English, but unfortunately so far this hasn’t been possible in most cases, unless someone made the distribution in Italy. It is annoying when you read about online movie rentals or sales and then discover they are only available in the US. NBC lets you watch their shows online and for free, but only if you’re in the US.
I think that everyone who knows technology a bit and is an internet addict as I am, is waiting not-so-patiently for the day content will be available worldwide and for the same price.
I actually think this would also be a great solution against piracy. Think of being home, bored, you want to watch a movie, these are the options you have available:
Honestly for 4USD I would rent PLENTY. I often discover there’s nothing on SKY Movies when it’s too late to rent a movie (and this also makes me wonder why I pay a subscription to SKY).
See here the article: Apple to standardize iTunes music prices across Europe
The iPhone firmware 1.1.2 adds Italian, that’s a fact.
Something I haven’t seen around, though, is what I think is the final proof that Apple was ready to release the iPhone with TIM. This is the list of settings pre-installed in a 1.1.2 iPhone (US iPhone, by the way):
According to this article on Electronista Apple has started delivering iPhone SDK’s to some selected partners.
It seems like the SDK is not a full SDK, but a way to produce applications in a contained programming environment. Sounds like Apple did not get it and the fact that lots of developers wanted to hack and build their own fully native apps was not enough of a signal.
Also, can you imagine how many developers you could bring to the Mac once they have developed something for the trendy iPhone?
It’s a missed opportunity to me. The whole “signed application” process is a bit of a pain (Symbian developers can probably tell you something about this), but reasonable (especially if you want to create a “walled garden 2.0” in iTunes), but not allowing developers to create at all is a misake.
Android SDK has been released. There are videos that explain how the platform works and that the browser is based on the webKit. This was a bit of a surprise for me, I think I was not even considering that Google could go for something that is not Mozilla/Firefox.
Anyway I think this is great news and means that the webKit will keep growing and more sites will work on my Mac. Actually most sites already work, but sometimes I have to fire up Firefox or Camino, especially for AJAX-intensive sites.
Anyway, today, during Future of Mobile, I asked Dan Appelquist (another happy Mac user) if he thought Apple would let any other company take control of the core of the browser. My feeling, so far, is that Nokia is using the engine, but more in their own separate silo and not with Apple… And I have to admit this feeling is not because I think Nokia is evil and do not want to share, but actually because Apple wants to have full control on the browser and does not care to get changes and updates from Nokia!
Dan, on the other side, thought that Apple would have to let go a little bit of control on it so that Google and Nokia would get some space in the project.
Well, it looks like he knows what he’s talking about, see this post on Surfin’ Safari about Android committing changes to SVN.
Now I’m even happier.
I really like the contrast given by my new keyboard on my natural Teak table.
This is my Tisettanta Carpenter table (picture from official site, I don’t have the bench):
And this is how the Mac and the keyboard look like (sorry for the little blur, they just shine!):
You may also see the previous setup on Flickr, it’s still about the same, but the table is not a bit more clean. 😉
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