Articles by Chad Garrett
Information Week has posted an article discussing how the spectrum action is going. You remember, the wireless 700MHz spectrum action that is freed up from analog TV? Anyway, Verizon has won the largest segment of the bandwidth spending $9.6 billion to do so. Guess who’s number 2? You guessed it kids, AT&T. AT&T spent $6.6 billion for their share. What does this mean? Well for starters the FCC says that the bandwidth being auctioned off must be kept open and usable on any network; no more of this lock-down on a carrier mumbo-jumbo. Then there is Google coming with Android later this year…
So what impact does this have on the iPhone? Will Apple sell an iPhone on a segment of the open bandwidth? Could the 3G iPhone run only on AT&T’s 3G network and the EDGE iPhones run on the “open” spectrum?
Do you use Apple’s .Mac Services? I do. I like the synchronization between my Macs; it really makes life easy. With the iPhone, I really get a lot of benefit. I can add a website, Calendar appointments, Address Book entry, etc on my iPhone and it gets synced across multiple machines.
So why can’t I access my iDisk on my iPhone? I realize actually creating documents might be a stretch, but at least an adherence to Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines for iDisk on the iPhone via Safari should not be too hard. But why stop there. Why not an optimized view of my web-based .Mac Mail? Or Address Book?
I think it would be an awesome value for .Mac subscribers to get an optimized array of Apple’s services to the iPhone. They could start with their own Web App Gallery. What do you think? Would a tighter integration of Apple’s services with the iPhone make it that much more desirable?
Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Here we go!
Adobe Flash for iPhone
Would Adobe just make it for our beloved already? We started off the week with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen hopes Apple’s newly released SDK will help Adobe deliver that middle ground, with or without Jobs’ blessing. The world was ecstatic, could this really be?
… Well, not so fast, a few days later there was a, um, clarification.
Can’t we all just get along, join hands, sing Kumbaya and make Flash happen?
More of our best stuff after the break!
I have to admit, when I first heard about Pimp My News for iPhone, I was… less than enthusiastic. I mean, “Pimp” My News? Perhaps I am a little old school, but I thought with a name like this, the website is all bling and no substance. Boy was I wrong…
Pimp My News (PMN) has a standard website with an optimized iPhone interface. As you can imagine by the title, the website is an aggregator for multiple site feeds and more. Let’s start off with the aggregator.
With the recent announcement of the iPhone SDK, we became witness to the iPhone’s possible future in gaming. If you are a portable gamer, you probably already own a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. Perhaps in the future, you will just use your iPhone? The iPhone is flying off of the shelf these days and with the App Store around the corner, there is no excuse for users not to get a little gaming action. Electronic Arts is a huge developer and publisher for video games. What if they port games to the iPhone? A little Need for Speed Underground anyone? Imagine holding your iPhone like a steering while and using the accelerometer as you rotate the phone left and right to steer, then lean the iPhone forward to accelerate and tilt it back to brake and change your views by touching the screen… oh, the possibilities.
What do you foresee as possible future uses for the iPhone as a gaming platform? We could start with Nintendo’s Wii for inspiration…
With the iPhone’s lack of a built-in task list, the world of iPhone users have come to rely on web-based task solutions. For the most part these solutions fulfill on their promise; a web-based task list with iPhone optimization. For this week’s review I have decided to look at Toodledo (http://www.toodledo.com/slim) for the iPhone.
I still remember the keynote of keynotes: MacWorld 2007. Towards the end of the iPhone presentation, Steve Jobs showed the Apple iPhone Bluetooth headset. My jaw dropped. Small, light, perfect! I only held off on my purchase due to the slightly inflated price of $129. So in November of 2007 when Apple had their one-day sale event, I picked one up for $99. Here are my thoughts after 3+ months of usage.
I love the fact that Apple gives us their events on iTunes! Believe it or not, I still watch the MacWorld 2007 video. I enjoying watching the part where Steve says:
An iPod, Phone and an Internet communicator. iPod, Phone, and an Internet communicator. Are you getting it? These aren’t three separate devices…
hmmm, perhaps I have watched that one too many times.
I do wonder why it is a Podcast though and not a “movie”. I say this because the Podcasts do not refresh… we just get a new one every time.
You can find the link here to the Apple store for download, enjoy.
Yesderday’s Apple Event was very, very exciting. My wife is a clinician and was almost leapt off of the couch when she saw Epocrates with the new functionality. I was excited by the gaming apps; go figure.
With all of this energy around the SDK, you might ask why am I feeling a bit disappointed? I feel there is still a lot of work to be done with the core iPhone applications and functionality. The iPhone has been out a year, yet there is basic and fundamental functionality still missing. I think we know what the big ones are; copy/paste and MMS. However, there are some areas that I don’t feel get enough attention. These areas include search and calendars.
It is very difficult to find an appointment on the iPhone. I literally have to go day by day to find an appointment. Since the iPhone runs OS X, where is my Spotlight?
For those of us who use multiple calendars, why can’t I add an appointment to any one of my calendars instead of a default one? While we are on the topic, where is my Notes and Task syncing?
I did notice the 2.0 calendar that was shown had the calendar buttons placed on the bottom instead of the top and a mysterious button located in the lower right. Could it be a task button? Am I getting worked up over nothing? Only time will tell.
Google has announced that Google Gears is going mobile on Windows Mobile devices. Google Gears Mobile works the same way it does on the desktop version of Google Gears, via controlled caching of data. One of the first web applications out of the gate to take advantage is Zoho, a popular web productivity suite.
“Developers, look no further. Today we’re announcing the launch of Google Gears for mobile, a mobile browser extension for creating rich web applications for mobile devices. The first version is now available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. It’s a fully functional port of Google Gears v0.2 that can be used to develop offline capability into your mobile web applications. You can also create slick and responsive applications by hiding latency issues through controlled caching of data and storage of information between sessions. We’re also working to bring Google Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms with capable web browsers.”
Could Google Gears be part of the iPhone SDK? Will the SDK allow for a Google Gears type of functionality? Only a few more days until we know for sure. Meanwhile, we can laugh at the Windows Mobile folks who are forced to use Gears on Pocket Internet Explorer.
