Articles by Rene Ritchie
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The internets are a rocking with posts about the iPhone’s App Store unofficially hitting 100,000 apps, but while we wait for official word from Steve Jobs, the blogsphere is also debating the important of the sheer quantity of those apps, and whether that’s more important that quality.
It isn’t.
Scoble (and others, I think MacBreak Weekly covered this earlier) suggests that the huge number of apps makes for a greater chance each individual user will find that unique assortment that best fills their needs. In other words, while everyone has the same iPhone, they don’t all have the same apps, and those apps essentially create a personalize experience — a different iPhone — for each user.
What’s more, those must-have apps, and the money, effort, and time spent in acquiring, setting up, and becoming proficient in them, creates a cost that prohibits users switching to another platform. To go from iPhone to Android, in Scoble’s example, means you lose Tweetie, Tap Tap Revenge, Photoshop.com, NASDAQ, etc. (Never mind if you’ve bought Navigon or other, high-priced content).
John Gruber, for his part, asks if the App Store is popular because the iPhone is great, or is the iPhone great because the App Store is popular.
The number of apps already in the store — and, even more so, the momentum with which new ones are being added — almost certainly guarantees the continuing popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch for the next few years. But Windows is proof that popularity doesn’t guarantee market-leading quality.
But the iPhone isn’t Windows. Neither popularity levels not quantity of software can be used to balance that particular equation.
Unlike the iPhone, Windows has never been a poster-child for great user experience (Windows 7 may alter that, but it’s just going to market now). Fact of the matter is, the iPhone debuted in 2007 without an App Store at all, and sold for the entire first year (until the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0) without an App Store. It sold on the strength of its user experience.
It’s that focus on usability that makes the iPhone great, and that in turn makes many of the apps great. Just like with the Mac, Apple has built in core technologies and development tools to handle a lot of the heavy lifting. So, while it still takes the very best developers to make the very best apps, even fair-to-middling developers can make apps that are surprisingly usable.
Those great apps, combined with a large quantity of usable if not inspired apps, is what makes the iPhone so compelling. The App Store itself is proof. Where Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and RIM have had apps — many thousands of them — as well, it took Apple to create a single place, with a single home screen icon, to find and acquire them all. If it was just quantity, Apple would have had a hard time catching up to them.
Updated: Google Maps Navigation [Free as in Just Free] for Android 2.0 — Coming Eventually to iPhone
UPDATE 3: As pointed out in the comments, there’s no sign of ad support in Google Maps Navigation (at least not yet). It’s just free as in free.
UPDATE 2: According to Gizmodo, Google:
implied they are working closely with Apple now on [Google Maps Navigation].
iPhone 2.2 saw Google Street View, could iPhone 3.2 see Google Maps Navigation? Let the drooling begin!
UPDATE 1: Replaced video with official version, moved TechCrunch preview below the fold. Enjoy both!
ORIGINAL: Just a few hours ago TiPb posted about the rumors surrounding a free (with ad support, of course) Google Navigation app, and now TechCrunch has the goods — it’s real, and it’s (so far) exclusive to Android 2.0. And we quote:
Search in plain English. No need to know the address. You can type a business name (e.g. “starbucks”) or even a kind of a business (e.g. “thai restaurant”), just like you would on Google.
Search by voice. Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.
Traffic view. An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch on the indicator toggles a traffic view that shows the traffic ahead.
Search along route. Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.
Satellite view. View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.
Street View. Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.
Car dock mode. For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.
To quote our own editor-in-chief, it looks “bad@$$”, and so far it also looks exclusive to the US, and to Android 2.0, at least for now. But come on Google, you want to give it to everyone outside the US too, right?
[via Chad!]
Google already provides the free Google Maps service (with Street View, pictured above), but could they be planning to step up to full on turn-by-turn navigation? Forbes thinks so:
Google, which generally gives its software away for free and recoups its investment through advertising, would likely sell ads within the navigation application rather than charge users, experts say. The ads could be particularly valuable because the program would know users’ precise locations and destinations, allowing advertisers to pinpoint specific kinds of consumers. Google recently started running sponsored link ads in Apple’s ( AAPL – news – people ) iPhone map application, which it helped build.
Forbes cites competitors who think Google will enter the “small but lucrative” space, and it would be a great value-add to Android, extending Google’s control over the software to an area some carriers still want all to themselves (with the monthly subscription feeds that go with it).
Before international readers get too excited, however, like Google Voice, it might be US-only, especially at first. That, and other factors have potential competitors already getting their shots in:
“Millions of customers use our service because of its reliability, ease of use and additional features,” [Mary Beth Lowell of TeleNav] says. [Steve Andler of Networks in Motion] contends the mobile market is different from the Internet, where “everything’s free and always in beta. People are willing to pay a premium to have something work all the time on their phones.”
Translation: they won’t try to compete with Google on price.
But what about you? Would you let Google monitor your GPS coordinates and activities, and send you targeted ads, in exchange for free navigation?
[via Fierce Mobile Content via Engadget Mobile]
Apple’s iPhone has hit 30% marketshare in the US, according to ChangeWave. When laying out the current players, 4,225 consumers were surveyed, 39% of whom owned smartphones, and of those the top 3 answers were RIM’s Blackberry down ever-so-slightly to 40%, the iPhone up 5% to hit that 30% mark, and Palm steady at 7%. As sibling-site PreCentral.net points out, Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian weren’t even included on the chart (does that mean the percentages were too low and unchanged to graph, Changewave?)
Going forward, iPhone retains the lead for planned future smartphone purchases, though dipping from 44% in June to 36% in September). RIM’s second, with 27% up from 23%, and Palm again holds steady at 8%.
Customer satisfaction, however, remains Apple’s biggest advantage. The iPhone has a lofty 74%, way out ahead of second place RIM at 43%, LG at 39%, Sanyo at 36%, HTC at 35%, and Palm at 33%. Droid-maker Motorola is at 32%, Nokia at 29%, Samsung at 29%, and Sony/Ericsson at 17%. Ouch.
The bottom line according to Investorplace?
In the horserace among manufacturers, the release of the iPhone 3GS has led to a big jump in smart phone market share for Apple and has placed them within striking distance of Research In Motion — whose slew of models are still number one but have fallen to their lowest level in two years.
[Thanks everyone who sent this in!]
During ARM’s Q3 financial results announced today, 9to5Mac noticed this little gem:
including a license for ARM’s 2GHz implementation of a dual core Cortex-A9 processor.
We’ve heard about the Cortex A9 before. Purportedly, is 5x faster than an intel Atom, yet uses the same amount of power in a 60% smaller package.
Could this be for next year’s iPhone? For a mythical (maybe even second generation) iTablet? We don’t know, but 9to5mac speculates:
Apple is rumored to be an ARM licensee and that that they’ve reportedly split the PA Semi group up into two parts. One working on Smartphone chips the other working on tablet processors. It is now generally accepted that the Apple tablet will run a ARM Cortex processor. It will likely want a bit more horsepower than the ARM Cortex A8-class Samsung chip inside the iPhone 3GS.
Whether or not it’s Apple, the PA Semi group is working on something, even if it won’t be until next year that we get to see it. Anyone else care to speculate?
Apple has made Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0 available for both OS X 10.5 Leopard and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard users eager to add the new multi-touch Magic Mouse to their existing system — when they become available. That’s right, outside of buying one of the brand new iMacs Apple released last week (which include the mouse and the update), you won’t find hide nor hair of the new Magic Mouse either at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. They’re still pending.
If you’ve already placed your order, however, or are staking out your local store in anticipation, at least you know Apple has you covered while you wait. (Though whether that means 10.6.2 isn’t as close to shipping as we hoped is anyone’s guess….)
For what it’s worth, I had a chance to try a Magic Mouse out a few days ago and, yeah, I want it now as well.
[via MacRumors]
While Apple made a Windows version of iTunes years ago, they still haven’t seen fit to roll out any official syncing solution for our Linux friends. That leaves unofficial solutions, which according to Marcan’s Abort, Retry, Hack? blog, are finally on their way:
- libusb-1.0 provides an advanced API to access USB devices under Linux, replacing the old libusb-0.1 API
- usbmuxd coordinates application access to the device and talks the specific iPhone/iTouch USB protocol
- libiphone implements the Apple-specific protocols that are tunneled through usbmuxd: it can launch services through lockdown, retrieve device info, send notifications, and access the filesystem via AFC.
- iFuse and gvfs-backend-afc both provide access to AFC to regular Linux apps. iFuse does this by mounting via FUSE, while gvfs-backend-afc is obviously a backend for gVFS.
- libgpod (the library that traditionally has managed music databases for iPods) is being extended to support the new SQLite format, the new hash, and also to talk to libiphone to properly put the device in to and out of sync mode.
- Theoretically, actual music players such as Amarok and Rhythmbox will need none or very few modifications to work.
If you’ve got your FOSS-on, and you’re eager to check out this solution, head on over for the details, and then let us know what you think!
[Thanks Brian for the tip!]
Google has just posted the above video tour of Android 2.0 Eclair, but does it look as yummy to you as its namesake? Android Central has already dished the specs, but it’s nice to see them in motion and all official.
Meanwhile, talk sure seems to be shifting from the initial Droid ad’s “iPhone killer” aura to scuttlebutt that Google is really targeting Microsoft and Windows Mobile with this OS. The New York Times, TechCrunch, and Daring Fireball (twice), all bring up great points, Gruber especially:
Microsoft’s angle is that because Android is freely available to handset makers, that Google has no business model for Android. But they do: search advertising. (Another case where I wonder whether Microsoft says this because they think people are stupid and will believe whatever Microsoft says, or, worse, if their executives actually believe this.) What Google wants are lots of mobile search queries. The one angle Hansell misses, which further makes the point that Android is not targeted against the iPhone, is that the iPhone generates a ton of mobile search queries for Google. Apple may see Android as a competitor, but Google loves the iPhone.
So, what do you think of Android 2.0, and should Apple worry, or Microsoft, or both?
Apple SVP of Marketing, Phil Schiller mentioned to Gizmodo’s Brian Lam that, with last week’s offerings, Apple’s holiday product lineup was now complete. Translation: stop watching the Apple Online Store for down’age, take Tuesdays off, and cancel the campouts — no more new Apple products this year. No iTablet, no iPod touch with camera, no red flipping iPhones.
Your wallets are now safe.
And the rumors for 2010 are just warming up…
