Unless you’ve been pinned under a bus for the past 24 hours, you’ve no doubt witnessed the unfolding drama from yesterday’s announcement by Google about its upcoming open mobile platform, dubbed Android. Opinions range from Android’s arrival heralding the end of the wireless world as we know it, to “Oh my God…targeted ads on a mobile phone!” This story isn’t particularly relevant to iPhone enthusiasts, but its impact will affect the handset industry as a whole. And being the smarty pants, know-it-all, Smartphone expert, tech talkin guy that I am, I couldn’t let this topic pass by without weighing in.

Let’s start off by cutting through marketing speak and deciphering what Android is and isn’t. What it is, according to Google, is a software stack and not the packaged operating system we came to expect from rumors preceding the announcement. What does that mean? In plain English it means Google’s OS is a bag of parts, unassembled and customizable for any application, like a pile of Lego building blocks. More on that later. As part of this venture, Google has lined up an impressive group of A-list industry partners to back its platform… all part of a larger open source initiative called the Open Handset Alliance. The group includes companies ranging from handset makers, software developers, and carriers alike. Each one lends a hand in developing Android’s software stack, and each has own interests and agenda…each using the other to get what it wants. Here is where Android begins falling apart like a house of cards on a wobbly table.

Speaking as someone who has covered the mobile industry for many years, I can tell you from experience that such conglomerations almost universally end in failure. The reason is simple; no one entity controls platform development guidelines or sets roadmap. With proprietary operating systems like Windows Mobile, or OSX, one company or development teams controls the entire development process and most importantly… user experience. Google is being less than transparent with Andriod’s UI experience and application framework, but if my hunch is correct (and it usually is on matters of mobile tech) Android will end up being a mélange of disparate and disjointed software environments with different interfaces running on different hardware, all with different application layers. Apps that run on one device may not run on another (think Symbian).

Usability is another problem. Software is nothing unless it offers a compelling user experience. An operating system must be aesthetically pleasing, reliable, and brain-dead simple to operate. iPhone delivers all of these qualities in world class fashion, which is largely reason for its success. Looking through the list of Open Handset Alliance partners reads like a who’s who in the FBI’s ten most wanted list. None of the companies involved, including Google, are known for building pretty and usable interfaces. Google’s web based properties are minimalist at best and ugly at worst. Google search does what it does. Google Doc’s gets the job done, but certainly is no replacement for Office 2007 in either. HTC isn’t exactly a hotbed of innovation when it comes to handset design. The company has done well in the Windows Mobile camp, but that’s not saying very much given the lackluster success Microsoft has had outside of the enterprise, where looks and brains don’t count. Motorola, couldn’t design a proper GUI to save its own…business. Needless to say I have very low expectations from the first round of Android-based devices to hit the market later next year.

Then we have Google’s disturbing revenue model behind Android’s distribution…one that is ad-based. The plan, as disclosed by Eric Schmidt, is to license Android freely (under the Apache GPL) in return for targeted ad revenues with carrier partners. This is worrisome to me for two reasons. 1) Handset displays are simply too small to allocate already taxed space to text-based ads. 2) I don’t fancy the thought of Google aggregating my data and bombarding me with targeted ads. Imagine this scenario – your car needs repaired…you call your nearest garage for an estimate…suddenly a text message pops up on your screen soliciting a car insurance ad from Geico. Not the kind of mobile experience I want on my phone.

So what good is Android anyway? For starters, it could do a world of good for mobile platform development by bringing an end to the confused noise of different languages that exist today. As it stands now the wireless industry is a virtual alphabet soup of different proprietary operating systems, some closed – some open, all sporting different APIs and different incompatible software stacks. Other mobile Linux efforts abound, but having Google’s name attached to this venture provides a unifying label to get behind. My bet is that over the next few years, proprietary platform vendors, particularly Nokia and RIM, will layer their own software on top of Google’s Linux foundation. Consolidation is badly needed in this industry, and Google’s platform may offer that hope.

The big losers in this endeavor will be Access, the company that acquired PalmSource, the former software division of Palm Inc. Access has been working on a project similar to Google’s for some time, named ALP (Access Linux Platform). After yesterday’s announcement that project is as good as dead. Palm is another company to be placed on death watch, where they’ve been for some time now. Palm is locked in a desperate struggle to remain viable and get its long delayed Linux operating system out the gate. Android will ship months before Palm’s, making former handheld leader and its yet-to-be-released OS as irrelevant as Britney Spears music career. Microsoft’s executive team, too, will have reason to drink Pepto-Bismol in boardroom meetings, though I doubt Android will put them out of the mobile business anytime soon. Windows Mobile is well established with legions of backers and garners a handsome chunk in market share.

How does this play out for Apple? Android and its Open Handset Alliance will have little impact on iPhone or Apple’s handset business. iPhone, much like all products that wear the Apple logo, is a lifestyle device, not a commodity product like the PC. Mobile technology is a delicate interplay between hardware and software. If either one component is deficient or lacking in any way, the total product fails. That kind of synergy is only achieved when the software and hardware are made by the same creative team, with a cohesive strategy and vision. Google will quickly discover that merely getting the software equation right will be challenging enough. Getting device makers to build compelling hardware to wrap around its OS will be even harder.

Android could (emphasis) prove to be a turning point in mobile platform development, approaching a single but open environment for all to build upon, bringing an end to the Pan’s Labyrinth of platforms we know today. But the cynic in me feels this is just a lot of hot air. I’m anxious to see what this platform will offer, and rest assured I’ll be right there on day one standing first in line with other Smartphone aficionados waiting to get an Android phone. But given what I know from past efforts, my expectations are low.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Google’s Android Will Terrorize Proprietary Platforms, But Won’t Threaten Apple

Last week and the proceeding weekend I was on the receiving end of some terrible misfortune; the worst series of mishaps I have endured in… well, quite a long while. Fools rush in where hackers fear to tread. And I not only rushed in, I kicked in the door and set fire to the house on my in. Very unwise.

When news of Apple’s posted firmware update became available I anxiously awaited news from guinea pig unlockers, who bravely installed the update, whether or not updating results in brickage. Gizmodo boisterously (and prematurely) proclaimed that it was all a poker bluff from Apple. No bricks, nor breakage. That news emboldened me to proceed with flashing. Count me in! No sooner had a I begun applying the update when the first wave of reported problems began rolling in. Gizmodo was wrong, and led me to my doom.

But he who proceeds without hearing all the facts, suffers the consequences. I take full responsibility for the untimely but temporary demise of my iPhone. I knew I was playing with fire, and I got burned. That’s life. You roll the dice and take your chance.

Unfortunately that was only the beginning of my problems.

Friday night is, for me, a time to hang out with friends and socialize. Blowing off steam from the pressures of work. Not this particular evening as the case would be. My workstation PC had other plans in store for me. I had installed Vista Service Pack 1 beta earlier in the week, which took several attempts to get up and running, and this system has behaved unpredictably ever since. That description could easily be applied to Vista itself – unpredictable.

There is no way to put this subtly; Windows Vista is raw fecal waste material, minus the color and oder. Five years in development by Microsoft has yielded the absolute worst operating system they’ve ever released. It is slow, cumbersome, offers poor compatibility, miserable gaming performance, spotty driver support. The list goes on. I can’t begin to tell you how much I HATE this OS.

So when it became clear that SP1 (beta though it is) actually worsened my “Wow” experience promised by Vista. This was the last straw for me. I pulled out an external hard drive. Backed up all my critical data, and reformatted the hard drive, rolling back to XP Pro. Vista is gone from my hard drive, never to return again. From this point on I am moving over to OSX. I use both platforms daily, Windows and Mac, but Microsoft continues pushing me ever increasingly towards using Mac as my primary platform. When Leopard arrives this month, I’m pushing all of production workload over to my Mac Pro. Windows will live on as a virtual machine running in OSX.

So, in addition to a dead iPhone I now had to make an unexpected OS transition as well. Fun stuff. As I’m typing this I am staring at XP’s hideous blue Fisher Price interface and an antiquated Palm Treo Smartphone, which has replaced iPhone as my pocket companion. Needless to say I am not in the best of moods right now, and it’s a hell of a way to start a week.

As I’m sure most of you heard; over the weekend some enterprising user discovered a method for downgrading iPhone’s firmware from 1.1.1 to 1.02, providing a reversal (or so we all thought) to the bricking that occurred. Not so. It turns out this procedure does not downgrade baseband drivers to an earlier state necessary to reactivate AT&T SIMs. It only enables jailbreakage, so iPhone can be used with WiFi only. A nice start, but it doesn’t provide an end game solution to reactivating a “bricked” iPhone.

At this point there is little else to do but wait patiently for iPhone Dev Team to work out a reversal solution. Whether I can hold out for such a workaround is another matter. Right now I am this >< close to applying my $100 Apple Store credit towards the purchase of a second iPhone. It would probably be in my best interest to own two iPhones, using one as a “beater” device for testing and review purposes. With the second unit left in virgin condition as my personal daily use phone.

So in case you were all wondering why i have been so quite over the weekend… now you know. But enough of my whining. It’s a new week. Time to get back to work. And get writing again. I never seem to have the time to write good content for this site. The iPhone Blog is run with one hand and four fingers tied behind my back. Since I works as a freelance web designer as an occupation, that’s where I have to devote my time. This site is a secondary hobby, which is unfortunate. But I do have some ideas in play that I hope you guys will like. More on that later.

Back to work, and back to writing.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

A Weekend of Restoration Provides a Painful Lesson In Patience and Haste

In a rare candid interview, we sat down with Fake Ed Colligan, chief executive officer of Palm Computing. Ed graciously agreed to a conversation with us to discuss a number of relevant issues including Palm’s troubled past and market missteps in the handset industry. So let’s get to it.

TIB: Ed, first off I want to thank you for taking time out from your schedule to speak with us. I’m sure you’re a very busy guy these days, what with the board transition, the Elevation Partners deal, and shareholder approval.

Ed: Oh, not all. My pleasure. In fact I’m really not that busy these days.

TIB: Oh? You mean you delegate authority to other members of Palm’s executive team?

Ed: Well, no. By that I mean there really isn’t that much to do. Treo sales are falling, and there’s not a lot we seem to be able to do about that right now, other than watch sales descend. You know…sort of on a downward trajectory.

TIB: I see. But have you given thought as to what your company might do in terms of a change in strategy to…reverse that trend?

Ed: laughter Well, Kent…it’s not that simple. I mean – look, we are in a very competitive market right now. And consumers and business customers are beginning to demand more from our products than we can deliver on. You know, it used to be easy for us. Our product strategy was…just rehash the same old products year after year, making very incremental improvements, a few tweaks here and there, and repackage them as new SKUs. Customers actually bought into that. You know, sort of like a high school girl with low self esteem; she never expected to snag the star quarterback so she settled for the class nerd. That sort of thing. It gave us a real competitive edge to have that kind of loyalty.

We lost that advantage. Competition has changed the rules, and reset expectations. Now we may as well be selling dead rats in a box. Frankly our customers just aren’t as dumb as they once were, and that poses a real challenge for us. Take the Treo 680 line. We took our existing product…the 650 – snipped off the antenna – painted it in different color schemes and presented it as a “new” product. At one time our loyal customers would shit themselves at the mere sight of a new Treo. Even rumors about our upcoming products had people jumping. They really got off on that kind of thing. Now, pfffft. They don’t care. They just don’t care. It’s tough. TIB: I understand. Ok, speaking of dead rats, let’s talk about your platform. PalmOS has pretty much reached its end of life, and yet it still remains on shipping devices. Why is that?

Ed: Well there you begin to see our problem. It goes back to what I just said. We are working very hard to convince customers that our products, and platform, are both competitive and state of the art. And to be blunt; pulling the wool over the eyes of our customers is…just not as easy as it once was . I think the acuteness level has gone up dramatically. Consumer perceptiveness is up there now. raises hand in the air

TIB: Right, but what about your platform strategy? Obviously you intend to wholly replace the Palm operating system with a succeeding platform based on Linux, that you have in development at this moment. How are you coming along with that and how soon will we see it shipping on devices?

Ed: sighs Pfffft. Honestly Kent, I couldn’t tell ya. I really couldn’t. You know I’m on the phone with these guys in Platform Development every day, chewing asses out. But all I get is a bunch of crap about difficulties in merging legacy architectures with with some new host framework. Hey, I don’t even know what the hell any of it means. I just keep telling them…GET IT DONE. TIB: When will it be “done” do you think?

Ed: Who knows. Maybe in Q2 of next year, maybe it will slip to Q3. I don’t know. What I do know is this new platform isn’t going to fail like that last one that PalmSource developed. Remember Cobalt? Jesus, what an unmitigated disaster that turned out to be, huh? We waited around for two years for those idiots at PalmSource to bake their OS, and they hand us a plate full of sh…well, it was bad. Thank God we’ve been able to limp along with Garnet as long as we have.

TIB: Speaking of PalmSource. Describe to me your relationship with your former OS division, and Access, who later acquired them.

Ed: sigh Kent, I tell you. rubbing forehead I could write a book about these clowns, I really could. And David Nagel, their former CEO? That leftover from Apple’s refrigerator? He sank the company faster than I could sync my Treo. laughter Oh God what a nutjob. I mean, to give you an example; you just brought up Garnet, our legacy operating system. What the hell kind of name is that for a product? It sounds like an old Jewish woman. These are the kinds of management decisions this screwball made. I rest my case.

But that’s all in the past now. As you know Access acquired PalmSource a few years ago, so that’s…water under the bridge. I guess. shrugs

TIB: Tell me about Access

Ed: silence Let me ask you, Kent. Have you ever depended on someone? I mean depended on someone for your well being. You know, like your future depended on their actions, or outcome of their actions? And then have that person screw you to the wall. Not only to the wall, but actually all the way through it, till you came out the other side? Well it’s kinda like that, only more serious.

They led us down a dead end street. A dark and lonely street filled with hungry wolves, and buzzards circling overhead. They took our former intellectual property, our platform, and ran away with it. Leaving us with our thumbs up our…well, they screwed us is what they did. So now we have to scramble like crazy to get this new Linux thing, whatever the hell it is, out the door and into devices, like yesterday. So we got slapped with a double whammy of PalmSource incompetence, followed by a hit and run by Access. sigh

TIB: Access is working on a parallel platform based on Linux as well. Have you thought about licensing their software.

Ed: laughter Oh, you were serious? Sorry I took that as a joke. No. Hell no, we’re not going anywhere near that company or its software. We intend to take our share of the intellectual property and escape with our lives. Those bast…well, they can just forget signing us on as licensee for ALP, ALPO or whatever the hell they call that Linux platform they peddle. We’re gone.

TIB: Speaking of things going away. Tell me about Foleo. What was the deal with this product? How did its conception come about?

Ed: See, here again I come back to my earlier point about customer perceptiveness. They’re catching on to us, and now even before we get these products out the door.

Foleo started out something like this: We had this idea; wouldn’t it be great if we took a laptop, crippled it with low-end hardware, stripped away all the useful but costly components, and installed some funky Linux OS on it, saving licensing costs from Microsoft. We’ll call it something other than a laptop, even though that’s all it really was, and charge as much for it as a notebook PC. We figured…hey, it worked for us before, it’ll work again.

Unfortunately customers, and the media, attacked it. Rather vigorously so…to say the least. So, what with shareholders and analysts riding me, and Engadget posting that unfavorable story about us, I had no choice but to scrap it. Foleo kind of blew up in my face, but in this industry you live and learn. Perseverance. That’s the key. TIB: But who was its target market?

Ed: Anyone stupid enough to buy it. Anyone we could find. Would you like one, Kent? I have truckloads of these things just sitting in boxes. We took a bath on this deal. I’ll be giving Foleos away as Christmas gifts to family and friends, whether they’ve been naughty or nice. You know what I’m saying? laughter

TIB: Let’s talk about the competition for a second. Back in January at the Churchill Club event, just after Apple unveiled iPhone, you were quoted as saying something to the effect that, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Apple isn’t just going to walk in and get it right.” Do you remember saying that?

Ed: Yes.

TIB: But the iPhone has in fact largely proven to be hugely successful. Reviews are positive. Analysts see the product and technology as innovative. Consumer satisfaction is higher than any other smartphone. And Apple recently announced that, in the space of 76 days, they have sold more iPhones than you sell Treos in an entire quarter.

Ed: Yep. I know.

Yeah, what can I say? I throw my hands up; guilty! laughs Sometimes we say things that come back to bite us right in the ass. And that’s certainly not one of my best quotes, I’ll grant you that. But don’t count us out just yet, because we’re not done yet. This game is only just beginning. The battle has…has…just barely gotten underway and we have not yet begun to fight. We’re putting on our battle uniforms, you know? We got our helmets on, all polished up. And we’re in it to win it.

TIB: You say Palm is ready for battle, and the fight has only just begun. But that’s not entirely accurate, is it? I mean hasn’t the battle, as you call it, been going on for more than several years now? Aren’t you guys a bit late to the party.

Ed: silence Speaking of late. Gosh, look at the time. I’d love to stay and chat with you some more but I really do have to hit the bricks.

TIB: Alright, Ed. You show those bricks who’s boss. Thanks.

Ed: Thank you.

*disclaimer: the above interview is parody and entirely fictional. The opinions and views expressed belong solely to the voices in my head. No Palm executives were harmed in the making of this article. Void where prohibited.

And now for something completely different.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Interview: My One on One Interview with Fake Ed Colligan, Palm CEO