All Articles Tagged iphone vs palm pre

Once again validating Dieter’s iPhone 3GS vs. Palm Pre web rendering smackdown, MacRumors reports on Medialets‘ latest Sunspider Javascript tests pitting the iPhone 3GS against the iPhone 3G (both on 3.0 and 2.2.1), Palm Pre, and Google Android G1.

As MacRumors points out, not only is iPhone 3GS’ clear, current speed advantage impressive, but the 3x improvement iPhone 3.0 gives the iPhone 3G is most impressive as well.

Bill Gates’ “power of software” indeed…

Update: Engadget re-did the math and it looks like the iPhone 3G S is actually 21% faster than the Palm Pre (for now).

According to Anandtech, Dieter was spot on in his iPhone 3G S vs. Palm Pre browser speed test video. (as was our iPhone 3G S vs. iPhone 3G smackdown video)

The bigger story, of course, is not only do we have several great devices pushing competition and better serving users these days, but Mobile WebKit (the rendering engine behind Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome Lite, Palm Pre’s browser, and Nokia S60 (tip of the hat to Sascha Segan) has become the mobile internet platform.

That it’s relentlessly standards based, scales elegantly from desktop (where it ironically holds minimal share) to handset, and is continually being improved upon makes us especially happy for all concerned devices.

We’re not surprised. Obviously. Apple plays the product cycle and media hype engines to perfection. Still, it’s interesting to see Electronista’s take, based on ChangeWave data:

A mid-June study from the research group has 14.4 percent of those tracked looking to buy some kind of smartphone within the next 90 days, a record high and a large jump from 11.2 percent in March. Of these, a full 44 percent now plan to buy an iPhone compared to 30 percent just three months earlier.

As the above graph shows, Palm went from 4% to 8%, BlackBerry from 37% to 23%. Android, Nokia, and Windows Mobile weren’t shown

Other device makers likely know this, explaining why we’re seeing so many iPhone-style devices hitting the market. TiPb still thinks it’s more than a set of features, however. Sure, iPod halo and Apple brand help, but in the end the iPhone is all about usability and user experience for the consumer market, and that’s not as easy a task to duplicate.

UPDATED: Icebike makes and interesting and opposite argument in the comments:

If you ask me that wording amounts to tacit approval to use third party devices, without Apple assuming any liability for their continued operation.

ORIGINAL: Not quite “get off our lawn”, yet clearly a sign post warning that the lawn might on day get a tad hostile if you choose to linger there without leave. Here it is, via Daring Fireball, Apple’s latest Knowledge Base Article: iTunes: About unsupported third-party digital media players, aka the Palm Pre syncing saga:

This article is about iTunes and unsupported third-party digital media players.

Products Affected iTunes

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

So, if/when iTunes breaks compatibility with the Palm Pre — intentionally, incidentally, or otherwise, does this cover Apple?

I joined Leif Iverson on yesterday’s Digital Trends Podcast, and since Dieter wasn’t available, I was put in the untenable position of having to champion both the iPhone 3G S for TiPb and the Palm Pre for our sibling site, PreCentral.net. Somehow, I survived. (And had a lot of fun — thanks Leif!)

Check it out, and let us know what you think about the upcoming rumble in the smartphone jungle!

Attack of the Show co-host, Olivia Munn, offered her professional opinion on the Palm Pre with regards to the iPhone today, via Twitter.

• yeah, if you pre-switched to pre from iphone, you’ll be upset on monday. [Link]
• you got the pre? does it suck to know you should’ve just got the iphone? it’s okay. we all make mistakes. [Link]
• **** the Palm Pre. If you have an iPhone, stick with it. If you have a Blackberry, like me, omg dontyoujustlove it? [Link]

What. Up. Indeed.

[via @philnickinson]

Remember that brouhaha over the Palm Pre syncing with iTunes? (Check out PreCentral.net’s massive Palm Pre review for more on it from a functional perspective.)

Well, DVD Jon’s nanocr.eu site (via Engadget Mobile) says he’s confirmed that:

the way [Palm Pre] hooks to iTunes is very shady indeed. Turns out that the Pre identifies itself as an iPod when it’s in Media Sync mode, but only on the system’s mass storage interface; the root USB node still comes through as a Palm Pre.

This leads them to believe it might be something Apple could more easily block, if Apple so chooses to. We’ve already gone over the reasons why we think Palm’s decision to sync directly with iTunes (as opposed to with the iTunes library XML file like RIM and Nokia do) is ballsy but ultimately bad for Apple (since they’ll get blamed for problems by consumers who don’t understand the hacky nature and limitations), Palm (since they will have to work at maintaining unlicensed compatibility), but most importantly consumers (because the experience is flawed and unreliable).

Here’s hoping Palm finishes their strut around the launch-day press lines and the next update contains something closer akin to a non-shady, yet still iTunes and user friendly solution for everyone…

We’ve had a lot to say about the Palm Pre over the last few months, but it pales to insignificance compared to the epic monster of a Palm Pre review our noble Editor-in-Chief, Dieter Bohn, has just dropped on sibling site PreCentral.net:

There are Pre Reviews & then there are huge Pre Reviews with 12 videos and photo galleries w/ 200 images for companions

Well. Done. Sir.

If you’re tired of the sizzle and want some steak, if you’ve seen smoke but question if there’s fire, get thee over to PreCentral.net and read the Palm Pre review.

Then hurry back here and tell us what you think of it, and how you think it’ll compare with the iPhone!

Palm faithful rejoice, Gizmodo — via an unnamed source — claims that Palm Pre still syncs with iTunes 8.2 release, same as it reportedly did with the pre-release version.

Meanwhile, Daring Fireball weighs in on the situation again, this time wondering if what Palm is doing is illegal, and if Apple stops it, whether that would be illegal. PreCentral.net, for their part, looks beyond the what to the why:

we’re increasingly getting the feeling that Palm is either trying to goad Apple into a legal showdown or they are so confident in their patent portfolio that they feel they can throw these features in Apple’s face.

To which Gruber aptly footnotes:

And, when judging the likelihood of Apple filing such a lawsuit, consider the perspective of a certain highly-competitive quasi-paranoid Apple founder and CEO who is famously sensitive to what he perceives as being “ripped off”. The one and only company to ship a product that successfully masquerades as an iPod via USB is the company whose engineering division is run by a former Apple senior VP and has hired a slew of former Apple engineers.

In — as they say — deed.

Jeremy already passed along the warning from the iPhone Dev-Team on iTunes 8.2. In case you missed it, they told jailbreakers and potential jailbreakers NOT to install Apple’s just-released iTunes update.

According to their latest Dev-Team Blog post, the reason seems to be:

It breaks your ability to use QuickPwn, PwnageTool, and iPhone Tunneling Suite (ssh over usb). We don’t think this is a deliberate breakage of these tools. It’s just that Apple has updated a low-level USB protocol that normally only Apple cares about (but jailbreakers care about).

Is Dev-Team working on a fix? Youbetcha, but they don’t want to release anything further until iPhone OS 3.0 is final. This may annoy people who have the 3.0 beta, but legit developers probably have more pressing concerns than jailbreaking at the moment, and why would the Dev-Team waste their energy and tip their hand to Apple when the betas will likely keep changing every couple of weeks before release anyway?

Of course, the blogsphere now has another concern, since last week’s announcement that the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes, likely by faking Apple’s USB protocols to disguise itself as an iPod (see Daring Fireball’s take on this as well). There have been two pre-release versions of iTunes 8.2, going back over a month, but the obvious question still becomes: will the iTunes 8.2 final release also effect the Palm Pre sync?

Dev-Team thinks it’s possible:

It may actually break Palm Pre’s connection to the device (please give us feedback on this).

We think Palm’s Jon Rubinstein — who used to head the iPod division at Apple — may just have compromising pictures of the iPhone taken during it’s “bachelor” party the night before Macworld 2007 … We mean, it’s got to be something, right?