All Articles Tagged The competition

T-Mobile has issued a warning that the ongoing, dare we say catastrophic failure of the Sidekick servers could result in permanent data loss if Sidekick users in any way reset their devices during the outage:

“Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.”

Scary, but also an urgent reminder to everyone who uses Cloud Services, including iPhone owners with MobileMe, Exchange ActiveSync, Google Gmail/Calendar, or any other, similar accounts.

Best practices dictate that data doesn’t exist unless it’s in at least three locations: local, local backup, and off-site backup. Cloud covers offsite (so does a duplicate drive at another location), but if any of your data is irreplaceable, even important, you need to make sure it’s backed up locally.

You can typically save emails, and export calendars and contacts. You can get cheap external hard drives and either manually copy your files over or get easy-to-use automatic backup solutions (some, like Shadow Copy for Windows and Time Machine for Mac are even built into the OS).

Storage is cheap, photos, videos, information, etc. can be priceless. Back it up now. If you need help or advice, check out TiPb’s iPhone Forums.

[ZDNet via Engadget]

Microsoft today takes the wrappers off their latest generation of mobile software and services, and our good friend George Ponder from sibling site WMExpert.com gives us the details in his complete Windows Mobile 6.5 review. The pre-amble sums things up well from an iPhone point of view:

For some, the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 may very well be a non-event. But it marks the beginning of a journey for Windows Mobile and a new approach to mobile computing with the Windows Phone.

Rumor has it even Microsoft doesn’t believe WinMo 6.5 is competitive with the iPhone — that’s be next year’s Windows Mobile 7, which even Steve Ballmer thinks is way late to the party. It’s a refresh of a refresh of a refresh. But it does show which direction Microsoft is going, and how the “one OS, multiple handset vendors” strategy is shaping up or them.

Along with Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is also launching Windows Marketplace for Mobile (think App Store) and the previously-in-beta My Phone online service (think Mobile Me, with backups, and also now with “Find my iPhone” er… “Find my Windows Phone” features!).

WMExperts will be live-blogging all the Windows Mobile 6.5 festivities starting at 10am EDT, so head on over there if you want to join in the fun.

Rumor has it Microsoft is on the verge of axing the Pink Project. Come on, you remember those Pure Turtle phones we’ve been hearing about for months? The ones built by the former Danger/Sidekick team that might run Zune software and compete for the hearts and minds of tweens (TM PalmCast) everywhere? Yeah, those. Axed. Finished. Ballmered.

Seems like since their dear leader Andy Rubin left to father Android for Google, things have been on something of a downward spiral:

Amongst remaining employees, dissent is high. Much of the team uses iPhones around the office, or their old Sidekick handsets. Employees “hate the product” internally, many feeling that the division exists only to “challenge [the Windows Mobile 7 team] and upset them into competing.” Our source outright indicated that they felt the product was never intended to ship.

Malatesta from WMExperts.com is hearing conflicting stories, so take the above with a FUD-sized grain of salt. Still, even if Pink isn’t dead, given what’s left of the Danger team, the designs we’ve seen leaked so far, and the fact that Windows Mobile needs all the help it can get right now, maybe it ought to be?

[MobileCrunch via WMExperts]

While TiPb is still waiting for an iPhone 3.1.1 bug-fix update, not to mention iPhone 3.2 betas to start dropping, it looks like the competition is getting their OS on this week:

• Palm webOS 1.2 didn’t re-enable the iTunes hack (kudos Palm!) but did bring some nifty new features including Amazon MP3 downloads over 3G, the foundations for paid apps in the App Catalog, improved cut and paste, and much more.
• Android 1.6 Donut is expected to hit now’ish as well. A new Android Market is coming with it, but not multi-touch — at least not yet.
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 still doesn’t seem to be official, but is leaking out all over the place (would that Apple had such porous pipes!). It’ll make your Berry more Berry, though it doesn’t seem to integrate a real browser yet, despite what the commercials say…
• Windows Mobile 6.5 might be on 30 Windows Phones by 2010, though even Ballmer is finally admitting Windows Mobile 7 should have been out this year. Bottom-line, it’s a skin-job, and even though it looks hawt’er than a old style centurion, it’s still a machine on the inside.

What does that mean for the iPhone? Even if RIM looks locked in stasis, Palm and Microsoft appear to have up-hill battles re-gaining their traction, and Android is still slowly ramping up, Apple can’t afford to coast. A new OS from RIM, a Palm-style rebirth from Microsoft, and webOS and Android gaining marketshare are all possibilities. Many of these updates have interesting new features that hopefully Apple is looking at and working their own magic on.

So, let’s get on with the 3.2… and 4.0. March is only 6 months away, after all, and Apple needs something else to wow Smartphone buyers with at the next SDK event…

UPDATE: Google’s response, with commentary from Casey.

According to sibling site Android Central, Google has sent a cease & desist order to well-known Android custom ROM maker, CyanogenMod.

Google is not happy that CyanogenMod is distributing closed source Android applications like Gmail, Android Market, YouTube, etc. [...] CyanogenMod explains that he’s not breaking any copyright issues because he develops specifically for Google Experience devices (G1 & myTouch 3G), devices that already include said closed source applications.

Casey asks if this could be a sign of Google finding their inner evil. We re-hash our own cliche: any company sufficiently powerful is indistinguishable from evil. It’s just that Apple (and Microsoft) tend to get called on it more.

But, hey, if any clever Android modders want to port that Gmail app over to the iPhone Jailbreak community, we promise we won’t object…

Some feel there’s got to be more to this Microsoft Pink platform, Turtle and Pure phone concept than meets the eye. We’re wondering if, like Newman on Seinfeld, there’s actually less?

Could it really just be a Microsoft Sidekick running Zune HD software?

On the face, we’d say that’s crazy. Microsoft already has Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Mobile 7, and the Zune HD on the market, would they really fragment their offering further by releasing an Instinct-class consumer phone?

Anyone else, never. Microsoft, absolutely.

In their defense, they’ve said Windows 7 will be their iPhone killa, while Windows 6.5 targets Android. These bad boys? We’re honestly not sure…

However, going this route does mean they likely won’t stab their WinMo hardware partners where it hurts, the way they did their MP3 player partners when they abandoned PlaysForSure and released the Zune…

[Gizmodo via WMExperts]

While everyone is waiting on Apple to unveil their universally rumored iTablet/iPad device next year, Gizmodo has just scored the scoop on what Microsoft just might be planning to counter it — the “Courier” tablet.

Decidedly un-Apple in it’s approach, with dual booklet screens, pen and touch input, and feel that’s all organized chaos, it’s also strikingly different to Microsoft’s previous Tablet PC efforts (which were largely tweaked versions of XP and then Vista). Here’s why:

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft’s brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who’s spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

Head on over to Gizmodo to see a video of the concept in action (not iPhone friendly, sorry). Then come back here, tell us what you like and don’t like, and let us know how you think Apple’s take on the tablet will differ.

Microsoft is beginning to staff up their upcoming retail store chain using freshly poached Apple Store managers and employees. Using “significant raises” and in some cases, moving expenses as the carrot, Apple Store managers are hunted and then asked to contact their (now former) top Apple Store salespeople and offer them similar incentives to switch from Mac to PC.

Employees, of course, are not the only thing Microsoft is taking from the Apple Store experienced. Having hired Apple’s former retail location scout, George Blankenship, their plan is to open up right next door to Apple Stores everywhere.

Though they still, stupefyingly, don’t seem interested in actually selling much of anything (they’re focusing on consumer experience), along with the shrink-wrap copies of Windows 7 and Office, Zune HD and XBox 360 that Microsoft manufactures themselves, they’ll be showing off their hardware partners’ wares with PC, PCTV, and Smartphone walls, along with Learn, Connect, and Info tables, and “Guru” bars modeled after… you guessed it…

The strategy is certainly sound, but we’re still not sure that a company with a split software/hardware model will find the same formulae brings the same success.

[The Loop via Ars Technica]

So the Zune HD is out, Windows Mobile 6.5 is starting to come out, Windows Mobile 7 will come out end of next year, and all of this relates to project Pink and new rumors of device code-names Pure and Turtle, and a Surface-related tablet just how exactly?

Sigh. Microsoft is like that cousin that we just know could be great but somehow keeps getting turned around, lost, and otherwise just not-quite delivering on it’s amazing potential. Imagine if they had one division, making one platform, and all that effort and integration went into delivering a killer XboxPhone in time for the holidays this year? And don’t hate on us for saying that, even our sibling site WMExperts is pounding the integration drum.

Back in the real world, however, Microsoft is said to be using a 2-prong strategy, Windows Mobile 6.5 now to compete with Android, and Windows Mobile 7 next year to compete with the iPhone (which, if Apple keeps up with their own roadmap, will be on its 4th hardware revision and running iPhone OS 4.0 — a moving target indeed).

The Zune HD meanwhile is positioned somewhere between the original and current iPod touch.

Microsoft is also rumored to be working on a tablet, based on their big-@$$ Surface table, to market against Apple’s still unannounced iTablet/iPad. Surface uses infrared camera technology, and required a huge basin to house all that hardware, so no doubt this will be Surface in name only (because who wants a 4 foot thick tablet, right?)

And on top of that, Microsoft is still working on Project Pink, which is a giant unknown, except it might be using Danger (makers of the Sidekick, bought out by Microsoft), and might be a Microsoft phone (though Microsoft swears they aren’t making a phone — just like Steve Jobs said no one wanted video on an iPod).

Pure and Turtle would then be these Danger-developed, Sidekick-like handsets running Windows Mobile 7, with on-board Zune software to handle the media layer?

Yeah, we don’t know either. Would that — Sidekick hardware running WinMo7 and Zune HD interface — be competitive with an 4th gen iPhone running iPhone 4.0?

We’re only a year away from knowing….

[Via WMExperts via 9to5mac]

Palm is abandoning Windows Mobile to concentrate their resources on their new webOS platform as currently found on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi.

As former Palm users (I had a Treo 600 at the time), we still remember Bill Gates and Ed Colligan taking the stage together at CES 2006 and showing off the first-ever Windows Mobile Treo 700. (Talk about cats and dogs living together!) Picture speed dialing on the today screen was an immediate sign that Palm was working their “secret sauce” (TM, TreoCast) magic to customize WinMo and give Palm users as much Zen as they could. It was equally evident when the razzle dazzle ended that Palm’s own PalmOS was reaching the end of its useful life and with Cobalt vaporizing, Palm needed something to pin their immediate future on.

A couple years and one long walk in the desert (TM, TreoCast) later, and now webOS is a fresh new take on the smartphone space, and Windows Mobile is the OS in danger of being left behind. Add to that Palm’s limited resources, and the focus makes sense. It’s also gutsy, going all-in on webOS, and Palm needs to be gutsy at this point. No better way to make people believe in your future than believing in it yourself.

In the video embedded above, which we’re offering now in tribute, we argued the Palm Treo Pro was neither a Palm, a Treo, nor particularly Pro (it was an HTC running WinMo with a tiny keyboard). Now maybe they’re a Palm with some new Apple blood and still stuck in tiny keyboard land, but give them a year or so of distance and pure webOS differentiation, and we’re excited to see where they go.

We sympathize with Windows Mobile Treo fans, but cheers Palm. Now bring the competition, Apple needs it, and Apple’s customers will benefit from it in the long run.

Check out PreCentral.net and WMExperts.com for ongoing coverage.