Memex 1.1

The Register has been given a sneak preview of Google Android.

The real magic is the Android runtime called Dalvik. This is a custom virtual machine designed to be a better embedded OS. It’s a register-based Virtual Machine, and therefore more efficient in an embedded environment than a traditional Java Virtual Machine; core libraries interact with the Java Harmony project. You may write in Java, but the byte code is Dalvik.

Dalvik uses .dex byte code files and Java class files are converted to .dex. The .dex structure allows processes to share system classes, saving memory…

Just thought you’d like to know.

Register report:

About 27 per cent of the iPhones sold in 2007 are being operated on unauthorized wireless networks, according to research released today. That works out at about one million handsets.

The unlocked phones are used largely in regions where the must-have device isn’t officially sold, according to a report issued by Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi. He says the appetite for the modified phones has given way to a cottage industry that sells hacks or phones that come out of the box unlocked. Most phones originated in the US where, thanks to current currency exchange rates, prices are comparatively low…

Unlocked phones dramatically reduce the profitability of iPhones for Apple becaue the company gets $300 to $400 from its network ‘partners’ for each iPhone sold. So the missing phones generate 50 per cent less revenue and up to 75 per cent less profit than normal. A million missing phones therefore means $400m in lost revenue. Ouch!

I don’t have an iPhone but I do have an iPod Touch which runs most of the iPhone software and I’ve been blown away by the version of the Safari browser that runs on the iPhone/Touch. It’s the first time I’ve ever found it acceptable to browse the Web on a handheld device. Accessing the Web on my BlackBerry is like having one’s teeth pulled without anaesthetic. It’s simply dire.

Looks like I’m not alone in this:

On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times. A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone.

The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.

The iPhone has taken the frustration out of browsing on a mobile phone, said Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Company.

Other companies confirmed the trends, if not the specific data, observed by Google. Yahoo, for instance, said iPhones accounted for a disproportionate amount of its mobile traffic. And AdMob, a firm that shows billions of ads on mobile Web sites every month, said it saw traffic from iPhones surge drastically around Christmas.

“Consumers are going to demand Internet browsers” as good as Apple’s, said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president who oversees mobile products…

The stats are significant: Google is seeing almost as much traffic from a device that has 2 per cent of the phone market as from Symbian phones which have 63 per cent of the market. There’s a lesson there, Nokia.

This morning’s Observer column…

The saga of the Apple iPhone continues. Last Thursday, AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, was asked at an industry gathering about the prospects for a future iPhone with a faster net connection. ‘You’ll have it next year,’ quoth he. Those ‘familiar with the matter’ (as US newspapers quaintly put it) are amazed that Mr Stephenson still lives and breathes - or at any rate was doing so when this column went to press. For there are two things that Steve Jobs, Apple’s mercurial - not to say explosive - CEO, cannot abide. The first is anyone other than himself making product announcements. The second is announcing forthcoming upgrades while there’s plenty of old stock to be shifted over Christmas. After all, who in their right mind would buy a steam-powered iPhone now when they can have a 3G one in a few months? Answers, please, on the back of a death warrant, to Steve Jobs, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA.

Interesting CNET interview with the guru himself:

For years I used to say, “We shouldn’t have to adapt to technology, it should adapt to us.” I now believe that’s wrong. We shouldn’t have to adapt to arbitrary technology. On the other hand, so much of our modern life has been a major adaptation to the technology surrounding us, whether it’s heating systems, lights, telephone, or television.

If you’d asked me to predict texting I’d have said, “No, it’s really too hard. Jeesh, you need to type three times to get a ‘C.’ That’s ridiculous.” Not only did people learn it, but (they) learned it so well…So, there’s an adaptation for you.

Now, just as an aside, I think it has not to do with the age…I think it has to do with how you live your life…In my case, it was easy because I grew up helping develop the technology so I learned it as it was developed. For many, it suddenly sprung on them and it’s true, it’s hard to keep up.
As people, we should not care about the technology. We should care about the benefits it gives us.

The issue is not how tech-savvy you are, or how quick you pick up to it. I believe these are things that often take many hours to master…You just didn’t want to spend the next 20 hours of your life mastering it. But a lot of the kids, they have that kind of time to devote to it…

This morning’s Observer column…

Until now, phones have been relatively primitive devices, so the corrupt absurdity of the closed systems operated by networks has not been obvious to most. The arrival of the iPhone lays it bare. Having an iPhone locked to a network which doesn’t provide 3G connectivity, and is unable to make VoIP calls despite having good wireless networking built in, is like buying a Ferrari and finding that the only thing you can do with it is power your lawnmower. It’s nuts - and our regulators have allowed it to happen….

My Skype phone arrived today, and it’s a very interesting gadget indeed. It’s got a lovely implementation of Skype and does Skype-to-Skype calls smoothly — and free. Also the Skype IM client works smoothly and efficiently. It’s also a perfectly good ‘ordinary’ phone (and has quite a decent 2MP camera) with Bluetooth and a micro SD card. What with this and the iPhone and the revelations about Google phone plans, the mobile phone business is about to become a LOT more interesting than it has been up to now.

Haven’t read all the small print yet, so haven’t been able to check what happens when you want to make Skype-to-Skype calls in another country. There has to be a downside to this somewhere. But it’s a neat and innovative package just for UK use.

Oh — I almost forgot — it’s also got a nice app which makes it easy to post Facebook status updates. See photograph.

Lovely WSJ column by Walt Mossberg…

Suppose you own a Dell computer, and you decide to replace it with a Sony. You don’t have to get the permission of your Internet service provider to do so, or even tell the provider about it. You can just pack up the old machine and set up the new one.

Now, suppose your new computer came with a particular Web browser or online music service, but you’d prefer a different one. You can just download and install the new software, and uninstall the old one. You can sign up for a new music service and cancel the old one. And, once again, you don’t need to even notify your Internet provider, let alone seek its permission.

Oh, and the developers of such computers, software and services can offer you their products directly, without going through the Internet provider, without getting the provider’s approval, and without giving the provider a penny. The Internet provider gets paid simply for its contribution to the mix: providing your Internet connection. But, for all practical purposes, it doesn’t control what is connected to the network, or carried over the network.

This is, he says “the way digital capitalism should work”, and he’s right. But there’s one area in digital technology where it doesn’t apply — the mobile phone industry.

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.

Whether you are a consumer, a hardware maker, a software developer or a provider of cool new services, it’s hard to make a move in the American cellphone world without the permission of the companies that own the pipes. While power in other technology sectors flows to consumers and nimble entrepreneurs, in the cellphone arena it remains squarely in the hands of the giant carriers.

The Soviet Ministry Model

That’s why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the “Soviet ministries.”

It goes on, and gets even better. This is a great op-ed piece.

Oh no. BBC NEWS | Technology | Mobile phone use backed on planes…

Passengers could soon be using their mobile phones on planes flying through European airspace.

Plans have been developed across EU countries to introduce technology which permits mobile calls without risk of interference with aircraft systems.

Regulators around Europe are calling for consultation on the potential introduction of the technology.

If given the go ahead, the service would allow calls to be made when a plane is more than 3,000 metres high.

Individual airlines would need to decide if they wanted to introduce the technology, if the green light is given by national regulators.

Bah!

New York Times report today says that:

the Web was filled Friday with complaints from people who had installed the latest iPhone software update, only to see all the fun little programs they had been adding to their iPhones disappear — or, still worse, see their phones freeze up entirely.

It was bound to happen. The moral is that if you hack your iPhone you should forget about syncing it to your computer from then on.

Control freaks like Apple don’t give up easily.

But wait! – GMSV has more:

From the warranty right on through Steve Jobs explicit reminder (see “Jobs to iPhone hackers: Bring it on”), Apple has consistently warned iPhone buyers that if they choose to go off the reservation and modify their units to use third-party software or run on networks other than AT&T, they run the risk of their beautiful toy turning into a handsome skipping stone. Still, thousands took their chances, and sure enough, when Apple pushed through an iPhone update Thursday, there was soon wailing and lamentation throughout the land.

Unfortunately for Apple, at least some of that wailing was coming from owners who had not hacked or modified their iPhone, yet found it hobbled or bricked after the update. And the overall picture of which phones were hit, the damage and the chances of recovery is veiled in the fog of war. Depending on which unlocking hack was used, or not, the iPhone update may or may not brick your unit or cause data loss, and that damage may or may not be repairable by new hacks or perhaps by a sympathetic Apple Genius. What is clear is that even while acting within its rights, Apple has a messy little problem that is not going to go away any time soon.

Still more: Erick Schonfeld has advice for Apple — “Stop behaving like a phone company”…

As we all know by now, the latest software update to the iPhone may in some cases turn it into a useless brick—if you happen to have put hacked software on it or unlocked it (ahem, John) in order to make it work on a non-AT&T carrier (such as T-Mobile, in the U.S.). Apple, of course, is free to try to lock in customers to its partner AT&T and to control what software will work on the phone. That’s just the way the cell phone business works. Right? It’s all about customer lock-in and reducing churn.

But Steve Jobs might be better served here to take his own advice and think different. Because, as he has so elegantly demonstrated with the iPhone, these devices are finally becoming little computers. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that consumers will expect them to act like computers. They will want to modify them to their exact, quirky predilections. They will want to use them any way they want, as a general-purpose device.

That is why PCs took over the world. They could be tuned a million different ways to the needs of a million different customers. You don’t ask Apple permission to download software off the Web for your Mac. And you would never agree to buy a laptop that only worked with only one broadband provider. Why should the iPhone be any different?

The uproar today may be limited to hackers and the digerati. But soon everyone will want the same thing. And if they don’t get it from Apple. They may look somewhere else. Google Phone anyone?