So much for the meme that the rise of Apps implies the ‘death’ of the Web.
Category Archives: Apps market
Android’s fragmentation problem
One of my boys has recently adopted my Android phone after his 6-year-old Motorola handset finally gave up the ghost, and it’s been interesting to observe his reactions. On the one hand, he’s charmed by finally having a handheld device that connects properly to the Net and the Web. But his experiences with Android Apps mirror mine, namely that there not much quality control, great variability and many Apps won’t work with lots of handsets. In fact, he’s experiencing the problems that finally drove me to get an iPhone.
What he hasn’t experienced yet, though, is the maddening control-freakery of the mobile carriers in relation to updating the OS on the handset. First of all, they accept no responsibility for the OS; and secondly, even when they grudgingly offer some upgrade facility, it’s often flaky and sometimes requires serious geek skills to implement. A friend of my daughter’s has the same Android handset (a t-mobile Pulse) and when I asked her what version of the OS it was running she said “I think it’s 2 point something”. Surprised (because she is not in the least geeky), I asked her how she’d done the upgrade from the version 1.5 that’s running on my handset. She replied that her brother — who is an engineering student and a real geek — does the upgrades for her. But then she added: “the only problem is that it crashes a bit after he’s done the upgrade”.
Dan Gillmor has an interesting piece in Salon.com in which he explores some of these issues.
The first problem, as I noted in a recent post, is that Google has given the mobile carriers nearly total control over the phones they sell — including the software. In the process, they’re taking Android — an open-source operating system when it gets to the carrier — and turning it into an operating system that removes user choice, by adding software that locks down the devices in ways that are even worse, in some respects, than the famous Apple control-freakery. At least Apple doesn’t load crapware — mostly unwanted, unneeded and un-removable software — onto the iPhone and iPad, as the carriers are doing with their Android devices. This has forced users to jailbreak their Android phones, a perversion of the very idea of openness.
We’ve seen the consequences of mixing manufacturer control-freakery with open source OSs already in the Netbook market, with every vendor offering its own infuriating version of Linux Lite. I’m tired of having to clear the disk of every Netbook I try in order to install Ubuntu. But at least the Ubuntu people take responsibility for their distribution, and they’re very helpful in relation to different brands of Netbook. Google should do the same for Android.
The iPadification of Mac OS
Hmmm… Apropos my column pondering the implications of iOS for Apple computers, here are some interesting thoughts on the same subject.
But it is the changes coming in Lion that are inspired by the iPad's user interface that will have broader ramifications for the future of all Macs, even desktops. These include the Launchpad screen and its folder-creation method, (OS-level support for) full-screen apps, auto-save and auto-resume. As with the iPad-inspired hardware changes, these will bring tradeoffs. Many of these make computing more accessible to newcomers, a path that Apple has doggedly pursued since the dawn of the Mac. To Apple's benefit, they also differentiate Mac OS further from Windows and tie together Apple's products better.
For veteran users, though, the changes may not represent an ideal execution. For example, auto-save can be a lifesaver, but for productivity applications it is ideally implemented with version control that is generally not in iPad apps today and which can be a confusing concept to new users. Similarly, the Launchpad interface may be effective for a world without mice or hierarchical folders, but Apple already offers the dock and the Applications folder for easily browsing programs. And with tried and true aids such as list view and sorting, one can take advantage of larger displays to view more apps at a glance without having to wander among screens, particularly when hunting for apps that are used less often.
But the hope is that Apple will blend them into the Mac OS rather than graft them on. Just as with the new MacBook Air, the key is to recognize what is relevant and what is not.
Apple hasn't yet offered extensive details on how these iPad calques will work in Lion; there doesn't seem to be any requirement for users to use these in Lion. But the hope is that Apple will blend them into the Mac OS rather than graft them on. Just as with the new MacBook Air, the key is to recognize what is relevant and what is not. For example, while Apple has dismissed physical keyboards on its iDevices, it continues to treat them as sacrosanct on the Mac, ensuring that its smallest notebook still has a keyboard with full-sized keys with spacing…
John Gruber has some interesting thoughts about this — as usual. For example:
iOS apps do run on Mac OS X, today, in the iPhone/iPad emulator that ships with the iOS developer kit. Ends up they’re just not that pleasant to use on a Mac. Gestures that are natural and fun with direct touch are awkward and clumsy using a mouse or touchpad. I never hear iPad developers — who run their own iOS apps on their Macs during development, for testing and debugging purposes — wish that they could ship them as-is to Mac users. Ever try a game like Pac-Man on the iPhone? A game that’s designed from the ground up around a hardware joystick or D-pad just isn’t very good on a device without a joystick. Everything about iOS apps is like that when you run them on a Mac. (And, conversely, popular iOS games like Angry Birds tend to feature controls that only really make sense with a touchscreen.)
The Mac Apps store: a harbinger of … what?
This morning’s Observer column.
A couple of weeks ago, Apple announced some new products, including a fancy new lightweight laptop and the latest version of the OS X operating system. In the midst of all the techno-porn, however, Steve Jobs dropped a little bombshell: Apple is opening an online store to sell Mac apps, ie small programs akin to those sold for the iPhone and iPad.
So what? you say. And you may be right. But since Apple is now one of the biggest companies in the world (by market value), nothing that it announces will go unexamined. In the blogosphere, there has been much speculation about what the Mac app store portends.
Opinions vary from the bored to the apocalyptic…
Where the iPad comes into its own
As time has gone on, I’ve found that my iPad has a few really useful affordances. The biggest is the battery life — which means that I no longer have to cluster with other laptop users round the few available power sockets. So I now take it to every meeting where I’m likely to want to take notes. I’ve also managed to get the hang of the on-screen keyboard, so I can type reasonably quickly.
There are now tons of note-taking Apps for the device, and so far I’ve tried quite a few: Apple’s (relatively expensive) Pages App; DocsToGo; Mental Note; Dan Bricklin’s NoteTaker HD; and Simplenote. Of these, I found Simplenote to be the most useful, because it automatically syncs to all my other devices — which means that a note can be accessed from anywhere. A few weeks ago, for example, I had to give a talk at a symposium, but didn’t have time to prepare a presentation or even print a script. So in the venue car-park beforehand I jotted down some notes on my laptop using the JustNotes program (which syncs with Simplenote), and then used the synced version on my phone as an aide-memoire for the talk.
This week I was a speaker at a Cambridge symposium on “The Digital Revolution and its futures” and — as usual — took out the iPad to begin taking notes. Sitting behind me was Andrew Gruen, a Gates Scholar who is doing very interesting work on Citizen Journalism and who is also an iPad & Mac user. He tapped me on the shoulder and said “Have you heard of Soundnote?” When I looked blank, he said “Try it: it’s really cool”.
So I did. At first sight it looks like any other notetaking App. But it has one magical ingredient: it can record audio and sync the recording to the typed notes. In other words, it does much of what my Livescribe pen does, but with none of the associated gadgetry — and cost. The Livescribe pen retails at around £120, and then there’s the cost of the special notebooks (you can print your own special paper, but life’s too short for that) on top.
And the cost of Soundnote? Why £2.99. For some people — those whose work involves taking minutes of meetings, for example — it would justify the purchase of an iPad. If this isn’t a Killer App, then I don’t know what is.
There’s an informative review/description of Soundnote here.
The tablet future?
The Register reports on a recent Gartner forecast which predicts astonishing sales for the iPad.
Tablet sales will more than double in the next year, with general-purpose machines taking business from mini notebooks and single-function tablets such as Amazon’s Kindle.
The iPad will drive sales of media tablets in 2011, with 54.8 million units projected to ship worldwide according to Gartner compared to 19.5 million tablets this year.
North America will account for more than half of media tablet sales this year, but as they become available elsewhere, this proportion will drop to 43 per cent by 2014.
Gartner vice president of research Carolina Milanesi said in a statement that all-in-one tablets will cannibalize sales of e-readers, gaming devices and media players.
“Mini notebooks will suffer from the strongest cannibalization threat as media tablet average selling prices (ASPs) drop below $300 over the next two years,” Milanesi said.
Gartner didn’t use the phrase, but it probably meant netbooks.
The ‘Death-of-the-Web’ meme rides again
This morning’s Observer column.
It’s possible, of course, that the Anderson-Wolff scare story was the product of an innocent mistake. But let us, for a moment, refuse them the benefit of the doubt. The core of their argument is that the popularity of apps as on iPhone and Android phones signals the death knell of the web. The marketplace has spoken, they write. When it comes to the applications that run on top of the net, people are starting to choose quality of service. We want TweetDeck to organise our Twitter feeds because it s more convenient than the Twitter web page. The Google Maps mobile app on our phone works better in the car than the Google Maps website on our laptop. And we’d rather lean back to read books with our Kindle or iPad app than lean forward to peer at our desktop browser.
That’s the message. Now, who is the messenger? Answer: Condé Nast, the publishing conglomerate that owns Wired — as well as the New Yorker, GQ and Vanity Fair. The web has posed a serious threat to their business model as it has to almost all print publishers because they have thus far failed to find a way to get people to pay serious money for online content.
The arrival of iPhone and, later, iPad apps was the first good news that magazine conglomerates had received in a decade. Why? Because, in contrast to the Wild West Web, apps are tightly controlled by Apple and consumers willingly pay for them. As a result, print publishers have fallen on the apps idea like ravening wolves…
Invasion of the Jabscreeners
Wonderful column by Charlie Brooker about the iPhone, er Jabscreen.
Several times over the last year I've attended meetings which started with everyone present gently placing their Jabscreen face-down on the table, as though commencing a futuristic game of poker. It wasn’t rehearsed, wasn’t planned, it just happened; a spontaneous modern ceremony.
There’s something inherently nauseating about the sight of a roomful of media types perched reverentially around their shiny twit machines, so each time it happened, a vague discomfort would hang in the air until, in a desperate bid to break the tension, someone would mumble a sardonic comment about the sinister ubiquity of the Jabscreen, likening it to a scene from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. This would in turn prompt a 25-minute chat about apps and gizmos and which level of Angry Birds you’re stuck on. Sometimes there wasn’t much time for the meeting at all after that. But never mind. You could all schedule a follow-up on your Jabscreens…
Will we lose our App-etites?
This morning’s Observer column.
Google has launched a new online tool that may eventually make you wish you’d never been born. It’s called App Inventor, and it’s a kind of DIY kit that will allegedly enable non-techies to build applications for Android smartphones. “To use App Inventor,” says Google, “you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires no programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behaviour.”
There’s a nice video that illustrates this point. It opens with an attractive young woman and her cat, who’s walking all over her computer keyboard. So she takes puss on to her lap and sets to work…
Google’s DIY App Tool
Google is bringing Android software development to the masses. According to the NYTimes,
The company will offer a software tool, starting Monday, that is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smartphones.
The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android, has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors.
The thinking behind the initiative, Google said, is that as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves.
“The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” said Harold Abelson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on sabbatical at Google and led the project.
The project is a further sign that Google is betting that its strategy of opening up its technology to all kinds of developers will eventually give it the upper hand in the smartphone software market.
The strategy looks on track. For one thing, Android phones are outselling iPhones. And the Android Apps market seems to be developing nicely, as this graph from Android Guys suggests:
