2 Robots

So, it looks like I called that one wrong. Or did I?At first glance, it appears that android is a serious contender against the iPhone and IOS. It’s even arguable about which on is more popular at this point — do you measure by total units sold, or sales in the most recent quarter? What [...]

A colleague recently asked me who I thought would win the mobile phone wars: Apple or Google. He suggested that Android is a better horse to bet on because Google has virtually unlimited resources to spend until Android dominates the mobile phone market. From reading around the Internet, this seems to be a common misconception.

The expectation of an emerging dominant platform for smart phones comes from general experience with the PC industry, where there has been virtually a single platform for decades. However, the cell phone business is very different from the PC business: while market forces pushed the latter towards platform consolidation, there are several factors keeping mobile platforms distinct. Factor in Google’s self-stated motivation for entering this market in the first place and it becomes clear that the current fragmentation of smart phone platforms isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Read more.

Apple seems to be getting a lot of negative press on its recent SDK announcement. Much of the criticism seems to focus around two issues: That not all functionality of the phone is accessable via the SDK, and that Apple controls the distribution method to the phone. I’ll adress the second point first. Some perspective on the history of apps on cell phones will do a lot to put this in perspective, and see why these decisions were made as tradeoffs, and actually strengthen the position of the iPhone as a leader in custom applications.

Chrome Walker has a post on some of the new phones coming out in Europe for 2008. One of the trends that seems to be emerging is the “real web.” This was kicked off by Apple with the iPhone, and its the idea that you can view the Internet on your cell phone with a reasonable interface. In other words, its formatted the same way as it would be on your computer.

Is this the future of cell phone applications? Read on …

When it comes to my personal computer, I believe in making as many copies of my data as I can, as often as I can.

Mozy is a little program that runs in the background and backs up your files every now and then to their servers. If you need to restore a file, you can do it through their web site or else through the program you download. However, not is all rosy with Mozy.

Read on.

Yesterday was the first day of the Apple-Starbucks partnership to bring iTunes integration to your local Starbucks. If you haven’t heard by now, the idea is that when you walk into a Starbucks and you have a laptop, iPhone, or iPod Touch, you will get a special Starbucks store with specific Starbucks music and a “now playing” option so you can check out what you are hearing over the speakers in the cafe. So, how does this work in practice in New York, one of two cities slated to have initial support for this integration?

Read on.