Apple’s iPad – It’s all about the apps.

I’ve had some time to digest Apple’s announcement of the iPad this Wednesday, and despite being confused and unsure at first I think I’ve come around on it.  Is the iPad perfect?  No.  Is it a device you need?  No more than you “need” an Amazon Kindle.  It’s a luxury device that’ll fill some use cases for you and probably make your life a little more convenient, but certainly not a necessity.

There has been a lot of commotion about the iPad being “just a big iPod Touch.”  I disagree with that sentiment completely, for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s about the user experience.  What’s the most-obvious difference between the iPod Touch and iPad?  The display size, of course.  Because the display for these touch devices doubles as the user input interface, it means developers can do a hell of a lot more with the software they create on the iPad.  I think it’ll be the first device to truly recognize the full potential and yes, I’ll admit it, “cool factor” of multitouch.  Sure I can do some multitouch functions on my iPhone, but usually only to zoom in or zoom out on an object.  Imagine the possibilities of the iPad’s nearly 10″ of screen real estate, particularly when you can set it down on the table or in your lap and have two free hands with which to manipulate the on-screen information.

The second major difference is the horsepower.  My current smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, which has a ARM processor clocked at 600mhz by default and only 256MB of memory.  The iPad on the other hand, has a 1ghz processor and rumored 1GB of RAM.  That means that the applications that are being developed for it will have a much wider range of capabilities and a richer user experience.  While watching Apple’s keynote it wasn’t until Scott Forstall brought developers up on stage to show their iPad apps, not to mention when Phil Schiller did the iWork demonstration, that I began to truly understand the amazing amount of potential this device has.  Compare the iPad right now to where the iPhone was when it launched: there are very few native applications and those that do exist were created by Apple.  The one thing that the iPad has going for it over the iPhone though, is that we already have an SDK for the device before it’s even released.  How long did it take Apple to get the iPhone SDK out there?

I’ll be the first to admit that I think the way they’ve chosen to integrate iPhone apps into the iPad is a little cheesy.  You can either run them in a native mode, which displays them in a tiny black box in the middle of your 9.5″ display, or you can use “pixel-double” to expand them to fit the screen.  Pixel-double might be good for apps that are predominantly text or image-based, but I have a feeling that there’s going to be significant graphical degradation with video playback and games.  With all that said though, iPhone apps on the iPad are not what users should be excited for.  Software developed with the iPad in mind will truly make the device sing, and I think it’ll be the best media-consumption device we’ve seen so far.

Plus you can’t read ibooks on your iPod Touch, you illiterate brigand!

Google Voice

I was fortunate enough to get invites to both Google Voice and Google Wave this week, but for now I’m going to stick with discussing Google Voice. This is mostly because nobody I know has Google Wave yet and, for a product that’s about collaboration with other people, it makes it hard to form an educated opinion about its usefulness.

Google Voice is a new service from Google which lets you link multiple phone numbers (home phone, work phone, mobile, etc.) to one new number of your choosing, as long as it’s available.  You can search for numbers via keyword (for example your name), area code or zip code.  Once you’ve chosen your new number all you have to do is link your pre-existing numbers to that one and you’ll have access to the host of cool features that Google Voice provides.

The most obvious feature Google Voice provides is call forwarding.  Using the site’s settings you can set Google Voice to forward calls and messages to one of your various phones automatically.  For example, you could set your work phone to only receive Google Voice calls between 9 and 5 on weekdays, or your home phone to only receive calls on weekends.  You can even setup and manage certain groups of contacts and set the default phone for each – for example, if you want to direct work calls to your mobile phone you can do that.

The next feature I like is getting Google into some hot water with carriers – free SMS messaging.  From the Google Voice website you can send text messages to any phone, for free.  Many people have presumed that this feature alone is why the Google Voice application was denied from Apple’s App Store.  You can be sure that AT&T wasn’t too excited about the idea.

One of the best features you get with Google Voice is the purest form of free visual voicemail I’ve ever seen.  Voicemails sent to your Google Voice account are automatically transcribed to text and forwarded to the Google Voice website where you have an inbox for all incoming messages.  The transcriptions are surprisingly accurate, but you can also playback the message from the website if there are a few missed words.  As you would expect, from your Google Voice inbox you can read incoming messages as though you were reading email from your Gmail inbox.  You can search for messages, leave notes to yourself and even add stars to important messages so you can come back to them later.

All said I think Google Voice is an excellent service.  I can only hope that someone at Apple or AT&T decides to let the application through to the App Store.  If not, you can bet that Google will work on a mobile web version of Google Voice like they’ve done with most of their other services, and we’ll get access to it anyways.

Google’s Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple Board of Directors

This is a very interesting development given very recent conflicts between Google and Apple/AT&T.  Sure, Steve Jobs has stated that Eric’s resignation was a mutual decision made by both companies because Google’s encroachment on familiar territory is becoming a conflict of interest.  Still, Android has been out for some time, so why now?

One of the biggest stories last week was Apple’s denial of the Google Voice application on the iTunes app store.  The dispute has since been consumed by the gaze of the FCC to determine if this choice was made by AT&T moreso than Apple, or if AT&T in any way influences the content found on the App Store.  If that’s the case, as it may very well be, the ruling could be important for a couple reasons.

1. Consumers have one more reason to detest AT&T
2. It gives no logical support for the claim that the denial of Google applications has anything to do with Schmidt’s descent from the board
3. Consumers have one more reason to dete….oh, I already said that one

Honestly though it doesn’t sound like Apple’s style to bend to the will of AT&T.  They love their products enough to say something to the affect of “Listen, we have a product that has made you millions, you think this app conflicts with your service then tough cookies – we’re working on a Verizon version of the iPhone anyways.”  I’m getting off-track here.

Does this departure setup a feud between Apple and Google?  The two companies have seemed almost philosophically aligned for some time now, and most pundits don’t really consider Android or what we know of Chrome OS as major threats in their individual markets (phone and PC operating systems).  All this time it has been Microsoft who has been desperately trying to compete with the big G, and just when it seems that they’re making a solid go of it the focus might be shifting towards an Apple/Google main event instead.

There is one area in which the philosophies of Apple and Google conflict, however.  Openness.  It’s been proclaimed that this might be the achilles heel of Apple.  Google always happily opens up their projects to developers while Apple severely shies away from such behavior.  Sure, the iTunes App Store is extremely successful, but the only complaint we seem to hear about weekly is that certain apps get shot down for seemingly silly reasons, and of course Apple’s proprietary take on their hardware and software is always criticized.  If Apple had the market share Windows does, they’d have one of the worst monopolies we’ve ever seen.

The only thing we could possibly say Google has a monopoly on is the search engine market, but with Bing approaching 10%+ market share that’s not as much of a compelling case.

Apple updates!

Yesterday Apple updated a bunch of products.  Most were just hardware updates (CPU speed bumps, graphics card updates, more RAM etc.) and there are so many to mention that I’ll just have to refer you to Apple.com or MacRumors if you want to see the nitty-gritty details.  Just know that if you were in the market for an iMac, Mac Pro or Mac Mini now’s probably the time to take the plunge.  I’m just happy because the iMac wasn’t significantly updated, no aesthetic redesign or anything, so I’m still pleased with my 24″ 3.06ghz iMac from last July.

What I did find interesting was a lesser-noted addition to Apple’s product line: the new wired wireless keyboard.  It’s basically a wired version of of their wireless keyboard which means that it’s shrunken down and has no number pad.  To me this is pretty odd.  The justification of forgoing a number pad on my wireless keyboard was that it was exactly that: wireless.  Who’s going to buy the same keyboard but now it has a wire and no numpad?  Dunno, like I said, it just seems goofy to me.

What most excites me about these updates is what wasn’t updated.  This smacks of “clearing the road for WWDC” to me.  With these updates they can get all of their spec-bumps out of the way and save the flashy stuff for WWDC.  After all, announcing a new iMac that looks just like the old iMac but is slightly faster doesn’t really excite audiences at a keynote.  Instead they can roll out the new version of the iPhone, which I’m hotly anticipating.  We might even see something a little more over-the-top like the iTablet everyone’s talking about these days.  Honestly though, if at WWDC they just spend a whole 2 hours talking about a new rev of the iPhone and how cool all of its new features are, I’ll be happy.

If you think about it, the iPhone is the perfect product for WWDC.  At a developers conference you should talk about what developers are developing for, right?  Increasingly that’s the iPhone.  How many millions of applications have been downloaded from the App Store?  Sure, standard desktop applications are still important but iPhone apps are the new hotness right now.

Mobile applications: the future of software development

I twittered a link to an article by Gizmodo yesterday in which it was announced that BlackBerry was bringing it’s own application store to their mobile products.  Obviously the success of the BlackBerry is fairly well known, but with the iPhone gaining more and more traction it’s not entirely unexpected that BlackBerry would want to throw their hat into the mobile application market along with the recently released T-Mobile G1 (powered by Google’s Android OS).  Could this be the new trend in application development?

As more and more emphasis is put on cloud computing it seems that there isn’t as much need for actual desktop applications anymore.  Presumably the ultimate goal of computing in the cloud is that we’ll be able to access server-based applications from a web browser, much like 280slides and Pixlr – two websites I’ve probably talked about a little too much recently.  I’ve also made reference to the Google applications (docs, calendar, mail) and Microsoft’s Live services (email, calendar, Skydrive, Live Mesh) as other good examples of where cloud computing might be headed.  So then, in 15 years will traditional desktop application developers still have a role in the tech industry?

I think that’s where all of this push for mobile applications comes in.  Obviously they’re successful.  I wrote a post about the developer of Trism for iPhone being on track to make $2 million by 2009.  There’s a market here.  Besides, isn’t that what we’ve wanted from our cellphones all along, that is to say a mobile computing device?  The phones in question (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) have some features with all sorts of potential for developers – functionality that we dont necessarily see in even sophisticated computers today because they don’t lend themselves well.  I’m talking about GPS, video capturing, accelerometers and obviously telephony – and it shows with some of the more innovative apps to hit the phones’ respective stores.

Of course there is some room for improvement.  The G1 for instance, only has around 30 applications right now despite being completely open source.  Also a lot of the applications are a little too innovative for their own good; for example there’s an application that calculates your carbon footprint as you drive using GPS (it’s called Ecorio, seen here) and yet there isn’t a quality instant messenger app.  Some have speculated that this is because of Google’s $10 million contest for the best Android application, which may have spurred more incentive to make an overly ambitious application instead of focusing on something more basic (and yet essential).

It seems like common sense to me that as the shift to smaller devices happens that developers will have a home on mobile platforms.  It could be sort of a trend in which BlackBerry sees the iPhone and Andriod app stores and says “we need to get in on that as well” but based on some of the success stories so far I think mobile applications are here to stay.  They aren’t new, but now they’re beginning to take front stage.  I don’t dare say that this shift will be as important as the shift to the internet, but to say that mobile applications won’t have at least comparitive importance is rather shortsighted.  So if you’re a desktop application developer (or any developer in general) it might just be worth your while to grab a copy of the iPhone/Android/Blackberry(???) SDK and tinker around a bit. =)

Now Playing:
The Pogues – The Battle March Medley
Saints Row 2

My app store applications

So it’s been a while since I first started using Apple’s app store, and I’ve tested various different applications that provide various different functionality.  Based on what I have used so far and what I’m still using to this day, I figured I’d write a post outlining some of my favorites.  Granted I probably don’t install new applications as often as a lot of people do, so this list might not be full of the latest and greatest, but still if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch and you haven’t heard of the following applications you should go ahead and check them out.  Let’s get started!

Air Sharing

Ever wish you could use your iPhone or iPod Touch as an external hard drive?  Better yet it’d be nice to view some important documents from the device as well.  That’s what Air Sharing does.  When you set up Air Sharing you set up a connection between your Mac and your touch device.  What that means is that you can easily mount your iPhone or iPod Touch to your Mac wirelessly.  Once mounted you can drag and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone completely seemlessly.  I’ve found it’s been particularly useful for .pdf and .doc files I’ve been given in classes.  If I’m in class and I need to reference something in the notes I just pull out my iPod Touch and I’m good to go with Air Sharing.  Air Sharing is also free, which is a good bonus.

Remember the Milk

There are a ton…and I mean a ton of to-do applications for the iPhone.  Some are free and some are paid, and as expected some are fairly basic while others offer a lot of functionality.  My to-do list is a website, however.  Remember the Milk has an excellent web app built specifically for the iPhone which sings on the device and looks better than most to-do software applications I’ve seen in the app store.  I think there has been a lot of people who have forgotten that Apple was pushing web applications pretty hard before they unveiled the SDK for the iPhone, and Remember the Milk is certainly not a website which should go overlooked.

Aside from the pretty interface which allows you to add tasks to your various lists, set priorities, set due dates and so on (all of the features you’d expect with a to-do list), RTM integrates into a lot of other applications as well.  For instance, I recently started using Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity extension, and there’s already a nice command for adding and viewing your tasks straight from Firefox.  RTM also has a Firefox plugin which shows your tasks inline with your gmail account and (as I’ve mentioned before) using gmail in a web browser without my tasks sitting to the right has since become foreign to me.  Finally there’s even an RTM dashboard widget which allows you to tick off completed tasks throughout the day.  If you haven’t used Remember the Milk and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, check out i.rememberthemilk.com from your touch device and give it a spin.  The only drawback is that it costs $25 after the initial 15-day trial period, but I loved it so much I dropped the cash without thinking twice.

Wikipanion

This is a fairly simple application.  We all know that Safari is excellent on the iPhone.  Still, there’s sometimes when you just want to search Wikipedia and get some information that is pre-formatted for easy reading on the iPhone.  That’s what Wikipanion does.  All you have to do is open Wikipanion, search for Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and the application pulls down the article after formatting it for the iPhone’s screen.  It also has predictive queries so if you start by typing a few letters of your keyword chances are pretty good that one of Wikipanion’s suggestions will be what you’re looking for.  Wikipanion is another great free app.

1Password

It’s obvious that one of the best parts about Apple’s touch devices is that they’re mobile computers.  As a result, you probably find yourself logging into your web services from the device quite often.  However, if there’s one complaint that anyone can make about the iPhone it’s that the keyboard is a little unfriendly when it comes to inputting strong passwords.  1Password allows you to safely and securely store your passwords on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  Using 1Password you only have to remember…you guessed it…one password in order to access your others.  After inputting your master password you get access to your concealed account credentials, and from 1Password you can login to various sites.  1Password is free for now despite being a paid application on the Mac, so if you’re even slightly interested I’d check it out before they decide to start charging.

So there you have it.  Those are the applications (aside from ones I’ve mentioned in previous posts) which I’m enjoying the most right now.  Honorable mentions go to Twitterific which is still my favorite Twitter client on the iPod Touch and Bloomberg, an awesome stock application that blows Apple’s Stocks app out of the water.  The only reason I’m giving those two an honorable mention is because Twitterific isn’t exactly the most obscure application, and Bloomberg is really only useful if you’re a stock junkie…otherwise it’s just pretty to look at.  =)

Now Playing:
Deftones – Teenager (Idiot Version)
The Orange Box

The app store gold rush

This isn’t exactly a new story, but since I don’t have anything else to write about and this story makes me pretty happy (as opposed to the economic calamity going on right now), I figured I’d write about it.  Last week the developer of my favorite App Store application was featured in a news story discussing his incredible success based on app store sales in the few months since his application launched.  The application of course is the game Trism, a puzzle game which I did a video review of not too far back.

This is the first prime example of Apple’s app store empowering average-Joe developers to get out there and make solid products.  Apple facilitates all app store purchases, even free applications, by providing the infrastructure (hosting, sales, marketing) free of charge.  Of course in the case of pay-for applications like Steve Demeter’s Trism, Apple takes the 30% cut that I mentioned earlier.  Still I’m sure Steve isn’t complaining about that, after all he’s on track to make $2 million by July 2009.

In the article Steve also goes on to denounce Google’s Android platform.  He says that he’ll stick with Apple because (obviously) he’s “doing just fine” with them.  He then went on to mention that he thinks Google’s approach of having multiple handsets for different carriers will be an annoyance for developers:

“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”

- Silicon Alley Insider

His argument makes sense to me.  It’s pretty obvious that it’s easier on a developer if they only have to worry about one platform (the iPhone/iPod Touch) rather than multiple.  Support becomes easier, and coupled with Apple’s hands-on approach to managing the app store everything runs more smoothly.  Sure there have been plently of detractors lately saying that Apple is a little too strict with their certification process, but in the end it provides a much better-managed environment for both users and developers.

In the news story Steve Demeter, a solo developer, discusses how he went from working on Trism as a side project to making $250,000 in two months based on app store sales.  The game went up in the middle of the summer for $4.99, and since then Steve has been able to rake in a ton of cash on a relatively simple application, and that’s after Apple took their cut (30%) and his initial investment is figured into the equation.  Not too bad, huh

Buy, Borrow or Bury: Trism

I promised a second video and here it is!  My first game review for the iPhone/iPod Touch is Trism.  It’s a brand new take on the puzzle genre of games that have become very popular, fans of games like Bejeweled, Hexic, and even Puzzle Quest will be right at home playing it.  It’s my first App Store purchase, so was it worth the $5?  You’ll have to watch the video to find out. =)

Now Playing:
The Pogues – Sally MacLennane
Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm (can’t wait to review this one!)