Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs

A very interesting article on the differences in the PC and mobile supply chain ecosystems and why mobile tech advances so quickly compared to PC tech.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
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Technorati Tags: Funny, Macintosh

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I don't actually use the space that comes with our DSL contract. But wow, ignoring the whole issue of terms and conditions, Embarq's hosting is just terrible, or at least, so minimal that it is a joke. What is this, 1999? 20 megs? 15 pages? 1 Gb a month?

But in happier news, when calling to get our DSL speed raised, we not only got it raised, but got the price lowered.

I'm very impressed with Boxee from boxee.tv. If it talked to AirTunes, could manage a DVD player and could see iTunes playlists, it would be perfect. I rather expect it will get the first and last of those with some beta updates. Now that I have my big HDTV it looks amazing, though of course now the low rez internet shows are painfully, well, low rez.

Still, I get to see the Daily Show and Colbert without having cable and don't ever need to worry about there being nothing on TV any more. Never again ET tonight, never again Jeopardy.

Boxee has an interesting social aspect (like every other web site these days) but there's no way to find out if friends of yours are using it unless they tell you. No "import your email address list" feature like Linkedin or Plaxo has.

So, if you're someone I know and you're using Boxee (or want to try it and have a Mac) let me know. I'll add you, or send you an invite.

Why in the world would the new, otherwise super-cool-give-me-one-now iPod Touch not include the same Mail application that comes on the iPhone? Can anyone explain a business reason for this? I can't imagine there's a technical reason, since Mail already works on the iPhone.

Sure, an 8 GB iPod touch might not be the best thing for syncing two or three big email accounts, but default download preferences for IMAP accounts could fix that issue.

So I can only think of a business issue, something that I'm no analyst of. All the lack of Mail on the touch does is drive everyone to their various webmail gateways, which does fix the problem of storing mail on the touch, but I still don't see why. Apple has nothing to gain by that, since dot Mac mail isn't advertising supported. Until Yahoo, gmail and the other big webmail providers have a good versions of their interface for iPhone and touch, the user experience for touch users will be terrible.

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Technorati Tags: Zune

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While I have very mixed feelings about AT&T ("Your world. Delivered. to the NSA.) still the lure of the iPhone is very very strong. I'm free and clear on my current cell service through Alltel. I even held off on refreshing to new phones to avoid a recommitment to a new year-long plan, just to be free to switch to an iPhone if it looked as good as I thought it would.

With the announcement of AT&T's "affordable" (that is, not horrifyingly expensive) monthly plans, I'm ready to buy.

Except for this.

I can taste the disappointment. Even my wife has said "those iPhones sure look cool."

Come on, AT&T, I'm not that far out in the country.
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Technorati Tags: Alltel, Apple, iPhone, Tech

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I'm as big an Apple fan boy as anyone. Well, bigger, actually,

But Safari on Windows is the lamest "One More Thing" from a keynote ever.

Check this image out. It came up on my screen this afternoon.

Now, what if I didn't want to restart the download?

And no, there wasn't a "quit" option in the menu bar, either.

Bad, bad design.

Technorati Tags: Macintosh, Tech

Alltel doesn't build hardware of course. Anything they do has to be from the "back end"– the services they supply. With their new "celltop" service, it looks like they want to add lots of eye candy to the phones that can handle it.

Alltel is pretty well regarded in the Southeast regional market where they compete, coming out first in some customer satisfaction surveys. They happen to be my cell provider (for now) so I was pretty interested in seeing what "celltop" was. Looks like Alltel is trying to jam as much "look and feel" of the iPhone into their phones as possible.

At the moment they only offer this new service on the Samsung U520, which is not iSync compatible. Mark/Space's Missing Sync doesn't even support it. So it's a no-go for me. However, the "coming soon" section lists the Motorola RAZR v3m and Motorola KRZR, which are or may be iSync compatible.

Alltel may be getting something really right, though: thee web site suggests that development of new cells will be, if not open, at least be straightforward and welcomed by the company:

"Alltell will be providing an Alltel Celltop Cell Development Kit, with reference documentation, example code and submission process details to interested developers in the near future. "

I have to wonder if these phones (especially the Samsung) have the processing horsepower necessary to make these "cells" work with any sort of snap.

Will it have scrolling like the iPhone? No. Will it be as elegant as the iPhone? No. Will it cost anywhere near as much? No.