Android

MaxMobile Android is supported on the T-Mobile G1 and MyTouch phones; additional models and carriers will be supported in the future. The latest MaxMobile Android version is 6.5.1.401. It’s compatible with all MAXCS servers running 6.0 Update 2 (6.0.2.412) or higher.


iPhone

MaxMobile iPhone is supported on all iPhone models. The latest MaxMobile iPhone version is 6.5.1.404. It’s compatible only with MAXCS servers running 6.5 Update 1 (6.5.1.403) or higher.

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As it is now, iPhone OS does a whole lot of things OS X does not–platform-wide UI support for multi-touch is just the beginning of the list. Still, it seems Apple has gone to great lengths not to cannibalize desktop PC sales, if not overtly saying so. No, iPad is not a desktop replacement, yet.  For starters, it synchronizes with iTunes, meaning that it doesn’t actually run iTunes, so its calendaring and music apps are still very mobile in nature. I also wonder if the lack of a user-facing camera was a design scheme to keep the iPad out of the desktop space, as opposed to a financial consideration to keep down manufacturing costs.

But the brushes app seems like an impressive utility with the potential to offset some productivity that’s normally reserved for the desktop.  And as I type this on a Macbook Pro, I realize that the iPad will never be suitable for video production, or for audio mixing. Even still, I can imagine great uses for multitouch in these kinds of apps.

Without the UI goodies, OS X shimmers less, and I believe it’s only a matter of time before touch-enabled desktop gear starts shipping from Cupertino.

All iPads are unlocked and use GSM micro SIMs, so you can use a carrier right away if you have data. No contract: you activate the service directly from the iPad and can cancel any time you want without an ETF. iPad has built-in 3G. Data plans normally cost $60 a month for a laptop. 250MB of data per month is $15 (less than the usual $35). $30 for unlimited — a much better deal. AT&T is providing the service.

Come on AT&T, I still can’t tether my iPhone according to your terms of service!  Brutal.

Among Blackberry, Microsoft, Google, and Apple, Microsoft was the earliest player in mobile computing and smart phones, so why have they failed in this area?

With Windows Mobile 7 waiting in the wings, it occurred to me that I just don’t see people using Windows Mobile devices that much any more. In fact, at work, we’ve seen a shift from WinMo to Blackberry and iPhone, with the exodus split about 60/40 in favor of Blackberry. The market share shift has been swift and decisive.

Now I know this isn’t exactly news, but I was trying to figure out why.  Microsoft correctly foresaw the mobile market as being the next big thing for them and the software industry, and they had very early foresight that mobile was going to sweep our eyes away from our desktops in a major way. They had the timing right, but their solution is, and has been, inadequate.

The Value of Ecosystems

One key difference between Microsoft and Apple is that, while they both offer end-to-end ecosystems (Microsoft with XBox, Apple with iTunes/iPhone/AppleTV), they seem to use their ecosystems to different ends.  I believe Apple’s tightly-integrated iTunes ecosystem was primarily driven by the “digital paranoia” of the record industry in the early 2000’s, and it may not have been Apple’s idea to provide such a closed environment. But, in the end, consumers seem to prefer the “just works” ecosystem over the “bring your own interface” approach. For this reason, Microsoft can be seen to have failed at establishing a clear content-to-consumer delivery model based on Windows Mobile.

What’s worse, the Zune, which could have been a great launchpad for a simplified, stylus-free version of Windows Mobile four years ago, exists on yet another Microsoft island, limiting its value to the consumer. Rectifying this problem by bringing the ill-fated Zune line into the limelight of the Windows ecosystem would go a long way towards making Windows Mobile relevant again. Think iPod.

Failure to Recognize Consumer Patterns of Behavior

It was only a matter of time before the average consumer was using personal devices to manage nearly every aspect of his life. Yet Microsoft took the wait and see approach, preferring to believe that the corporate world would drive personal device adoption, where, in reality, we can see that personal, entertainment-oriented device use has driven the entire mobile industry for the last several years.  Two parts gear lust, and one part nerdification of the general populous, this movement is the exact opposite of the strategy Microsoft used for Windows Mobile.

Most People Lose Their Stylus

The user interface options available on Windows Mobile devices, until recently, have been based on resistive touch screen technology, generally used with a small, inkless pen called a stylus.  Blackberry, by contrast, has always offered its trademark “scroll wheel”, and Apple developed a slew of UI technologies, including groundbreaking iPod controls, that culminated in a stylus-free touch-screen control environment for the iPhone. Windows Mobile never employed either approach, so solving this problem (and Microsoft is solving it) will help.

Give Developers a Reason to Develop

The real trick isn’t coming up with the idea. The real trick isn’t coding the program.  The real trick IS getting people to notice.  Apple has more than solved this problem, for better or worse, with the Appstore.  You bring the code, we bring the customers.  While some web sites have served as communities of developers and consumers of WinMo apps, they exist outside the ecosystem and don’t provide turnkey delivery of content.

When Microsoft finally did show up on the scene with an official WinMo store, they stubbed their toe by naming it “Windows Marketplace for Mobile”.  Srsly?

Stop Trying to Look Like Windows

Windows Mobile shouldn’t look like Windows and shouldn’t even be called “Windows”, since a windowing environment on a 3″ screen is a useless idea anyway. Yet when we look back at the releases of Windows Mobile (and its mobile predecessors), we get the idea that Microsoft has always wanted WinMo to look as much like desktop Windows as possible. Only with Windows Mobile 7 has this pattern been broken. (See above screen grab.)

Blackberry never had this problem, as their main objective was to develop a good mobile UI, and they had no ties to an existing desktop environment.  Apple, who does have Mac OS X, decided not to bother bringing the X look and feel to their mobile device. This was a great decision, of course.

When I first read about it, it sounded great.  When I read that it was developed by ex-Diablo engineers, it was a must-download.  While there was some meager novelty in “owning” the local community college, the shimmer quickly faded, because nothing at all interesting occurred as a result.

Sadly, 48 hours later, I think I’m going to remove it.  It’s boring, and it plays just like one of those Zynga social games where you have to check in as often as possible in order to “level up”.  I just don’t have time for that.

More access to friendly development tools = more iPhone apps = a more mature and varied iPhone marketplace.  Everybody wins, right?  TechCrunch even headlined their post about this, “the year Flash’s 2 million developers come to the iPhone.”

Maybe not.  Sorry TechCrunch.

When Adobe announced that it will include an iPhone “packager”, that is a program that will package Adobe Flash programs as iPhone apps, my initial reaction was, “Great, now I can do that time entry app I’ve been envisioning for my company’s web-based trouble ticketing system.”

But I quickly realized that this packager is only going to produce iPhone-runnable Flash apps, and the full set of iPhone APIs will likely be out of reach to Flash developers.  The telephony APIs and other niceties XCode jocks get to use will probably still be off limits, to say nothing of distribution of the apps.  It will be very easy for Apple to spot a Flash app on its way through the App Store submission process, and disapprove it.  In fact, the rejection of the packaged Flash apps could be automated such that there’s not even any oversight–and on similar grounds Apple used to reject the Commodore 64 emulator last year.

Not to mention that fact that other apps that could benefit from Flash’s presence (like Safari, to say the least) still won’t be able to run custom-made Flash client programs.

So maybe Apple will come around–but in the mean time, I don’t think this announcement is nearly as significant as it sounds.

Well doy, Apple realizes that consumer-empowering voice technology is a competitive advantage.  We VoIP folks have been preaching that gospel for the last ten years.  Comrade Ken Camp wrote with visionary accuracy about the merits of VoIP in his book IP Telephony Demystified, one of the really early books on the subject.  I agreed with him when I wrote Switching to VoIP that VoIP is a leveler of the playing field, a true equalizer and a legitimately revolutionary technology item.

I’ve also viewed carriers like AT&T, at least for the last four or five years, as access providers, not “phone line providers” offering dialtone.  Apple, it seems, has arrived at the same conclusion.

Second, let’s ask the real question: Since we know the decision to allow Google Voice is ultimately up to Apple, and not AT&T, what could Apple’s motivation for this rejection possibly be?  Are we ignoring the simple answer?  Enhancements to the iChat ecosystems, perhaps? The most obvious answer may not satisfy the conspiracy theorists.  But something as easy as Apple is getting ready to release their own Voice-killer makes the most since to me, to heck with AT&T’s bandwidth.

Finally, I’ve almost concluded that AT&T’s days as the exclusive distributor of iPhones in North America are numbered. Apple would have to score a pretty low IQ to permanently marry their network support to a single carrier, with the rise of new wide-area wireless networking standards and mass WiFi addiction marching on with no favoritism towards Bell.  This would seem to indicate, at least out here in the “sensible” midwest, that Apple is not beholden to AT&T, a company short on both sexy intellectual property and an applications-oriented revenue model, for a short-term political favor that screws its relationship with Google, a company who is enriched of both.

The answer to this mystery, I believe, is in Cupertino.

Apple is nearly past that point in their new platform’s life cycle.  If it’s an app platform–let it be.  Palm and Blackberry are still waiting in the wings, and Windows Mobile will be the centerpiece of Microsoft’s revenue strategy in the next ten years.  And, like it or not, whatever else Microsoft did that was crummy and evil, they never told a developer he couldn’t distribute an app.

I have a healthy amount of respect for Nokia.  Before the iPhone they were the only devicemaker offering half of what Apple now offers with the 3GS.  Indeed, I toted a Nokia N95 for a while, and an N81 8GB for a while.  Both were excellent phones, but I’m convinced now that Apple’s iPhone, even as it arrives as a better all-around phone than Nokia’s current flagship (the obviously Blackberry-inspired N97), is more appealing to American consumers because it is made by an American company.

That’s right.  Nokia’s brand is obscurely perceived in North America, particularly the U.S., as an upscale European oddity not unlike Fiat or Porsche, to use an automotive analogy.  So while it may be the number one brand globally, Nokia has failed to make an impression on American consumers precisely for the reason that they’re a non-American company.

Apple owes a helping of its iPhone success to that fact.  The product is American; the company is American; the marketing is overwhelmingly American, with sitcom-style television commercials, extremely stable revision control (how many models of phone does Apple have on the market compared to Nokia?), and a least-common-denominator hardware engineering approach that appeals to the maximum number of simultaneous consumers instead of offering a specific style or feature set to five or six different niches.  Fewer buttons, more software.

The other American-friendly thing about the iPhone is the nature of its name.  Nokia is some Scandinavian meme as Sony is some Japanese one.  The difference is that Nokia’s name hasn’t been overcome with a mass-market product the way Sony’s cross-cultural name has been with the Playstation, and earlier, the Walkman. Same with Nintendo.  Who didn’t have a Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990?  And for that matter, who doesn’t have a Wii today? Far fewer carry a Nokia product than own a Wii in the United States.

But there’s more to it that the brand name. Say what you like about Nokia’s lack of good carrier support in the United States (Apple still has only one official carrier), or their botched execution of an application store model (Apple a lot to harm themselves on the appstore anyway), the real problem with Nokia’s phones isn’t the name on them.  It’s the way they look and feel.  While the majority of American consumers still haven’t obtained a smartphone, the daunting physique of a Nokia N81, for example, could give a buyer pause.  The lack of fluidity of form in Nokia’s products means that the user is exposed to as many features as possible, whether or not they want to use them, and perception is that there’s a long learning curve.

But then, I believe most iPhone sales occured at Blackberry’s expense, not Nokia’s–and that, of itself, does not bode well for the European giant.

I spent ten bucks for MLB Gameday Live on my iPhone.  Every game, every radio broadcast, plus the gameday diagrams, video highlights, and consolidated video replays.  Awesome.  In fact, the best value on the App Store if you ask me.

Only one problem: the local broadcaster of the Cleveland Indians, WTAM 1100 AM, which refers to itself with the catchphrase “the Big One”, hasn’t had a working stream of its broadcasts for over a week.  So when there’s a day game, like today, I am forced to listen to the opposing team’s broadcast team.

I could understand if I missed a portion of a broadcast due to technical problems at WTAM, but come on, the thing’s been down for over a WEEK.  What’s worse, the excellent iHeartRadio app for iPhone, which also carries the ClearChannel affiliate WTAM, has been absent the live stream for a over a week, too.  I couldn’t even listen to their web-browser stream yesterday when I tried.

So I’m listening to the Minnesota Twins crummy announcer instead of Tom Hamilton, the Indians’ announcer.

Come on WTAM, fix this. And keep it fixed.

The Good, The Bad, The Unknown, and The When

The Good: Apple has already confirmed the addition of MMS messaging (photo and audio messaging). Unfortunately, it’s only for 3G iPhone users and only, apparently, for subscribers to AT&T. I’d like to see this combined with visual voicemail so that I can forward messages to contacts without having to make a context-halting stop in iPhone Mail (which doesn’t let me forward voicemail anyway, so I digress).

It also appears that the new iPhone will sport a search function.  How in the world you can carry 16 GB of data in your pocket without a search function is perhaps only attributable to Apple’s useability ethic, I suppose.  But a cross-app search function is definitely a welcome addition.  So is cut and paste.

Another notable newcomer to the iPhone’s feature list will be landscape orientation compatibility for typing-related apps such as SMS and Mail.  It’s hard to type in portrait orientation–though not unusably so.  The spot on my iPhone where the backspace key appears is beginning to wear out.  Landscape typing will allow for larger keys and, hopefully, fewer typing errors, at the expense of some message body real estate.

Finally, a largely unhyped feature that Apple has confirmed is RSS updates to iCal feeds over 3G.  Huge for me and I can’t wait.

The Bad:

Apple has not confirmed that apps acquired from sources other than the iTunes store will run on iPhone 3.0. This is hugely disappointing, though not unique among smartphone makers.  A proliferation of open (particularly open-source) applications would bode well for Apple’s efforts in the business arena.

It also appears that the iPhone camera improvements, demonstrated in software, may in fact be disabled on 3G iPhones, so that they only work on the new 32 GB models when they arrive.  If this is the case, features like blur prevention and light control will be artificial bait to foster new device sales.  Ho-hum.

The Unknown:

Last we checked, the camcorder app for the iPhone was more or less proven by the existence of evidence within some developer seeds of iPhone 3.0 that appeared a few months ago.  However, we remain skeptical as the iPhone still doesn’t have enough storage to be the leaps-and-bounds improvement in cell phone video recording Apple probably desires.  I would not be surprised if this feature ends up 32 GB-only as well.

The When:

My guess is WWDC.

To hook an iPhone up to a PBX.  Come on Apple.  The jig is up with AT&T; let’s see some SIP!

Moreover, any attempts to develop apps that accomplish video recording and storage or media messaging using MMS have been blocked by Apple’s Appstore Nazis.  Why?

Does Apple have something so incredibly cool up their sleeve that they’re forcing would-be competitors to the sidelines while we all waiting in Lemming-like anticipation?  I doubt it.   If Apple had something that slick and revolutionary–having to do with mms–they wouldn’t need to worry about competitors or imitators in the app store, would they?

Seriously, it’s ridicululous that I can download a multimedia Fart catalog from the app store but I still can’t take video or mms on the iPhone.

Anyway, the iPhone tax is high enough as it is.  You’re in it for $100/month just to own an iPhone. This is why the non-nerdy don’t buy data plans.  But imagine the economy of scale if unlimited 3G was 50% less expensive per subscriber.  Even if AT&T can’t do that, the fact that you can’t tether your iPhone is disappointing to begin with.  Tethering should be an out of the box feature.

After all, you’re saying, when you buy an iPhone, “Hey, AT&T, I know you’re a giant customer-shafting carrier [a totally legit business model in this day and age], but I’m going to go along with your smelly customer-reviling existence because it’s the only way I can get my grubby hands on an iPhone without doing questionable things. Please, please, how about letting me tether?  It’s not like I’m going to use more simultaneous bandwidth on my laptop than I do on the iPhone by itself.”

To which AT&T replies, “No, no, no.  See, we can get $120 more bucks a year from you.”

How appropriate a thing for a big telco to say.  Reminds me of the carriers saying you can’t use a broaband router and multiple PCs on a DSL line a few years back.

Truphone users will be prompted, at the time they dial an international number, whether or not they’d like to use Truphone to handle the call. Very clever.