Mobile – Page 9 – ɔimoɈɒ

HSDPA coverage in NI

O2’s network maps for HSDPA are a little frustrating. For one thing, they won’t show you a map of the whole country, only little segments 7.5 km wide. The big deal for me is that when you’re in a 3G area, you can surf the web and also make/receive calls at the same time. The … Continue reading “HSDPA coverage in NI”

O2’s network maps for HSDPA are a little frustrating. For one thing, they won’t show you a map of the whole country, only little segments 7.5 km wide.

The big deal for me is that when you’re in a 3G area, you can surf the web and also make/receive calls at the same time. The current EDGE-based iPhone can do one or the other; that is you can’t start browsing the web on your phone while you’re using it for a telephone call. Yes, this is a real need!

What does this mean for speeds? Rumour has it that O2’s implementation has a theoretical peak of 3.6 Mbps (about 400 kilobytes per second) but their mobilebroadband USB modem package, which also uses HSDPA, tops out at 1.8 Mbps. That’s not quite as impressive but then again, beats the pants off EDGE. O2 also specifically prohibit streaming and VoIP applications over their 3G network.

O2’s roaming charges for data aren’t too bad these days. For countries in Europe it’s Â£3 per megabyte and outside of that, Â£6 per megabyte. Considering that since October 2007 I’ve consumed less than 1 gigabyte of data, I’m not worried about the additional charges for roaming while I’m on holiday for two weeks in August.

I’m going to pop into an O2 store later this week – have a go at their 3G demo machine and ask some questions. Last time I tried a 3G demo machine was in the Three (3) shop in Castlecourt and my iPhone beat Windows on 3G for rendering a web site – so you can imagine how slow the 3G was. Not very impressive. Now…O2’s infrastructure provides Three (3)’s 2G network and a little birdie told me that Orange provide the backbone for their 3G network so the 3G performance I noted may not be indicative.

If you’re in Belfast, say, around QUB, you’re going to do okay.

but coverage gets very patchy outside of the town centre in Bangor (where I live). In fact, my house is right in the middle of one of the big white areas there so I’m going to have to rely on WiFi or (god forbid) dialling down to EDGE or GPRS.

and where my parents live in Lisburn is just … barren. For what it’s worth, they live about 200 metres away from that green B101 label in the centre of the map. It doesn’t look like they’re going to be enjoying HSDPA speeds any time soon!

and I’m thankful that Mac-Sys Ltd will give you their WiFi password if you ask them nicely because coverage in Newtownabbey really depends. As soon as you start seeing grass, the coverage simply ends.

The saving grace is that O2’s mobile broadband contract also covers the Cloud hotspots (which there are quite a few of these days) and the iPhone contract will also cover BT OpenZone hotspots from July 11th (give or take a few days). Pretty soon, we’ll have wireless everywhere.

So, go on, pop along to O2’s network maps for HSDPA and post your area coverage. Drop me a link or a pingback so we can see what’s happening!

Entitlementards…

The BBC News weighs in on the iPhone 3G release but the more interesting opinions are in the comments. Vish of London writes: “After Apple’s arrogant and blase behaviour over their flaws in the Safari browser, I am going to stick with Nokia. At least their platform is secure and they have decades of experience … Continue reading “Entitlementards…”

The BBC News weighs in on the iPhone 3G release but the more interesting opinions are in the comments.

Vish of London writes:

“After Apple’s arrogant and blase behaviour over their flaws in the Safari browser, I am going to stick with Nokia. At least their platform is secure and they have decades of experience of designing excellent phones and operating systems.”

Yeah….except that they don’t design their own operating system but rather license it from Symbian. And they don’t design their own browser, they use Webkit in the S60 series….which is the rendering engine behind Safari and would therefore have the same flaws. And their operating system construction is going so well that they just bought Trolltech. Why? Not to get a better browser because, whatayaknow, Trolltech uses WebKit too.

It’s exactly this sort of muddled factoids that mean people stick with Microsoft. And you know what – as long as hackers see Windows as low hanging fruit, it makes life easier for the rest of us.

Sherif Kadry, Houston, TX demands to be known as an entitlement bitch!

“This is absolutely disgusting, I had to dish out about $399 for the iPhone 1.0. I got a sub-par phone which incidentally I had to replace two times because of quality control issues at Apple. Now they release a 3G version that is substantially cheaper, I am more anti-Apple than ever.”

Oh noes! Sherif had to dish out all that money for the iPhone. Someone forced him. This is unpossible!

Yeah, it sucks that stuff gets cheaper but that’s what happens, especially when you buy a 1.0 product that changes the world.

WWDC Keynote highlights

There were two things shown during the WWDC Keynote today. The first was new software. This software will be available to everyone who has an iPhone, new or old in July and available to iPod ouch users for $9.95 (which will probably be about Â£7.99 in the UK). The second was hardware: the iPhone 3G … Continue reading “WWDC Keynote highlights”

The second was hardware: the iPhone 3G was announced. It’s pretty much the same device – it has two differences however.

There’s a 3G radio in there allowing access to the UMTS/HSDPA networks. This will step down to GSM/EDGE if 3G is not available which provides a decent fallback. One big advantage of the 3G radio is that it can be used at the same time as taking a call – something that has proved to be an iPhone annoyance – you can’t browse the web while on the telephone! HSDPA supports download speeds from 0.9 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps so until we get more information, it’s going to be anyone’s guess.

The second hardware difference is GPS. Gone is the ‘yeah, you’re somewhere in this town’ and now it’ll pinpoint you right down to your street position and follow you around. That’s what a GPS is for. It’s not going to read instructions to you so it’s not like your Tom-Tom but on the plus side I’m not going to have to buy maps for every inch of the planet if I go travelling.

Let’s face it – unless you’re a real geek, you’re likely going to be happy with current iPhone hardware and won’t need the iPhone 3G at all. You’ll just be able to take advantage of the hundreds of new apps that will be available for free (and for pay), you’ll get the new calculator, better attachment support (now it does iWork documents, Word, Excel and Powerpoint!), the new integration with ‘mobileme’ and other stuff they thought wasn’t interesting enough to cover in a keynote.

Apple said they had already sold 6 million iPhones in the first year while only being released in half a dozen countries. They’re going to be launching in 60 countries….and the price is down to $199 (Â£120 or so) for the 8 Gb version (the version I paid Â£269 (over $500!) for.

Price is likely the biggest sticking point with the iPhone. Not so any more.

Steve Jobs wanted to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. He sold 6 million at the old price in 1 year. Do you think he’ll sell 4 million more at the new price? Yeah, obvious huh?

Apple to trump Nintendo in Gaming?

The short answer is:No. Touch Arcade writes: Apple Poised to Snatch the Crown from Nintendo™ DS Combine this seamless distribution model with beefy gaming hardware, a CPU that’s over six times the combined clockspeed of the DS’s processors (and nearly twice the clockspeed of the PSPs) and a screen with 50% more area than that … Continue reading “Apple to trump Nintendo in Gaming?”

The short answer is:No.

Touch Arcade writes:
Apple Poised to Snatch the Crown from Nintendo™ DS

Combine this seamless distribution model with beefy gaming hardware, a CPU that’s over six times the combined clockspeed of the DS’s processors (and nearly twice the clockspeed of the PSPs) and a screen with 50% more area than that of the DSs dual screens combined and you’ve got a winner, right?

I’d have thought by now that people, especially people who follow Apple, would have realised that specifications do not a success make. How many times has the iPod bucked the trend and beaten other players soundly even though it sports relatively meagre specifications?

Apple has kitted out the iPhone to compete with other smartphones and, perhaps to a lesser degree, subnotebooks. I certainly find it a lot more pleasurable to type on my iPhone than on my eeePC laptop keyboard. And yes, there will be a heap of games released for this new platform, but you have to ask yourself – is it truly a gaming platform – the answer is simply No.

OSX for generic PCs?

MacRumors writes: A few rumored changes could be positioning Apple for a transition to sell OS X for generic PCs: Changing .Mac to Me.com (platform neutral) OS X Leopard (not Mac OS X Leopard) 10.6 to be Intel only (dropping PowerPC would be necessary) “No new features” in 10.6 could be due to resources devoted … Continue reading “OSX for generic PCs?”

MacRumors writes:

A few rumored changes could be positioning Apple for a transition to sell OS X for generic PCs:

Changing .Mac to Me.com (platform neutral)

OS X Leopard (not Mac OS X Leopard)

10.6 to be Intel only (dropping PowerPC would be necessary)

“No new features” in 10.6 could be due to resources devoted to just making 10.6 “PC compatible”

and they add this photo:

Back in 2001, Jobs was very vocal about the name of the operating system being ‘Mac OS X (pronounced ‘ten’) and there were corrections made when individuals dropped the ‘Mac’ part of the name.

I think the main change in thought came with the release of the iPhone. Calling it iPhone OS 2.0 is technical, iPhone OSX sounds poo. I don’t think that Apple is ‘removing the Mac’, I think we’re just seeing some consistency in the branding especially as Apple have indicated that the operating system in the iPhone and iPod touch is going to power all of their handheld iPod devices.

So, we now have ‘OS X iPhone’ and ‘OS X Leopard’ on banners at a developer conference. These are not meant to indicate marketing messages. I think it’s unlikely that Apple will offer OEM deals with third party PC makers but they may open the licensing of Leopard so that individuals and companies may put Leopard on their own hardware.

However – with Apple’s focus on design (and the fact they have grabbed 66% of the high end $1000+ PC market) it seems very unlikely to me that they would endanger that by allowing individuals to reproduce a Mac on a cheap piece of hardware. Apple was bitten on this before with the Mac clones back in the 90s – it almost killed them.

I can’t honestly speculate on anything regarding 10.6 because, frankly, it’s a little early. I find it ridiculous that Apple would have gone to all this effort to make the OS universal and then one version later dropped PPC support. I think we will see PPC support continue to 10.6 but I’m doubtful it will go further. Apple has a history of supporting ‘the old way’ for 5 years. It’s what they did with Classic and it’ll be what they do with PowerPC. That said – we’re 2.5 years into those 5 years now – and Leopard is less than a year old. If we had Leopard for two full years, we’d not be far off the 5 year limit so 10.6 might end up being an Intel-only release after all.

As for the dropping of Mac.com and the replacement with Me.com – that’s pretty clever really and indicates to me more that Apple will be offering their online service to iPhone and PC users as well as just Mac users. That makes sense as PC users could very easily avail of some of the current .Mac services considering they already have iTunes, Quicktime, Safari and iPhone.

The changes we’re seeing are purely marketing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Related posts:

Universal means everything

Develop for PPC AND Intel.

Snow Leopard: the next version of Mac OS X – due 2009

PCs for kids in developing countries

Microsoft re-invents the past. Again.

Back a hundred years ago when I was studying Human-Computer-Interaction, there was much discussion about touchscreens. They mostly discussed the difference between a mouse, a touchscreen and a light pen. The latter two devices got short shrift from my lecturer as they had two issues. your arm obscured the screen your arm would get tired … Continue reading “Microsoft re-invents the past. Again.”

your arm obscured the screen
your arm would get tired

The recent upswing in multi-touch touchscreen technology, pioneered by Jeff Han’s amazing multi-touch demo and brought to consumers a year ago in Apple’s iPhone, has produced a lot of speculation as to the nature of computing devices. For the same reasons as above, I think touchscreens, even with haptic responses, will become an additional way to interact. It has advantages and disadvantages – it absolutely sucks for data entry in the same way that voice recognition sucks for data entry. In addition, touchscreens might be fine for 17 screens but do you really want to spend a day directly manipulating data on a 30″ LCD? Or two of them?

Let’s experiment.
Put your keyboard just ABOVE your monitor. Put your hands on your keyboard. Now imagine that being your new work position? Of course – it’s going to be bollocks.

None of this stops Microsoft re-announcing multi-touch like it’s new all over again.

This is what happens when someone innovates and Microsoft photocopies. There will be poor implementations of multi-touch for the next few years from Microsoft (remember that Windows 7 is still slated for 2010) just as they have ‘bullet pointed’ every innovation from other companies.

“Multi-touch? Sure, our OS has multi-touch. It’s shit and doesn’t work right but our end users will blame themselves for not being better at using it so we’ll get away with our shoddy implementation. Anyone for Foosball?

This is the pattern I’ve seen repeated now for over a decade with Microsoft. I remember mentioning cool new technologies and my friend countering them with “Yeah, Windows has that”. One of the conversations had this gist…

Me: Cool new feature in Mac OS – Location Manager. You select this option and with one click can choose which network ports to activate, whether sharing should be on or off and so forth. It’s a simple selection – it’s great – takes all the work out of changing locations.

Friend: Yeah, Windows has had that for ages.

Me: It requires a reboot? How do you set your options? You have to edit the configs directly? Uh, that sucks…

Friend: Heh. MACINTOSH stands for “Macintosh Always Crashes If Not Then Operating System Hangs!

Me: I have to go over there now…

It never mattered on the QUALITY of the implementation, just that the bullet point was fulfilled. This was repeated again and again over the last two decades and it just staggered me that people who were, to all intents and purposes intelligent, still endured the awfulness of Windows.

Back in 1996 when I was living in Belfast, Apple wasn’t doing so well and I refrained from convincing a friend to buy a Mac. He had no intention anyway – but I remember him laughing at our Macs afterwards (he’d gotten excellent PC-buying advice consisting of hearsay about how Macs were crash-happy). Five minutes at his flat showed how he worked with his PC. He screamed at it. He bashed the monitor. He repeated data entry again and again because Word simply couldn’t handle the large files he was throwing at it. In the end he finished his dissertation on a Mac he borrowed from me and yet still, even in the face of superior capability (on an older, slower machine) still remained a PC user.

It was around then I came to the conclusion that as well as perceptive, cognitive and emotional intelligence, there must be some sort of ‘common sense’ intelligence that was missing. It’s one thing to never use a Mac and be ignorant of the advantages. It’s another thing entirely to have them spelled out, demonstrated, used and then still defend your shoddy technology choices.

This neatly segways into two conversations I had recently about the rumours surrounding the new iPhone. Cheaper prices? Wider distribution? There’s a sizeable number of people who have iPhones now who do not want the general public to have iPhones – they enjoy the exclusivity.

We only have to wait a few days to see what is happening with the iPhone. And two years to see them poorly copied on Windows.

Wil Shipley talk from WWDC 2005

I don’t believe I ever linked this before… Wil Shipley spoke to some students in 2005 and told them, in no uncertain terms, why it was better to be an independent Mac developer than it was to be virtually anything else (an independent Windows developer or any iteration of Working For The Man). Read on, … Continue reading “Wil Shipley talk from WWDC 2005”

I don’t believe I ever linked this before…

Wil Shipley spoke to some students in 2005 and told them, in no uncertain terms, why it was better to be an independent Mac developer than it was to be virtually anything else (an independent Windows developer or any iteration of Working For The Man).

Read on, download the slides and the MP3 at the end to go along with them

Thinking about iPhone 2.0

In the next week, we’re going to see what Apple has on offer from WWDC. Everyone is expecting some news about the new iPhone models because, with the exception of a minor memory storage upgrade, the iPhone will have been on sale for 1 year without any changes and Apple likes to upgrade their devices every 9 months – 1 year. So it’s not a bad speculation. What are we likely to see in terms of hardware? Faster wireless is for one thing. It’s a little early for solar-panel displays but we could reasonably see the camera gaining a hardware ‘button’ and a small camera mounted on the front of the device for video conferencing.

We’re also going to see the new iPhone operating system. The big news there is obviously the Application Store. Why do I want it? So I can play a couple of casual games while I’m not in a good network region. So I can read my RSS feeds while mobile without the clunkiness of the online readers. So I can twitter by only sending my data and receiving others twitter data rather than having to receive the text and graphics from pockettweets. It would be nice to be able to receive MMS messages and also to be able to forward the odd SMS but, to be honest, there are a lot more easy wins in this respect. Double-tap to zoom in a mail message for the idiots who keep sending me 800-pixel wide images as their email signature?

waffle writes some speculation about the 3G iPhone

“Loading freeze-dried sites from bookmarklets using the current iPhone software takes almost as long as loading the site itself, which suggests an efficiency problem in the browser and rendering software, not the network hardware.”

Except that the bookmarklets on your home screen are just bookmarks – they’re not freeze dried copies of the web sites themselves. The renderer in MobileSafari over EDGE is quick enough to outpace the slower renderers on faster 3G networks so I think we can reasonably expect that if the EDGE limits are removed, we shall get much faster data and therefore faster rendering.

Lots to think about and only a week to go.

Work in progress

Apple released beta5 of the iPhone SDK and quietly opened iPhone Developer registration to the public so that everyone can load their code onto their iPhones and give them a go. The updates SDK is winging it’s way to me at 1495K/sec right now which means I’ll be able to have a play with it … Continue reading “Work in progress”

Apple released beta5 of the iPhone SDK and quietly opened iPhone Developer registration to the public so that everyone can load their code onto their iPhones and give them a go. The updates SDK is winging it’s way to me at 1495K/sec right now which means I’ll be able to have a play with it at lunchtime when I’m away from the oppression at $BIG_COMPANY (where music players have now been banned because they’re ‘not professional’ – it’s fun working through a problem when there are people talking loudly in every direction – really aids the concentration.)

Anyway, the SDK release.

This is, to be honest, much sooner than I expected and I think there must be quite a few happy people around who are loading apps onto their phones and enjoying the novelty. I’ve been fighting for some time at lunch just to try Interface Builder but something has always come up for the last 7 days. It’s frustrating and when I mention the frustration, the helpful response is ‘Well, if it mattered to you, you’d find time.” Brilliant.

I don’t know what sample code will work on the iPhone with the latest beta and I don’t know whether or not it’s safe to load my iPhone with the beta firmware and still want to use it as a phone. And there’s no way to check because Apple still have an NDA on all discussion on the technical aspects of the SDK and firmware.

As this is very much still a learning experience for me, it’s slow and boring. I’ve kinda decided to strike out and work on something else in order to maybe build some momentum. I would like a cashflow-type application for the iPhone.

As you can see, it’s a work in progress.

Cocoaing with the JesusPhone

My copy of “iPhone Open Application Development” arrived in my hands today after spending a couple of weeks in the Mac-Sys office. It’s a slim tome compared to the other Cocoa books I have but I understand where it fits in and it’s a nice little addition to the collection. Why is this book relevant … Continue reading “Cocoaing with the JesusPhone”

Why is this book relevant when we have a proper (beta) SDK available from Apple’s Developer Site. Because, gentle reader, it looks at the system from a different angle and I think it will help me better understand how things fit together. It goes into a lot of detail in the construction of an application and the bits and pieces that are needed. This reinforces that there’s no ‘magic’ here. It’s a system with components.

I’ve only got a couple more chapters to go through in the Cocoa book I’m working on. Then I’ll attack the iPhone book as well as the BigNerdRanch Cocoa book.