Okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m working on remedying that right now. Without revealing too much, let’s just say I’ll be making some time to do a lot more tech writing in the near future. If you’re interested in what I’ve been working in for the past few months, check out my work on the /Filmcast podcast, /Film, Twitter, and my Tumblog.
It’s scary how quickly things change in the tech industry. Just a few months after I wrote about my
technolust for the T Mobile G1, Palm came out of nowhere to deliver one of the
most surprising CES presentations ever with their unveiling of the Palm Pre. It was perfect timing, especially given Apple’s limp and Jobs-less
Macworld 2009 presentation just a few days before. By then, I was well aware of all the problems people have had with the T Mobile G1, and my unbridled enthusiasm for that phone was a bit more tempered as I waited for a revamped model with better battery life and design.
Along came the Palm Pre–a phone I like to refer to as the first real “iPhone killer”. I know that’s a loaded statement, but in this case I think it truly applies. The Pre is of course building on the iPhones success, but its improvements over Apple’s platform are fairly significant. Whereas the iPhone is media and gaming focused, Palm is taking things back to what made them famous with the Palm Pilot–productivity.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’m always one for the underdog, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a big part of why I chose to purchase a Helio Ocean last winter. At the time, I was looking for a slick smartphone that wasn’t a Blackberry, had 3G (so the iPhone was out), and generally appealed to my geeky sensibilities. The Ocean, Helio’s flagship phone, fit the bill quite nicely–so I eagerly made the jump.
(Honestly, I was waiting for the release of Google’s Android phones, but knowing that they wouldn’t show up until the end of 2008 (at the absolute earliest), I decided that the Ocean would tide me over for the next few years.)
But, like every underdog tech product/company I’ve loved (see: HD-DVD, the Rio Karma), it looks like Helio is ready to call it quits. They’re selling to Virgin Mobile, who will be getting rid of the Helio brand and making all Helio customers Virgin subscribers. Read the rest of this entry »
photo credit: _Andrish_
The iPhone 3G announcement has come and gone, and it seems like the main take-away for many is the $199 price, along with the new 3G and GPS capabilities. Of those three, I think the surprisingly low price for the 8GB iPhone 3G is the most important. Let’s face it, while 3G and GPS are new features to the iPhone, they’re not exactly fresh technologies in the cellphone market.
But while I’m all for a cheaper iPhone, I’m personally more interested in the iPhone software announcements from the WWDC than anything else. Everything from the SDK, to the application store, to the new MobilMe synching all cement the iPhone as a major mobile computing platform. And now that Apple is actually taking enterprise users into account, it has the potential to trump Microsoft’s Pocket PC platform and become a major competitor to RIM’s Blackberry domination.
Saul Hansell at the NY Times Bits blog (someone who I’m finding myself linking to a lot these days) seems to agree. In a recent column, he writes:
The most important battle here isn’t between the iPhone and the latest from Samsung or Nokia. The fighting now is over what will become the dominant platform for mobile computing. In that fight, Apple is competing with Microsoft, Symbian, Google’s Android, Palm and R.I.M. The company’s play is to make the iPhone, and the tools to develop for it, very closely related to the platform it uses on the Mac and on the Apple TV. Read the rest of this entry »
Update 9/13/08: This article was written in March 2008, before we really had a clear idea of what mobile quad core chips would really be capable of. Of course now, with desktop-replacement laptops including SLI graphics (?!), the addition of quad-core chips certainly seems more feasible. I still maintain that it will be useless for most people, but some power users will certainly be able to see some benefit.
9to5Mac is
reporting that Apple may be rolling out Macbook Pros featuring quad core processors later this year–coinciding with upcoming quad core laptop chips from Intel. Let me repeat:
Quad core CPUs, in laptops. Given that we’re still waiting for quad core CPUs to be fully utilized on the desktop, the notion of bringing it to the mobile market seems utterly premature.
I’m not denying that quad core chips will ever find a home in laptops, but as of today it seems we’ve got a long way to go before they’re a viable option. Here are a few reasons why I think this is a wasted effort: Read the rest of this entry »
