iPhone and Palm Pre – the Obligatory Post

I’ve had my paws on the Pre, and while I have not, of course, gotten hold of a 3GS, it doesn’t really matter.

See, getting my hands on a 3GS might convince me it has a better hardware/software experience. And since the 3G already has a better hardware/software experience than the Pre, I’m going to call it a “gimme” for the new 3GS.

The Pre, for all of its clever conceits compared to most phones, is still clunky, hiccup-y, and jittery next to even the current iPhone model. The graphics aren’t as smooth, the UI is harder to use, the physical keyboard is marginal, and on and on.

On top of that, it is hard to overstate how important the app ecosystem is to this “competition,” and Palm doesn’t even seem to be trying (they’re still saying “real soon now” on the SDK).

No matter how many apps in the App Store are just fart apps, and no matter how beautiful the bundled apps on the Pre are, there is no contest because these guys are playing different games.

Apple has succeeded in making the phone a general computing platform in the mind of the public – something I argued for 3 years ago – and you judge a platform not by its internal specs but by what you can run on it. Palm doesn’t seem to get that. They’ve got a decent bundle of specs but there’s nothing to run on it and there may never be much.

So with Apple still killing in the UX department, and Palm leaving their A-game at home (if they ever had one) as far as the app/platform/dev community goes … is there anything positive to be said for Pre in this contest?

Only this: AT&T’s network is so egregiously ill-behaved in so many prime metro areas that Sprint could actually pull a few people across the line.

I am one these last folks: I would much rather replace my current phone with an iPhone, but the thought of another two years of dropped calls, missed calls, bars-but-no-coverage, data connection unusable half the time … and I’m seriously considering the Pre.

Say what you will about Sprint (I’ve used every major carrier and none is perfect), where they have coverage, the devices just work. You can make or take a phone call. Which, ironically given that smartphones are bordering on augmented reality nowadays, is still the sine qua non for a phone.

New iPhone App Store Rules Take a Step Closer to Scriptable Apps

A lot of folks commented today on newly-approved web browsers appearing in the App Store. Or, more precisely, a handful of apps using the existing web browser widget to offer a slightly tweaked browser experience.

While iPhone apps could include the UIWebView component before -- and indeed this has proven a popular route to getting hybrid native/web apps up and running quickly -- today's change is about allowing apps that "duplicate" a built-in feature of the phone. And one of the fundamental characteristics of any web browser nowadays is that it is thoroughly scriptable.

If you build an app this way, it already includes a scripting environment ... so the question (since scripting and dynamic apps are verboten on un-jailbroken iPhones) is how far one can let the scripting go and still pass muster with the App Store overlords.

Using stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString we can inject script into the browser ... including script that pulls data back out.

And although the JavaScript bridge is "one directional" compared to the OSX desktop API, there are workarounds such as registering a protocol handler to receive scripted "requests" from inside the page ... or by hooking decidePolicyForNavigationAction with a script-initiated navigation request (disclaimer: I haven't checked to see if this is in the phone API, but it seems plausible) to signal the availability of data.

So native code becomes effectively scriptable. Or, for an even less controversial but perhaps equally powerful route: just inject a bunch of JavaScript API libraries into the browser and keep the scripting (and more of your app) in Safari. That's not too different from pointing a browser at a web site (where the page loads various scripting libraries) ... except that underneath it all we are in native-caps mode ...

Unless I'm missing something here, a somewhat ambiguous situation has gotten thornier with the admission of this new class of general purpose browser apps.

iPhone Brings New Attention to AT&T's Existing 3G Problem

The wave has been building for a few days now, with consumers, Apple, and AT&T sparring over the problems with the iPhone 3G staying connected (and on 3G).

Today seems to be a local maximum and the mainstream media are starting to look.

If you read this blog regularly, you're probably expecting me to blame Apple for the problem, then blame Apple again for denying there's a problem, then blame Apple fanboys for putting up with it all for so long then suddenly acting betrayed.

Surprise!

As much as that might be a valid argument -- especially the part about Apple denying there's a problem -- this one is really not their fault.

It's kind of AT&T's fault -- and kind of GSM's fault -- and kind of just mediocre engineering.

A while back, I wrote about similar experiences with my Samsung Blackjack on AT&T. I've also seen the same thing with the AT&T 8525 (Cingular 8525 / HTC TyTn), as this was one of the first multi-protocol, multi-band 3G devices on that network.

Most people don't have any idea what this is all about, since their devices cannot experience this specific sort of problem because they don't support 3G, and so never have to resolve between 3G, EDGE, GPRS, etc.

In this case, AT&T argues that one suspect, the Infineon chipset, is not to blame because it's the same one in Samsung devices, with which they have had little problem. I don't think that's their strongest argument: others appear to be having as much trouble as I do with the Blackjack/3G. We just never made as much noise as the iPhone folks.

Perhaps a better argument would be that it affects all the EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA devices on the network and then maybe blame GSM for having such a funky data transport technology roadmap over the last 10 years.

I'm not saying AT&T could easily do better -- maybe they need more capacity and a tune-up of switching algorithms. A CNET article points to GSM carrier T-Mobile Netherlands having the same problem. And even though CDMA is worlds better as a technology, it's nice to have a little competition out there: two CDMA carriers for the U.S. out of four majors is enough.

So what does all this mean?

First, I'll tip my hat for once to the iPhonosphere and the obsessive media that love them: this is a real issue and we all know it takes a lot of volume to be heard talking to a telco.

Second, even Steve Jobs' strong-arming of the carriers worldwide (and good for him on that one!) doesn't mean everything is really under his control. According to this Sydney Morning Herald story, Apple didn't provide any test units to some carriers until the day before the product release, hoping it would all "just work."

To paraphrase someone I used to work with, in technology "hope is not a strategy."

On the Other Hand...

Yesterday I wrote about the potential of the iPhone to break the longstanding wireless app logjam in the U.S.

Today the Free Software Foundation blogs about the other logjam we might be getting into with the device, namely that the app development and publishing community is just as locked down and controlled as the DRM on iTunes tracks. Wait, actually the app side is even more locked down (since there's a low-tech path to extract songs by way of audio CDs, whereas the app infrastructure requires jailbreak).

I'm curious whether this passage from the FSF post will have the fanboys plugging their ears and whining "I can't hear you" or just shrugging their shoulders and saying "who cares":

"Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible."

If not a prison, it's still a walled garden. Like Verizon's mobile app vending machine (odd are you've never even hard of that one) or the old America Online. Maybe it can work, but there are better alternatives.

iPhone App Store: Let's Hope It's Not All Fun and Games

The iPhone phenomenon seems to be a kind of Rorschach test, where you can find whatever you're looking for ...

There are all sorts of posts on data from the App store, looking at, for example, pricepoints in the app catalog, or the kinds of apps available.

These data are far from perfect (though worth a look), and in any case I hope that VentureBeat's post on the prevalence of Game and Entertainment apps turns out to be wrong.

Why? Mobile apps and mobile net usage have been waiting to "break out" in the U.S. for nearly 10 years. It's tempting to agree with the sentiment that mobile net use is reaching critical mass thanks to iPhone, but everyone in the industry has made that mistake many times before.

Successful off-deck software on phones in the U.S. has been more or less limited to games. So when I read the headline "Fun! Nearly half of all the iPhone App Store apps are games or entertainment," all I could think was "let's hope that it doesn't stay that way!"

I have no problem with Super Monkey Ball per se. It's just that if all the top app activity is in games and entertainment, then the mass psychology around the iPhone / App Store ecosystem is in danger of slipping irretrievably in the direction of "diversion" and not the enormous opportunity it really is.

Before you say I should just chill out about the Monkey Ball, consider:

Blackberry, because of its email device pedigree, was pigeonholed as a "corporate email/organizer device" years ago, even though it could do many other things. Despite RIM's attempt to sex up the brand, boost the hardware, cut prices and improve the design, it looks now like the window is closing for RIM to make any big gains. The enormous deployed base of Blackberries never translated into a general platform for mobile net-based computing.

At the moment, all of the top 10 -- and 18 of the top 20 -- paid App Store apps (over the last 24 hours) are Game/Entertainment apps. So right now, when the frenzy is at a peak, with mass media coverage of sold-out stores and consumers showing acquaintances their hot new gadget, the eyeballs are on the Super Monkey Balls.

To a lot of people, who have never seen a 3rd-party app on a phone, and who don't totally get what this is all about, the demonstration is going to look more like a Nintendo DS than a handheld computer.

Which raises a possibility: perhaps Apple was wise to restrict iPhone 1.0 to Safari-based apps, thus forcing consumers to view the device as a mini-web-tablet, rather than as a portable entertainment device.

Please, Tell Me Another Cool Story About Your AAPL Stock

A comment I read today claimed that Research in Motion (maker of the Blackberry mobiles) stock (RIMM) has outperformed Apple's over any conceivable period you might want to look at. (Yes, I checked it out, it's true, and I have some numbers for you later if you don't want to go try it yourself.)

Here's what I find really interesting: Apple doesn't just have product fanboys, it has stock fanboys too. I've personally met dozens of people who -- entirely unprompted -- insisted on telling me about their AAPL stock adventures, successes, questions about timing and the future ... I haven't met a single RIMM investor who has spontaneously felt the need to chat me up about the stock.

Now there's no mystery about RIMM: Anyone who understands fundamentals could analyze RIMM as easily as AAPL. Or if they want to really get into it, RIMM's products, plans, sales channels, and management are arguably more transparent, simpler, and easier to crack than AAPL's. (Most investors love leaks and hate surprises.) So it's not like these AAPL investors stuck with the company they could understand and analyze.

Instead, I'd venture the opposite: I bet they know little to nothing about either company under the hood, but they love the drama and the theater of an Apple product announcement, whether it's really good or bad for the stock. They think that press coverage somehow equals investing success.

As for the numbers, I checked Google Finance and observed that ... yes ... in all the time that these two companies have been public, RIMM has outperformed AAPL over all reasonable intervals. In fact, even if you had, say, sold your AAPL to buy RIMM at the worst conceivable moment, when RIMM peaked relative to AAPL, within a few years your RIMM holdings would already be worth much more than the AAPL shares.

I'm not bringing this up to recommend one stock over the other. They have actually trended together, and if this sector is your thing (I count them together today, because of the iPod/iPhone contribution to Apple's success), then you might want to invest in both of them ... and some of their other competitors too ... to diversify, at the expense of trying to make the most money on a single horse.

But what cracks me up is how people so often want to believe a story they know over a story they don't know; a simple story over a complex story; and a story (narrative construct in general) over the tricky realities that motivate and underlie all of our constructs.

And if you're one of those people so in love with a romanticized Apple story that you don't mind having half the returns (in the last 5 years), 40% of the returns (last 2 years), or even just 30% of the returns (1 year) of a RIMM investor ... I'm not saying sell Apple, but diversify, diversify, diversify!

I Say "Ôpen" - You Say "Õpen": It's Not iPhone vs. Android, It's Software vs. Telcos

I couldn't find the first article I had read spreading the Android vs. iPhone competition meme. No matter, it has taken root and grown like ivy. iPhone doesn't compete with feature phones or smartphones, but with Android, yada yada. Where's Microsoft and RIM, yada yada. iPhone is closed, Android is open...

Hold that last part just a sec.

It is true that by the standards of the software world, iPhone is less "open" than Android -- Android will run on lots of hardware, it is open to programming at more layers of the stack, doesn't involve an App Store or a pseudo-proprietary language. iPhone is more constrained.

It's shaping up to be an epic battle if you accept that framing of the story... But:

By the standards of the wireless telco world, both iPhone and Android are "open" (as are Symbian and Windows Mobile) because they let you choose what you want to run, and by exposing services like GPS location and push messaging to ISVs, they allow a freeform relationship between the device owner and the software vendors offering real, fast-paced innovation. Such a relationship is a huge change from tradition, where the telco mediates the relationship to the detriment of everyone involved.

Never mind if the data access costs a bit more than some folks might like (Gizmodo shows that there isn't really any change here from existing smartphone plans). The carrier has to make money somehow, and building wireless infrastructure and selling access to it is what they're good at. Controlling the user experience is not what they're good at (one reason they rank slightly below used car salesmen and vampires in terms of customer satisfaction).

Looked at this way, iPhone and Android have a whole lot in common: they're trying to push the evolution of consumer use of mobile devices while trying to wrest control of the narrative from telcos who have stifled the industry for almost a decade.

The hype and success of iPhone and Android is a boon for consumers and for the entire industry, a chance for America to move from a cellular Minitel world to an Internet world.