How long before the smart phone is as smart as your computer?

It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when. Smart phones will eventually be as good as modern desktops.. The latest iPhone has a 600mhz processor, that’s faster than just about anything from 7 or 8 years ago. Back then 700mhz was the realm of the supercomputer. Not bad considering the iPhone can be had for $200. But I think the figures actually belie the usefulness of the iPhone vs older desktops.

The iPhone is much, much more useful than older computers. It can easily handle all the same tasks from gaming to excel editing, and even introduces a few of its own trick features thanks to its motion sensing and light sensing abilities. When was the last time your home computer automatically dimmed its monitor when you turned the lights off, or made things brighter when the sun came creaking through your window and shown its glare on your monitor.

Admittedly, smart phones will always suffer for their compact size. You’re just never going to get a keyboard that’s 2.5” wide to work as well as one 18” wide, it’s just not going to happen. And the same thing is true for the screen, a 17” monitor will always give you better view ability and resolution than a palm sized screen. And those are pretty much the only limitations of the smart phone. It can easily overcome storage space, speed, and reliability as technology improves. This leaves two problems left to overcome, and they are already being worked on.

Let’s focus on the keyboard, along with the mouse, it has been the main method for computer input for many generations now. But that might change. Smart phones are moving to very advanced capacitive touch screen technology which allows for quick and easy control. Gestures – flicks, taps, squeezes, and slides, are the new key strokes. Applications can now be controlled entirely with hand gestures, add in things like rotating or shaking of the phone and you have a pretty complete input system, and that’s before you even get to voice recognition.

Those are just the technologies that are already mainstream. Don’t forget about the technologies still in testing such as controlling devices with mouth or eye movements, some researchers are even working on mind control; yes you literally will be able to control electronics devices with your thoughts.

Take the iPhone as a quick example of how well alternative means of input to the mouse and keyboard can work. Choosing a song to listen to is just as quick as it would be on your computer, setting the alarm is the same deal, checking the weather is just as easy as well, and so is taking a picture. It’s all just as easy with the iPhone as it is with a computer. The area where the iPhone falls down is text entry, writing long emails is still much, much easier and faster on a real keyboard. But that’s about the only thing.

Once developers work out a better way for small devices to do large amount of text entry we will be in the clear for unparalleled development on smart phone devices. And smart phones by their nature are more convenient than desktop computer or even laptops. Smart phones fit in your pocket and you can take them anywhere. The best computer is the computer you always have with you.

I give it 10 year before we are mind controlling our smart phones, and another 2 or 3 after that before they are sending signals back to our brain rather than outputting information through a tiny screen. At that point though, smart phones will arguably, be a bit more than just phones.

The future of the iPhone – Will success lead to failure?

The iPhone is popular, very popular in fact. Apple sold over 1 million phones in just the first weekend of the phones release (iPhone 3GS). Apple has sold roughly 15 million iPhones to date, including first gen, 3G, and 3GS phones. And sure at least 2 or 3 of those phones have been blended by Mr. Dickinson, but still it’s enough in sales to bring Apple up to nearly 10% market share in the smart phone segment. All that in only 2 years, that’s really moving, just imagine where apple will be in another 2 years. Some analysts predict market share of 33% by some time in 2011. All of this makes Apple’s measly 7.5% share in the computer sector seem Lilliputian in comparison. And that got me thinking, aren’t Apple’s supposed to be exclusive? Isn’t that why they charge such an exorbitant price for their products?
I thought the whole appeal of Apple products is that their different…unique…and some how just better than any other computer out there, in an innocent but slightly snobby way. You don’t have to be a computer guru to know what I’m talking about either, look at those commercials on TV and tell me that Justin something or other fellow doesn’t come across as smug. Take a trip to your local Apple store and count the number of piercings if you’re bored one day. I always loose track some where around 30. Every employee has blue hair, extra tight jeans, and those silly looking converse sneakers with the black and white chess board pattern. They all act very relaxed and say “hey man” a lot. Basically their unique and proud of it.
I don’t think these people would be too happy if everywhere they went people had colored hair, silly sneakers, and uncomfortable jeans. And it’s the same story with Mac’s. Mac users like to see one or two Mac’s a day, like their part of secret society, not thousands everywhere they turn. They want a Ferrari, not a Camery. And I’m afraid the iPhone has become a Camery, when the phone can be had for $100, without having to wait a week online, or jump through blazing rings of fire, then it’s no longer exclusive.
The real challenge for Apple will be to make the phone exciting without being rare. To make every customer feel like they’re special even when they’re not. I have an iPhone, and I’m proud not to have a boring blackberry. But I don’t have green hair and I don’t try to fit pencils through my earlobes, so naturally I don’t own a Mac. Can the iPhone remain in the vanguard even with a distinctly average following? Only time will tell?

Does Apple want the iPhone to be Jailbroken or Unlocked?

My friend was joking about how much Apple must hate the Dev Team, the group of hackers who reverse engineer the iPhone so that 3rd party applications can be put on the phone without going through the App store, or Apple’s approval process. The group is also the driving force behind the movement to unlock iPhones so that they can be used on any carrier network. I argued that Apple was probably more ambivalent towards the Dev Team than one might expect. Sure, the Dev Team is a pesky bunch of hackers who constantly defeat any security measures that Apple employs to blockade the phone from unlocked use. But let’s not forget that Jobs got his start in the computer world by hacking their predecessors, land line phones. As a teenager Jobs idealized hackers and wanted to join the ranks of archetypal characters like “Captain Crunch, the vanguardist hacker extraordinaire. After building his own phone “phreaking” black box, Jobs went on to found Apple, but his hacker specter certainly must live on.
Which again brings us back to the question does Jobs or Apple want their phones to be jail broken. Jail breakers have certainly pushed the development of the iPhone farther and faster than Apple themselves has been willing or able to do. Lets not forget the laundry list of features first developed for Jailbroken phones, MMS, video recording, voice recording, ability to remotely control other computers, navigation, increased Bluetooth functionality, ability to upload media to remote servers, copy & paste, I could continue but I think you get the idea. Jailbrekaing is without a modicum of doubt, the reason we have many of the features of the 3GS and OS 3.0. Jailbreaking allows applications to make their way onto the iPhone that Apple could never allow themselves for fear of litigious retaliation from any number of concerned specialty groups. Is Apple happy that hackers have pushed the development of the phone along, and shown the world what the iPhone is capable of, or are they upset that hackers have torn down the walls of their carefully constructed system and allowed everyone limitless access?
Then there is the most common argument found in any hacker debate, money. Does the hacking community increase or decrease Apple’s revenue? On the surface it seems like an easy question to answer, if people are able to get applications without needing the pay as you go App store, then Apple is loosing money. There’s also the forfeited revenue in the form of contract money from AT&T. Apple’s agreement with AT&T gives them 30% of the monthly service fees collected by AT&T on all iPhone accounts, and that adds up to a lot. With unlocked phones subscribers are no longer tied to AT&T, they are free to roam as they please from one carrier to another if they so desire, denying Apple a sizeable amount of money. However, it’s important to remember that Apple is the sole manufacturer for the iPhone and that means that every single iPhone in the world, no matter how jailbroken, unlocked, or hacked it may be, was purchased from Apple. Apple built the old iPhone 3G for around $150 for the 8gb model, and that’s cheap. Especially when you consider they collect around $700 on each phone after an AT&T subsidy to the customer. If you want to buy an iPhone outside of the US without an AT&T contract it could cost you even more, up to $800 in some places.
Revenue from the App store is generated by collecting 30% of the sale price of all applications that are purchased. And that seems like a lot when you consider that the App store has already had over 1 billion downloads. Most of those however were free, and the ones that weren’t free sold for an average price of roughly $1. When you add it all up, it amounts to a fairly small pile of money, at least when you consider Apple’s overall revenue. And that’s the point; Apple makes far more money on the sale of the physical devices than they do on the sale of applications.
Their profit model then, is the same as the model for all other Apple products. The software is created under a no-profit scenario in which more development money is spent on the software than could ever be recovered by software sales alone. But the software is what sells the hardware, and that’s where Apple makes their money.
The iPhone then, is a very profitable venture for Apple, but mostly it’s because of the huge margins on the hardware, and jailbreaking is never going to change that. In fact jailbreaking has lead thousands and thousands of anti-Apple consumers to cave in and purchase the very capable iPhone. And in this way jailbreaking and unlocking may actually be making Apple more money!

The Ugliest Phone In The World, The Motorola QA1

I came across a couple pictures of this phone today and I was shocked, in this day and age how could a major cell phone manufacturer come out with something so hideous. The QA1 is not just ugly; it looks like the bastard love child between an obese midget and a Blackberry Storm. It’s horrible, its not just a matter of taste, this phone is clearly unattractive. And that’s my point, is Motorola deliberately producing an unattractive phone, or are they so obtuse they can’t see how grotesque this phone is, is it like a parent who never thinks their child is ugly, no matter how obvious it is.
How can Motorola plan to compete with the likes of Apple, RIM, and LG, if they keep putting out crap like this? Apple is known for their design prowess, and the iPhone is one of the sleekest and sexiest phones on the market, no doubt about it. Offerings from LG aren’t half bad either, based just on looks; the chocolate, voyager, and especially the KS20 are very attractive phones. And while no one is going to accidentally mate with a Blackberry, from a strictly industrial and utilitarian standpoint the phones are very nice; they have a pleasing aesthetic quality to them.
But since the Razor, Motorola has really struggled to produce attractive phones, and they really need to get their act together if they want to stop loosing market share to Apple & LG like they have been over the past few years. Don’t believe me about the horrendousness of Motorola phones, just have a look at the i465, I think it’s even worse than the QA1. It looks like it got dented after falling off the table and they didn’t bother to fix it before putting it on sale.
Motorola’s market share has plummeted over the past few years, and I think it’s because they have stopped innovating. Their designs are ugly and their features are trite. Motorola was the maker of the StarTAC, the $1,000 phone of the mid 90’s noted for its stylish and trend setting design…what happened. Where has that creativity gone? In just 10 years Motorola has slipped from one of the major cell phone players to a bit of a joke, their efforts are a faff and their products are hopeless.

The future of Media on Smart Phones

The last few years have seen an exponential growth in storage capacity, not just in smart phones, but in the electronics & computer industry in general. Storage has become so cheap and plentiful it feels as though we will soon reach the point of having so much space the thought of running out would be laughable. This is certainly the case with the modern computer. With 1 Terabyte hard drives selling for well under $100, storage is now cheap.
Will the same be true of Smart Phones? The newest iPhone can now hold 32gb, up from the 16gb model which preceded it, and before that was 8gb and even earlier was a meager 4gb. But is all this storage space really needed on smart phones? At first glance the answer would appear to be “sure, why not” if computers need lots of space, and smart phones are becoming min computers, they too need lots of storage space.
I want to suggest however, that they don’t need all that space. The reason, one word, streaming. With smart phones constantly being connected to the internet there is no need to store media locally? AT&T has HSUDPA, Verizon & Sprint have EVDO, and T-Mobile will get their act together eventually. High speed internet on smart phones is becoming ubiquitous. Just as the cable internet age lead to a boom in online streaming websites (Hulu, Netflix, etc…) the same will be true of the 3G age for cell phones.
Pandora already lets users stream music to pretty much any smart phone platform. And there are applications for the iPhone which allows users to access their own personal music connection over 3G. Finally, Apple is scheduled to update MobileMe with the ability to stream any content over 3G. That means you can watch your favorite movies, listen to your favorite songs, view all your pictures, and even watch porn remotely from your smart phone.
Why cram more storage into a smart phone when all it does is increase its size and cost? Just let your computer at home do all the work for you. You can have all the terabytes of storage at your house, loaded up with all your favorite movies. Then you can have your cheap and nimble smart phone stream whatever you want.
That’s the way I see it at least. I’m sure smart phone storage capacity will increase regardless. As flash memory gets cheaper, every manufacturer will cram as much of it into their phones as possible, it’s just the arms race that is the modern day smart phone industry. But my point is that it’s not really needed. That’s why I bought my 3GS in 16gb flavor instead of the more expensive 32gb variety.