squared99

So I read this article on the NYT last week and meant to write about it right then and there, but as usual something distracted me and I continue to struggle to maintain my ‘at least once a month’ blog promise.

The premise of the article being that giving consumers choices and creating a competitive marketplace for Android apps is a bad thing, and that a closed system with one party controlling our digital rations is a good thing.

To this I say wha!?

Is there some sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing in the US in relation to the mobile industry.
Maybe it’s more like a technology blind spot.

Since the market has historically been dominated by carriers who controlled access to all services available via mobile it seems that just like the basic assumption that the sun revolves around the earth, (it’s obvious isnt it!?) that this how things are and always will be with mobile technology.
In fact, that is how they should be gosh darn it! I don’t want to hear this poppycock about open access, dumb pipes, etc.

So Apple comes along as the new guy, maintains this paradigm and all is right in the world. See, told you, this is how it is done!

We can trust Apple to be impartial about this, right?

But wait, what is this Android thing!? What do you mean it can be installed on more than one handset, gasp! even possibly on handsets it wasnt built for specifically. ewww, and you can buy “things” for it just anywhere. How vulgar, who knows where that app has been!

Newsflash NYT writer, if online news articles operated on those principles we’d all be going to one website to read your article and you’d have to hope it met all the proper criteria and was approved by the provider of the technology on which it would be viewed.

The biggest difference in iPhone Appstore vs Google Android is that Google isn’t necessarily looking to take a piece of the pie on every sale of an app or handset. They have a very very different approach than Apple and their iPhone strategy.

They are interested in getting something out there that can be ubiquitous fast. If that is propelled along by multiple points of access, appealing to different segments and tastes, as well as by cloned handsets then all the better for them and (in my opinion) the industry

ps. voeveo is one of those back-alley dealers where you will be able to get your Android fix.

It seems that the ASA, a body responsible for advertising standards in the UK, has found and upheld a claim that Apple has been misleading with its current ad campaign which claims that “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone”.

Whether you agree that Java and Flash specifically are parts of the Internet, I find this encouraging.

Apple has been claiming all sorts of holy grail status regarding iPhone web capabilities, but until the recent 2.0 firmware upgrade and 3G launch it wasn’t even possible to download and save a file unless a ‘hack’ was installed. This is a capability possible for years on some of the lowest end handsets out there, and the fact it wasnt possible on the iPhone has lead to confusion by both the users of the iPhone and those that try to create services accessible by wireless devices.

Flash and Java are just the tip of the iceberg with respect to what features taken for granted are not actually possible on the iPhone. They do expose two holes in the firewall Apple has put in place to prevent “unauthorized” 3rd party access to the device. If Apple allowed Flash and Java to run via the browser, then the App Store becomes less a gatekeeper for apps.

Is Apple likely to allow these features? Probably not soon, but at least we can avoid confusion in the meantime. It also allows other devices to market effectively against the iPhone by highlighting the features they allow compared to the iPhone and prevents Apple from hiding behind broad claims of supporting “all parts of the Internet”.

Ars Technica has published some benchmark findings of the latest Firefox 3 beta 4.

I’ve been running every released version of the beta as my main browser, hey might as well go whole hog. I hope my feedback and bug reports have helped! :)

And I have to say from personal experience/observation that, yes, the memory footprint seems to be very good, and page rendering speeds are very good (haven’t done any benchmarks my self). This latest release has been a delight to use.

An interesting thing in that article is the comments at the end regarding the mobile web. Probably a salvo at Apple, as there is still uncertainty about Firefox on the iPhone.

These types of comments are coming up more and more and it is just more proof about where the web industry is turning its eye, the momentum is definitely picking up speed.

Imagine the day when proprietary browsers on the handset are old news, and we get to choose between browsers competing against each other on speed, memory usage, usability, etc.