32 posts tagged “apple”
I feel like an uncertain poker player when I am sitting with my PDA in hand. Do I hold ‘em, raise the stakes, or fold ‘em? (Let me apologize in advance to any real poker players when I violate the rules of the game as I make the descriptions below. Go with the flow, eh?)
The hand I hold is a Treo 680. Great work-horse of a machine, thousands of aps, and my particular 680 has been well tweaked to provide almost all of what I need or want. Crystal clear screen? Check. Brilliant planner/calendar? Check. Reliable phone? Normally a check. Great interface? Double check due to a copy of Teal OS before it was pulled from view. Sat nav? Check, compliments of TomTom Navigator 6 and the Palm handsfree auto/GPS kit. A bit quirky at times, but it works. Push email? Normally a check via Chatteremail before it was discontinued. Internet access? Internet access? Hello…hello? Well, I do have an internet connection via Vodafone blox, but the Treo’s CPU just whines and cries when asked to do real world work, sort of like Gore when asked for credible proof of global warming (again, apologies to his faithful followers. As penance I’ll buy one of Brussel’s/Washington’s newly mandated €10/$7 “light” bulbs in place of the .59 ones I’ve bought all these years. Now that type of push toward societal impoverishment was an accomplishment worth the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Al and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, no?). WiFi? Nope. No way, no how.
All that said, I get a tremendous amount of work done. But what’s in the other guys’ hands? Do I hold and hope I’m the winner while the market shakes out and their hand goes bad? That hold ‘em strategy has left me with a storage room containing Pentium 200 and 400 machines, a box or two of random parts and memory chips as well as a well-used but now old and cranky Palm Tungsten E2. My sister-in-law got the m515, and it probably sits in a drawer like my E2.
So, how about raise the stakes? I’ve had a series of Palm machines and enjoyed each one: great applications, intuitive interface, and innovative engineering. The Palm Pre definitely would mean raising the stakes. That’s a chunk o’ change to upgrade, though, and I’d have to change companies from what many think is the best in the world (no, I do not work for Vodafone nor do I own stock in it). Plus I’d be purchasing a unit from a company still hemorrhaging money. I did the expensive orphan technology thing years ago and don’t want to put another check-off in that box.
Life in the cloud? Hmmm. Any of you T-mobile Sidekick owners want to tell us of the glories of the cloud? Still, the Pre owners are reportedly as rabid a set of fans as the Apple fanboys are of the iPhone. As the Pre improves with each new revision, the faithful Pre fans may actually have a unit to match their hype in the near future. So, do I raise the stakes? Right now that choice is simple: Palm has no announced plans to market the Pre where I live, and the rumored company for the eventual service is not one I’d choose.
Now the game gets harder as I see what is in my hand - the Treo 680. (Another shot of whiskey, bar tender, and no I won’t quit digging my spurs into the wooden floor). Is my Treo 680 really the one I want to be holding when the time comes to play show and tell? Maybe it’s time to fold ‘em and look for something that’s in another player’s hand. (Cue the creepy music. Can you hear that voice? …”Come to the dark side.”) Yes indeed, the iPhone is looking better with each passing day. Never owned a MAC or an Apple or any other type of fruit to do desktop or in-palm processing. This change to the iPhone would mean throwing out most of the software I have for my Treo, hoping to find a stash of negotiable gold bonds to purchase the iPhone and software, and hiding my face lest others think I am among those who will do anything to be a part of Apple’s kingdom (Is it really true that all iPhone users are required to make a laudatory You Tube video and give options on the ownership of any future offspring for social network engineering via Apple products?) The challenge, however, is that the iPhone really works. (Let’s lay aside comparisons which include Nokias, Blackberries and Androids for now. Besides, I need to save words for the asides above).
Each time I try various friends’ units, the more impressed I become, and they only have the iPhone 3G. I think a hand containing an iPhone 3GS will cause me to fold my hand, the one which is holding the Treo 680. Applications are even being made available to sync to my desktop without using the cloud. Yeah, I know, no type of SD card for backup, no easily removed battery, and no Vodafone contracts available here just yet (2010 looks promising, though). But the iPhone does work, and I’d guess their financial standing is a bit more stable than Palm’s right now.
So, hold ‘em, raise the stakes, or fold ‘em? What should I do? What will you do?
[John v. Hollande]
Again, Roger McNamee is on interview and a brilliant candidate to explain Palm's mission statement. I love to see him talking on the channels and also his ability to talk about things in plain english.
He is also losing a word about Palm's vision of the smartphone market, Palm's major competitors RIM and Apple and mentions the upcoming Palm Pixi.
During yesterday's keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, said he recovered pretty well from his liver transplant and is fully integrated into daily work.
There is a new webOS update 1.2 coming soom to your Palm Pre and there is one important feature, which makes me headache: Remote removal of installed applications
This is what Apple has introcuded on the iPhones months ago and that's why people hate them so much. Everything goes down to total device control by the manufacturer and the user is reduced to a payer of some kind of electronic cicuitry with no rights on the device he has paid so much for!
From one moment to another the smartphone could be very expensive garbage. Nobody ever said, that "they" (Apple, Palm, etc) will remotely control and/or lock your device and delete applications on it, but it is close to that idea and thus, people double-check whether they really want to invest into an Apple iPhone or Palm Pre or go with an open platform, such as Nokia maemo for the internet tablet range N800, N810 and N900.
What Palm can currently do:
(A) Force the user to install updates - at least after one week
(B) Delete installed applications remotely
What Palm currently is doing:
(C) Provide firmware updates remotely
(D) Transmit your GPS location to a central Palm server for advertising purposes
I, for one, do not like this development...
Leave me your comments in the comment field.
Laut immer wieder aufkommenden - und in letzter Zeit zunehmenden - Gerüchten, arbeitet Apple daran, ebenfalls ein Netbook auf den Markt zu bringen. Dieses soll um 800 US-Dollar kosten und ein “besseres Filmerlebnis” als Media-Center und Spiele-Maschine versprechen, so ein Analyst, der für das Wirtschaftsmagazin Barron’s schrieb.
Er habe angeblich einen Prototypen gesehen, der bereits im September, zusammen mit den neuen iPod Touch 3G und den iPod nano 5G Modellen vorgestellt werden soll. Apple würde hier wahrscheinlich auch in den eBook-Markt einzudringen versuchen, wird weiterhin gemutmasst.
Auf einer Keybote-typischen Ankündigung soll dieses Gerät sogar von Steve Jobs persönlich mit dem Werbespruch “There is one more thing” im September 2009 angekündigt werden.
Google has implemented geo positioning called "latitude" into their iPhone range. From now on users can decide whether or not to give others access to their exact GPS position and to see friends in the neighborhood.
It can update the geoposition automatically while the user is on-the-move or set the position manually.
The strange thing about it is, that Apple asked Google to make it as webappliaction, not as iPhone application, in order to not allow background operation.
The interesting thing is that, apart from what we knew, iTunes synchronisation is working again and thus make most of us happy to get access to our desktop music again.
As foreseen a few weeks ago, when Palm announced the iTunes synchronisation feature, this will end in a battle between Apple (not allowing iTunes support for anythig else than their own iPods) and Palm (making it possible again and again after Apple closed down the gab).
I love to see Palm being able to dominate the game currently, but I am also concerned about which measures Apple will take in the future to not allow Palm to do so.
So we could guess to always receive an webOS update right after the next coming iTunes updates...?
The developer for SimplyTweet (see Review in PUGcast - The Blog) is giving out iPhone gift cards in a contest.
Visit his website for details on how to take part. The contest runs for only 1 week.
Help to digg it - http://digg.com/d1vdT4.
The New York Times has released two interesting articles reg. the Palm Pre called "A Skeptic Sees Strong Sales of Palm’s Pre" and "To Pre 0r to iPhone?"
In the first article, the author is argueing about Palm's production plans and why the Palm Pre could become a great success in sales. The latter one talks about migration from an existing PalmOS device to either iPhone or Palm Pre explaining some migration and synchronisation tools for Windows as well as MacOS users.
I would have expected the iPhone being turned off due to the water, but see yourself...
