Tag: developers

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-24

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-24

  • Star Trek movie. A great way to re-invigorate the property and with an alternate reality from the series so they can break with tradition. #
  • RT @twinmamacita: What is up with baseball coaches wearing uniforms anyway? My comment: basketball / football don’t look like a player! #
  • Beautiful day to drive to Columbus. Now let’s hope someone has money up here! #
  • Robert Morris women’s basketball coach David Heeb resigns http://cli.gs/THNTjy #ncaaw (via @hoopfeed) in reply to hoopfeed #
  • There’s three sides to every story: Yours and mine and the cold, hard truth – Don Henley (Eagles) #
  • Why does this not surprise me We want to surf while we drive. Smartphones Selling Far Better Than Dumb Ones http://bit.ly/svtGE #
  • Watching Reds beat the Phillies. I am amazed it is so empty! C’mon Cincinnati leave Chikfila and go to stadium! http://yfrog.com/15qhij #
  • If I would have known Obama would renege on so many campaign promises and Pelosi would be so incompetent, I may have voted for him! #
  • Developers, check out TIBCO General Interface Open Source Project Home Page http://gi.tibco.com/ #opensource (via @tibco) in reply to tibco #
  • Just finished watching eldest son receive award for joining National Honor Society. #
  • Star Trek and Terminator. Two very different views on the future of mankind. #

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AT&T is whining about the iPhone

AT&T is whining about the iPhone

There is an article in the Wall Street Journal that has AT&T whining about the cost of supporting the data plans for the iPhone.  Seems that with all of the really cool apps that the iPhone has, they tend to load up on the data! I suppose AT&T’s complaints are so that they can keep offering affordable phone data packages on sites like Raise as Cricket Wireless, one of their phone package brands, is selling like hot cakes for data hungry customers.

But AT&T will just have to deal with it as the iPhone is by far the coolest product in the mobile world. It has also set the standard for all other phone developers and networks to aspire to.  No surprise, the quality of the apps is excellent (check out this site that reviews iPhone apps). Because of this, there is no way that we are going to roll back time and start to use a less flexible and featured product.

AT&T may not like it but Apple and it’s iPhone have given them first mover advantage in mobile computers.  Everyone else is trying to play catch up.  If AT&T screws it up, the competition will be all over them.

Here are portions of their article “Demands on Network Are an iPhone Hang-Up”

Users of iPhone download games, video and other Web data at two to four times the rate of other smartphone users, according to comScore. Yet AT&T charges iPhone subscribers the same fee of $30 a month for data that it levies on other smartphone customers. And aside from restricting certain activities, like file sharing, AT&T doesn’t limit how much data can be downloaded.

But Web applications popular with iPhone customers are bandwidth hogs. A recent analysis by Alcatel-Lucent of North American wireless network use during the midday hour on one day found Web browsing was consuming 32% of data-related airtime but 69% of bandwidth, while email used 30% of data airtime but only 4% of bandwidth. Email taxes network resources but in a different way.

As the proportion of customers with iPhones grows — 5.9 million 3G iPhones were activated in the last three quarters, 7.5% of AT&T’s total subscribers — the resulting growth in downloading and Web browsing will strain AT&T’s network. AT&T will need to add cell towers and spend more on the back-haul lines that connect the towers to the rest of the network.

……….

The falling cost of voice minutes and additions of lower-end customer has offset growth of text messaging and other data services. Voice and texting use little bandwidth and are lucrative.

Now, new customers are harder to come by. The question is whether new data revenues the industry is banking on — from Web-browsing and entertainment services — will be as profitable, at least as measured by return on invested capital. That looks doubtful. To ensure networks have the capacity to offer these services, particularly bandwidth-heavy offerings like video streaming, carriers will have to make heavy capital investment. Both AT&T and Verizon are building the next-generation 4G network, each spending more than $9 billion last year on new wireless spectrum, as well as $6 billion annually on overall capacity.

……….

In the short term, carriers should abandon unlimited data pricing plans. Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless already charge extra for heavy users with wirelessly connected laptops. They will have to contemplate similar strategies for smartphone users.

Setting the right price won’t be easy. With competition, the temptation to discount will be hard to avoid. And there’s no guarantee that customers will pay as much for entertainment as for voice-calling and email.

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RANT! Apple’s App Store hurts software sales

RANT! Apple’s App Store hurts software sales

By all accounts, save one, Apple’s iPhone has been an amazing success. When you factor

  • the number of competitors in the marketplace,
  • Apple as a relative newcomer to the cell phone market,
  • the strict relationship with only one carrier

it is amazing that the iPhone has had such a strong impact on the revenue of Apple as well as the sales of other phones.

The one area that Apple really needs to develop is the developer network. While the App Store is the best method yet developed for delivering software to a cell phone, it does not appear that it is a great commercial success for many of its developers.  The vast majority of the apps on the store are priced so cheaply (or free) that it is not likely that they will return a profit to their developers.

While there are more appropriately priced software packages on the store, the comments show that these have a smaller community than many of the free or cheap apps.  Why is this?

My belief is that few people are willing to pay 10 bucks for an app when they don’t know how it will work and screenshots are a poor tradeoff.  Some developers have rigged up “trials” on their website. Solitaire Forever does this quite effectively.  I don’t know what technology the folks at Solitaire Forever used to have the product work in such a multi-platform environment but it is a great model.

Additionally, Apple could help the situation by allowing software to expire after a certain amount of time.  This would allow software developers to time limit the software and adopt the try-before-you-buy (TBYB) model that is so popular in desktop apps.  This is done in a small way by some developers when they offer a less functional “lite” version of their software but that is difficult for the developers to manage and difficult for customers to deal with.

APPLE – PLEASE INCLUDE TIME EXPIRATIONS IN THE IPHONE OS!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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iPhone makes easy password typing

iPhone makes easy password typing

Typing a password on a small keyboard is typically a chore. I have used a variety of mobile devices in my career and have always dreaded typing in passwords.

While the iPhone is not as easy as your full keyboard it is easier than any other mobile device you probably have ever used.

First, the iPhone pops up a large rendition of the key tapped. This makes it easy to change your mind if you have tapped the wrong key. This is easier than a chiclet keyboard like that of a Blackberry which makes you commit to the key that is depressed.

Second, the iPhone displays bullets in the password field like it should. But it displays the actual character of the last key tapped so that the user can hit the backspace key.

Congratulations to the great user interface developers at Apple.

This post was created on an iPhone.

RANT! iPhone needs better apps management

RANT! iPhone needs better apps management

Yes, I know that I just praised the iPhone from Apple as being a great phone.  In fact, it is the best phone that I have ever owned and I have had quite a few.

However, the management of application icons leaves a lot to be desired. 

First of all, it is not possible to name the different screens.  So while it is possible to congregate all of your games onto a particular screen, there is no way to name this screen and jump instantly to it.

Second, whenever you update an application to its next revision (and at this early stage, this happens a lot) the icon will jump back to the earliest possible spot.  This means that when you do an update, the icon forgets where you first put it (as in the games screen described above) and sticks it on the very first screen of the phone.  If there are no more open spots on that first screen, it puts it on the second screen (and so on).  This makes it tedious to reorganize your applications as developers work out bugs in their early versions.

If this was Microsoft, I would expect this bad behavior.  Microsoft regularly rearranges my Start menu when I do a patch to it or upgrade their Office application.  I hate it but I expect the idiots in Redmond to treat me like an imbecile.  Apple though is the king of cool interfaces, but as I have said before, software should not act smarter than me.

I am not the only one that feels this way, I hope that Apple is listening to this complaint.

APPLE – PLEASE GIVE US SOME WAY TO BETTER MANAGE OUR APPLICATION ICONS.  YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! PC’s and the Disabled: 20 Molehills that Become Mountains

RANT! PC’s and the Disabled: 20 Molehills that Become Mountains

I recently came across a post on a different kind of top 20 (or worse 20) list. This list is of bad software (or at least poorly behaving software). The focus of the article was on web applications but, too be honest, I think there are still some ‘regular’ applications that make these same mistakes as well.

I don’t want to reproduce the entire 20 items, you can go to the original article here and read those. I would like to point out that that author forgot some of my personal least favorites:

I did like some of the items on the original list. Especially

4. Amnesia

5. No Undo/Redo

6. No Cut/Copy/Paste

13. Tiny Fonts

19. Not Eating Their Own Dog Food (although I prefer the statement “Not drinking their own champagne”

20. Bugs – what is up with “beta” releases of software that go for months, if not years!

SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS – YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT USABILITY WHEN YOU WRITE YOUR SOFTWARE (and yes, I did intend to have my caps lock on when I was shouting despite number 7).

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

Did you know that you can have these articles emailed to you? Click on the Email link in the upper right corner Subscribe section, fill out the details, and you are set. No one will see your email address and you won’t get more spam by doing this.

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