WebOS Connect
Tonight I’m heading to WebOS Connect, HP first ever London based developer event
.
I’m excited about the potential for WebOS, its still the best mobile OS around. That said competitors are quickly taking the best bits of WebOS and integrating it into their own platforms, WP7 use of the card metaphor for multitasking and Androids use of notifications in Honeycomb.
HP has a huge task on it hands, Palm’s treatment of Europe was sub optimal (to put it politely). For two years developers have watched with envy the regular developer days in New York and California, all European developers could see were power points and the occasional video. This is at odds with the wealth of developer events for Android and iOS all over Europe.
HP needs to make up for lost time, big events like these are great for creating mindshare but what I would like to see are regular sessions highlighting the benefits of WebOS:
Ease of development (HTML/JS/C++ etc)
Ease of Portability (Use the PDK to port from iOS/Android)
All is needed is a room, some laptops and a SME leading the show.
Developers are interested in WebOS once more (WebOS Connect has over 300 attendees from all over the UK at time of writing), but what I want to see is understanding of the mistakes of the past and how HP are moving things forward.
In short HP needs to hit the ball out of the park tonight.
A witty title that involves clouds
I like hardware ‘throwbacks’, ‘retro’ computing.
I really like old Apple hardware as it takes me back to the halcyon days of my youth, I am of course speaking of my old Performa:
Look at those curves, that beige!
A pure powerhouse… ok perhaps not but still it occupies a special place in my heart, sadly it was replaced by a PC from the now long defunct Tiny Computers. That Wikipedia entry is three lines too long in my opinion, but I am glad to see them get the recognition they deserve. Anyhow that PC was a typical beige box and although it got me into PC gaming, upgrading and the internet; it occupies no special place in my mind.
Which has gotten me to thinking about the world (see how that naturally slips into the conversation, takes skill that), old computers are big business. I mean of course recycling, lots of copper and precious metals contained in processors and motherboards. They are also a humanitarian and environmental crisis that’s happening right now, their are countless reports on the squalid conditions of those in the 3rd world who seek to reclaim our digital legacy.
We need to truly think through the implications to our environment of the next must have upgrade.
The time has long departed where we can throw away our old IT and forget about it, I think we should stop throwing it away at all.
A typical office computer will run four products:
- Mail/Calendar/Address book
- Internet Browser
- Office productivity suite
- Operating System
You may wonder why I put the operating system in that list, it consumes resources and its critical to the usage of the device. It’s also a large reason why someone might choose to upgrade their computer (add more ram, a larger hard drive) or invest in a new one (Apple’s move from PowerPC to Intel forced a migration).
What if we removed that need?
Cloud computing is well established in the Enterprise market but hasn’t made all that much of a visible dent on the consumer (I say visible because although someone might use a cloud based service they are probably unaware of that fact).
“X is running too slow, I need a faster computer”
I’ve spoken that phrase many times, as I am sure you (or someone close to you) have. This is where I think Cloud computing can really make a difference, you can have all the latest software available to you instantly with little to no lag and yet still be running an old device.
Why? Because the device used to interact is irrelevant, all it needs is a connection to the cloud. Which brings me back to the Performa, it is possible for that machine to run the latest software even though its prehistorically old.
By offloading the OS to the cloud we no longer need to be slaves to the 3-5 year upgrade cycle and we no longer have to throw old hardware away.
This can run everything you need
In short old hardware is cool, we shouldn’t discard it so easily.
Enyo
Currently awaiting access to Palm/HP’s Enyo alpha program.
I’m a web developer by nature, so I’ve always been attracted to webOS, I had started to learn mojo but stopped due to the impending release of the new JS framework entitled Enyo. It’s a scalable framework that enable a developer to code an app once but have it available for multiple devices (think Veer > TouchPad and beyond).
As a developer saving time is always a good thing, I dont want to have to develop two versions of an app if I can avoid it.
Details for Enyo are still quite sketchy (indeed all who have access to it are under NDA), but an example is sizing of elements uses em rather than pixels to ensure that any content can scale infinitely.
Work smarter, not harder.
Exciting times
I don’t think there has been a single month where more mobile unveiling have occurred than in February.
- Google demonstrate honeycomb aka Andriod 3.0, it fixes a lot of my issues with Androids UI
- HP finally take a step in the right direction with the Touchpad tablet, Pre 3 and the super cute Veer
- Nokia announce that they are dropping Symbian and MeeGo for WP7, people weep lamentations and cry exultation
- MWC unleashes a range of new Android tablets
- Motorola Xoom is priced at $799 off contract
And the month is only half over!
I cant wait to get my hands on some of the new tablets, especially the TouchPad.
Exciting times indeed.
Dearly beloved, we are gather here…..
There is no longer a day that goes by that another issue with the HD7 becomes evident, this morning? Unable to download the Adobe reader app via WiFi and then the phone crashed.
The fact that the WP7 doesnt have a pdf reader built in is shocking.
I am considering giving her my iPhone4 for a day and seeing how bad it really is, I refuse to think that the phone can be this bad.
Shooting themselves in the foot?
Apple have once again rejigged their App store terms of service:
“The company has told some applications developers, including Sony, that they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App Store. Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books bought from the Sony Reader Store.
Apple told Sony that from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple, said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division.”
Which means that popular Apps like Kindle also fall foul of this change…
Now it isn’t clear what “going through Apple” actually means, but if they take a cut of the purchase price then it can only mean bad things.
Especially with new tablets being announced in February….
Tick tock
The clock is ticking, I dont feel that the HD7 is going to be staying in L’s ownership for long.
The reason? Stability.
The HD7 seems to crash a lot, combine this with random graphical glitches and a it doesnt make a convincing long term package. She has also noticed the lack of cut copy and paste (I had failed to mention it before hand…), she still likes the phone but the honeymoon period is well and truly over.
In fact I’m glad that she isn’t a massive multitasker as if she were, it would highlight another drawback in WP7…
Now we know that there is an update coming through to WP7 later on this week (hopefully) this will bring improved memory management which will speed up application, stability fixes and copy cut and paste (but not in third party apps unless they use the textbox control).
Will it give the HD7 a shot in the arm? Only time will tell
First steps
So L has had the HTC HD7 for a few days now, I thought it was high time to post her initial impressions beyond the industry standard new thing = awesome.
Overall impression? Not bad, but not great.
Her issues are not necessarily legion but there are a couple of sore points, namely battery life, stability and speed.
Low power:
L has a long commute into London each day meaning that any of her phones spend a long time surfing the net on 3G, playing music and either reading a book (more on that later) or playing a game. On top of this you add the oh so lovely live tiles that constantly poll various sources (FB/Gmail/Photostreams etc) for new content and display on the home screen. All of this consumes a lot of power and being that the battery is a meager 1280 MA/H doesn’t bode well. First day out in the real world and the battery lasted about eight hours, which is frankly appalling (it died 20 mins into her journey home), now there are a couple of things she can do to reduce the load on battery (turn off 3G, Live Tiles etc), she can invest in a 1500 MA/H battery or she can get a cable for work.
All of which she can do, but she shouldn’t have to, HD7 needs to be able to provide a full day of power considering the relatively light usage its being put through.
Spit and Polish:
Windows Phone 7 is lovely to look, use, apart from the crashing. L has experienced multiple app crashes and system lock ups requiring full restarts of the phone. It’s a real shame as the UI is leagues ahead of what other providers are putting out. Which leads me on to the next issue
Speed:
There’s no way to sugar coat it, WP7 feels slow at times, especially opening third party apps, now I’m holding fire on fully damning it as their is an upcoming update that is supposed to increase speed across the board.
So all negative then?
Far from it, the screen is large (4.3 inches) which makes reading books a lot easier even if the DPI isn’t up to my iPhone 4, the larger screen makes reading far more comfortable. The Marketplace offers enough distractions and the hardware instills confidence.
Probably the most over looked feature is Windows Connect.
This tiny application (40mb) e makes the migration process all the more palatable as it give you the ability to access your iTunes library, meaning that any podcasts/mp3/4 etc available to on iTunes (DRM’d aside) is accessible to your WP7 mobile.
It’s small light and fast and gives you the access to iTunes you need without any of the bloat, heaven.
We’re both holding judgment until the fabled update rolls out but the Windows Phone 7 platform definitely shows promise and at this early stage that’s enough.
A brave new world
Meet L, she needs a new phone
This is L, our Window Phone 7 test pilot
She (in her own words) is an “average user” in that she doesn’t care about:
- What goes into the operating system,
- How its powered
- Running apps in the background
- why x is better than y
She does care about:
- Speed
- Games like angry birds, god hand, fruit ninja
- Solid hardware that conveys a sense of durability
- and a quality user experience
What I mean by the last one can be summed up when we went phone shopping last month:
Me: “So what are you looking for?”
Her: “You know, a new phone”
Me: “So you staying with iOS or do you want to try Android, Symbian even?
Her:”……”
Me:”okaaay, so moving on there are couple of phones but hardware wise check out this (I hand her a N8), it has a 12 megapixel camera!”
She plays with the phone for a minute
Her:”Nope, this wont work, its not intuitive” Then pausing for a moment “I dont know what to do with it”
And its true we all know that Symbian on the N8 isn’t great, but it begins to dawn on me how quickly my list of candidates are being removed.
It essentially comes down to Android (Experia x10, staying with her 3GS until the iPhon5 comes out or the HTC HD7 running windows phone 7.
It’s a nice bit of kit.
My viewpoint on the competing phone OS’s is this:
Apple: Currently Top Dog because it offers a seamless enviroment in which to use your phone, the interface is well realised and its easy to use.
Android: Nice try but it still feels half finished, perhaps with 3.0 it can finally compete with Apple on the UI front, so until its released, why bother?
Window Phone 7: I like WP7 because its trying something different, I love the transitions between layers, it feels like its pushing the mobile space forward and more importantly it has mobile versions of excel (critical in her line of work).
And more importantly, she likes the HD7, so we buy one outright (£280 on ebay, she’ll be able to sell her 3GS for £250) so if she grows to hate it she can just sell it and get something else further down the line.
The phone should arrive today, so I will try and capture her experience in the next couple of blog posts.
Bett2011
On the tube, towards bett11 listening to the tron legacy
soundtrack. Dramatic music for austere times, this is the first
exhibition of the year and the first to take place as the cuts are
begin to bite. It’s a new era in education, one where the
gluttonous excess of the past decade are a testament to the work we
have to do. But it is one filled with potential, with less money to
spend, public bodies are far more reticent with their funding. A
Contracted marketplace means one thing, competition and it’s that
force that can help educators to drive the education industry to
provide a better product. I will be watching with interest at
bett11 to see how many companies have recognised this. As it those
who will not only survive , but prosper.
If not now, then when? 