It was another day of soul-searching later, that I said to myself, “Wait, is that all there is to this news? That’s it? Really? You mean, I didn’t miss anything? I mean.. I combed through my RSS reader for hours and hours looking for more detailed information, something more exciting, something with actual substance…. and… really? That’s it?” For at least a few hours, I thought I was caught in some sort of temporal anomaly and was missing vital information that Google has apparently announced to the entire world minus little ol’ me.

The truth is rather, disappointing? Underwhelming? Indeed, the news outlets were positive on Day 1, and almost all universally speculative and introspective on Day 2. How many times have we been promised a “mobile phone OS based on Linux & open-source”? This harkens back to the Linux PDA days, and we all know how that went. The only difference between Google’s announcement and all the other dozen open-source mobile OS initiative, is that Google has a lot of money. Shitloads of money. Certainly a lot more money than open source Linux companies that’s been trying to figure out how to make any money at all by doing, anything and everything?

Of course you’ll see an impressive list of partners, it’s Google for god’s sake! Everyone jump in the pool! The question is, how many of those partners really have any product development plans? How many of those partners will be looking for their own competitive advantage once the SDK is out? How many of those partners will actually, actively contribute to the initiative once they realized that they are at very high risk to put themselves out of business?

The answer for now is, “It’s Google, they’ll make it work.” We’ll see what develops in the coming months. I see it as Google just throwing a piece of SDK out there, and allowing the sharks to battle it out for supremacy. After all, taking this strategy really means they have very little stake in any particular company. It’s a smart way to position themselves, as a software platform provider that doesn’t really care which hardware wins out. If Sony Ericsson develops something great and put HTC out of business, so be it. If Nokia collapse (well, they haven’t made a commitment to the consortium at all yet, probably a smart move at this point for them), it really doesn’t matter to Google either.

I’m starting to see a bunch of executives & software engineers from companies gather at a coliseum built in Google’s backyard (or maybe by naval airbase or something), and someone from Google is sitting atop in the Emperor’s seat and just giggling at the bloodshed that’s about to happen.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the way that Google is going about this. In fact, it’s probably the smartest thing they could do to get into the mobile device arena without actually becoming involved in it. The style just disagrees with me on a personal level. I like companies that design end-to-end solutions that satisfies consumer needs. For example, Tivo is a great company that threw themselves into the heat of the battle, and forever changed the way we interact with televisions.

That kind of a company earns my respect. Google’s Open Handset initiative makes me wonder, “Is this just going to be a Linux version of Windows Mobile?”

I’ve ran into a few annoyances so far with the iPhone:

• I missed being able to manually manage music. Even though creating a playlist for the iPhone is still pretty much the same thing, it just creates one extra step that I didn’t have to deal with before.
• I’m guessing the above change was made due to the “always disconnected except for sync” nature of the iPhone. I think Apple realized people will need to answer their iPhone at any given time, they can’t wait for the “disconnect first” method of previous iPod and all USB mass storage devices. So unless you are syncing, the iPhone is always disconnected. I think they could’ve created some sort of logic to handle manual management as well… but they just didn’t have the time to do that, so manual management is out.
• As a result of the above change, USB storage mode is turned off, so you can’t use the iPhone as a hard drive. Well, not unless you have other apps to hack it, I suppose.
• For whatever reason, iPhone also do not charge from USB when the computer is turned off. My previous iPods can charge from powered USB hubs even when the computer is turned off. The iPhone cannot. Hence you will probably be wise to grab another dock cable and have that with your AC adaptor ready at all times.
• I really hate the recessed headphone port.

Those are the only gripes I have with iPhone. There are other shortcomings for more advanced users, such as not being able to install native iPhone apps without hacking it (and having to reinstall them again probably after every Apple firmware update to the iPhone). I do wish there is a robust eBook application of some sort, but for the most part I’m happy using the various web-based apps for things that iPhone can’t do with antive apps. For example, Meebo on iPhone works extremely well.

With the new, larger screen, watching movies and tv shows on iPhone is also much more pleasurable than before. Also the playtime is much longer than iPod Video due to the lack of hard drive access. I’ve purchased an entire TV series from iTMS for the first time, and actually enjoyed the private watching experience almost as much as I would have on my HDTV setup. I can watch the shows before going to sleep (instead of hanging around the living room and falling asleep on the couch), I can watch them during lunch breaks at work… etc.

I also ripped some of my DVD’s using Handbrake into iPhone compatible format. I never thought I would enjoy watching video on such a small screen, but there’s something about the private, personal experience I can have now with my movies, just as with my music, that is very satisfying. I don’t think I’ve been this happy with any consumer electronic device in a very, very long while (since my first Tivo?).

Despite of how much I love the iPhone, I still don’t believe in signing  a two year contract for AT&T/Cingular. I’ve been a customer with Cingular back since when they were PacBell PCS, I have no reason to be locked down to a contract to prove my loyalty to a carrier. Especially since the iPhone isn’t subsidized at all. If signing a contract meant I can save a few hundred dollars, then at least the value proposition is existent. There is absolutely no reason to a sign a contract for a phone that will inevitably be unlocked (and probably be available at the same price).

Service issues aside, the iPhone itself is simply one of the most brilliant consumer product ever made. It is a device that will completely reshape the mobile phone market. The problem is, the other phone manufacturers seem to be thinking, “Wow, the iPhone has a touchscreen, we must all move to touchscreen-only phones as well.” I’m not saying that iPhone’s touchscreen isn’t brilliant, but it isn’t the end-all solution to the woes of the mobile phone design we’ve seen in the past decade.

There are already several manufacturers that’s decided to manufacture their own versions of a touchscreen phone. Some of which has been offering touchscreen capability for years (for example, most of HTC’s Windows Mobile based phones). The problem with these phones isn’t whether or not your buttons are placed on a screen or engraved into a rubber nub, the problem is the underlying unresponsive, inadequate, and sometimes down-right ugly software.

It’s easy to credit an obvious invention (even though touchscreen has always been around, the type that iPhone uses, basically a type of clear laptop touchpad, is completely new to the market) for the success of a hardware product; ultimately it isn’t just the hardware design, but how the hardware design interact, melds and works with the underlying software. I don’t find the buttons on my Razr hard to press, I don’t find the features on my HTC Windows Mobile phone to be so hard to access or inadequate; but I also don’t understand why everything I do on either of these phones seems to take place 3 seconds after I’ve executed a command, clicked a button, or even just scrolling through the address book.

Years and years ago, there was this great, ambitious operating system called BeOS. It was built from the ground up to be a multi-threaded, multi-CPU operating system. The most impressive aspect of BeOS, was how responsive it was at handling tasks that were extremely taxing to other operating system at the time. You can run multiple windows of videos, move them around the screen, resize them and still have lightning fast response. Mind you, this was the age when most users were still living with Windows 3.1 (maybe some on Windows 95?). The software engineers of BeOS were able to achieve this, because they were very aware that the outward responsiveness of an OS is just as important to its interaction with the user as the underlying operations.

For example, while another OS will prioritize the task of writing files to the disk, BeOS prioritized the playback of that file being written, saved, copied. The writing of the file can still be finished up in the background, but the immediate feedback of that file being worked on is the most important thing to the user, and delivered a level of interactivity that was far more appreciable.  The OS was instantaneously more robust because it made sure that you knew what it is doing, what you’ve done, then went ahead and finished up all those tasks in the background where it wouldn’t bother you.

That is in essence one of the most important aspect about the iPhone. On the first week of iPhone’s release, CNet even performed a real-life, side-by-side test of iPhone’s UI speed against what Apple were showing in the commercial. There were all sorts of accusation that Apple had fussed with the footage, sped up some parts, edited out the lag time in between. Well, the CNet guys found that almost second by second, they can do everything that was done in the commercial with their iPhone. Sure, the touchscreen UI is slick and intuitive, but it is also the amazing responsiveness of the UI, the underlying robustness of the software, that really sets the iPhone apart from any phone that you’ve ever used before.

Another company named Pasen put out this video on Youtube recently:

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Sure, it’s a touchscreen device that completely rips off the iPhone. Look at the video, watch the number of times you had to click, double-click, drag fingers around, try to see if the device is responding. Wait, what is it doing now? Did I just select that? Is that playing now? How do I.. wait, let me click on that again.

I hope the rest of the consumer electronics industry doesn’t follow suit. It’s not just about the touchscreen.

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However, for every created need, there are a dozen of “WTF were you thinking?” I think this qualifies as one of them:

iCarta: Stereo Dock for iPod® with Bath Tissue Holder

I realize the product is a bit on the old side. I ran across a picture while browsing TUAW, and couldn’t resist posting it here. Since the product has been released for almost a year now, I’d like to see how many of these they’ve actually sold.

CES 2007: The Wootable Awards

Worth a read:
The Presto Service and HP Printing Mailbox Review – Part Two

The iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices—such as an iPod and a phone—and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and contrary to Newton—who knew a thing or two about apples—they all occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It’s a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone.

Read the whole article here.

Walt Mossberg’s review on Wall Street Journal
(sorry, subscription required for this one)

Presto on CBS’s Early Show

Presto on CBS’s local San Diego station

San Jose Mercury News

A very detailed out of the box experience via Gear Diary

Via my favorite gadget blog.. Engadget:

Smart sole, adjustment shoe.. etc…