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londonitis

Listed below are comments made by londonitis between Thursday, 15th May 2008 and Friday, 11th September 2009.

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Apple: All sizzle and no steak 06:43am on 11 Sep 2009 Actually I DO think people would want to read about Nokia World 2009. I for one do, and the buzz all over the blog community is huge regarding the products and services launched this time.

The reason I think that this time was particularly worth covering is that Nokia for the first time have launched a Linux based smartphone, and it looks fantastic. If the price is right, it's definitely a worthy contender in the high-end smartphone market. The UI is slick and user-friendly, and the power of the device is up to the mark, with true multitasking.

Anyway, before I end up describing all the specs, my point is that people log on the BBC to read the news, and opinions. They don't decide before hand that they only want to read news about, for e.g. the US, and not about any other country. That's why the BBC covers news from all over the world, so that peoples' varied interests are all covered. Tehcnology news isnt different either. if something special or big is happening, the BBC should let the people know, and perhaps even get a discussion started on the blog. Let the people decide whats news-worthy.

The BBC even reported about the new Palm Pixi, which, in my opinion, is no big deal. But it still got reported, because someone out there thinks its a big deal.

I'm not sure if the BBC is too Apple-centric, or too US-centric when it comes to technology reporting. Something tells me its the latter...
Apple: All sizzle and no steak 6:06pm on 10 Sep 2009 I am, to say the least, extremely disappointed with this blog, and the BBC in particular, for not having any coverage of the Nokia World 2009 on this website.

At the same time, I am not at all surprised that regardless of whether there was a big announcement at the Apple event, it got comprehensively covered. After all, this has been the trend with the BBC over the last few years.

The Nokia World 2009 was a significant event in the mobile industry, not only because of the product and services announcements that were made, but because it signified an interesting time in the mobile industry, where the market leader is trying to fight back not only the market share that it lost over the last year or so, but also the mind-share of mobile users.

It also signified how dynamic the mobile industry is at this moment, when every new product launch is scrutinised with a microscope. Sadly, this is not the case with the BBC and dot.life, as they are only mostly concerned with Apple and Google, even though Nokia is still the market leader, and just announced some of the most exciting devices and services it has in some years.

I would have liked to see some information and perspective on those launches on the BBC, which in the end I had to get from various other sources on the web.

I hope in the future the BBC, being a responsible news source, provides this much larger perspective that is needed in an industry like the mobile industry.
Apple playing catch up? 12:03pm on 23 Mar 2009 This is Apple doing what they do best. They are for sure the masters of 3 things - Design, Marketing and knowing what really sells.

When they designed the first iPhone, they realised what technologies they need to concentrate their efforts on that will produce the wow factor in the market, get consumer buy-in, create the product image and perception, and eventually get people hooked on to the phone.

Once you have consumer buy in, then you can slowly bring your product up the specs that everybody is making noises about, but very few actually care about.

The idea is simple - do a few things, but do them better than anyone has ever done them.
Apple playing catch up? 02:48am on 19 Mar 2009 I couldn't help laughing out loud (and very close to even rolling with laughter) when I watched the video of the iPhone 3.0 software release.

A room full of suited individuals sat seriously watching a man demonstrating 'cut, copy and paste', and then spontaneously burst out in applause!

Who said there is no more humour left in this world?
Going mobile in Barcelona 3:27pm on 17 Feb 2009 I just saw the report.

On the one hand i'm rather disappointed that the report overlooked the fact that branhds like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others have been offering application downloads on their smartphones for years.

However, on the other hand it is perhaps a true representative of the view of the average users of smartphones today. The fact that they are not aware of downloadable applications on mobile phones before the iPhone, shows the faliure of the giants like Nokia and Micorsoft in making the common user aware of the true power of the smartphones they have been buying all these years. It is a failure on their part to take advantage of the head-start they had in this area, which they have now foregone to Apple.

At the same time it shows the true genius of Apple for making the common user aware of downloadable applications on the iPhone, and making it one of the 'killer apps' of the iPhone.
Scrabulous users - stunned, bemused,baffled. 07:32am on 27 Aug 2008 The 'Indian guys'... do they have names? :o)

I heard they were brothers, so perhaps we can refer to them as 'The XYZ brothers', .. you know, just for a change. I'm getting tired or reading 'the Indian guys' or 'the Indian boys' :oP
The Apple tease 6:16pm on 16 May 2008 @Maggie:
Perhaps in the future you could explicitely mention which regional market your blog is aimed at. BBC is a global news portal, and US-centric blogs such as these are misleading for customers and technologists around the world.

Alternatively, you could perhaps expand your research to non-US markets and write a more balanced view on the mobile industry.

@JoeARP:
I am not trying to say that Symbian is more powerful than OS X. That would be like comparing apples with oranges, in a way. Symbian was designed from the bottom-up specially for mobile phones, where processor speed and memory (and I mean RAM, not flash memory!) are limited as compared to in desktops. Desktops are a differnt kind of cheese.

If you looked inside an iPhone, I am sure you would find a rather dumbed down version of the OS X, which wasn't originally designed for mobile phones.
Suggesting that for smartphones to achieve convergence they need to run dumbed down versions of desktop operating systems, is a very naive and dangerous view of technology, and one that restricts innovation.
as 'quanneur' said above, Symbian IS the current choice for mobile computing.

@BrownSource:
I like your idea of a smartphone being a dumb client, which builds its 'smartness' through features requested by the user. However, I would not like to see smartphones being dependent on desktops. I see smartphones as being the most ultra form of mobile computing that would compliment desktop computers but not be tied to them.

Also, if MS could build the best mobile browser, it would have by now! ;o)

@Yorkshirespur!! :
Wait for a N96. You might be pleasantly surprised!
The Apple tease 1:57pm on 15 May 2008 Oh, and I think I should add here that S60 is releasing a browser that can run embedded flash videos, just like your desktop browsers. You won't need an app to run youtube anymore.
The Apple tease 1:49pm on 15 May 2008 OK, this discussion is moving more towards the technical capabilities of the various OS's available.

My original comment was intended to get Maggie to re-align her views with the rest of the world's, and not just those of North America.

However, I will attempt to respond to each of the above comments, now that this discussion is heating up!

@ TerenceEden:
I meant 'native' applications, not Java ones. Java apps can be written for any platform, including the not-so-smart proprietary ones offered by all handset manufacturers. These apps are, slow (being Java), and are not capable of using the phones' powerful features.
In a sentence, Blackberry is not an open platform.

@JoeARP :
It may not take a Nostradamus that the future of mobile is a convergence device, but it certainly does not take a rocket scientist to also figure out that PC apps cannot run on a phone as is. Mobiles are constrained when it comes to memory and processor speeds. You PC application doesn't really care that much about memory.
Having said that, there are loads of PC apps that have been written for Symbian devices, just like various Windows apps have been written for Mac. Symbian is just another platform, so all apps can be ported using Symbian's native API's, and now even POSIX C API's.
Convergence means merging of all devices into one, i.e. camera, music player, organiser, etc. and of course the phone, to provide mobile computing. Just because desktop PC's run Windows/Mac/Linux, doesn't mean all mobiles should do so as well. This is in fact one of the reasons Symbian was created by the handset manufacturers.

@abhimittal:
I gave credit where it was due. Symbian's multimedia is much more powerful than Apple's, and especially RIM's. There is nothing special about the iPhone’s music quality. In fact, the N95's music quality is far better. With the release of Dolby Surround on Symbian OS, this will widen the gap even further.
Symbian OS phones have better camera's that Apple's/RIM's
NGage brings a whole new level of game playing on Symbian.
Symbian phones can record videos @30 fps!

What you talk about is performance (photos taking time to load) and user experience (iPod viewer), both of which I am sure are being addressed by Symbian. In fact, have you tried the N95 with demand paging? I am sure you will change your mind about Symbian's performance.
Push email you ask? Symbian supports both Blackberry Push email as well as Microsoft's ActiveSync, the choice is entirely yours! If Apple has invented a new way to do Push email, then I am not aware of it.

Let me clarify something here. I like the Blackberry for what it gives, Push email.
I like the iPhone for what it gives, user experience, and I admit, for most users around the world, that is enough to swing them towards an iPhone.
However, under that shiny hood lies a not-so-powerful OS, yet. I must admit, I don’t know what new features (beside the obvious 3G etc. ) will the iPhone 2.0 bring.

And finally, @JimConnolly : Thank you. No, I don't blog, but I will definitely take your advice! :o)
The Apple tease 06:54am on 15 May 2008 abhimittal wrote:
"Yes, Symbian is a big player, but the software doesn't even come close to what Apple/RIM/Google are already offering! "

I beg to differ. Lets see what each one is offering individually:

Apple:
A phone with absolutely no real 'smartphone' features, but a great user experience and a fantastic user interface. The phone is not stable by any standards and crashes quite often.

RIM:
Push email, and thats all. Everything else has nothing 'smart' about it. In fact, you can't even develop any applications on a Blackberry.

Google:
Its too early to see what Google is offering. But from what I ave seen so far, the OS is still in its early stages and has no maturity. Google are having problems deciding how 'open' they want the OS to be, and what exactly should be made part of the SDK. They are still a long way from delivering a phone.

Symbian:
Fully featured smartphone, in all senses of the word. Push email, excellent multimedia capabilities, games, and bascially very powerful phones.
I agree however that the user experience needs to improve, but the quality has improved significanlty. I have a N82 for 5 months now and it hasn't crashed even once. Neither did my E61 before that. And the user experience is great as well.

Also, yes, developing applications for Symbian can be rather painful, but we haven't seen offerings from the other OS's to make a judgment right now.

Numbers speak volumes! 200 million phones sold worldwide... there is a good reason for that!

I think Maggie Shiels should look further than just the US market if she wants a true picture of the mobile OS industry.

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