The bigger question is hidden below the surface of this issue.  Who says that a single company can control what you read on your phone or tablet computer?  Is it really OK that Steve Jobs and his employees get to decide what you have access to?  That flies in the face of everything that America was founded on.   Where is the line?  Will they get to the point where they mandate that you can only install applications that get news from a certain partner company?  What if Apple suddenly decides that the BBC is an enemy of theirs?   Will they retroactively deny applications that can connect to the BBC for a news feed?  What’s to stop them?

Android is becoming a bigger question, a bigger solution, a bigger issue.  It’s becoming about the freedom to control your computing platform.  It’s about the right to install whatever the hell software you want on the device that rapidly is becoming the most used computer in your life.  I for one don’t plan on giving that control to Apple – no matter how slick and nice their software is.

Really folks:  are you willing to trade away your freedom for a bright shiny toy?  Really?

Then there’s the “Apple’s iPad Tablet Could Slay eBooks and Netbooks.”  Steve Jobs slammed netbooks as “slow” and sporting “low-quality displays”. The problem with them, he said, is that ” netbooks aren’t better than anything”. So let’s look at this for a moment.  The iPad has a 1024×768 display that’s not wide screen.  Sure, it uses a nice newer oleophobic, LED-backlit, 9.7-inch screen that uses IPS (in-plane switching) technology.  Newer netbooks will use something similar but will be wide screen.   The nVidia Tegra/Intel Atom chip is incredible at media encoding/decoding.  I don’t know if Apple’s A4 CPU will be much different, but it won’t be radically better.  But the real killer is that the iPad runs the iPhone OS.  It’s single tasking for goodness sakes.  Apple will sell iWork applications for $10 each – but can you image the use case for that?  You cannot switch from your word processor to your spreadsheet and back?  We’ve been able to work like that for what, 25 years or so?  One of the smartest moves Apple ever did was base OS X on the unix-like BSD operating system.  They got great networking and multi-tasking out of the gate.  But on the iPad?  No way.  Did I already ask what century Apple is in?  Oh, and did I mention that there’s no USB ports on the iPad either?  So you cannot just pull out your thumb drive to move some data between machines.   Golly.  I use that all the time.  I carry a thumb drive on my key chain I use it so often.

The biggest thing about this is how simple it would have been for Apple to just hit a grand slam.  Widescreen.  A real multi-tasking OS.  The A4 can decode HD video the way the new Atom/Nvidia chips can – imagine if they’d put an HDMI port in!   And Bluetooth for a wireless keyboard/mouse when at a desk.   Then you’d have a netbook killer *and* a Kindle/Nook killer.  Then the only real issue would be their Evil policies around application acceptance.  I’ve blogged on that before so I won’t again… but it’s even worse that a new platform – a real tablet – will live in such a controlled ecosystem.  If someone really comes up with an amazing new application that is the killer application for tablets (maybe one we have not imagined yet) Apple can just kill the competition out of the App Store.  You cannot buy software from anyone else.  This device that is now clearly more than a phone but less than a general purpose PC, but the fact that you can buy iWork for it indicates it’s more general purpose than not… and now Apple controls the software distribution channel?  Smart business move, but very bad for the consumer.  Restricting the open market is never good for the consumer.

Of course some people (some of whom I really respect) seem to express an attitude that since the software on the device is so easy to use, so polished, that they don’t mind all the other problems.  Kudos to Apple for working so hard on the interfaces and doing such a good job in general on their software.  Other software vendors should aspire to that.  Of course, they cannot use the ‘private APIs’ that Apple can use.  They will never have the access to the in-depth knowledge base of how the inside of the machine/OS runs so that you can optimize your code.  But hell, folks had those disadvantages against Microsoft too and they… oh, wait.   A lot of categories Microsoft now controls dominant market share in.  Gee, how’d they do that?  Apple’s playing the same game.  Smart for them, but bad for the consumer in the long run.

There’s a lot of foo about Flash support.  Frankly, I admire Apple for taking a stand.  I don’t like Flash.  It’s a completely proprietary, close ecosystem controlled by Adobe.  A lot of what I don’t like about APple I don’t like about Adobe (though there are things I do like about Adobe).   I think that Flex is silly and needlessly complex.  I think that Flash video has been a very big detriment overall to what video COULD BE on the net.  Having spent the last 7 years working with IPTV technology, I actually know what is possible.  And Flash video ain’t it!    But since so many of today’s web sites are flash based (including PRN, where I work – where we just launched our new website that is SO much better than our old one) then it’s pretty shocking that you cannot do flash on the iPad.   Just think about it – major companies web sites you cannot see with an iPad.  But then again, if you consider that Apple really wants you to consume media through their channel…  maybe it’s not to strange.  But is it good for the consumer?

Personally, I want a tablet.  I have several use cases for one in my life.  I like to read in bed, but part of what my daily word consumption is the web.  I read RSS feeds, web pages, great articles I pick up from tweets… and then I read a book.  I ride the San Francisco Muni to work a lot, and I won’t pull out a notebook there.  I would a tablet.   In meetings I don’t like to put the screen up and block peoples faces.  But I do like having a computer there so that I can either look something up fast, or more likely, respond to an urgent IM with enough of a reply to let them know I grok the problem and will get back to them as soon as possible.  I want to be able to use the tablet to watch movies too – only in HD and wide screen.    I think there’s a LOT of things you can do with a computer that is with me pervasively like I’d use a tablet.  But I want to be able to install software from an open ecosystem where the best offerings compete for my dollars.  Yes, I do want to develop software for it myself – or at least be able to if the demands of my job and kids ever give me more time.  And I most certainly don’t want to spend $500+ on a device only to then become a captive customer to Apple.

The biggest thing I see is that Apple is using this as a play to control even more of the media puzzle.  This is how Apple will control more of the casual use market (folks who just basically email and simple surfing).  This is how Apple will challenge Amazon for the eBook market.  This is how Apple will try to control the distribution market for eMagazines and eNews.   It’s not about being a good tablet, it’s about being a good content delivery device.  And maybe it will be that for a large market segment.   I’m sure the iPad will  sell like hot cakes.  And I’m sure that as the price drops many more will buy it.

But not me.  No thanks Apple.  I’ll wait for the MSI Android Tablet, or something like it.   What about you?

The real reason that the iPhone is doomed is that it’s just simply too closed.  Apple changed the game with the iPhone:  they moved the walled garden from the exclusive domain of the carriers to the exclusive domain of Apple.  They control everything about the platform – look and feel, what APIs are open, what you can and cannot do with the phone.  It’s just like it was a few years ago when you *had* to play the carriers silly games to get a mobile app approved, only now it’s Apple not the carriers.  The only thing that made this radical change in garden ownership possible was that it was done by a company that defines cool and hip… and (and this is a BIG and) they did it at the exact right time where they could literally enable the mobile web.   The mobile web was pathetic before the iPhone.  I’ve used a number of mobile phones that had a data package – and was an early adopter of the Nokia N800/810 MID devices tethering through my phone.  But the average consumer was left out until Apple made the market right for a huge number of consumers.   The iPhone made it possible for literally *anyone* to use the web no matter where they were (within coverage).  The web became more open and accessible and Apple reaped billions.  Good for them.  But the Internet is more than the web, and the world of mobile applications is far more interesting.

Today’s ’smart phones’ are still primarily phones and oh, they are handheld computers too.    In the case of the iPhone that’s sort of true.  It’s a handheld computer that you can do one thing at a time with.   The Nexus One that I am testing has better screen resolution than an iPhone 3GS and has more memory and a more powerful CPU.  But as an Android phone it  can do more than an iPhone can do since it’s a real multi-tasking system.   The future of mobile applications is not about a human doing one thing at a time.   It’s about machines doing things for us as we are mobile.   Most of these applications have not even been envisioned yet but I have glimmers of some ideas.   I see a time soon when your ‘phone’ will detect (and be detected) in a variety of contexts – and software will act on your behalf without you having to do anything.  An easy to imagine use case is checking in at a restaurant where you have reservations.  Your phone knows where you are, and it can know that you have reservations someplace (especially if you booked them through Open Table or similar.  Your phone can easily send a message when you arrive and give you a little buzz that you are acknowledged.  In fact, the system can buzz you again when your table is ready.  This app is not possible (to my understanding) on an iPhone.  You’d have to manually start the app to have it do the work.  We could sit and drink a few glasses of wine and come up with a dozen other similar ideas.    You can be sure that there’s a bunch of folks out there right now building these apps for Android right now – and the applications will be far more exciting than my silly reservation check in example.

The brain drain of innovative independent developers started last year as folks started abandoning the Apple platform.  The rate of increase in Android applications is insane (10,000 in a few months, and rising fast).  Now that AT&T will have Android phones (joining Verizon’s Droid) subsidized phones will broaden the user community.   Of course, I think that the future will see all phones being unlocked – after all, can you imagine that you cannot buy a computer unless you lock in with an ISP for years?  Insane!).   But more importantly, the application ecosystem is not closed – anyone can make and sell applications and you don’t risk a company like Apple slamming the door in your face.   The same thing that doomed the telco efforts to keep a walled garden will doom the iPhone (in it’s current form).  Apple broke the walls with a device that opened the mobile web.  Android will break the Apple walls by opening the mobile Internet – literally a whole new way of computing.  Real-time mobile applications will be more cool (and more useful) than just the mobile web.  The rate of innovation in the Apple closed walled garden will not be able to match the rate of innovation on the open mobile Internet – which is what the Android devices will be operating on.  Voice applications will all be Voice over IP – they are all packet data anyway – and there won’t be silly minutes plans anymore – just different data plans.  Your ‘phone’ is just a computer that you will take with you everywhere, and the applications that run on it will be amazing.  It’s a whole new market and open markets always generate innovation.   I’m looking forward to helping to make that reality happen sooner.

What do you think?  I’m sure the Apple lovers out there will have something fun to contribute.  What have I gotten wrong?  How do you think it will play out?  Comments welcome.

Think about it.  You get a few hundred dollars off the cost of the phone but then are LOCKED to that plan for two years.  The coming price and feature war between Sprint’s new 4G network, Verizon’s rollout of 3G, the shift of AT&T to a new world that is more than the iPhone playground… we’re going to want to take advantage of those dropping prices.  T-Mobile is already offering month-to-month.  $60 gets you a month of unlimited SMS and internet and 500 minutes of call time.  Use Skype and it’s unlimited talk time.  The phone network is going all IP and the era of the voice network is coming to an end.  Finally.   I hoped to help bring this about a decade ago when I was with Quicknet building the MicroTelco system.  It’s nice to see that the market has brought this around finally.

What’s really enabling this is the power of the smart phone hardware *and* the effect of Android.  I’ve been down on Android for it’s tendency to fragment the market and I’ve whined philosophically about how nice it would be if Nokia’s Maemo could be a unifying force.  But the power of Android is evident all around me.  It’s basically a radical sea change in the nature of phone software development.  The walled gardens are down – the thorned buses surrounding the pristine revenue gardens of the carriers are burned to the ground and the gates are thrown open to innovation and access.  As much as this might open the phones to possible malware, it also open the ecosystem to radical new possibilities.  Android is already running on tablets and lots of other mobile devices – and it will be on more and more.  Why?  Because it’s open.  Because there is no walled garden.  Because it’s basically a solid linux core with a reasonable set of API functionality on top.  It’s not just about the phones, it’s about the mobile device ecosystem, and the fact that the leash that was the carriers is now off forever.

Smartphone, PDA, handheld computer, whatever…  call it what you wish.  But the power of a gigahertz processor with 3D video coprocessing, decent memory, some storage, and connectivity is going to enable a whole new way normal people use computers.  By ‘normal’ I mean non-techie geeks – regular folks.  Making a voice call is just one of the things you can do with these devices… and a very minor thing at that.

The future, my friends, is unlocked.  In more ways than one.  And I could not be more excited about it.

Tell me what you think about our unlocked future!  Leave a comment.  Should be fun.

First of all, why is there no accelorometer in the device?  Having a device that can display either landscape (for web and email) or portrait (for calls) *should* have a means to automatically detect what orientation the user is holding it in.  FAIL. [NOTE:  folks have since told me that I am wrong, that there are accelerometers in the hardware - that's great!]

Second of all, why the crazy decision to use a Type B micro USB plug – and to make it client only?  Micro USB is still USB, but geesh, 99% of all other devices are mini-USB.  Most folks I know have a collection of mini-USB cables and chargers already because we have a collection of devices that use them.  There’s room on the phone hardware to use the mini-USB, but no… Nokia went and used the darn micro-USB.  And what’s with the choice to make the device client only?   Here’s a hand-held computer and you cannot plug a thumb drive into it?  What?????? FAIL.

Third, since it’s a phone and the assumption is that the users would definitely use 3G when not in WiFi range they *removed* the N800/810 capability to use Bluetooth tethering to access the network via another phone.  Why take it out?  I was actually hoping to use the N900 as a tethered device to avoid having to pay *another* data plan.  I carry a Blackberry for work and have a data plan on that… to get 3G coverage on the N900 I now have to buy anther data plan since Nokia decided to remove perfectly functional software that works wonderfully on the N800/810 devices.  FAIL.

All that said, the device is well built, has a beautiful screen (even if they did shrink it – I like the bigger N810 screen).  It’s crazy fast and very responsive.  The camera is excellent.  As a platform I think some really good software can be developed for it.  But Nokia better get with the program and think about what a mobile hand-held computer is all about.  They should have had a several year head start.  But I think they have wasted it.  I’m terribly disappointed.

I’ll be developing some software for the N900 over the next months and I’ll comment in this blog about my findings.  Perhaps I’ll change my mind and fall in love with the device as I start to use it more.  What about you all though?  Are you loving the N900?  Why or why not?

I’ve tweeted a lot about Apple’s iPhone empire being evil (of a sort).  It’s a closed, controlled ecosystem.   You can buy your phone from only one vendor.  It will run on only one carrier (AT&T).   You can get applications from only one place (Apple App Store).  If you want to develop for the iPhone you have to use one set of tools (from Apple).    If you want to share your software you have to do it through the App Store (even if it’s free).  If Apple thinks your application is inappropriate for any reason, they can block it.  Some reasons might be that they think it’s illegal, or perhaps it has profane words in it.  Or maybe it has functionality that Apple wants to reserve for itself or it’s partners (think Google Voice).     Apple can even revoke your right to be in the App Store after they have accepted you… so you might have a pile of loyal users of your software out in the world and suddenly find yourself with no way to get upgrades to them.  All the power is in Apple’s hands, and they seem to be wielding it for their own gain.  That’s prompted folks – me included – to call them evil.

I believe in a free market and a free ecosystem.   I believe – and vote with my dollars – for products that are more open than Apple.  I want the right to code for my computing devices and to install software on them if I want to.  I want to be able to write software and either give it away or sell it for others who have a similar device.  I don’t want to allow the device maker to have the power to control when, if, and for how long my software – or anyone’s software – can be distributed for the device.   I want multiple ways to get software distributed.  I want to install software from the Open Source Community.  I want to buy software too – from a variety of online stores, direct from the maker, or through media I purchase in a box in a store.  But Apple does not allow that.   It’s worse, actually, since this is an artificial limitation that Apple built into the iPhone.  There’s no technical reason for it – just that Apple wants to ‘control’ all the look and feel of the applications and of course to take their hefty slice (30% minimum) on all the transactions.  Sounds a lot like a thug with a gun at the bridge toll plaza.  “You want to cross, you pay my toll” kind of thing.

I should say that I don’t like the iPhone anyway.  It’s got wiz-bang human user software that took the game up a level for phones.  They have a great browser – if you want to web surf mobile it’s a nice platform.  They are a terrible phone – terrible radio.   I’ve been in remote areas (near Truckee, actually) and my Blackberry 9000 had two bars and a friends iPhone had NOTHING.    I hear that all the time.  I also don’t want a phone that can only run one application at a time – oh, unless you have the secret Apple hooks to get some limited call back functions.  You know, real multitasking systems on phones have been standard for a decade.   And just try to type on one if you have fingers like mine.  Sorry, mobile email is still my killer application and is the only thing that really makes my phone’s data plan ripoff costs something I can morally agree to.

So, on to Android.  Russell Beattie wrote in his blog that Android is splintering.  He makes a good point.  There will be so many flavors of the Android phone with such different capabilities that creating an application for all of ‘Android’ is probably impossible.   I’ve written before though that I’m not holding my breath about android (pun intended).  It has all the marks of a system written by too many smart Engineers without enough serious market focus behind it.  Toss in the fact (carrier meddling?) that they won’t even expose real telephony interfaces (read my blog about that) and it’s not the iPhone killer some seem to think it is.

What’s occurred to me is that the reason iPhone has so much power is the fact that their evil control over the ecosystem is what will give them even more power to destroy Android.  Russell’s blog made a great point:  consumers just want the software to work.  If they buy one Android phone and install Android software on it, they will be right to expect it to work.  But it probably won’t since the software author may have never tested on their model phone.    iPhone developers have a drastically smaller QA matrix.  Their very evil ways essentially give them an incredible advantage.

All this got me seriously thinking about the new Nokia N900.  Amazing computer power in a phone with a touch screen *and* a nice keyboard.  I’ve used the Nokia 800 and 810 quite a bit and they were *almost* there for me.  They needed more polish, but what they really needed was a phone and a 3G data plan.  When my N900 comes I can tell you if it’s the one or not.  But in the meantime I wonder if Maemo – the Linux based software stack that runs on these Nokia units – is the phone OS that can challenge the iPhone.  Controlled hardware platform produced by a trusted brand.  Serious market penetration to start with.  Solid hardware if their history indicates anything.  Seriously open development environment with a growing community of developers – with many computer languages, not just the java-centric thing that Android is.   An App store in the works but software available from multiple channels.  Can Nokia use Maemo to lever into the game the way Android might not be able to?  Maybe.   Seriously maybe.

I tweeted about this tonight.  Peter Cranstone tweeted me that he thinks it will be Windows Mobile 7.  I doubt that, unless it’s a total rewrite.  My Windows Mobile phone (a Motorola Q) was a scary indicator of how far back Microsoft was in basic phone thinking:  even though I had a full keyboard the only speed dial keys available wre the numeric 0-9 keys.  What?  And the UI was pathetic – all desktop Windoze oriented with no understanding of a mobile interaction model.  If MS can wake up they might be able to fix that (they have enough money to hire the best and let them rip) but can they really do it?  Maybe – they are grokking open source a bit these days (I cannot believe I am admitting that though) – they even released some gode under the GPL.  So, it might be colder in Hades soon, who knows.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.  I’m interested in what you all think about where mobile is going.