Sounds like one of those article to keep in the drawer and compare with reality in 3 to 5 years.
I don’t care if this guy’s really into this market. I think he’s plain wrong. Or really uncapable of making his point.

This morning I was contemplating the browser war, which has started again. IE vs. Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Safari. Nice fight to watch, something that takes me back to memory lane when Mosaic was my browser, when the fight was Netscape vs. Microsoft. You know, the browser is the center of our Internet experience. Everything goes around the browser. Google is built around the browser. Microsoft and Yahoo just agreed on a search deal around the browser. The browser is everything.

Then I got an epiphany.

The browser is going to disappear.

Whhhaaaaat? Are you crazy?

Ok, ok. Let me try to explain ;-) I saw the birth of the browser. I attended the third World Wide Web conference. I started the first web company in Italy. Once Tim Berners-Lee came up with the hypertext concept and created the idea of the web, I even thought about building a browser. I did. I still have some Tcl/Tk code somewhere. Others were much better and faster… The browser was the perfect visualizer for the web on a desktop. The hypertext meant links. Links need to be clicked. We had the mouse. We had big screens. We had a chair and a desk. Great match. Boom, the Internet was born.

Then came mobile.

I haven’t seen one single implementation of a browser on a mobile device that actually makes the experience good (not great). Do not tell me you like the iPhone browser. It is horrible. It is probably the best you can do on a small screen, with no mouse. Clicking is a pain. Zooming and panning is a super-pain. You click when you want to scroll. You yell.

If you can choose between browsing on your PC or on your iPhone, what would you choose?

Exactly.

Now let’s talk about Mobile Apps. They are built for interaction without a mouse. With one finger (the other hand holding the device). They are quick, immediate, intuitive, interactive.

If I have to choose between checking the weather on my PC or on my iPhone, what do I choose? The iPhone. One click. Done. I do not have to sit, open the browser, click and re-click and maybe even type my zip code. It is there when I need it.

Think about it. Mobile Apps can deliver a better experience then those on PC. Granted, I am excluding the productivity tools where you need a lot of typing. But those are few and you will need a keyboard, a desk and a chair. When you do not have to do a lot of typing, a mobile app becomes preferable.

Where is the world going? To mobile. The new Apple Tablet will blur the line even more. But it will be a mobile device for sure. An e-book reader + video player + music player + weather viewer + news viewer…. All with your fingers. All with little apps. All with no mouse. All with an App Store where you can find everything you need. The world is all going to mobile. We will spend more time without the mouse than with it.

This is the Internet era all over again. Back then, we had hundreds of small companies that started with the goal to build web sites. Now, every company wants an iPhone app. You can deliver more value with an app, than you can with a web site. More interactive, more personal, 24/7, in the hands of your customer, with push capabilities.

The result is that every company will have a mobile app, and hundreds of small companies will be created to support it. That you will “navigate” between companies moving from an app to another. That the search engine will not be on a browser, but in the app store (or in the search engine of the app stores, which someone should start developing fast…).

This is going to change the world as we know it. If the browser loses its centrality, ads will go somewhere else. The search engine will be way different. Someone has to invent a platform to link apps one to the other, of course, but the infrastructure is there. It is the engine of the browser itself, with its HTML, AJAX, CSS.

The browser will be swallowed inside the apps. We will have a world without the browser. The future is all of a sudden clear to me. Well, the browser fight looks kind of moot now…

Apple just rejected the Google Voice iPhone application from App Store distribution, the most recent in a long line of questionable moves, and the message is clear: If you want a device that won’t lock you out of innovation, skip the iPhone.

Photo by rore.

Lest We Forget

There’s no question that this brilliant little piece of hardware has sparked a revolution in the world of mobile computing and cellphones, and, likewise, there’s no question that consumers have benefited from that. I’ve been a believer in the iPhone from the start (hell, I even co-wrote a book on the stupid thing), but despite all the missteps Apple has made along the way, it always at least seemed plausible that they were holding out on apps or making unpopular decisions with some sort of good reason. (That was probably always willful ignorance, and Apple’s culture of secrecy just makes it that much easier to assume there’s some Very Special Reason for their bad decisions.) Still, I’ve never regretted buying an iPhone until now.

Refusing Competition

Over the course of the day, most people have speculated that Google Voice was rejected from the App Store at AT&T’s behest. The reason? Apple’s official line is that Google Voice duplicates features already on the iPhone—namely the Phone and Messages app. Of course, none of that holds water, considering the App Store is already full of alternate SMS apps and apps like Skype that sport a telephone dialer.

So what separates Google Voice from the other, already-approved tools that offer similar features to the iPhone’s default apps? As far as we can tell, the main issue is competition. AT&T doesn’t see Joe Schmoe’s SMS Big Keyboard Deluxe (it’s a real app) as much of a threat to the colossal ripoff that is text messaging, for example, but people may actually want to use Google Voice.

From another angle, Apple only seems concerned with duplication of features if an application competes with an app that they already made. If you’re competing with another non-default third-party application, you can go and duplicate all you want (hence the oft-cited Fart apps). Still, if a Google Voice app actually does duplicate the functions of the telephone/SMS applications that ship with the iPhone, I want to know how I can use my iPhone to check my Google Voice inbox, send messages via Google Voice, or get my voicemails transcribed with what Apple and AT&T are offering. And do not send me to a crappy iPhone 1.0 webapp.

The real problem, then, is that Google Voice, and all it offers, is actually much better than what AT&T offers.

Forget About Innovation

It’s unfortunate, of course, because Google Voice doesn’t actually stop anyone from using AT&T. It’s not a VoIP app (yet), so you still need AT&T for it to work at all. Again, it simply improves on what the iPhone already has. It would actually make AT&T—and the iPhone—better. From my perspective as a consumer, that in turn makes the iPhone a much more attractive device. Since it’s been rejected on the iPhone but approved for Android phones and BlackBerrys, that in turn makes both of those devices that much more attractive.

Sure you can switch carriers if you’re not happy—as long as you’re willing to empty your pockets to drop out of your contract. That’s always been the case. But Apple/AT&T have never sent such a clear message in the past about just how restrictive they’ll get if they feel threatened by an application. Those of us who were once excited at the seemingly limitless potential of the App Store now know where we stand.

Apple would like you to believe that the goals of the App Store approval process are lofty ones—that they’re only approving innovative apps and that the only reason they don’t approve apps is to protect you from bad software or, horror of horrors, confusion. Because god knows it’d be confusing as hell to use a better phone application than what came with the phone. Meanwhile, thank god we can pass our time with iWet T-Shirts (borderline NSFW).

It’s All About the Software

As far as I’m concerned, there’s two things that set the iPhone apart from its competition: 1) It’s got great hardware, and 2) It’s got the most third-party applications.

The first issue is a hurdle for other phone providers/phone manufacturers to figure out; some already have matched the iPhone’s hardware (as far as its guts go, the iPhone and the Palm Pre aren’t all that different) and others will eventually.

The second is where Apple is really asking for it. The more alienated developers feel—especially good developers who’re trying to build something new and innovative (as opposed to those looking to join the Fart app gravy train)—the less time they’re going to spend playing iPhone App Store roulette. Which means that if you want a phone where you can expect some real innovation, you should probably skip the iPhone.

Isn’t This a Bit Familiar?

The iPhone is a full-on computer in your pocket, and in many ways is more capable than your regular old PC. Imagine, if you can, that Microsoft tried dictating what browser you had to use on Windows. Oh right, that happened. Except they didn’t refuse to allow you to use any other browser just because it duplicated the features of their default browser. And as Wired points out, Apple is inviting all kinds of regulation with this kind of mindset. And it hasn’t just been about Google Voice:

Apple and AT&T are living dangerously though. Apple has also forced video services like Slingbox to cripple their applications because of purported concerns over data usage, while approving ones from paying partners (e.g. Major League Baseball) that would put more strain on a network than Slingbox’s would.

If the iPhone’s default applications were better than those submitted by Google or by some other third-party developer, then people would use them. If not, then that’s a sign that they need to make them better—not a red flag that they should start pulling apps left and right from the App Store because of “duplication.”

Why You Should Care

At the end of the day, this isn’t simply a Google Voice/iPhone problem—it’s a concern for everyone, iPhone owner or not, with an interest in the latest and greatest crop of smartphones. Google’s Android OS may be open source, but that doesn’t mean they’re above pulling apps when pressured by carriers. Right now the non-iPhone manufacturers and carriers are much more willing to allow anything on their platform because, frankly, they’re desperate to get some of the attention the iPhone already has. That doesn’t mean that’ll always be the case.

Every now and then, we like to go on grumpy, long-winded, opinionated rants. We’re far from the definitive voice, and your feelings may differ, so feel free to air your thoughts in the comments.

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• A.S.I. – Agenzia Spaziale Italiana -
• forumastronautico.it – Astronautica e Scienze aerospaziali – News portale

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Filed under: Internet Tools, iPhone, App Store

We didn’t want to let the week slip into the weekend without mention of the long-awaited release, on Thursday afternoon, of Google’s Latitude client for iPhone, allowing users to update their locations to the social service and keep track of friends and family on the move (otherwise known as “iStalkU” — no, sorry, that was Loopt, my mistake). You can access the service by browsing to http://google.com/latitude on Mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Yes, that’s right, browsing. Latitude, believe it or not, is a web app — which means that you can’t get push notifications about your contact’s movements, or keep constant tabs on folks without leaving Safari running. Intriguing. As Google’s Mat Balez notes in his blog post announcing the Latitude release, Google actually developed a native app for Latitude… only to have Apple, uh, suggest that the big G redo the concept as a web app to avoid user confusion with the Maps app. Really? Must have been an interesting phone call.

David Coursey at PC World is frustrated with the limitation, and it’s hard to fault him. Meanwhile, location-centric apps like Brightkite are already on the store — of course, they are also kneecapped by the lack of a backgrounding mode to send updated position fixes.

If you’re a Latitude fan, give us your feedback on the new web app below.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

TUAWChanges in Apple attitudes force changes in Google Latitude originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cursive handwriting, a one-time mainstay of communication and mark of status, has become a rarity on the cusp of extinction. We’re wondering if you think that’s a good thing for all those future thank-you notes and other correspondence.

Photo by procilas.

If you’ve long since abandoned writing in cursive, you’re in the good company of most of the world and the entire Lifehacker editorial staff. According to TIME magazine, cursive has been on a slow decline since the 1920s and practically on life support since the 1980s:

People born after 1980 tend to have a distinctive style of handwriting: a little bit sloppy, a little bit childish and almost never in cursive. The knee-jerk explanation is that computers are responsible for our increasingly illegible scrawl, but Steve Graham, a special-education and literacy professor at Vanderbilt University, says that’s not the case. The simple fact is that kids haven’t learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. “Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore,” he says.

Write everything in cursive? Only your signature? Plan never to write another word in cursive, thanks to the non-tender ministrations of Sister Angelina?

Do You Write in Cursive?(polls)
Log your vote in the poll above and then sound off in the comments with your tales of dapper penmanship or handwriting woes.

Mourning the Death of Handwriting [TIME]