MobileViews Blog

I just read on TechCrunch that Google quietly launched a new interface for Apple’s iPhone (and iPod touch too by default). If you have your iPhone (or iPod touch with WiFi turned on) handy, just head over to google.com. You don’t need to type a special URL. Your iPhone will be autodetected and sent to the new interface. Switching between web-areas (say from Home to Gmail or Calendar) is instantaneous.

Heading over to Google with a Pocket PC or Smartphone redirects you to the older and, unfortunately, uglier, mobile device interface. This widening gap between the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices should be a great concern to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile team. iPhone Safari users (and iPod touch users) are clearly getting a more satisfying mobile browsing experience than Windows Mobile Internet Explorer users. This is clearly reflected in the Gartner data I quoted in my previous blog that shows the iPhone browser use marketshare has eclipsed Windows Mobile browser use marketshare in the less than 6 months since the iPhone launched.

According to the Gartner data reported in this Computerworld blog item…

iPhone browsing marketshare closes in on .1%

… the iPhone browser marketshare eclipsed the total Windows Mobile browser marketshare in less than half a year. That is pretty impressive considering that Windows CE/Windows Mobile has been around since late 1996. The iPhone checks in with 0.09% of the browser market share while Windows CE (aka Windows Mobile plus a few other devices) had a 0.06% share. Something listed as simply iPod in the list is probably the iPod touch and has a 0.01% share. If you add that to the iPhone, it has a full 0.10% browser share. I guess this explains why so many sites are building iPhone tuned web pages. The iPhone clearly has momentum in the mobile browsing world.

Other points of interest: The Nokia S60 series has a 0.01% share (same as the iPod touch). The Hiptop shows up with 0.02%. Windows XP is #1 with a 78.37% share. And, Windows Vista is a distant second with a 9.19% share. The Mac is divided into two categories: MacIntel (3.59%) and Mac OS (presumably PowerPC based with 3.22%) with a combined share of 6.81%.

Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac is due out early next year. The Office 2008 for Mac team blog let us know about a very interesting feature that PowerPoint 2008 for Mac will have: The ability to export PowerPoint  slide decks as pictures to iPods that provides photos viewing (all current models except the Shuffle do). This trick has been used for a while now. But, it is nice to see the Office Mac team build it directly into PowerPoint 2008. You can read their blog entry for more details…

PowerPoint to Go

After watching Jeff MacArthur’s review of ifrogz cases on commandN #110, I decided to order a case. The case arrived pretty quickly. Unfortunately, ifrogz sent the wrong case. I sent email to try to get it corrected but became impatient even though I hadn’t even waited a full 24 hours yet. So, I called ifrogz’ customer service number and was shocked to be speaking with a human being right away. No gigantic touch tone menu tree or voice mail jail. The person on the other end (Kim) took down my order number, listened to my explanation and took care of the problem right away. She said the correct product would be shipped to me as soon as possible. No hassles, no DNA samples, no annoying 20 questions. Thumbs up for ifrogz customer service.

I finally got around to downloading the Apple iPod touch 1.1.12 firmware upgrade (157.9MB large). I couldn’t find an official Apple page describing the changes in 1.1.12. However, I did find a discussion thread in their support area created by users describing the changes. You can find it at…

Apple Support Discussions Forums User Generated 1.1.12 Changelog

The most noticeable change is that calendar events can now be directly added on the touch itself (in addition to iCal on the Mac). Looking forward to playing with the upgraded touch a bit to see what else has changed.

According to MacRumors.com, the Apple iPod touch 1.1.2 firmware upgrade adds the ability to add calendar events on the iPod touch (the iPhone already has this feature). My iPod touch is still at 1.1.1 and is apparently not on the schedule for upgrading today. So, I can’t confirm this first hand. But, I’m looking forward to getting the update sometime in the next couple of days.

Combine this news with the commentary over on PocketPCThoughts.com about well-known techie Chris Pirillo’s conversion from Windows Mobile to the iPhone (see Chris Pirillo on the iPhone vs. Windows Mobile for Business Use) and the many concurring comments on PocketPCThoughts’ forums. Now, things are getting interesting. The big problem with the iPhone is that many of us in the US are unwilling to switch from our current mobile phone service provider to AT&T Wireless. The iPod touch, however, doesn’t require anyone to make any kind of change to use it.

Since the calendar sync will probably be flawless like the contacts sync, iPod touch owners are not going to have the kind of love-hate relationship with ActiveSync and WMDC that Pocket PC and Smartphone owners have. In fact, iPod touch owners simply won’t even think about syncing much. It will just work.

The iPod touch’s Safari browser is already the gold standard for mobile browsing. The touch is a great music, video, and photo player. It lets you enter contacts and soon (if not now) lets you enter calendar events. Most people don’t add applications to their Pocket PC or Smartphone from what I’ve seen over the years. But, application development is underway via Jailbreak and iPod touch and iPhone development will be legitimized by Apple early in 2008. Add the perceived coolness factor that all iPods (and the iPhone) have and you have a killer mobile product.

While I doubt that anyone from the Microsoft Windows Mobile team reads this blog, I’ll add a note for them here anyway… Earth to Windows Mobile Team: Geeks like me (and probably the two or three people who read this blog now and then) will continue to buy and use Windows Mobile devices because we need/want apps like Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, eWallet, Newsbreak, SoundExplorer, and HanDBase. But, the vast majority of non-enterprise non-geeks (99.999+% of the world) just need contacts, calendar, and media playback (mobile browsing is not high on the list of non-geeks). And, since syncing an iPod with a Mac or PC is natural and easy for iPod users, syncing contacts and calendar will be just another automatic action that they don’t worry about.

I’ve already watched one of my favorite mobile tools, the good ol’ Windows CE Handheld PC, go the way of the dinosaur and disappear. The Pocket PC (Classic Edition – no phone radio) is probably not far behind. And, the Pocket PC Phone Edition (Professional Edition) and Smartphone (Standard Edition) may become niche enterprise tools. The iPhone and iPod touch are here now. The Google phones are on their way in 2008 (or more likely 2009 IMHO). If Windows Mobile doesn’t fix its broken basics such as the awful sync experience and awful Internet Explorer web browsing experience, it will not be a viable platform except in vertical markets by 2010.

I’m constantly amazed by how enthusiastically websites are adapting to the relatively new iPhone browser. The latest one that caught my attention is the iPhone tuned site for Yahoo! Pipes.

iphone.pipes.yahoo.com: Access your mashup while mobile

As the announcement’s title says, you can find it at…

iphone.pipes.yahoo.com

I just tried it using my iPod touch and it worked fine on that too (as expected). The one tiny gotcha is that the login screen is the conventional non-iPhone formatted web page. Fortunately, the Safari browser deals with it just fine. You are thrown back to an iPhone/touch friendly view after the login process is complete.

The screen shot on the left is of the Weather.com site on a Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC (Professional Edition). The screen shot on the left is the same site tweaked for the iPhone on an iPod touch. Although it takes a lot longer to load on the iPod touch (both devices were on the same WiFi network although the Pocket PC was limited to 802.11b vs. the 802.11g for the iPod touch), the iPhone version sure looks a lot nicer and provides a lot of functionality without scrolling up and down.

Microsoft has a lot of work to do to bring the Windows Mobile Internet Explorer browser into the 21st century. The iPhone has clearly inspired a lot of firms and their web designers to maximize web-impact for the iPhone’s Safari browser in a way that we have not seen previously for other web-enabled mobile devices.

Microsoft’s announcements of more enterprise mobile-enabling products for 2008 is good for the enterprise. But, again, that is clearly not where most of us are these days even if we work for a large organization. Microsoft really needs to focus on the basics and fix the broken stories at that level: Internet Explorer, ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center, and alarms are just a few of the basics that need fixing.

Google announced that a mobile-friendly read-only (ack!) Google Docs web access.

Docs on the go

Head over to https://docs.google.com/m to view (but not edit) documents and spreadsheets on an iPhone (iPod touch), Blackberry, or Windows Mobile device. iPhone users can also view presentations (slide decks).

I recorded a quick and dirty 2 minute video demo and placed it on YouTube: Google Docs for Mobile Devices on an iPod touch.

Viewings videos on ultra portable devices is nothing new. However, perhaps surprisingly, the oldest of the device families, Windows Mobile, falls far short of a good end-user experience. This is especially true for the under-powered (processor-wise) Smartphone (Standard Edition) where viewing anything except a video specially prepared for it results in a disappointing experience. For example try viewing a video podcast NOT specially prepared for a Smartphone. You will probably see what amounts to still images with a sound track.

The Pocket PC (Professional Edition) video experience is a bit better but still not good. Since Windows Mobile is not designed as a media device, you will find it does things like dim or blank the screen after a timeout period. Normally, this is fine since it is a battery saving feature. However, it is annoying to have to remember to change this setting everytime you watch a video and then set it back when you are done. On the other hand, the faster processors on the Pocket PC (compared to the Smartphones) lets you watch a wider variety of video files (including video podcasts). And, it is not often that you see someone showing a video on an external device connected to a Smartphone or Pocket PC. Despite what Microsoft might claim, these are not real media devices (see any WM5 or WM6 Playlists for example?).
The Zune does a better job since it is designed as media device. However, its non-intuitive user interface (navigation pad) makes something as simple as scrolling and selecting from a list tedious. Once a video gets rolling, it is a pretty good experience though and optional docks make it easy to connect to an external display.

The iPod touch has the best video and user interface I’ve seen so far. Its one drawback is that Apple decided that all 6th generation iPods require docks with a special chip for video playback on external devices. So, previous video docking solutions do not work with the latest iPod models.

The 5th (previous) generation iPods only had one model that provided video playback. But, it has a huge existing accessory infrastructure that lets you easily and relatively cheaply purchase devices to provide a larger video screen. For example, there are several portable DVD players with integrated LCD screens that also have iPod docs built-in. This lets you use the player to show and listen to videos on a larger screen.

For the moment, it is a toss-up between the 5th and 6th generation iPods. As soon as the 3rd party accessory market catches up (probably this holiday season or early 2008), the 6th generation will be the device of choice. It will be interesting to see what the Zune 2.0 delivers. And, unfortunately, my favorite overall mobile device family (Windows Mobile) is down for the count when it comes to Media playback.

No third party binary applications for the Apple iPhone or iPod touch yet. However, Apple created a list of web apps for these devices. You can find it linked below.

Apple Web Apps

I was surprised to see so many (relatively speaking) web apps designed specifically for the iPhone/touch (215 as of Oct. 11, 2007). It will be interesting to see if this part of the iPod eco-system continues to grow.

The old Windows CE Handheld PCs had large (by today’s thumb keyboard standards) physical keyboards and a touch screen. They never caught on (even though I really enjoyed using them . The problem was that the touch screen were really just a substitute for a mouse and the need to pick up a stylus in between typing was annoying.

Following the lead of the Palm Pilot, Microsoft moved on to the Palm-size/Pocket PC and dropped the physical keyboard completely. Then RIMM’s Blackberry and Palm’s Treo showed that a physical keyboard was indeed a good thing but needed to be sized and designed correctly. Many current generation Windows Mobile Pocket PCs (Professional Edition) and Smartphones (Standard Edition) have physical thumb keyboards too. And, many of them are well designed (I particularly like the Dash’s and TyTyn’s).

Recently, Apple went retro and introduced the iPhone and iPod touch with touch screens that don’t need (or work) with a stylus and dropped the physical keyboard in favor of a graphical tactile-less one. On one hand, the finger gestures for viewing photos and navigating web pages works much better than stylus based Pocket PCs or keyboard based Smartphones. On the other hand, I guess I’m just one of those fumble-fingered people who prefers tactile feedback when typing (even thumb typing). I do think it is great that I don’t have to reach for a stylus to use the iPod touch. But, I really wish I had some kind of option (Bluetooth keyboard for example) for the iPod touch.

I was originally going to comment on the relative granularity differences between finger touch screens and stylus touch screens. But, I need to think that through a bit more. It just occurred to me that one of the original applications categories for the Pocket PC were little mini-PhotoShop type drawing apps. Yet, those never did become very popular. And, we don’t see that category heavily pushed or sold these days. Part of the issue may be the relatively small processing power on mobile devices (compared to desktops). But, I wonder if the digitization errors inherent in any touch screen might have something to do with this too. More later…