Several Verizon Wireless employees stumbled upon the Pandora's Box of personal cellphone accounts, that of President-Elect Barack Obama, and couldn't help sneaking a peek. Luckily, the account was old and out-of-use, there's no indication that email records, voicemails or call contents were monitored, and at the very most the employees only got to see billing records, according to Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam. Oh yeah, and the employees are now fired.
PERSONAL CELL PHONE ACCOUNT OF PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA ACCESSED BY UNAUTHORIZED EMPLOYEES
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell McAdam made the following statement today:
"This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-Elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone account. The account has been inactive for several months. The device on the account was a simple voice flip-phone, not a BlackBerry or other smartphone designed for e-mail or other data services.
"All employees who have accessed the account – whether authorized or not – have been put on immediate leave, with pay. As the circumstances of each individual employee's access to the account are determined, the company will take appropriate actions. Employees with legitimate business needs for access will be returned to their positions, while employees who have accessed the account improperly and without legitimate business justification will face appropriate disciplinary action.
We apologize to President-Elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day."
Mobile browsers are the hot item on the smartphone front with everyone consuming more web content on them than ever. There are some good browsers out there in various stages of release with Opera Mobile, Skyfire and Mozilla coming to mind. We shouldn't forget about the Iris browser from TorchMobile...
Microsoft faces a tough sell with its latest mobile browser, Internet Explorer 6, since consumers will need to buy more powerful handsets to run it.
Microsoft, which announced plans earlier this week to launch IE6 with market leader China Mobile, has made no secret of the more stringent requirements. It has indicated the software won't be available to download.
The browser requires 500MHz chip processing speeds, according to Lena Goh, director of marketing in Microsoft's mobile communications business for Asia.
"It will only be available in new handsets," she added.
Having to buy a new smartphone just to enjoy the benefits of mobile IE6 may put people off considering there are many choices for mobile Web browsers, including the popular Opera Mini and Skyfire .
The initial launch of the browser will be on a SamsungOmnia i900 made for China Mobile. The Chinese mobile network operator, the world's largest with more than 436 million subscribers, has been offering new smartphones along with the rollout of its 3G network in China.
Microsoft is launching mobile IE6 with China Mobile in hopes of capturing more first-time users in emerging markets, said Scott Rockfeld, director of Microsoft's mobile communications business.
Among the improvements in IE6, the mobile browser will allow people to complete transactions more easily than before and offer users the choice to automatically revert Web site searches to mobile optimized Web sites or full Web sites.
On Nov. 6, Sam Palmisano, chairman, president & CEO of IBM, made an important speech entitled "The Smart Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda" at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City. That speech is only now getting public press attention.
To emphasize the significance of Palmisano's speech, IBM took two-page ads out in numerous newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, throughout the world. This can be seen as public relations, self-promotion or the simple realization that the way out of this global financial mess requires a refocus of technology not on the consumer, but on corporate business.
Palmisano's argument is that technology has permeated our daily lives to an extent beyond what prior generations could ever imagine. Here are some key points from this speech.
"The world is becoming instrumented." A vast array of sensors perform telemetry tasks in every industry that affects our personal as well as business lives. From RFID tags in retail stores to red-light/speed cameras to security systems to hospital instrumentation technology. No matter how mundane, these are now integral parts of our lives.
"Our world is becoming interconnected." From almost 2 billion people on an ever-growing Internet to the untethered virtual workplace, individuals have accessibility and mobility to time-shift and increase their productivity on a global basis. Add to that the non-human communication of telemetry devices and human to machine interaction, communication technology and services become a necessity for survival, not a luxury.
"All things are becoming intelligent." The PC and cell phone are just the "tip of the iceberg." Everything from our cars to our cameras to our clothing will be smart. The real advances in computer technology, information science and advanced analytics software are just in their infancy. As with any child, we are experiencing growing pains. We live in an information age where we have let information, be it an e-mail or a video, consume us rather than allowing technology to process the details and we as humans to process the exceptions.
"Digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging." Everything large or small contains or will soon contain a computational engine that can network and communicate. This is a subtle statement that from hindsight caught everyone by surprise. Another definition of "convergence" or a realization that we missed "seeing the trees because we were looking at the forest?"
Developing technology for technology's sake (feed the consumer and they will feed the ad revenue-based Web sites) and business processes to increase profitability/revenue (make the quarter numbers to meet financial analyst expectations not long-term growth) were myopic goals while the "system was running on all cylinders."
In achieving these goals we all got sloppy and missed numerous opportunities to utilize technology to benefit society, our county, our daily lives and last but not least our employer.
Palmisano listed numerous examples such as energy waste caused by unintelligent and archaic electrical grids; traffic congestion causing lost working hours and gasoline consumption; corporate supply chain inefficiency reducing business profitability; antiquated global healthcare systems with little or no process linkage/communication (profits first/patients second) creating ever increasing costs and inflation; decreasing water supplies which limit access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities causing human malnutrition, disease and tainted food production; and financial institution risk taking that created a global fiscal disaster of unprecedented proportion that undermined global government, business and individual confidence.
All of us can add to this list examples of technological sloppiness that have produced waste or loss of productivity/revenue. From the oil crisis to the healthcare crisis to the financial crisis, technology innovation and use have taken back seats to greed. At first this seems to be altruism or socially motivated thinking. Not true, capitalism with technology as its core competency will drive the next recovery.
Good intentions aside, IBM had examples of technology/systems solutions for each of these problem areas. Sales pitch aside, Palmisano had it right -- increased technology use is the driving force that will produce a global business recovery. The next global growth period will be business driven not consumer driven. This is not the Internet Bubble of 2000 but the Business Recovery of 2010.
Throwing human resources and/or money at a problem will not solve all of today's complex interdependent global issues. Add to this the prospect of increased regulation and oversight required to manage ourselves out of this financial mess and restore confidence in the global economy.
Without the creative use of information technology, autonomics, collaboration and information analytic systems and communication internetworking on a global scale, this is an utterly impossible task that's doomed to failure. Conducting business the "old way" will not work going forward to 2010.
Review Has the discussion about what might be the ‘iPhone killer’ become irrelevant yet? Yes, the iPhone is a great multimedia device, but it's easily beaten in other, now traditional, phone feature categories.…
Pity the makers of PDAs, MP3 players and pocket digital cameras: Their devices have been all but wiped out by the advent of the massively capable smartphone.
It's hard to overstate how important the BlackBerry Storm is to RIM and Verizon. It's RIM's bold effort to fend off the iPhone and Verizon's best hope for a star handset that draws people in, or at least keeps them from bailing. The Storm's major innovation is what RIM calls SurePress—the entire touchscreen is fat, honkin' button—which has been paired with a redesigned, finger-friendly BlackBerry OS. We've already showed you a lot of what the fuss is all about, but now that we've spent some quality, uninterrupted time with the Storm, here's why we think it falls short of its promise.
The Hardware The Body It's surprisingly heavy. Like, heavier than RIM's manly slab of smartphone, the Bold, at 5.47 oz to the Bold's 4.7 oz. It feels thick, too, thicker than it actually is, because of its squarish shape. It looks good, it feels okay in your hand. It's just kind of clunky at the same time. On the other hand though, all this substance also makes the Storm feel really robust. You'll never feel like you're going to break it.
That Button Screen When you push the screen and it clicks, it's a genuinely satisfying tactile sensation that, as I said in my hands on, is clearly a finely tuned experience. You won't accidentally press it when you don't mean to, but you don't have to drop a sledgehammer on it, either. Like the rest of the body, it's a sturdy piece of hardware that seems like it will hold up over the many, many thousands of clicks it will endure in its life time. The only concern is that it seems like the chasm between the screen and rest of the body is a lint nest waiting to happen. But the gap is large enough you should be able to clean your pocket gunk out with the edge of a toothpick.
The Other Buttons For a touchscreen phone, the Storm has a lot of damn buttons. Nine, to be exact: The four standard BlackBerry buttons, one side button, a volume rocker, and dedicated lock and mute keys. I wouldn't get rid of any of them. The BlackBerry button is still your best friend, since you'll still need to bring up the menu in practically every situation.
Screen The Storm has the biggest, highest resolution screen RIM has ever produced with a 480x360 res. It's bright and beautiful, though not quite as stunning as the Bold's since it has a lower pixel density. Still, the OS and video look fantastic on it, with plenty of pop. The capacitive touchscreen is fairly responsive—on par with the T-Mobile G1—though sometimes the OS lags behind you.
Battery We haven't fully tested the battery life on the Storm yet, but it seems to be respectable. The battery isn't quite as beefy as the beast powering the Bold, but you shouldn't have a HUGE problem getting through the day on one charge or anything.
Network No Wi-Fi is a bummer, even with Verizon's fantastic 3G network, 'cause not even it penetrates everywhere. That said, one of the Storm's greatest strengths is Verizon's network, with its basically unbeatable coverage, and you'll get a signal most everywhere that's not a subway, airplane or supervillian secret lair. 3G is plenty fast and more reliable than AT&T, so it's been sunshine. Any pokiness in web browsing is the software's fault. Calls sounded great to the other party, though kind of muted to me compared to the Bold or iPhone.
Camera The camera is 3.2MP of noisy noise, like most cellphone cameras. The camera is tarted up with some basic photo editing features and a dedicated flash, but it's nothing incredible.
GPS The GPS seems to provide a pretty accurate location with a reasonable amount of speed, though you're stuck with Verizon's VZ Navigator as the main navigation app (no BlackBerry maps). Some people really hate Verizon's program, so you might be less than a happy camper here.
OS and Usability Interface RIM's first touchscreen BlackBerry doesn't toss the old baby out with the buttons (or something like that). It's very much the familiar BlackBerry OS, just with a UI that's been optimized for your fat fingers. It's pretty, with big, easy-to-press icons, lots of fade transition as you move from screen to screen, and standard highlight motif of lighting up a Dr. Manhattan shade of blue whenever you select something.
The list menus—like the menu pop up when you press the BlackBerry button or lists of messages—are just spacey enough to be touchable without pressing thing very often. The accelerometer is pretty decent at keeping up with you and will rotate the screen in all four orientations, letting you choose to the have the four main buttons on the left or right in portrait mode. It got "stuck" in the wrong orientation less often than the iPhone does (to me anyway), which is good, since the only way to use the QWERTY keyboard is in landscape (or conversely, SureType in portrait).
The major issue with the interface, at least in the main menu area, is that lags. Like, enough to be annoying. Scrolling through the main menu, for instance, it seems like part of the scroll slowdown is built in (I don't know why) but it got choppy more often than occasionally. The transition fades from screen to screen, besides being inconsistent (sometimes you get 'em, sometimes you don't), make the OS actually feel slower. And when it does lag, it's somehow more frustrating because it makes you distrust and pissed off at the SurePress feedback—not good for your major selling point.
Stability The Storm needed a little bit longer in the oven—I had lotsa lock-ups and crashes over the last two days with it. Lag was all over the place, which is a cardinal sin with a touch-based UI. It really needs to be more stable. I wonder how long before there's a software update, 'cause it needs one badly.
The Keyboard The keyboard layouts themselves are roomy and perfect, with the QWERTY subtly divided into two halves. Which actually makes for a good guideline—keep your thumbs on their respective sides of the divide and you'll be a much happier camper when it comes to typing, since you have to consciously let the screen pop back up between every letter press. Having a true alternating rhythm between your thumbs makes it much easier to use, so you're trying to press a key with your other thumb while the screen's already pushed in.
RIM makes a big deal out of the fact they've separated navigation from confirmation with their SurePress thing. That, hypothetically, is a means to an end, the end being more accurate typing than a standard, feedbackless touch keyboard. In that respect, it fails. Even after two days, with the keyboard's great layout and perfect size, I was leaning just as hard on the autocorrect on the Storm as I ever did on the iPhone. Here's why: Confirming I've pushed a key doesn't actually tell me whether I've pushed the right one. Which makes the feedback, as far as typing on a keyboard goes, basically useless. It's made worse by the fact that RIM's glowing blue highlights also are far less effective than pop up letters at indicating what key you're pushing.
I hate to say this, but I kind of came to hate typing on it. Pushing the screen in over and over requires so much more effort than simply gliding my fingers around a good touch keyboard. It was tiring. SurePress is a bit less annoying with the onscreen SureType keyboard in portrait mode though. One other gripe is that you can't get a QWERTY keyboard in portrait, even though its screen is as wide as the iPhone's.
Other Touchiness Copy and paste! Yeah, Storm's got it. You highlight text by putting your fingers on either side of the text you want to highlight, then you've got a little menu that pops up below asking what you want to do with it. Your fingers are probably too big to do it correctly every time, but once you've learned the process of how to float the cursor with a long touch, it's easy and it works most of the time. Moving the cursor around within text isn't quite as intuitive as the iPhone's magnifying glass, but once you hover to take it into cursor mode, the whole screen acts like a trackpad, so you can move anywhere around it. It works. There are some other cool UI things here—in your inbox, hovering over an email will bring up every one in that thread.
Email and Texting It's a BlackBerry, so yes, the Storm is everything you'd expect from one in the email department, like search, push, the works, just touched up with a touch UI. For instance, the aforementioned easy search feature, which also bring a menu when you hover over a person's name to do things like send them an MMS (take that iPhone!) or add to contacts that works really well with touch. Thankfully, I saw lag in the email app far less than anywhere else in the phone—it was always snappy, and works really with the touch UI. It's also got a few subtle aesthetic enhancements over the email client in the Bold. I'd like threaded text messaging, but it's the standard BlackBerry setup here that looks just like email.
Calling and Visual Voicemail The phone UI is pretty dandy, with giant buttons all around and easy access to logs, contacts, and contact search. Contacts is a fairly standard list thing with search. Visual voicemail though, that is a snazzy looking app. It's kind of busy, but I think it's one place I like the UI better than the iPhone.
Browser The first thing I asked the RIM rep was how much better the Storm's browser was than the Bold, which kind of eats it when it comes to scripts. He said it was improved "but don't expect a miracle." That's a good assessment. It's fast, faster than the Bold whenever I put them side by side, but not quite the fastest browser on the planet. It's also smarter than the Bold, rendering pages more accurately where the Bold slipped. Performance once pages loaded was good. I'll be doing some more formal benchmarks, like with our browser Battlemodo earlier today, shortly.
One thing RIM gets really right is the browser UI. You have lots of of options for getting around—two prominent zoom in and out buttons, plus you can zoom by clicking. Very easy. You've got two main navigation modes though—pan mode, where your finger swipes zoom around the page, and cursor mode, where the whole screen acts like a trackpad. I mostly stuck with pan mode. SurePress comes in handy when scrolling, because you'll never accidentally press a link again. One thing I'd like is multitouch zooming (sorry, gotta say it) and a way to quickly get to the bottom of the page, since a hard flick doesn't send you flying like on mobile Safari. Overall though, RIM delivers pretty big here.
Multimedia The biggest improvement over the Bold is that the Storm comes with an 8GB microSD card. Unfortunately, everywhere else, it's mostly the same. The media player UI is essentially identical, with minimal tweaks to make it touchable. On the actual playback screen, it's fine, and album art looks great. However, the list system it uses is fairly tired and straight out of the old BlackBerry playbook essentially. The bigger pain point, if you're comparing it to the iPhone's multimedia muscle, is the crappy Roxio Media Mananger. New phone, same crap. Please please please get better media software RIM, this stuff is beneath you. Video looks really great though on that screen!
Apps Okay, so you've got Verizon's Navigator as the main navigator app. It's okay and has some solid features, but not as easy to use as Google Maps. I haven't roadtest it, but it's more responsive than on other phones I've used it on, and benefits from the Storm's big screen.
You'll probably be excited when you see an icon in the main menu for the Application Center. The Storm's App Store it is not. It's just where you can download Verizon and RIM's pre-approved apps like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Flickr, Facebook and the like (there are a lot of IM clients). It's where you'll grab software updates for the phone, but don't expect to be using it frequently since updates will be few and far between. It's browser based, which is annoying. The actual app store, the one you want, won't hit until next year, and we're waiting impatiently for it. In the meantime, you can find BlackBerry apps the old fashioned way, on the internets.
Verdict The Storm is a strong effort from RIM, but it's not quite the killer phone that they or Verizon need it to be. It's good—RIM clearly put a lot of thought into the design. But I think it fall short of what they were aiming for, and ultimately what all the hype is driving people to expect. For one, the damn thing needs to crash less often. SurePress is not the end-all, be-all of touchscreen technologies—it's not really an evolutionary step forward, even. The experience is fairly refined, but it could still use some more polish. Had this Storm been left to brew a bit longer, it would've been much more powerful.
Celio is convinced that some people don't want to lug around a smartphone and a notebooks, so it’s expanded its Redfly smartphone terminal range by two models.…
We didn't see this one on our exhaustive leaked Nokia roadmap, but our homeboy Boy Genius has uncovered pics and specs of a new Nokia flip destined for AT&T. Codenamed "Wahoo," the quad-band clamshell features an interesting half-QWERTY keypad, an internal 2.2-inch QVGA display and a 1.36-inch external unit, push-to-talk, microSD expansion, and A2DP support -- which you'll need because Nokia seems to think a 2.5mm headphone jack is still somehow acceptable. No word on a release date, but if you're waiting on pins and needles for a phone with a display that small we really can't help you anyway.
LG may release some crazy handsets on a global level, but believe it or not, the LG Incite has arrived at AT&T as what could be considered the first full-fledged LG smartphone in the States. And it's not a bad first showing. The 3G Windows Mobile handset features a 3-inch touchscreen with full virtual keyboard and haptic feedback, along with aGPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3MP camera, and microSD port. The Incite is available now for $199.99 with a 2-year agreement. Read on for the full details.
AT&T and LG Mobile Phones Launch New Windows Mobile 6.1 Smartphone With Sleek Design, Vibrant Touch Screen, aGPS, Wi-Fi and More
Dallas, Texas, San Diego, California, November 18, 2008
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A. Inc. (LG Mobile Phones) today announced the availability of the LG Incite™, the newest Windows Mobile device powered by the nation's fastest 3G network for users who crave premium capabilities with ultramodern design. The Incite — available in the U.S. exclusively to AT&T customers — stirs up the smartphone market, with its stylish, sleek look and sophisticated technology.
The LG Incite boasts the latest in wireless communications technology, with domestic and international 3G capabilities, built-in aGPS and Wi-Fi® (802.11 b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0®. The LG Incite is equipped with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5. The Incite, the first of its kind for LG Mobile, offers Windows Media Player 10.
LG Incite looks as good as it sounds: a sophisticated, sleek design, a crystal-clear 3-inch touch screen and a 3.0 megapixel camera and camcorder that enables consumers to send and enjoy memories at the touch of a button. Users have a choice of on-screen virtual keyboards — a full, QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode and a 20-key keyboard in portrait view — with haptic keys that provide vibration feedback. The Incite also offers users choice in terms of screen navigation by simply using their fingers to move through the Incite's friendly user interface, the scroll button to the upper right of the screen or the included stylus. A configurable, drag-and-drop favorites menu provides quick access to the applications that matter most to the user.
The Incite is pre-loaded with everything you'd expect, including AT&T Navigator, powered by TeleNav, featuring turn-by-turn voice and on-screen directions with colorful 3-D moving maps that can be used in vehicles or while walking. AT&T Navigator also features traffic alerts, re-routing and other location-based services. There also is business and personal e-mail access through Microsoft Direct Push and AT&T's Xpress Mail service, instant messaging and AT&T Mobile Music service, which provides fast access to downloadable music from eMusic®.
Store all your favorite songs with the microSD Memory Port with up to 16GB of support. Bluetooth 2.0 capabilities allow consumers to wirelessly access music through stereo headsets, transmit data to other Bluetooth-enabled devices and make calls hands-free anytime. The Incite also features AT&T Video ShareSM, the first-ever service in the U.S. that allows users to share live video over wireless devices while participating in a voice call.
"LG Mobile Phones has done an outstanding job in its first offering in the U.S. smartphone arena with the LG Incite, and AT&T is pleased to the be first U.S. carrier to offer an LG smartphone," said Michael Woodward, vice president, Smart Devices for AT&T's wireless operations. "It is a great looking smartphone with powerful capabilities that will provide our customers with a new and outstanding choice in our Windows Mobile smartphone portfolio, which is the broadest in the industry."
Ehtisham Rabbani, vice president of Marketing and Product Strategy for LG Mobile Phones, said: "LG is excited to offer a phone with a different capability than anything we've offered in the U.S. thus far. As a leading provider of handsets, LG constantly looks toward the future and strives to incorporate the newest technologies as they become available to our consumers."
The Incite also supports Microsoft's System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, an enterprise-grade mobile solution for managing and protecting Windows Mobile 6.1 phones. Mobile Device Manager helps companies provide its mobile workers with software updates and applications over the air, as well as security-enhanced access to company data. The Incite operates on AT&T's 3G BroadbandConnect network, which currently is available in more than 320 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and, by year-end, AT&T expects to offer the service in nearly 350 leading U.S. markets. In addition to 3G connectivity, the Incite is also designed to connect seamlessly with AT&T's nationwide1 EDGE network, which is available in more than 13,000 cities and towns and along some 40,000 miles of major highways. When abroad, customers can use the Incite to make a phone call in more than 200 countries and access data in more than 150, including more than 60 with 3G networks. AT&T has the broadest international wireless coverage of any U.S. carrier.
The Incite is available now in AT&T retail stores nationwide and online at www.wireless.att.com for $199.99 with a new two-year agreement and mail-in rebate. AT&T voice plans begin at $39.99 with monthly enterprise data plans priced at $45 and personal data plans at $30 per month. Small business customers also can subscribe to AT&T's new, industry-first BusinessTalk voice plans, which start at $60 a month for five users and 700 Anytime Minutes and can be expanded for $9.99 a line to accommodate up to 40 users and 20,000 Anytime Minutes.
Microsoft is offering smaller businesses the same kind of Windows Mobile push services that enterprises get with new versions of its server software, expected to be launched on Wednesday.
In addition, as part of a promotion, Microsoft and Palm are giving away a new Palm Treo Pro to businesses that buy one of the new servers and four of the phones. The Palm Treo Pro retails for $549 and is not locked to a particular operator.
The two new server products, the Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008, include Exchange 2007 SP2, the latest version of Microsoft's e-mail software. Combined with Windows Mobile 6.1, the Exchange software can push out e-mail to Windows Mobile phones.
End-users can receive full HTML e-mails, attached photos, and Office documents, including Excel spreadsheets. In addition, calendar and contact items are synched automatically over the air. These are the same capabilities that enterprises get with the latest Exchange release.
The server products are available now and will ship with the push e-mail capabilities turned on by default to make life easier for smaller businesses, said Augusto Valdez, a senior marketing manager for Windows Mobile. For enterprises, Exchange 2007 ships with the Windows Mobile features turned off because larger companies prefer to configure those services themselves, he said.
"In small and medium businesses the availability of resources is scarce, so it's important to provide solutions without a lot of human intervention," he said.
The Palm Treo Pro promotion, which is available in most countries, is evidence of how important the SMB market is for Microsoft, Valdez said. Microsoft has been increasing its investments in products for that market and doing more integration among Microsoft products for SMBs, he said.
Microsoft uses a similar sales pitch as it does for enterprises to explain why SMBs might want to choose Windows Mobile products over the BlackBerry. "We provide a cohesive solution that allows small and medium businesses to get mobility solutions without the need to change their environment or add additional servers," Valdez said. In contrast, companies that want to manage their own BlackBerry users must buy the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which works in conjunction with Exchange or Lotus Notes.
But bundling the mobile services into Exchange doesn't seem to be enticing customers from Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry. Microsoft slipped behind RIM among smartphone OS developers in the third quarter, according to research from Canalys.
While Microsoft grew its share of the market to 13.6 percent in the third quarter, from 12.2 in the same quarter last year, RIM did better. Its share climbed to 15.2 percent, from 10.6 percent in the third quarter a year ago, Canalys said.
Both were surpassed by newcomer Apple, however, whose iPhone had 17.3 percent of the smartphone market by operating system in the third quarter.
Not really a news flash to most folks, but if you're a numbers-crunching kind of person, the latest AdMob metrics report might give you something to chew on. I'll cut to the chase: they say that the iPhone is the number one smartphone worldwide in mobile browsing. Here in the...
Fail and You Smartphones have been around for a long time, but only recently did the laptop industry figure out that it could cut into the market funded solely by tech nerds' fuck-you money with a compound word of its own: netbook.…
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gadgets/Engadget_reviews_the_BlackBerry_Storm'; By now most of us have heard this story in one fashion or another: when Steve Jobs and Apple were in the planning stages of the iPhone, the first carrier they brought the device to was America's largest network, Verizon. Even if you haven't heard how the tale ends -- Verizon refused and Jobs took his multi-billion dollar ball to AT&T -- you surely know the outcome. The iPhone has soared to become the ultimate smartphone, the must-have accessory that everyone from celebrities to your mom wants -- nay, needs -- to have in their pocket. It's changed the landscape of modern cellphones, put a serious dent in the sales of competing devices (just recently overtaking the venerable RAZR as the best-selling domestic handset), and unquestionably raised the bar when it comes to expectations for features in new handsets. It may seem unfair to open up the review of RIM's latest BlackBerry -- the Storm -- with a history lesson on the iPhone, but if you understand the market which Verizon and RIM hope to capture, then you understand the Storm, and it helps put this critique in perspective. The Storm, a widescreen, touchscreen device boasts many of the same features as the iPhone, but adds innovations like a clickable display, and comes packed with RIM's legendary email and messaging services. Mainlined into the biggest (and some say best) network in the States, the Storm is an almost deafening blast to the competition at first glance, but does it hold up on closer inspection? Read on to find out.
When Terry Weaver wants to create .Net applications, he fires up Visual Studio and types away like any other .Net programmer. The setup gets a bit weird when he wants to test how the .Net application might appear to a Mac user visiting the Web site. Instead of starting up another machine, asking a colleague with a Mac, or simply ignoring those crazy followers of Steve Jobs, Weaver just pops over to the browser in another window. That's easy because Visual Studio is running on Windows inside a Parallels virtual machine, which, in turn, runs on his Mac. He has a PC, a Mac, and a Unix development box all in one.
"I set up the networking so that I can type the IP address of my dev Web server to test my ASP.Net pages to see how they look and behave on Mac systems," said Weaver. "I think that's a good thing since I don't believe many developers of .Net take the time to test their applications on browsers in other operating systems."
Stories like Weaver's are increasingly more common as the Mac's popularity among programmers continues rising. Apple's decision to move to Intel chips and embrace virtualization of other operating systems turned the platform into a very flexible tool for programmers. Macs let coders work with most of the software standards that live in boxes that range from the smallest smartphone to the biggest cluster of computers.
This newfound success has been evolving for some time. One team manager interviewed for this article said that his programmers started switching from Dells and ThinkPads at least three years ago. Now 80 percent of his group uses Apple laptops.
X marks the spot
The explosion of interest in smartphones is helping the trend. The Miami-based Weaver says the fact that he's using a Mac made it simple to start experimenting with the iPhone development kit, available only on the Mac. Google's Android SDK and RIM's BlackBerry SDK both run in Java, a language that's usually well-supported on the Mac (though Java releases for Mac tend to lag behind those for Windows, Linux, and Solaris). Developers for the Palm OS also seem to gravitate toward the Mac OS X. All the major handheld operating systems except Windows Mobile run directly on Mac OS X, and Windows Mobile runs in Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion.
Programmers who concentrate on enterprise development and server applications are often devoted to Apple's hardware, although they're usually able to cite several dozen glitches and incongruities that annoy them. Developers building code for the Unix-dominated world of servers naturally feel more at home on the Mac. Although the surface layer is dripping with consumer-friendly eye candy, the underpinnings are close to those of BSD. This makes OS X a kissing cousin to Sun's Solaris and many versions of Linux. If you're developing for Sun servers, a Mac laptop offers a portable environment that's comfortably familiar.
Each developer, though, will curse at some difference that drives them insane. The Mac, for instance, insists on using a carriage return to end lines, a historical anomaly that clashes with both Unix (line feed) and Windows (carriage return and line feed).
Problems like these are disappearing as more developers grouse, but change is slow. The newest versions of the file system on the Mac, for instance, are now both case preserving and case sensitive, but you can still type "ls /library" in a command-line window and get the same results as typing "ls /Library" -- not so in most versions of Linux or BSD.
Others complain about what they see as poorly tuned performance and generally sluggish behavior. One programmer who refused to be named because he's on the other side of a negotiation table with Apple says that OS X often feels like it's "wading through mud." In his experience, the virtual memory system does a poor job paging data in and out of memory, and the default-network file system, AFS, is engaging in some kind of passive-aggressive torture. This programmer does, however, use the Mac frequently, no doubt enjoying the snappy performance of music and video, which get a high priority in the OS X kernel.
Java development on the Mac is also very popular, in part because all the major Java development environments are written in Java. Therefore, Eclipse, IntelliJ, and NetBeans all run about the same on Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes. While there is a bit of native code, most software -- including all the server applications -- compiles and runs in almost the same way on all three systems -- well, at least until you try to run some shell script that relies on case sensitivity.
Dev aesthetics
Java is not the only language for server applications that flourishes on the Mac. David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, and his colleague Jason Fried, one of the co-founders of 37signals, are featured on Apple's Web site endorsing the machine. A beautiful and tastefully undercolored video describes the joys of building Web applications on the Mac.
"Working on the Mac really inspires me to do great work," says Fried in a voice-over to the video. "When you work on somethin
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It's hard to overstate how important the 
LG may release some crazy handsets on a global level, but believe it or not, the LG Incite has arrived at AT&T as what could be considered the first full-fledged LG smartphone in the States. And it's not a bad first showing. The 3G Windows Mobile handset features a 3-inch touchscreen with full virtual keyboard and haptic feedback, along with aGPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3MP camera, and microSD port. The Incite is available now for $199.99 with a 2-year agreement. Read on for the full details.
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