Phew! - Parent-approved safe YouTube and web for kidsFor all the improvements to the Android end-user experience, and there have been big strides, there’s still a lot of practical differences in usability between the two platforms for everyday average-Joe users and this recent GottaBeMOBILE article inadvertently highlights one of the biggest real-world problems facing users of Android devices: Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note…
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I won’t shed a tear for Microsoft
People have told me they feel sorry for Microsoft these days, that we should be thanking them for all they have done for the industry, that Bill Gates should be praised for “placing a PC on every desktop.” I see what you did there. You almost got me. You see, I think about what the…
Secret decoded
The Secret app is a new iPhone app for sharing photos and text anonymously. The sharing model of Secret is unusual and intriguing to me. According to their FAQ: Your secrets are delivered anonymously to the people in your Contacts who are on Secret. Ok, so right there, although it may not be obvious on…
The Twitter times they are a-changin’
Back in 2010, when Twitter was changing their API from Basic Auth to oAuth (the first Twitter-pocalypse) we had various conversations with the Twitter dev team regarding challenges that micro-controller environments have with implementing such protocols. John Kalucki (@jkalucki now ex-Twitter) made the following suggestion: Why not have the controller proxy through a full-featured webserver…
Microsoft Office for iPad, will they or won’t they?
Microsoft was hoping the exclusive availability of “real Office” would be enough to give their Surface tablet an advantage. It turned out that wasn’t enough and, after a year of sluggish (non-existent) sales, Microsoft had to write off almost a billion dollars in inventory that they couldn’t sell. Recently, they slashed prices to try to…
Things Apple TV could learn from Chromecast
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but my wife watches a lot of TV. She does not, however, particularly like watching “TV” on her computer or iPad etc. She wants to watch TV on a TV. One day, she saw something about Chromecast and so she went online and bought one. Usually I research and…
An “eye on mobile” is not enough for the next Microsoft CEO
Tim Bajarin is a wonderful and vastly experienced PC analyst, but his story, A Look Back and A Look Ahead for Microsoft misses the point as badly as Microsoft and Ballmer themselves did, and ironically, for much the same reason: only looking at the world through a PC lens. Microsoft had a chance to remain relevant, and…
Stop the bullying, I love Google too
I’ve been critical of Google on this blog. I’ve been critical of Apple, and others too. These companies deserve praise for what they have done. But that shouldn’t give them a free pass forever. I take grief for bashing Google (nobody seems to mind when I bash Apple). But I wanted to take a moment…
Another perspective on “Why mobile web apps are slow”
The recent post from Drew Crawford “Why mobile web apps are slow” has received a lot of attention and provides a rather powerful argument for the topic. I’m not here to dispute anything in that post; it’s good information, go read it if you are interested in the topic. The point at the end of the day is…
iOS 7 Quick Takes and What’s (Still) Missing in iOS 7
By now you have probably seen the screen shots of iOS 7. It is extremely white, wow, and yes, it’s “flat” too. I have not taken the deep dive into all the features and changes yet, but already I can see that it’s a much bigger shift than I first thought. There have been some…
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