The Woz (Steve Wozniak) is truly awesome. For those that do not recognize his name, he co founded apple computer with steve jobs and in fact, was the one who invented the comptuer. Steve Jobs was more of the front man. Anyway, here is his take on the patent wars:
“I hate it…I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies.”
Source: Mashable
You can watch the whole event from yesterday here: http://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2012/
iPhone 5 was announced today. The phone will be a good upgrade for current iPhone users. However, will it be an upgrade for Android users? Well here is what I thought as I watched the announcement (i did get this list from another website but it was exactly what I was thinking) and this is comparing it to my GNex that is 8 months old:
1) LTE – 1.5 years too late
2) Widescreen – 3 years too late
3) Old apps run letterboxed – this is bad
4) Facetime over cellular – 2 years too late although skype did this on iPhone 4s
5) Maps – Google Maps/Earth knockoff
6) Navigation – 3 years too late. Well they had it you just had to buy a separate app for it.
7) Tab sharing – Firefox/Chrome knockoff – A year+ too late
8) VIP e-mail – Gmail knockoff – A year+ too late
9) Passbook – neat concept but no payment within app
10) No NFC – Year and a half too late and counting
11) No backwards compatibility of hardware (need to buy new chargers/car chargers, etc)
12) Poor battery life – this is compared to GNex and S3
13) No SD Card (mine doesnt either and i do not care about this feature but many do)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on record yesterday discussing their recent move to a native app in Apple’s iOS. The facebook app had been developed in HTML5. Now I am not quite sure why a company with the resources that facebook does would have even considered an HTML5 app vs a native as native is definitely better, however, they did. But why was it a mistake? Because Apple has chosen to not allow HTML5 apps to run as fast and smooth as native ones.
So what is the future of HTML5? Well at this point APPLE does not want to support HTML5 mobile apps. Why? They lose control and money. Sure they are supporting it in the browsers but they are not supporting it in apps. Why would HTML5 apps be good for developers? Because you could develop one app and publish it to all mobile devices. So for instance, Apple has purposely made apps running HTML5 run slower than they would as webpages in their browser, citing security and stability concerns. While it might be valid it a very suspicious as Apple has been trying to tell people to use HTML5 instead of Flash for similar reasons.
Here is another article about why apps should go to HTML5 but they are not being supported:
Quite simply – YES. Ask the ‘tech’ people what their response is (ie the early adopters in the tech industry). We are not pushing Apple right now and this is just one of the many reasons why.
Here is a full article about it: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57509081-71/did-samsung-verdict-hurt-apples-reputation/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
I think this speaks volumes about the power of HTML5 vs native app development. What I find interesting is that both Apple and Google claim to really push HTML5 yet they still make sure their native apps run significantly better – for now at least because I am sure their futures OSs will offer better support. I am surprised a company like facebook even attempted HTML5 vs a native app to begin with and am surprised it held up so well to this point. This shows HTML5 does have power but not enough compared to Xcode. Xcode offers a lot more and HTML5 is really only designed for simple apps. When you are a company like facebook that has millions of users I could only imagine how bogged the app could easily get. Well here is the article for your reading pleasure:
Article: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3262782/facebook-for-ios-native-app
Another article: http://mashable.com/2012/08/23/facebook-ios-5/
If you have been following tech news or my blog you know about the patent war going on between these two companies. Here is a good article by mashable describing the ridiculousness that these patents claim. For instance, the article explains how patents are so broad that its impossible to build a phone without copying. This would be equivalent to Ford claiming that a mercedes was copying it.
The article uses this example from history with the wright brothers:
“Everyone knows the story of the Wright brothers and their historic flight in December 1903. What you may not know is that the Orville and Wilbur Wright submitted a patent for their invention months earlier, which was eventually granted in 1906. Then the airplane patent wars began.
The Wrights sued Glenn Curtiss (among others) for infringing on their patent with his company’s aircraft designs. The thing was, the Wright brothers’ patent was so broad, it was virtually impossible to build any kind of aircraft without infringing on it. Eventually the two sides were forced to settle their differences at the advent of the First World War, when the U.S. government stepped in and created a temporary patent pool for wartime production, which eventually became permanent.”
Here is the full article: http://mashable.com/2012/08/21/apple-samsung-copying/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29
Motorola (Well Google really as Google is parent company) is suing Apple for various patent infringements.
“Motorola is demanding a ban on the imports of the iPhone and iPad for alleged infringements of intellectual property used in Siri, E-Mail notifications, location reminders and music/video players.”
Personally, all of these lawsuits need to stop. Get rid of these patents because they are slowing down progress and innovation in the tech world.
Here is my presentation for tomorrow’s GLTC conference
Tons of headlines floating around the web yesterday included “youtube no longer on iOS 6” “youtube done” etc. Well guess what? Youtube will still be on iOS. It just will no longer be pre-installed on it so you will need to download the app the from the app store. So, you will now need to go into iTunes App Store and download Google’s youtube app.
Now what was the cause of all the headlines? Well to those who understand the google/apple rival we know that apple lost the the license to keep putting youtube pre installed on their OS. Whether google refused to renew or apple chose not to renew is something only they know at this point. Either way, everyone still gets youtube.