Thinking About Mobile

The idea of the "Mobile Phone," has morphed and shifted into the new reality of the "Mobile Web." This has largely occurred largely on the shoulders of a single company. That company? Who else but Apple.

Think back 2 to 3 years. Look at any mobile carrier and compare any regular or smart phone to the iPhone. If you're honest, you realize how mediocre the hardware and software has been. Add to it that going to a mobile carrier like Verizon was akin to taking a trip to the DMV. Going in, you had the knowledge that when you walked out the doors, there was a high degree of certainty that you would come away irritated, pissed off and maybe even a little helpless, cause you where at their mercy.

And that is how Apple has been able to gain so much traction in the market so quickly. All they really had to do is stay, "Apple." What does that translate into? Words and principles like, "Experience economy, quality, elegant, ease of use, functional, intuitive, High quality customer service and comfort."

It might seem like a million years ago, but pretty much everyone scoffed at the thought of Apple even having the notion that they could walk onto the playing field. That notion was reinforced by a dismal product known as the Motorola "ROKR," that was Apple's way of seeing what the water temperature was like.

What was Apple's problem? Hadn't they heard the words, "Motorola, LG, Samsung, Blackberry, Verizon?" Every thought Steve Jobs was either, drunk on Apple culture, mentally insane or some combination of the two.

Looking back now, as people gleefully purchase their iPhone and download their favorite app(s), it all now looks so inevitable that Apple would succeed. How could you have ever lived without Safari, my Kindle App, Twitter, Skype, Epocrates and the 10,000 other apps that are available?

As I work on some applications and test the iPhone 3.0 Beta 4 software, I can't help but think, this is the new reality of "personal computing. Our data is ubiquitous (as long as we have a wireless connection). It really can be everywhere you are. This is especially true if you have Microsoft Exchange, Mobile Me or the fledgling Google contacts and calender "Push," enabled in your Gmail settings panel. The expression "Cloud," computing is truly meaningful within our lexicon.

To use a Bill Gates expression, the new mobile experience is about, "rich," immersive experiences facilitated by applications as the connector. It's about having hardware/software that is so well designed that when you don't have it you feel naked or discombobulated without it, because it seems so natural. It's having a phone where you don't need a book to figure it out, it just fits into your life.

The notion of "Just fitting into your life," is something that Apple does very well. On the horizon is the soon to be released Palm-Pre. Google Android, while a good first effort has had setbacks because the hardware has not been powerful enough to allow the software to shine. As we move along the technology curve, look forward to having richer, unobtrusive, connected experiences. In the future when you hear the words "desktop," or "lap-top," you'll put them in the same category as 8-track tapes or VCR's.

Mobile life is a good thing. Enjoy as much as you can, just drop the crappy hardware and software.

Jaye Morris

A Week With Windows 7

Windows 7 Beta has been a pretty good experience overall. What seems to detract from it is Internet Explorer 8. Since so much of what we do is browser based, that makes its being so half-baked, so particularly disappointing. As a matter of fact, I'm making this post from Google Chrome, because of the numerous problems with IE8.

Windows 7 Beta as an OS itself is surprisingly good. Installing SQL servers, CF, Flex, etc... has been flawless and very manageable. The actual OS overhead is far better than Vista, where the systems can be "punishing," to use a word. That's the good.

Now for what might be bad. There are two area's to look at. First off, going from Windows XP to either Vista or Windows 7 is a dramatic change. Things are moved around, the work flow is very different. In and of itself, change is not a bad thing. The problem is introducing change without being intuitive. The end result is frustration for so-called "regular," computer users. They want to work on their task. They don't want to spend 45 minutes trying to figure out how to change their profile picture. It's relative to the system shock of going from Office 2003 and office 2007. I've had to help a lot of frustrated people because the paradigm shift was so extreme.

The second thing which is idiotic is the number of versions of Windows Vista and planned versions of Windows 7. Currently there are four (4) versions of Vista. That's ridiculous. Most people could deal with 2 versions of XP, home or pro. That made sense to people. Four versions is just opening a can of worms and introducing an elephant to a pool party. You don't want the complications. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm a Apple fanboy, but there's a reason for that. Do you know how many versions of OS X Leopard there are? One. You can use it for the home network or corporate network environment. It doesn't matter. You pay only one price (99.00 USD). What could be better. Microsofties for being so smart are impressively dumb, when it comes to stuff like this. If they continue with the same pricing structure and confusion, it will be proof that Microsoft is not learning from their mistakes.

Jaye Morris

Thinking About Microsoft

Beating up on Microsoft and picking them apart is nothing new. It's a religious right on any given day. I am primarily a Mac user, so I'm not one to drink the "Microsoft Kool-Aid." But there are some important to remind and encourage people about with certain products. Specifically, I'm talking about Microsoft Office.

MS Office is something that Microsoft does very right, especially Excel. I like to think of Excel as the "Swiss Army" knife of software. The application in and of itself is awesome. You can easily use it in a variety of ways. The obvious it calculations and formulas. The other is as a flat file database. You can do some really cool stuff that on the surface seems simple, but in reality can be a little mind bending. I can't tell you how many times I've used it to create and manage and been data through CSV files. I love that stuff. We don't talk enough about it.

As a matter of fact, people in tech world are famous for talking about how deep Adobe Photoshop is. But the truth be told, so is Excel. If you want to go in that direction, it's impressively deep in scope. I've seen some mind-blowing stuff that would meet the needs and demands of any serious business person. Unfortunately most people only use about 10 of the available feature set.

Word is Word. I've had friends write anything form novels to training manuals to automated forms. There are some interesting tools inside. You can do a heck of a lot more than design certificates with MS Word. The forms tool is pretty interesting to play with.

I'm not going to go into each application, but by now you have a feel for the direction I'm going in and what I'm talking about. The bottom line it that MS Office is something that the boys and girls at Redmond got right. If you look into it, you can find some cool stuff. Apple has a famous phrase. "Think Different." It would not be a false thing to apply towards the suite.

Let us know your thoughts. Happy computing!

Jaye

Microsoft IMF not so intelligent

Recently I've been testing out Microsoft's Intelligent Message Filter on MS Exchange 2003. My hope and prayer was that it would be at minimum give a little assist to blocking spam. The result? No such luck. It's about as dumb as a box of rocks.

What is lame about the IMF is, very few control and no genuine interface to manage things. If anyone has thoughts or suggestions, I'm all ears. I think the real solution is going to always be some sore of Spam Appliance like a "FireBox."

Jaye