Category: Google

Andy Ihnatko, in his review of iOS 4:

Many of iOS 4’s “new” features are old hat on other phones. Custom screen wallpaper! Bluetooth keyboards! A built-in way to move random documents on and off the device! Multitasking! They’re wonderful! And they’re also features you could get in most phones since well before the first iPhone hit the market.

Which is par for the course for Apple products. Historically, they’d rather say “we did this feature exactly right” than “we did this feature before anybody else.” That’s a very correct and user-focused attitude, best illustrated by the way the iPhone handles cut-and-paste. It just plain works, and it works the exact same way in every iPhone app that wasn’t written by idiots. When I cut-and-paste in Android, there’s always that Christmas Morning sort of excitement, as I wait to see exactly how, or if, it’s going to work in this particular instance.

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Prince McLean:

While Evo hardware features sound great, the advertised numbers (like Verizon’s inaccurate “720p screen”) and features of Android phones aren’t necessarily living up to their hype. For example, the HTC Evo really only supports WiMAX 802.16e, not the minimum WiMAX 802.16m standard that is the actual minimum for classification as a 4G network, making its claim to be the first 4G phone dubious. Sprint doesn’t even offer 4G in many cities, and even in the few where it’s available the service inhales extraordinary battery life.

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Peter Kafka, on Section 3.3.9 of the iOS SDK Agreement:

It appears as if Apple may still be limiting its biggest potential rival–Google’s AdMob. Note the language about only allowing “independent” ad-serving companies to collect data: “For example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent.”

Here’s some text from Section 3.3.9 itself:

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Chris Foresman at Ars Technica:

David Chartier alerted us this morning that his MobileMe account type had changed from “Family Pack” to “Full Member.” Turns out that several MobileMe subscribers have reported having their account type change, fueling speculation that Apple will announce tiers to MobileMe subscriptions next week during WWDC.

Previously, MobileMe account types were either “Trial,” “Individual,” or “Family Pack.” Without notice, numerous MobileMe users had their accounts changed overnight to “Full Member.” While rumors have suggested that Apple may drop the $99 price to better compete with Google’s services, Mac Observer speculates that Apple may instead offer multiple tiers of service at different prices, with current $99 subscribers getting all MobileMe features. New subscribers would presumably be able to choose a cheaper option with fewer features.

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Matt Buchanan has written a great piece over at Gizmodo about MobileMe and Apple’s overall problem with iTunes being the center of so many of their services:

A minute after I pull any Android phone out of the box for the very first time, it’s loaded with all of my contacts, emails and voicemails. It took some people hours to setup their iPad.

Which speaks to a more fundamental problem with the iPad and iPhone, that they cannot exist completely independent of a desktop computer, the thing they’re supposed to be replacing. Fantasies of handing your parents an iPad, a very simple computer that’s easy to use and handles most of the things they want to do, like browse the web, send email and share photos, are dashed by this very simple fact. It’s mind-boggling, because it seems so obvious that the only big computer to which an iPad should connect is a server rack somewhere in North Carolina.

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Tim Bray, Android’s Compatibility Program Manager:

Literally before the close of business on the same day we announced Android (4:46pm to be precise), I saw the first article about Android “fragmentation.” The first day wasn’t even over yet, and the press had already decided that Android would have a “fragmentation” problem.

The thing is, nobody ever defined “fragmentation” — or rather, everybody has a different definition. Some people use it to mean too many mobile operating systems; others to refer to optional APIs causing inconsistent platform implementations; still others use it to refer to “locked down” devices, or even to the existence of multiple versions of the software at the same time. I’ve even seen it used to refer to the existence of different UI skins. Most of these definitions don’t even have any impact on whether apps can run!

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Nilay Patel:

We’d heard rumors this morning that Matias Duarte had left Palm for Google, but now we’ve got it straight from Mountain View: Mr. Duarte is the new User Experience Director for Android.

This could be the shot in the arm Android’s interface team badly needs.

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Google’s Mike Smith:

Today, I’m happy to announce that Google Chrome for Mac is being promoted out of beta to our stable channel. We believe that it provides not only the stability, performance and polish that every Mac user expects, but also a seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with.

I’ve been using the beta as my main browser for several weeks with very few issues.

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Michael Gartenberg:

Android isn’t summer camp for handset vendors and not everyone gets get a trophy for showing up. Google is treating partners equally, but will not slow the rate of innovation so weaker players can keep up. By constantly raising the bar, both in terms of reference devices and software, Google aims to keep innovating and drive that innovation as a differentiator. Google wasn’t looking for volume sales with the Nexus One, it was looking to raise the hardware bar – and arguably the best way to do that is to do it yourself.

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Pretty neat. Features include Google search for content (present and future), DVR integration, Hulu, Netflix, content downloads from Amazon and more.

The AppleTV looks even sillier now.

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Google Vice-President of Engineering Vic Gundotra:

If we did not act, we faced a draconian future. Where one man, one company, one carrier was the future.

Update: John Paczkowski quipped:

But we’re just fine with the two men, one company, one search engine model.

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Jon Wiley, Senior User Experience Designer at Google, on the search giant’s revamped design:

During our process we focused on people’s rising expectations for search. As the web has evolved over the past decade, people have been typing more sophisticated searches and seeking out specialized search tools to match. To keep pace with rapid change online, we have teams of engineers working across Google to develop new ways to present and refine search results. Our central challenge with our latest redesign was to figure out how to squeeze all these tools and technologies into a single page.

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