Fran's Blog

Ok, so everyone is talking about this blasted iPad now. It’s been named the everything killer, the new world, the way cultures should have been in the beginning. lovely. The one quote I’ve had trouble with is “the ipad is for the normal stupid, non-techy user”. I have to say, I disagree. Ok, it is simple to use. It is a cut down OS, less to go wrong. I understand that. But I like to speak to normal, non-techy users about tech. My girlfriend and some of my best friends are a fairly good test bed, though they all understand tech a lot more than your average person still.

Now, if I said to a lot of these users “you’ll be able to read the newspaper on the bus with it”, they’ll come back with. “Yeah, but I can buy the newspaper for £1, that would make me have to buy 300 newspapers, then a new iPad would be out by then”. It’s the same if I said that you can read books, view films. They can buy a book, they can watch a film on their existing laptop. And I have to say, I don’t disagree with them. No one can explain to a normal user that the iPad is just sexy and it has a screen like they would to me. The average user wants function. Like their laptop which keeps on crashing, but it works with that trailer site they watch because their laptop has Flash. They can use word while listening to, I dunno, something cool on Spotify.

So take these semi tech users. Now take the older part of the population, who have no idea how all this works, and to them, an iPad is a new sanitary towel. Can we convince them? I’d like to see you try. No, I think the iPad is something I will buy because I know that I read RSS feeds every morning before embarking on my bus journey to work. Wouldn’t it be good to read RSS feeds on the bus? Yes. I could do it on my phone, but the screen is too small. I would like to just have a bigger screen. And I will justify it in some way, but it if it isn’t too much and I enjoy it But I don’t buy the idea that it is for the average man on the street who isn’t a techy because $500 or whatever the price is (for just the one without the 3G, which I reckon is essential, 3G will have extra cost there buddy) can buy you a good load of other stuff. For me, I want one ‘cos it’s nice, and it has a screen, and screens to me are like crack!

The recent announcements that Adobe are working on a full version of their Flash platform for mobile is making me jittery. Over the years of developing I have been well aware that Flash, for whatever reason, hogs resources. It uses processor aplenty, battery life, RAM. I’ve even worked on some projects where it has slowed my whole browser environment down to a crawl.

I have a fairly new Macbook at home. Using a fully 100% Flash site usually gets it to warm up, start sweating and the fan starts after a while. Not in a small way mind, but full on “OH CHRIST, THE PROCESSOR IS BLOWING UP”.

On a phone, this will be much worse with the lesser processor, less RAM, less cache, less battery life. It isn’t just the Flash platform that gets me worried though. It’s the actionscripter. I have used a fair amount of Android apps now, some are written with memory in mind. But some hog so much system resource I am forced to close it and uninstall to get my phone to work again. This doesn’t even depend on the complexity of the app. A Flash developer tends not to worry too much about battery life etc. as they predominantly develop for a notebook or desktop, as long as it works there, we’re all good. Not to mention the download needed for assets like the HD background to make it all look nice that the designer wants in there. How will the processor cope with that? The designer cares not for battery life or bandwidth.

So those of you with an iphone, thank your lucky stars that you may never have this issue. You may still have the resource hog applications every now and then, but we all have that.

Whether you like them or not, mobile service providers are here to stay, they’re a staple part of our daily lives, we pretty much all have mobile phones nowadays. A question I get asked semi-frequently is “which mobile provider should I be with” (second to “which mobile should I choose next”). I have to say, I am a bit lost with the provider question as I’ve been with Orange since 1999 or something stupid. I do really think that they are much of a muchness today as they try to compete on price, service etc.

So imagine my delight today when I read Tech Digest had had a run down (or deathmatch) of the big 5. So, I’ll stop talking now so you can read:
Tech Digest Technology Deathmatch

I’m excited today. Actually, I was excited yesterday, but the excitement had to continue till I got a chance to write a post about it. And the reason I’m excited is that Palm are back with a phone that is seriously interesting: the Palm Pre, wireless charging, full face touch recognition. In fact, don’t listen to me, watch this:

ok, it has several nods to the iphone and a keyboard (which I consider a down side) but f*ck me this is sexy (and small) and will probably not be the restrictionware the iphone is (I still want one, but it is restricted too much, come on), especially from a company who up until recently have been pootling along the black line between existence and, well, non-existence.

I thought of this last night and thought of my Palm III I had back at university. I loved it, for a while. The main thing was the handwriting technology called graffitti. You had to learn a new way of writing, but it was simple and really quick to learn. Anyone with a stylus Palm back in the heady days should remember it, do you? Here is a reminder in any case.

Palm Graffiti Gestures

It felt like a community with its own handwriting. Anyway, I’m excited, especially about the wireless charging thing, but the future of mobiles is great (and we do have Apple to thank for that, iphone hater or not) and if the new HTC Android phone rumours are anything to go by, 2009 could be a real step forward.