Missing email, contacts, and calendar apps–3 of the big four PIM apps, unless you have a bluetooth connected BlackBerry smartphone, is an absolute death nail for anyone not packing a Torch or other RIM phone.

RIM’s focus on their “enterprise” customers and security shows just how clueless they are when it comes to “consumer” electronics. Unfortunately, I don’t see this device driving new BlackBerry phone sales to get those missing features. And by saying they’re coming soon, RIM is just saying, “hey all you non-BlackBerry people, just wait until we deliver the features, then you can buy a PlayBook.”

Cool that Flash is supported so well. But now that millions of iPhones and iPads are browsing pages without it, maybe Flash isn’t that big a selling point. I’m kinda torn on this one. However, after playing with a PlayBook at CES 2011, I can confirm that even a heavy use of Flash, including the Logitech Alert video security camera web viewing site (https://alert.logitech.com) worked well on the PlayBook.

And perhaps the one big issue that is today’s game changer: Apps. The lack of apps, and a very small market for the apps, makes the device feel like a niche player. It’s going to be hard for RIM to get people to do something new for what looks like a small number of users.

Finally, I can say that I really liked a lot of the UI. The animations, smoothness, app rending were all pretty nice. Interacting with text was a big challenge for me. In one case, I couldn’t figure out how to insert and edit text, and neither could the person helping behind the counter. In the end, she just “backspaced” over what I typed and said retype it.

Great attempt. Not ready for primetime yet.

PlayBook: A Tablet With a Case Of Codependency

April 13, 2011

by Walter S. Mossberg

In fairness, Motorola’s not the only company to struggle with Froyo. Owners of HTC’s Droid Incredible are still waiting for their update — rumors of August 18 didn’t pan out — and the brand new Dell Streak tablet is stuck on Android 1.6 until the end of the year. Samsung’s Galaxy phones are all expected to get Froyo, but with no date announced for U.S. wireless carriers. So while Motorola gets an extra dose of shame for shutting down Droid X users, the only phone maker to truly ace the Android 2.2 launch was, of course, Google.

Motorola’s Android 2.2 Rollout: What a Mess, Jared Newman, PC World

Android is a very cool OS. I enjoy it. It has so much to offer and amazing potential. It’s available for device manufacturers, carriers, and even non-traditional or unexpected parties that want to play in the mobile game.

However, Android will continue to struggle until carriers and manufacturers get their stuff together and deliver what “consumers” want, not what they want.

I just receive the Froyo build. I still don’t have Flash. I have not “rooted” my device to get the latest goodness. I really don’t want to be a geek to use Android.

But when Google releases new “ready-for-primetime” code drops, you’re up to the mercy of your handset manufacturer and the carrier. These big titans live on their own time scale. Google will struggle to get things past these gate keepers.

Unlike Apple, who rolls out to everyone (even old handsets–within reason), Google is still strapped down by the people who implement their free software. Ultimately, the consumer will suffer.

From Forbes Magazine:

Eventually the iPhone bigots will get to you, as they did to David Rivas, a Nokia vice president in charge of its smart phone software efforts. “You’re ignoring Japan, you’re ignoring Korea. The statement that somehow the Web has not been mobile until the iPhone is absurd and back to the point about parochialism,” he told a room full of venture capitalists and software developers at a conference in July organized by tech blog impresario Michael Arrington.

“Wake up!” someone heckled from the back of the room as Rivas spoke. Arrington, the Valley’s answer to Judge Judy, wasn’t buying it either. “I believe that Nokia and Symbian [the software that powers its smart phones] are irrelevant companies at this point,” he pronounced from the stage.

In the month since Apple opened an online software clearinghouse called the App Store, users have downloaded more than 60 million programs for the iPhone, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in an interview at Apple’s headquarters. While most of those applications were free, Apple sold an average of $1 million a day in applications for a total of about $30 million in sales over the month, Mr. Jobs said.

If sales stay at the current pace, Apple stands to reap at least $360 million a year in new revenue from the App Store, Mr. Jobs said. “This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” he added. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software,” he said.

…

“Phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that,” Mr. Jobs said. “We think, going forward, the phone of the future will be differentiated by software.”

Source:
IPhone Software Sales Take Off: Apple’s Jobs
By NICK WINGFIELD
August 11, 2008; Page B1
The Wall Street Journal

This is a huge day.

Apple has done what Palm, RIM, Microsoft, Motorola, SonyEricson,and Nokia have not: they have delivered a compelling mobile platform that matches sexy hardware with a functional operating system PLUS attracted developers PLUS created a true shopping / marketplace experience for users like me who want to use and buy mobile applications. The application store had the shelves stocked with apps, applications that people want to use–and buy!

Today is game changing day for the mobile marketplace! Apple wins.

But I was off by a day. This morning, on my drive into Salt Lake City, I heard from @windley on Twitter that the iPhone 2.0 firmware was available. I also received note from @culturedcode, the makers of Things, that their iPhone version of Things was on the iPhone App Store. Bummed that I was driving, I rushed to a network connection, and got after the update.

On the first try, my phone didn’t like the update. It choked and I had to restore. I thought I’d follow the link from the Things page to the App Store. I was notified that I had to have iTunes 7.7. I downloaded and applied the new iTunes. Then Option + Check for Updates. This time it worked. The update and verify took a long time, but my phone is now running the iPhone 2.0 firmware!

I went back to the CulturedCode.com site and linked over to the iPhone App Store, bought Things, installed, and now–after a full year of waiting–have a fully featured task management application on my iPhone.

Seeing Samsung‘s next-generation 256 GB SSD makes my mind contemplate the mobile devices just over the horizon. A 1.8 inch solid state drives with the capacity that was in servers not all that long ago. But the performance is perhaps more impressive: sequential data reads at 200MB per second, and writes at 160MB per second. Tiny computing devices will be capable of carrying whole libraries and still leave space for are own creations. Of course if all those devices come with HD video recording capabilities, then we’ll fill it up quickly. Better get on that 512 GB version Samsung.

First, carriers have us over the barrel on what functionality the device will support (e.g., I’d try a BlackBerry Curve but ATT has removed WiFi support). Additionally, carriers offer similar yet different data and voice networks (CDMA/TDMA/GSM), requiring some efort.

The device manufacturers have to pick an OS to drive their machine. The OS has to work on a variety of devices and needs to be flexible, manage multiple radio frequencies/types (quad-band, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.). Finally, it has to work for a consumer. It’s nearly impossible to hit a home run with a single device.

Which leads me to Google and Android. From the mouth of Eric Schmidt, “Android is the first truly integrated mobile operating system.” That seems like a bit of a stretch. Yes everyone else talked about it early in the week, but I waited. Which leads me to consider: “Can Google and myriad developers across the wireless industry really create a usable Mobile OS that device manufacturers, carriers, and “consumers” can use?”

It’s true that Andy Rubin has good credentials for the heading the task. The Sidekick had its own cult following. He did something right by nailing a specific target market with a device that hit the core needs of thumb communicating teens and young adults — although the “voice” use looked a bit strange when you had to put the brick up to your head.

Apple may have come close, but many have expressed they couldn’t do it with Rev 1.0 of the iPhone (including the opinion of yours truly). From what I read and hear, lots of users like the user experience, however.

I can’t help but think of Nokia‘s effort with Symbian (and Motorola, and Samsung, and others that have long since dropped off the bandwagon). Symbian is a very capable and powerful OS, but it’s missed the mark somewhere along the line (personally, as I learned from my imported E61, there were way too many steps to do any one thing).

Palm gave up and sold what appeared to be a great head-start OS to Access, long after their head start was passe. Access has yet to do anything other than wave their arms every 6 months with a new announcement in the press telling the world they are still alive — although their product roadmap appears dead.

Now back to David Pogue. In this article, he has a hilarious quote about Microsoft Windows Mobile:

Frankly, Windows Mobile 6 is a mess. Common features require an infinitude of taps and clicks, and the ones you need most are buried in menus. Apparently the Windows Mobile 6 team learned absolutely nothing from Windows Mobile 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

So, here’s to Google’s effort at cracking the code on the new OS war: The Mobile OS. Heaven knows that many have lobbed many great suggestions (Peter Rojas at Engadget on Palm OS, David Pogue at The New York Times on Windows Mobile, Walt Mossberg).

Can Apple get it right w/ R2 of the iPhone? Will Apple “truly” open up a SDK that will appease developers (I think if this was here today, Android would be a yawner news).

Will Access ship a killer Linux OS — or will Motorola beat them to the punch with something that gets on to other smart phones?

Will Nokia be left to the low-end, non-smart phone market?

Can RIM continue to dominate the business user segment with their BlackBerry brand that appears to be a strong, yet pretty isolated from the interests of the third-party developer community?

Check back in a year.