Microsoft says viva la France!

This has been a busy week for Microsoft. After Monday’s Microsoft Surface announcement and Wednesday's announcement of Windows Phone 8, I feel it is necessary to see how the Smartphone/mobile world war is going. For those of you unfamiliar with what the hell I'm talking about in the past I've described the 6 available mobile operating systems as super powers at the end of World War 2. I'm going to keep on straining this analogy till it cries uncle, but for a recap: IOS was America, Android was the Soviet Union, Blackberry was Great Brittan, Windows mobile/Windows Phone was France, Symbian/Maemo was Germany, and WebOS in this analogy was Japan. Now that we know the players, where do we stand?



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Good Innovators Create and Promote Open Standards

One of the things to come out of WWDC was Apple’s plans to partner with several car manufacturers to integrate Siri into your system. Thankfully this seems more like wishfully thinking then an actual partnership. Don’t get me wrong having access to Siri in a hands free way is probably a good way to keep people from doing dangerous things while driving. It’s not the idea that I have a problem with it’s the method of implementation. Apple may be revolutionary but they do as much to stunt innovation as they do to advance it.


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A Smart, Sleek, and Innovative Tablet… From Microsoft?

Tonight Microsoft dropped a bomb on the tech world. Their new Windows 8/RT tablets look amazing. The design is fresh and for once Microsoft seems to have gotten the marketing right too. I’m very excited about the announcement because it means Microsoft has a decent shot at gaining back a lot of the mind share they lost to Apple and Google over the last few years. The announcement is great but there are a few things that worry me about the future of windows tablets.


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Fragmentation will not affect Android: Part 3

Apple Slamming Android and WWDC, from engadget.com

This week at Apple's WWDC developer conference the dreaded specter of android fragmentation came up yet again. This lead me to reconsider the arguments from previous posts here, and here on what fragmentation can do to the android platform. The short answer is android needs to work on unifying the platform, but it still isn't the crippling platform destroying problem tech writers tend to liken it to.

Fragmentation, everyone’s doing it.
One of the notable things to come out of WWDC is that even though apple really only has to maintain the iPhone 4S, 4, 3GS, the iPod gen 3, gen 4, and the three versions of the iPad, not everyone is getting the best and brightest features of IOS 6. Now you may ask where that list of products came from, and that's fair. It came from the products available for sale on apple's website at the time of writing. I think if it's fair to include every product from every manufacturer since what appears to be the original g1 in all the charts about android fragmentation, it is more than reasonable include all the products that apple currently sells in a discussion of apple fragmentation. The fact that IOS isn't coming to the original iPad is a particular slap in the face considering it is barely three years old and people are much less inclined to by a new iPad every two years then a subsidized phone and as such expect some modicum of support for their purchase. That said there are significant hardware differences between the original iPad and even the iPad 2 and thinking about the future of the platform means leaving behind some less capable devices. I would only say that if we accept this premise for IOS shouldn't the same be true for android.

Users really don't care, I mean really don't care
We can split smartphone users into two categories, fanatics and normal users. It is obvious to anyone that I'd fall into the fanatic category. In fact, most people who write about tech fall into this category, that's probably why they got into it. Normal people on the other hand, just want a phone that makes calls, can go to the web, and download apps. Normally users just want a device that works while fanatics are looking to eke out the most out of their devices. The iPhone is designed for normal users, while android is really for fanatics. Ironically the fanatics tend to go for iPhone, and normal users tend to go towards android. These are of course broad generalizations as I of course am in the android camp, and there are a lot of normal users using iPhone.

The thing is normal users don't care about updates as much as fanatics. In my office, several of my coworkers have android devices. While they are certainly tech capable none of them are fanatics, none of them are going to root their phone, and none of the iPhone users are going to jailbreak theirs. They are normal users. This week T-Mobile released the ice cream sandwich (ICS) update for the galaxy S2, when I found out I asked my co-worker who has one if he'd updated, he hadn't. He didn't know or care an update was available. He asked me why he should upgrade, and while ICS is a remarkable improvement over previous versions of android in terms of stability, responsiveness, and design, there is very little that you can do on ICS that you can't do on the phone he was using right now. His phone worked well now, and he was happy with it, so why upgrade?

Would someone please think of the developers?
One common complaint about android is with so many devices developers have a hard time testing to ensure compatibility. To a degree this is a valid argument, if you’re developing a processor intensive game, or a camera app, there is a large amount of hardware variations that have a dramatic impact on your programs performance. This however is the exception not the rule. For everyone else: casual games, productivity apps, social apps etc., I have a solution to your developer woes: the Samsung Galaxy S3.

The Galaxy S3 is currently the best android phone on the market. It will be available on every US carrier as the Galaxy S3 (No carrier branding or differentiation, a first for android). Its sales are expected to eclipse the S2, which is important because Samsung currently controls 40% of the android market, and the S2 is by and large the most popular android phone available now. The developers of Flipboard played this just right. Flipboard for android was announced with the S3 as a limited time exclusive. The program was optimized for what should be a juggernaut phone but it worked fine on most phones, mine included. Still before they released it to the masses they released an open beta to find bugs and fix them. Yes, there are thousands of android devices and it would be impossible to test for all the different variations, but in practical terms hardware variation is fading quickly, to capture the amount of users available on android equivalent to the number of iPhone users the amount of devices needed to test on are similar to that of the IOS ecosystem.

Free Market Android
Developers need to think of the differences between Android and IOS, the same way businesses treat the differences between the US and China. One is a highly controlled economy with huge restrictions on what you can and cannot do (IOS/China), and the other is a variety of micro markets of various sizes fiercely competing with one another game of thrones style (US/Android). Both markets have their advantages and disadvantages, but neither market can be ignored, which is again why fragmentation will have little effect on the android platform in the long run.

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The real risk taker: the middle class

I found out that what I do here can kind of be described as system thinking. The basic idea of system thinking is to understand how things influence one another within the whole. What I try to do here is stop look at a particularly vexing issue, and try to figure out the component parts that created the problem and determine the effect of changes to these component parts on the problem. By not looking at the whole and seeing all the parts it is easy to be lead to believe certain components have a greater influence then is truly possible. This leads me to the interview on last week’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart.


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Stop calling Michael Bloomberg a liberal

A curious thing happened this week; Conservatives got a prime example of everything that is wrong with liberal governance. Mayor Bloomberg announced plans to ban sugary drinks over the size of 16 oz in the city of New York. In one fell swoop Bloomberg justified the notion that liberals want a nanny state taking away the freedom and rights the conservatives strongly protect. Finally we can all see it, we should all know, all except two things. Bloomy isn’t a very liberal liberal especially when it comes to governing the city of New York. Secondly who said banning things was liberal?

Sure Bloomberg supported gay marriage, and has made a great effort to “green” the city. He’s done a lot of things that are in the liberal wheel house, but he lives and governs New York City. Our last mayor, Giuliani, made a habit of dressing in drag, being a little liberal is kind of a prerequisite in this town. You know, it’s like when Romney was in Massachusetts and he said he wasn’t a Reagan/Bush republican. The thing is in most other aspects Bloomberg has been fairly regularly anti-liberal. His attitude towards unions has been outright hostile. His tax policies favor the wealthy, and wall street in particular. If you don’t live in Manhattan, he couldn't care less about your needs.

More importantly the soda ban in method and premise isn’t a very liberal idea. The closest analog to the ban is the infinitely arcane metering laws regulating alcohol in Utah:

Metered Dispensing
Utah law requires restaurants, clubs, on-premise banquet licensees, reception centers, and airport lounges to use a metered dispensing system that is calibrated to dispense no more than 1.5 ounces of primary liquor in a mixed drink. Secondary alcoholic flavorings may then be added to a mixed drink as the recipe requires, not to exceed a total of 2.5 ounces of spirituous liquor.

As a liberal I think it is patently stupid to try to ban things that can be considered personal vices. When the effect of someone’s actions is generally considered harmful to no one other than themselves it is virtually impossible to curb the practice through banning, see marijuana. It’s not that I feel consuming 32 oz of coke during the Avengers movie was particularly good for me (it was the small). I actually abhor the ludicrous sizes, but that’s because there are no reasonable healthy alternatives. The guy in front of me in line actually asked if he could have a cup of water, regular old tap water, and was told it would cost the same as the soda, a ridiculous $5.49. That’s more than it cost to at Woodstock 99, and people rioted over that. It’s true that the mark up on the soda is also insane seeing as the amount of syrup necessary to make the soda in that size cost about 20 cents. However most people would logically come to the conclusion that economically at least the soda is the better value.

I don’t even disagree that there are societal cost to excess sugary drinks, but the key here is excess. One super big gulp isn’t going to give me diabetes, any more than one cigarette will give me cancer, or one night of heavy drinking is going to make me an alcoholic. The societal costs are in my continual care when I am negatively affected by my excess. This is why, for me taxing vices such as these and using the revenue from these taxes to a) promote and subsidize less destructive habits, and b) treat those afflicted by the ravages of excess is the much more reasonable governmental role. In a sense the tax would be a way for people to take personal responsibility for their individual actions. Banning on the other hand, would be costly to all concerned and be completely ineffectual in addressing the long term health concerns. To call this plan liberal is to only know the caricature of what liberal governance is.

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Splitting the apple

Rumors are swirling this week that Apple may be planning on releasing a new iPhone with a different screen. This is the normal fantastical speculation about future tech products that effect most popular products. The same kind of speculation comes up around the time of new game consoles. The media tends to spend a bit more time with the Apple rumors but that is neither here nor there. The great thing about speculation has less to do with its factual basis, of which there is usually very little, but what it say about consumer desires and expectations. The anatomy of the current rumors has deep implications for the iOS platform.

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Institutional inequality

It is very difficult for some people to wrap their head around the notion that America is still for many Americans unjust. They would like to believe that inequality is a thing of the past. When someone tries to say make things easier for a community that had been traditionally disenfranchised, they cry bloody murder and call such tactics as unearned advantage. The best example of this is affirmative action, but most of the "welfare" state falls under this assault.  I think the problem is people haven't really given much thought to the concept of institutional inequality and what it really means for a country.



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The American Homeowners Sophie’s choice

It doesn't get talked about much anymore but we are still in the middle of a housing crisis. Since Congress has decided to focus their laser like attention on jobs, jobs, jobs, which some how results in days of discussion about whether or not employers should be allowed to have some say in when women have children, it can be easy to forget. The truth is though we're still stuck in an economy sucking housing crisis. Homeowners are stuck and while occasionally someone will mention foreclosure rates no one is addressing the real problem facing homeowners underwater mortgages. 

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Tech Alert! (Warning Geekiness inside) Google Chrome brings us one step closer to the cloud computing revolution with latest update.

Google has started rolling out tab syncing officially for the Chrome browser. For the uninitiated tab syncing allows you to recover whatever tabs you have open on one computer on another computer. To use it you first have to have the latest version of chrome installed on the computers you use. Then you have to sign in to your Google account in the browser and enable syncing. I've been using this feature on my tablet since the beta came out and it is a true game changer.

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