Native iOS Gmail: Imminent?

MG Siegler has me all excited over the possibility of Google releasing a Gmail app for the iPhone. (Hope it has an iPad version, too.)

The One Really Nice Thing About Android’s Back Button

Back in June, I took up the unpopular stance that Android’s navigation buttons are kind of useful. This was before Google introduced Android Ice Cream Sandwich, which, as rumored, allows smartphones to drop physical buttons in favor of software buttons.

But Ice Cream Sandwich doesn’t remove buttons altogether, it just moves them to a different place, leading Mobisle Apps Co-Founder Christoffer Du Rietz to conclude that Android is conceptually broken because it’s doomed to carry these buttons forever:

“The problem is, that Android hasn’t decided what that it wants the back button to do. Do you want it to take you back to the previous screen, wherever that was, or take you back one step inside the app? Right now it’s a convoluted combination of the two, and most of the time, which one will occur is a guess and can’t be known before pressing the button.”

I agree that the inconsistency of Android buttons is a problem, because you don’t always know what’s going to happen when you press “back,” “menu” or “search.” But I’m still happy to have these buttons, and the back button in particular, for one reason: “Back” is universal. It allows you to move not just within apps, but between them.

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Apple Stores: Check Out Without Checking In

Eric Slivka of MacRumors says Apple Stores plan to introduce a feature I’d love: The ability to check out and pay for products using your iPhone, no waiting for a clerk required:

It is not entirely clear what will happen once a user has checked out via the app, although store employees will of course be on the lookout for store visitors walking out with merchandise in hand, as they are already. Customers who have made a purchase through self-checkout will be able to show an emailed receipt to any employee, confirming their purchase.

C3′s Astonishing 3D Model Technology–Now Part of Apple?

In March of 2010, I went to a tech conference and saw a Swedish company called C3 Technologies demo its system for turning aerial photographs of cities into 3D worlds, with very little human intervention required. The video I linked to in the original post has disappeared from YouTube, but here’s another one:

I said in that post that C3′s work knocked my socks off and that I couldn’t wait to see it show up in commercial products. Now it sounds like it might make its way into the iPhone and iPad: 9to5 Mac’s Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple has bought C3. If it has, it’s acquired itself some amazing technology.

Is the iPhone 4S a Battery Hog?

TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld is unhappy with his new iPhone 4S:

Today, my iPhone died after about 8 hours—not even enough to get me through a full day without recharging (and this is typical). This was not 8 hours of constant use (unless you count the constant pinging of notifications, which may be the culprit). It was 8 hours total from the time I unplugged it in the morning and took it with me until the screen went black at around 4 PM. According to the specs, the iPhone 4S is supposed to get 200 hours of standby time, 8 hours of talk time, and “up to 6 hours” of Internet use on 3g. During the day, I made half a dozen calls less than 5 minutes each, used the Internet for an hour on the train (email, Twitter, light Web browsing), and then maybe another 90 minutes throughout the day.

Schonfeld isn’t the only person I’ve seen grumbling about this issue. Macworld’s Chris Breen has covered it, and provided some troubleshooting advice. And the Guardian’s Charles Arthur says that Apple is on the case.

How much battery life you get out of a phone is heavily dependent on how you use the phone and what you use it for–and I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as a typical user of the iPhone 4S or any other smartphone. But in my time with the iPhone 4S so far, I haven’t noticed any striking difference in battery life compared to the iPhone 4. With both phones, I can almost always get through one day, and a bit more, on one charge.

If you have an iPhone 4S and upgraded from an earlier iPhone model, have you detected a difference?

The End–Once and For All?–of WebOS

Sad but not surprising: The Guardian’s Charles Arthur is reporting that HP, having failed to find anyone who wants to buy WebOS, is giving up:

Despite HP’s attempts to find a potential buyer or licencee for webOS – which ran on the short-lived TouchPad – there has been no apparent interest outside the company. Sir Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony, told the Guardian on Thursday that he had no immediate interest in buying or licensing it after completing the acquisition of the rest of the Sony Ericsson business. And early suggestions that HTC might purchase it have also fallen away.

Some have suggested that Amazon might buy webOS, seeing the presence on the Amazon board of ex-Palm chief executive and HP executive Jon Rubinstein, who previously worked for Apple. But there is no indication that Amazon is interested in acquiring another operating system; it is using its own version of Google’s Android software for its new Kindle Fire device.

Google TV Lives!

A year ago, the first devices based on Google TV–Logitech’s Revue box and some Sony TVs–debuted. Initial irrational exuberance over for the platform melted away quickly: The software was buggy and confusing, and major media companies such as the big networks started blocking Google TV from streaming their content.

And then everybody sort of forgot about Google TV for the most part. Google occasionally said that it was working on an improved version, but the platform made news most recently when Logitech said that the Revue’s sales had been catastrophically bad. I began to worry the Google TV wouldn’t make the cut of arrows that Google wanted to put wood behind.

Now Google is talking about Google TV again. Rather than hyping expectations, the company is taking an intentionally subdued approach–its blog post is titled merely “An Update on Google TV,” which sounds at first like it might be a warning that it’s winding down. But the news is good: Sony TVs will be getting the new version early next week, and the Revue will get it soon thereafter. (There apparently won’t be any new Google TV devices until 2012.)

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Dropbox Gets a Little More Businesslike

Of all the many and varied services devoted to letting you move around files between computers and other devices by storing them on the Internet, Dropbox may be the single biggest fan favorite. Unlike some of its competitors, it’s been aimed at individual consumers. But despite that, lots of folks in businesses have used it to share stuff with coworkers and clients.

Now there’s a version of Dropbox targeted specifically at such users: Dropbox for Teams. It’s not fancy or radically different from the service’s other plans. Subscribers start with 1TB of storage that’s sharable among five users, but they can get more space at no additional charge if they need it. They can also receive tech support by phone, an option that isn’t available with other plans. That costs $795 a year; additional users are $125 apiece.

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The Pros and Cons of the Internet, As Taught to Students in 1996

Last weekend, I was at my parents’ house in Connecticut for a family matter. As my sister went through some of the things in her childhood bedroom, she discovered a document from 1996, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. This was apparently part of some high school handout packet; also included among the papers were tips on using Altavista and print outs of the Yahoo home page as viewed in Netscape.

Since we’re fans of tech nostalgia here at Technologizer, I thought I’d share the document with you. Surprisngly, many of the Internet’s perks and problems remain the same 15 years later, but some of them just seem silly in retrospect.

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HP Decides It’s a PC Company After All

Back in August, HP announced that it felt its PC division, the world’s largest, might be better off if it wasn’t part of HP. It said it was going to review its options and that it might take twelve to eighteen months to come to any conclusions.

A month later, the company fired its CEO, Léo Apotheker, and replaced him with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. She didn’t take a year and a half to make a decision–and the decision is that HP will stay in the PC business.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

(Sadly, the reversal doesn’t seem to have any impact on Apotheker’s other big PC-related decision: Killing the TouchPad tablet after six weeks.)

I always found the breakup plausible–if for no other reason than that it’s an idea that’s been around for a least a decade–but I’m glad it’s not happening. And it always suffered from a fundamental flaw: How could it make sense for HP to want to be an enterprise software and services company that also happened to be heavily dependent on profits from ink cartridges sold to consumers?

The next few years of the PC industry are going to be some of the most interesting ones since the beginning of the PC business, since it’s so very unclear what’s going to happen to the PC we’ve known for all these decades. I hope that HP takes that as an opportunity, not an existential threat to its PC business–and that it builds some cool machines in the years to come.

Android Updates: Assume Nothing

Over at The Understatement, a revealing info graphic about Android phones (and iPhones) and the situation with software updates. Overall, it’s ugly for Android owners…

The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones and Nexus One users have fared much, much better than most Android buyers.

Why Would Anyone Use Windows XP Today, Anyhow?

As the world celebrates–or at least acknowledges–the tenth anniversary of Windows XP, I wondered why so many people continue to use an operating system that dates from an utterly different era in the history of personal technology. So I conducted a quick survey to ask XP users…well, to ask them why they’re XP users, and whether they intend to continue on with the OS forever. Bottom line: A plurality of them use it because it’s what their employers provide. But most of them seem to be reasonably okay with that.

(Standard disclaimer: This was an informal survey, and the results reflect only the experiences and opinions of the people–almost 900 of them–who happened to take it. I’m not claiming their responses map to the world at large.)

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Nest: It’s the iPod of Thermostats

Many years ago, Tony Fadell took an idea he had for a new gadget to Apple. It was a pocket-sized hard-disk MP3 player. Apple was impressed–and, just over a decade ago, released Fadell’s creation as the iPod. It was, as you may recall, quite popular.

Fadell went on to run Apple’s iPod division, but In 2008, he stepped down and in 2010, he severed all ties with Apple. He and his wife (also a former Apple employee) spent some of their newly-found free time with their kids, and some of it building a green home near Lake Tahoe.

While Fadell was working on his house, he had a new brainstorm. Why not take the thermostat–one of the most boring devices on the planet, and therefore one which is largely ignored by most homeowners–and make it interesting? Why not make it what he calls “a cherished object?” Why not make it a gadget?

Inspired, he co-founded a company called Nest Labs. It’s announcing its creation, the Nest, which it plans to ship in November for $249. And it’s not just the least boring thermostat ever invented: It’s downright interesting. When Fadell briefed me recently and did a demo, I got excited by its potential–and if you see one in person, I think you’ll be just as intrigued.

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The Life and Times of Windows XP

If you’d been alive in 1924 and had enjoyed the comedy stylings of a young Vaudevillian named George Burns, you never would have believed he’d still be packing them in seventy years later. In 1963, you might have dug the music that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were making, but the idea they’d still be touring almost forty-five years later would have sounded insane. Those of us who watched Dennis Eckersley pitch for the Red Sox in 1978 would have scoffed at the notion that he’d be playing for Beantown once again in 1998.

And then there’s Windows XP. The press release announcing its release on October 25th 2001 called it “Microsoft’s Best Operating System Ever.” A decade later, so many people still agree with that assessment that it remains the planet’s most pervasive desktop operating system.

Nobody would have been prescient enough to predict that Windows XP would be flourishing so many years after its debut. Not Microsoft. Not consumers and businesses. Not the analysts who get paid to know where technology is going. And certainly not me.

No single factor explains XP’s astonishing longevity. The most obvious one, of course, is the failed launch of 2007′s Windows Vista, an upgrade so lackluster that many PC users simply rejected it, instinctively and intelligently. But I think you also have to give XP credit for being just plain good, especially once Microsoft released Service Pack 2 in 2004. And desktop operating systems, from any company, simply aren’t as exciting as they were in the 1990s; people are less likely to want a new one every couple of years, and more likely to drive the one they’ve got into the ground.

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Goal One for Netflix: Be Normal

Netflix has announced its third-quarter results, and one stat stands out: 800,000 customers left the service its user base shrunk by 800,000 customers overall. Netflix says the defectors were mostly folks disgruntled over its abrupt price hike back in July, not ones rattled by its short-lived plan to split off DVD rentals into a stand-alone service called Qwikster.

At some point, all the unhappy Netflix campers will leave, and I still think that the company is going to a good place with its streaming service. At the moment, though, it needs to repair its reputation. It needs to prove that it cares about its customers and isn’t going to spring any more bizarre surprises on them. It needs to show that it has an adequate degree of self-awareness. It just needs to be normal for a while.

The Most Persistent Apple Rumor of Them All

More scuttlebutt about a possible Apple TV set:

In a note to clients released Monday, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster seizes on remarks attributed to Steve Jobs in the biography published overnight as “another data point” to support a thesis he’s been championing since 2009.