MacBooks. iPhones. Error Messages. And an upcoming upgrade to the Microsoft Operating System That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Those were some of the subjects that got the Technologizer community reading, commenting, and debating in October. After the jump, a look at the ten stories that got the most page views this month–read ’em all!
Author Archive | Harry McCracken
No Opera on the iPhone? Bad News.
The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has published a piece on browser company Opera, and the biggest news it contains is a passing reference halfway through the story: Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner says that the company has developed a version of Opera for the iPhone, but Apple has refused to distribute it on the ground that it competes with its own Safari. It’s the latest of multiple examples of Apple nixing competitive apps that’s come to light.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has pointed out that this instance may be different from others: If Opera’s browser includes its own JavaScript engine, it violates the agreement that iPhone developers sign, which states that new JavaScript engines other than Apple’s own are verboten. (Other competitive apps that have been banned don’t seem to have violated the agreement.)
I don’t find that particularly consoling. On what grounds is Apple restricting the ability of other software companies to provide alternatives to its own software? Is there any scenario under which it’s better for iPhone users that there be only one JavaScript engine on the iPhone (and therefore effectively only one browser)? Microsoft famously got in legal hot water when it tried to crush the already-successful Netscape Navigator; if Apple won’t let competitive browsers onto the iPhone in the first place, isn’t that much worse?
It is, most likely, the principle of the thing that matters here: Safari is a darn good browser, and I have no reason to think that Opera has come up with something superior. It deserves to have the chance to try, though. And we iPhone owners deserve to be the folks who judge its worth.
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again: I still can’t tell whether the iPhone will turn out to be the most exciting new computing platform since the original Mac, or a fancy but fundamentally hobbled walled garden. But at this point, I’m hungry for scraps of evidence to prove that the latter scenario isn’t the more likely one.
24 comments
10 Ways to Avoid Emergency When Your Web Services Disappear on You
Venture capitalists telling the startups they invest in that the good times are over. Big companies hunkering down. Layoffs, layoffs everywhere. You’d have to be a wild-eyed optimist not to come to the conclusion that a lot of cool consumer Web services aren’t going to close their doors before the economy turns around.
And you’d have to love living dangerously not to gird yourself for the possibility of some of the services you depend on going away. After the jump, ten tips to help you and your data survive disaster with as few headaches as possible…
4 comments
Netflix via TiVo? Cool. But Not Cool Enough.
So TiVo and Netflix are announcing that their longstanding, apparently-dormant plans to work together have amounted to something after all: Starting in early December, owners of TiVo boxes will be able to stream movies and TV shows from NetFlix, and the cost is included in their monthly Netflix subscription. That’s good news. But it’s also by no means a substitute for the primary way Netflix distributes content–which is, of course, by shipping out DVDs in little red envelopes via snail mail.
That’s because traditional Netflix offers more than a hundred thousand titles, while Netflix Watch Instantly includes only about a tenth as many. Netflix’s own promotion for the Internet-based service stresses that it offers a “separate, smaller” selection of content, and that it includes “very few” new releases. (When was the last time you heard any company use the word “few” when discussing the choice it offers?)
You can’t blame Netflix for the skimpy selection–Hollywood just remains incredibly backwards when it comes to licensing movie and TV content for Internet distribution. And even though some other purveyors of Net-based video have a lot more stuff than Netflix Watch Instantly, including new releases, nobody offers what you really want: A service as comprehensive as traditional Netflix that lets you watch everything instantly on every digital device you own.
After the jump, a quick look at some of the major competitors.
6 comments
Ooma: More Phone Features For Your Money
Last year, a startup called Ooma bet that folks hungry to save money on phone calls would spend $400 for its VoIP device, which let broadband users plug in their standard phones and then make all the U.S. calls they wanted for free, forever. (“Forever” meant what it always means when used by a technology company, of course–“for as long as we’re in business.”)
It got good reviews, but four hundred bucks turned out to be a lot to ask people to ante up. And so the company knocked the price of entry down to $250 for the main Ooma box and one “Scout” (a remote box you can place is another room to serve as an extension). At the samee time, it broke some service features out into a new level of service called Premier which goes for $13 a month or $100 a year. Today, the company announced that it’s beefing up the Premier service with a bunch of new features.
These new features include up to nine virtual phone numbers that can be associated with one Ooma setup; each custom number can have its own ring tone, and each one can ring all the Ooma boxes in your house or only certain ones. Ooma has also added several features that remind me of GrandCentral, including the ability to have your Ooma phone number ring both your home number and cell at the same time, so calls reach you no matter where you are. You can now opt to receive voicemail via e-mail or SMS messages, and can blacklist phone numbers so they can’t call you.
When Ooma launched, it required you to have at least basic landline service for 911 calls. It’ll still integrate with a landline if you have one, but no longer requires it.
Oooma is pretty slick; it’s an intriguing option if you’re willing to pay up-front for the hardware in return for long-term savings–even the Premier service costs a lot less than a more standard approach to VoIP service such as Vonage. Look for a hands-on review of the service here soon…
2 comments
Microsoft Office is Going Online. Now What?
So it’s official: Microsoft will release (if “lightweight”) Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. The news came out yesterday at Microsoft’s PDC event in Los Angeles; I was in the audience. And I liked what I saw: The Web-based versions of Word, Excel, and OneNote that Microsoft demoed sported interfaces that looked like real Microsoft Office (including the Ribbon toolbar) and features that looked surprisingly heavy duty (such as conditional formatting in Excel). And there’s plenty of possibility in the notion of folks who use the desktop versions of Office apps and those who work only in the browser being able to collaborate across the Net on shared documents and projects.
5 comments
Fifteen Random Questions About Windows 7
I may have sat down and cranked out my first impressions of Windows 7 last night, but I’m still pondering what we’ve learned so far about the OS–and what we still don’t know. Mind if I do a quick brain dump as of 1:31pm on Tuesday afternoon? (Hey, that’s right now!)
9 comments
Windows 7 First Impressions: Hey, This Looks Pretty Good!
And it looks…quite promising, really. As in “Isn’t this a lot closer to what Windows Vista should have been in the first place?”
168 comments
Sonos on Your iPhone
The iPhone is many things, and holds the promise of becoming even more of them. And one of its emerging applications is to serve as the world’s ultimate programmable remote control–one with an infinitely customizable screen, a cool touch interface, and a direct connection to the Internet. I think the day may come when using iPhones and iPhone-like phones as remotes is every much a core purpose of these gizmos as making phone calls on them.
Case in point: Today, Sonos, manufacturer of the cool multi-room wireless music system, has released an application that lets you control its players from an iPhone or iPod Touch. It replicates the functionality of the company’s $400 remote control for free, and did so very well in a quick demo I got from the Sonos folks–you can wander around your house and use the iPhone to select the music that plays on Sonos’s little streaming music boxes. More on it after I’ve had a chance to try it for myself….
No comments
Live Coverage of Microsoft’s Windows 7 Event
Here’s the post where I’ll liveblog the keynote here at Microsoft’s PDC in Los Angeles, starting at 8:30am PT Tuesday morning. It’ll be the first time that Microsoft has talked about Windows 7 in public in anything more than vague terms. And I’d be pleased if you’d join me.
(Shameless self-promotion: Some of the folks who attended my CoverItLive coverage of this month’s Apple notebook event said it was a faster way to get the news than the liveblogs conducted by those big name-brand sites.)
Oh, and here’s my extensive hands-on look at Windows 7, with plenty of screens.
[techno-pdc-event]