Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

I Have a Galaxy Tab. Do You Have Galaxy Tab Questions?

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 9, 2010 at 8:56 am

Over at TIME.com, you’ll find my first take on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which I’ve been exploring since last Friday. Executive summary: It’s not an iPad killer, but it is the first legitimate iPad alternative; the hardware is nice, but the biggest downside is that the software makes it more of a giant-Android-phone-that-doesn’t-make-phone-calls than an all-new tablet.

I also blogged at Techland about Steve Jobs’ recent attack on the very idea of 7″ tablets. Spending time with the Galaxy Tab left me feeling like the size has possibilities, but simply cramming the iPad experience down onto a 7″ device would be a lousy idea which Apple won’t pursue.

I’ll have more to say about the Tab as I use it a bit more. At the moment, I’m having fun with it in a very real-world setting: I left for a business trip to New Orleans yesterday, and took it with me as my primary source of entertainment. (And mobile productivity, too: On the cab ride from the airport to my hotel, I sent an urgent e-mail using it.)

Got any questions about the Tab? Leave them in comments and I’ll try to answer ’em before I send it back to Samsung.

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Death by Fabulously Successful iOS Launch

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 5, 2010 at 3:14 pm

It’s become a bizarre rite of passage: Interesting apps for the iPhone and iPad keep appearing, getting attention, and then being literally overwhelmed by consumer response.

The latest example: Skyfire, the smartphone browser that lets you watch some Flash videos on an iPhone. It hit the App Store on Wednesday. Then throngs of people read about it and downloaded it. The app, which is as much a service as a piece of software–it relies servers which translate Flash video into an iPhone-friendly format on the fly–stopped working in any sort of satisfactory way, and its creators yanked it from the App Store.

Now it’s back, sort of –they’re letting in new users in drips and drabs by putting Skyfire on the App Store and then taking it down and then putting it up again. (It seems to be up at the moment.)

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Skyfire Brings (Some) Flash Video to the iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2010 at 5:00 pm

[UPDATE: Skyfire has been pulled from the App Store. Engadget says that Skyfire did the deed itself because demand for it was crushing its servers–and here’s the official word.]

Wanna watch Flash video on your iPhone? If you sit around waiting for Apple and Adobe to make nice isn’t worth the effort, you’re going to grow moss. But a partial solution is available today: Skyfire, a browser that can play some Flash-based video that’s not otherwise available on iOS devices. Apple has approved it, and it’s now on the App store for $2.99.

As with the Android version that came out last spring (before FlashPlayer itself shipped for Android), the iPhone edition of the browser scans Web pages for Flash-based video. In many–but not all–cases, it’ll pop up a thumbnail video icon, which means that it can play a version of the video converted into the iPhone’s H.264 format. Click on the icon, and Skyfire will buffer and play the video.

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For Apple, Sticking it to U.S. Carriers Isn’t That Important

Posted by Jared Newman on October 28, 2010 at 9:48 am

Rumor has it that Apple is secretly building a SIM card as a way to handle all European iPhone sales and activations on its own.

According to GigaOM, this would allow Apple to sell smartphones directly in Europe. Customers would be able to activate their phones through the Web or at an Apple Store, with no need to ever visit a wireless carrier.

Naturally, the discussion has shifted to whether Apple will try to use its own SIM cards to weaken wireless carriers in the United States. As MG Siegler at TechCrunch notes, crazy demand for the iPhone gives Apple a lot of leeway to push carriers around. Once LTE networks are up and running, Apple could sell its own SIM cards instead of locking customers into specific carriers.

It’s a nice concept, but in the United States, I don’t think cutting out the wireless carriers is in Apple’s best interests.

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After a While, You Stop Counting

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 18, 2010 at 8:41 am

When McDonalds first got going, it was a small-but-pioneering outfit that was justifiably proud of how many hamburgers it had sold–so much so that it told the world on its famous signs. (Hey, a million burgers was a lot of burgers back then.)

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iPhone: 3G Until 2012?

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 11, 2010 at 1:43 pm

I don’t know whether TechCrunch’s Steve Cheney has it right when he says there will be no 4G iPhone in 2011, but it sounds at least as plausible as a scenario that does involve a 4G iPhone shipping next year. (The original 2G iPhone, after all, appeared well after 3G models had become quite common, which is one reason why I didn’t buy one.)

Cheney’s other prediction–that Apple will release a dual-mode iPhone that works worldwide on both GSM and CDMA networks–is an utter wild card, but one that I like…

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iPhone vs. Android: The State of the Smartphone Wars (and More to Come)

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 5, 2010 at 8:08 am

It’s Tuesday, so there’s a new Technologizer column up over at TIME.com. This one’s on iPhone vs. Android, and as I wrote it yesterday, I realized that I had bitten off a pretty gigantic topic for one 700-word column. It ended up being a 1,000 word column, but even then, I could have written on for another 2,000 or 3,000 words. Considering how fast both platforms are changing, the shelf life of this column will be short, so it’s a topic I’ll come back to repeatedly.

Actually, I might return to the smartphone wars as soon as next week. I got an e-mail from a reader who assumed that the fact I don’t mention Windows Phone 7 in the column was a sign I was a Microsoft hater. Nope–I just chose to focus on the big battle well underway between two platforms that are already on the market. I’ll be at the Windows Phone 7 launch in New York next Monday–stay tuned for live coverage of it, and for lots more thoughts about Windows Phone and its chances of success.

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