Mobile Technology News

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Apple’s September 1 music event ended on a sour note. Coldplay’s Chris Martin gave a tepid and pitchy performance that would have sent him packing from an American Idol audition. Michael Stanclift aptly tweeted: “This guy could have practiced before this gig.” Martin, whose daughter is named Apple, seemed like the right performer for what was otherwise an outstanding event. While Martin muffed, Apple — the company, not his child — hit every key. Not since the first iPod nano launched five years ago has Apple delivered such spectacular new music products.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The answer to the question depends on how iPad is classified and how the shipments add up combined with Macs. Is iPad a PC, like Windows tablets or low-powered netbooks? The definition is sure to generate controversy because of what’s at stake — which manufacturer is market share leader in the United States.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The InterWeb is buzzing about Android’s sudden second quarter smartphone OS market share surge against Apple’s iOS and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry OS. Windows Mobile was a goner last quarter. But behind the numbers is a bigger question: Which mobile platform will be more successful? Smartphones are but one small measure of success.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The other night, I got quite the shock. A good friend, who is a Windows enthusiast and IT administrator/consultant, informed me that he had dumped Windows 7 for Ubuntu. I didn’t see that coming. For one, he’s a Windows fan. For another, I would rate Windows 7 as nearly Microsoft’s best operating system ever (sorry, even with the driver problems, Windows NT 4 still ranks as my fav; for its time — 1996ish). My buddy contacted me by Skype, and I kept the transcript which I offer here with his permission.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Today, the Windows Blog has a post about Internet Explorer gaining a seemingly minuscule amount of usage share in July. Ryan Gavin cites Net Applications data showing IE gains for the second month in a row against Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox declines. Month-over-month, IE usage share rose to 60.74 percent from 60.34 percent; Chrome declined to 7.16 percent from 7.24 percent; Firefox declined to 22.91 percent from 23.81 percent. Apple’s Safari gained share — 4.85 percent to 5.09 percent. The share changes are statistically meaningful because of the large number of global users.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

July 29, 2010 may be remembered as the most important day in Steve Ballmer’s career at Microsoft. Tomorrow, the company hosts its annual Financial Analyst Meeting, or FAM. How much Ballmer and his core leadership team spend concretely talking about the future, rather than the past, will foreshadow how long the chief executive can remain the big boss. Nearly as important: Which executives will make presentations.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The day following blow-out Apple earnings, my attention turns to Microsoft, which announces fiscal 2010 fourth quarter and year results tomorrow. I’m not the only person thinking about Apple, Microsoft, other tech companies and the future direction of computing.

Overnight, I got an email from Mark Reschke, who clearly is a Mac fan. Reschke is excited about Apple’s fiscal 2010 third quarter results, where iPad and iPhone combined accounted for nearly half of revenues. In this post I share Reschke’s e-mail and my e-mail response to him.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Yesterday, I recommended five things Apple should do during today’s press conference about iPhone 4. Within hours of the post, Apple already had done two — release a software update and informally deny that there would be an iPhone 4 recall.

During today’s media event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs fully did two others: Offer free iPhone 4 cases and reveal number of iPhone 4 returns. For the other — bringing out engineers — Jobs instead personally discussed the engineering problems and showed that other phones display similar behavior, where human contact with certain areas of the phone can cause the signal bars to decline.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Seriously, all four new FaceTime ads creep me out. I know they’re meant to be sentimental, but they’re simply too real. I feel like a voyeur eavesdropping on very personal interactions. It’s a place I don’t belong. It’s not my moment to share. Apple posted the commercials to YouTube on July 9th. I only discovered them today.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Friday’s apocalyptic post “Windows Phone 7 is doomed” generated among comments assertions that I’m an idiot and demands that I be fired (Sorry, I’m a lowly freelancer). Nevertheless, I do read comments and seriously regard the ones written to extend the discussion (rather than just belittle the author or other commenters). Commenter rwalrond asked: “How about you write an article about how Microsoft can leverage its existing platforms to make WM7 a contender.” Actually, Microsoft’s trying to leverage its enterprise apps is part of the problem — the Office and Windows hawks driving off the consumer and cloud service doves. But the spirit of rwalrond’s comment is offering solutions, and that I will do here in response.