iParadise Lost

Strange days indeed, with Apple opening up their fan base daily this niche platform has now exposed them to all sort of problems with their latest software releases (MobileMe is dead in the water) and perhaps that's the reason they have already announced no new features for the next Snow Leopard software release in 09. Whilst in the other corner Microsoft the giant who has to keep the huge user base has come out with all guns blazing this week and CEO Ballmer had this comment on the age old rivalry..

"In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones–providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences."

So what will we see in years to come ? With current versions of each operating system mimicking each other more and more it might be as hard to tell them apart as a Republican or Democrat policy in the next US election.

So is it MircoApple or Applesoft anyone by say 2012 ?

Hooray for Apple with 41% increase on year for year sales and iPhones out the door like hot cakes these should be the halcyon days for the computer vendor. Not so I hear many say on the chitter-chatter of the Apple support sites. Like any business rapid sale success can often be as demanding as any sign of failure and for me I think the signal went out first a year ago when Leopard was delayed for the iPhone 2G launch iIjust got me thinking that hey perhaps Apple was really stretch to have a third leg to its business table ( Mac, iPod, iPhone and its 4th which is hobby not a business is Apple TV).

Cut to July 11 launch of the 3G iPhone and something very much marketed with the phone is MobileMe their in “the cloud” mail, contacts and calendar web application. Cut to another 12 days and this slickly advertised mobile sync and digital life organizer still doesn’t work and moreover no real admission of error from Apple to all of its customers some of whom had been .mac customer before the transition and had readily paid the £69 annual subscription fee.

So I tried the web support, boom nothing, I had an Apple engineer on the email bouncing ideas back and forth and yesterday a member of the Apple executive team finally admitted on the phone the calamity citing server outage and unknown complications with- get this - no known dates for resolving the myriad of quirk and rampant problems. The service appealed to me, as I thought it would help me build on my customer database when travelling and help keep in sync an iPhone, MacMini and Macbook Air. I know Apple are not alone with problems having read today on CNET that Amazon have written apologising for their cloud service called S3, so is this just early adopters teething troubles ?

No numbers of calls to Apple Press have actually gleaned a statement from them.

So what gives Apple, got your head in the clouds?

Will my posts ever end about the iphone ? Maybe they won't as it really is looking like a whole new platform. As a small business user I have been zapping the free applications from the store and can report it's mixed bag but ever so simple to use (note to Apple- so why on earth did you make MobileMe syncing so difficult?)

So for this week I choose Bloomberg on the iphone where you get world business news, the world markets, your stocks listed and a stock finder all on a sumptuously simple and deep black layout GUI. You can also contact a reporter's email about their new stories. I wonder if they reply....

This is just a end of the week Friday thought and it does depend on a who your friends are, but given the high text charges isn't texting on the on a iphone dead just email or AIM your friends?

Enjoy the weekend...

So for many of us this will be like the week after a tired and emotional Christmas. With the dust settling on the registration and MobileMe fiasco it is now time to look at how this phone works on a day to day basis, dipping into the Apps store and with my business and traveller’s hat look at how I actually use the slab.

The iPhone has changed the way we think about software on a phone and has made the browsing experience a joy (save the lack of Adobe Flash support). Given the leaps forward Apple has given Smart phones it is always too easy to say why doesn’t for example doesn’t it make my tea for me in the morning, so often is the case for demands on an all-in-one handheld device.

I can live without a 5MP camera, video support and MMS but here are 3 little things that leave me wondering why they were left out:

1 Cut and paste – Why is this so hard, can someone tell me? Is it because there is no central menu interface?
2 Multiple images send to MobileMe – again is this really rocket science?
3 Spotlight search – all that great technology is already on Mac OSX so why not on the iPhone?

Let’s hope with the time out on Apple’s 10.6 new feature development it means we’re going to get the phone OSX up to speed with more frequent updates. I presume we will get an update soon as there is a massive bug in the contacts file which keeps the contacts page from scrolling for at least 5 seconds after tapping on the app.

Oh and one last thing, doesn’t anyone have the feeling that Palm should have been here with the iPhone years ago they had a massive developers and programmes library. I remember around the year 2000 using my mobile phone modem on a Palm IIIc to pick up email and plan my working day and it was really pretty impressive back then. But now I hear the next Treo 800w is going to run Windows Mobile, what’s all that about?

So how was your first week with the phone ?