And outside of WebOS (lucky that I didn’t go down that path), I’ve been intrigued by the Windows Phone 7 OS since its launch just over a year ago. But the first iteration of the OS was too rough around the edges, and the lack of great hardware got me to stick with iOS until now at least. During a recent trip to the UK, I decided to get myself a Nokia Lumia 800 running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and I have to say that outside of a few little details (see below), I am really impressed by this device!

Let’s start with the hardware. I always loved Nokia hardware. And while the N900 was a little too bulky to my taste, the Lumia 800 feels really great in the hand. The weight is just right (for me at least) and the 3.7’’ screen size is exactly what I want. The industrial design / rounded shape of the phone has a very nice touch to it, and having all the connectors hidden is really nice, even if I am expecting the flip to the micro-USB port to break soon (so far so good). One the downside of the hardware, the Lumia only comes in a 16Gb model, but so far, it isn’t a big problem for me.

The 8 megapixels camera produces really good photos based on the little testing I have done. It isn’t a DSLR, but for a mobile phone, it does the trick really well to take pictures of white-boards at the end of meetings and the 720p videos are of good quality. Having a physical camera button that can be used at any time is really nice. I know some sites have done detailed comparison with other mobile phones, and you should look into these if the camera is the most important thing for you.

The one negative of the hardware is the lack of “ecosystem” around the device for in-car integration (or external loudspeakers, …) that is available around the iPod/iPhone dock connector. Not a deal-breaker, and it’s the same for any non-Apple based device I guess.

But what makes this device one of the few mobile phones that can really compete with an iPhone in my mind is the combination of the beautiful hardware with the really innovative and fluid UI from Microsoft’s mobile OS.

Metro, the user interface used by Windows Phone 7.x and that will also be the basis for Windows 8 when it comes out next year, is really enjoyable to use. Its task-centric approach compared to an app-centric world for iOS (and Android from what I can tell) is very refreshing. While there are many apps available for Windows Phone, the great integration of the main components with the key things you do on the phone anyway covers the majority of your needs out of the box. And as Harry McCracken wrote in a recent review: “I not only lived to tell the tale, but enjoyed doing so. In most respects that matter, Microsoft’s mobile software is terrific.”

One example of how this task-based WP7 OS user experience is different from iOS: if you want to contact a friend, you go to the People hub and select their name, without having to know if their details are in an Outlook, Office365, Facebook or LinkedIn contact. It’s one place to see your contact, get the recent status updates on the various social networks and to give them a call (it is a phone after all). On other devices, you would have to go to the built-in Contacts app, or to the Facebook app, or to the LinkedIn app… to find the right place. Yes, you will most often go to the right place for your common contacts, but it is very nice to have one hub to go.

The pictures hub works in a similar way, showing your camera roll, your synced photos as well as the Facebook albums from your friends. The messaging hub integrates SMS with Facebook chat and MSN Messenger all in one place. And the “me” hub centralizes your online profiles and ways to post status updates / check-ins in one place. I guess you get the idea

The web browser is a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9. While it isn’t compatible with all the latest mobile-OS frameworks which require a webkit browser, e.g. Sencha Touch based mobile apps won’t work for now, the rendering engine is fast and fluid, and the way multiple tabs are implemented is working well for me.

When it comes to Office compatibility, Microsoft has a great implementation (as expected) that integrates really well with SkyDrive, Office 365 as well as with SharePoint servers, and is compatible with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Sadly no WordPerfect support out of the box, but that would have been a huge surprise from Microsoft

But where Windows Phone 7.5 really shines compared to iOS is regarding Exchange / ActiveSync integration (including Office 365). You can combine multiple Exchange accounts into one consolidated inbox or keep them separate, which isn’t possible on iOS. The email functionality is really nice on WP7.5 and includes a conversation view very similar to the one in Outlook 2010, integrating the full discussion from all the folders and not only from the inbox. The only strange behaviour so far is that while I have configured my phone to use push-email, there doesn’t seem to be an automatic sync happening when you use your email client on the phone. Here is an example: I get a new mail. I read it on the phone (e.g. it gets marked as read) and then move it to an archive folder. That change will take a while to replicate on the server, but I can force the sync by a simple press of a button (I guess that this reduces the bandwidth used). But the really annoying thing is that the message in my archive folder will be marked as unread on the server!

On the subject of Exchange integration, the calendar and especially the group scheduling features are miles ahead of iOS. You can accept a meeting tentatively, propose a new time, include a comment with your answer, forward a meeting to someone else, and much more. The one thing not supported by WP7.5 is the ability to subscribe to iCal calendars (I want my TripIt calendar on my phone for example). The work-around here is to add the iCal calendars to your Windows Live Calendar, and they will then get automatically synchronized with the phone.

Throughout the phone, you can see that Microsoft has followed the rule that “perfection is in the detail” and that they went the extra mile to add little touches here and there. For example, when you scroll through a web page “almost” vertically, the phone will know that you actually wanted to be “really” vertically and will constraint the scrolling. Another example is how the spacing changes when you come at the bottom of a list, giving and elastic feel to the experience. One more example is when your phone is in your pocket with the screen off and a reminder rings. When you pull it out of your pocket, the phone turns on in locked screen mode with the reminder readily visible. No need to press the power button. This attention to details really makes the Nokia / Windows Phone combination a highly enjoyable experience.

There are three buttons on the front of every Windows Phone device. While the Windows logo gets you to the home / start screen, it will start the voice command feature if you keep it pressed. But not everything is perfect, and the voice recognition on the device is far from it. The idea is great (and Apple was able to implement it very well with its Siri acquisition from what I understand), but Microsoft still has a lot of work ahead to make this even close to usable.

To the right of the Windows logo is the search button, which opens Bing. One very nice touch there is that you can do an image search and there is built-in support for QR Codes / Microsoft Tags without the need for an extra app (again, task centric). But at the same time, the text scanning feature is far from perfect (or even usable), at least for the small tests I have done so far.

On the left of the Windows logo is the back button. Apple implemented something similar with 4 finger gestures, but this button is a welcome addition. Most apps / hubs us it extensively to come back from the setting for example (they are accessible from within the app, not hidden in the control panel). It is therefore very quick to go back a step if you tapped the wrong button, and by keeping the back button pressed, you will see the list of previously launched apps / hubs side by side for quick access.

The one hub I didn’t mention yet is the ”Music & Video” one. It is another example of a single place to access all your media. Overall this works well, but (yes, another but) I am really missing the 2x feature to listen to podcasts. I do listen to a lot of podcasts, and not having the option to go through them at double-speed in the car is really preventing me from using my Lumia for podcast listening. My only solution for now was to get a small iPod Nano for the car. This also means that I am unable to move away from iTunes, which is a shame.

There are tons of apps for Windows Phone 7.5 including a PDF reader from Adobe, a Kindle reader from Amazon, an Evernote client, a Netflix app, TripIt, RSS readers, and many more. The Nokia apps built-in are really nice as well, including one for off-line turn-by-turn navigation at no extra cost. But two are missing for me: Audible (rumoured for the 1st half of 2012) and Skype (shouldn’t be too hard now that this is a Microsoft product).

In summary, I am really thrilled by the Nokia Lumia 800 and its combination between the hardware and the software. It is impressive how mature a 1 year old operating system is, and while ahead on many aspects compared to the 5 year-old iOS 5 level, it still has a few things missing. If you are a heavy Outlook / Exchange user, this is well worth considering (I guess a Google Apps user will have a better experience with an Android Phones). If you want to get a taste of the user experience, try the Windows Phone simulator on a mobile webkit based browser. I will be using the Lumia for a while and will most certainly be selling my iPhone 4 shortly.

Update 19.12.2011: Just wanted to add on more piece of comparison. The Nokia Lumia 800 (16Gb) unlocked phone in the UK  is GBP 399, while the iPhone 4S (16Gb) unlocked is listed at GBP 499 on Apple’s site. For those outside of the UK, keep in mind that the VAT rate is 20%, which is included in the price quoted above.

For those who read my (very) infrequent posts, you know that I have been looking for solutions to reduce the numbers of trees needing to be cut every year in order to print all the documents I read (mainly in PDF and MS Office / WordPerfect formats). I also travel a lot, and have tried different solutions to reduce the weight of the books in my carry-on luggage (the Sony eBook reader does a good job for eBooks, but isn’t that great for PDFs). Doing email and browsing the web on the go are secondary (or so I thought) as I have an iPhone and a Sony Vaio laptop with me (and tethering works just fine in Canada with my data plan, sorry US friends).

My first experience with the iPad was for a few hours one evening shortly after it got released (and with no apps optimized for it to speak of). I really was not that impressed after this quick test. The device felt heavy after a short usage period, and the apps I had at that time didn’t provide a must-have type experience… A large iPod touch was my verdict when I gave it back, something I would not purchase.

But as for the other iOS devices, what really makes the iPad interesting are the apps. Noticing that I had more and more iPad compatible apps as my iPhone ones got updated, I wanted to give this device a new spin, this time for a longer period. I was able to borrow a WiFi-only model for my recent trip in Europe (3G would remain off anyway due to roaming charges) and I loaded it up with all my apps / information. I used iOS 3.2 for that trip, and used the 4.2.1 version of the OS for a few more days after its release (almost feels like a new device as Steve would say).

From a hardware perspective, there is a big debate if the tablet devices should be 5, 7, 10 or any other inches size. Considering that I already have an internet phone in my pocket (there was a great article about Symbian OS and why modern devices should not be called smart phones on TechCrunch recently), and that I really look for a content consuming device that I can have in my bag when I travel, I am happy with the 10” form-factor. The iPad size therefore is really well suited and is perfect for letter / A4 documents reading (smaller would require some reformatting). And when it comes to the weight of the device, yes it feels heavy, but you actually get used to it quickly. Battery life is great, and as long as you charge it once a day, as with any modern gizmo, you should be good to go (at least I am).

But not everything is perfect from a hardware perspective neither. First, why do you need a 10W USB charger, and why can’t the iPad charge over a normal USB connection? Really annoying when you travel. Yes, it might have taken a little longer to charge, but you cannot use a normal USB charger (or a laptop) to get juice to this device.

On the subject of hardware, the other big problem is that the iPad very quickly got old with the launch of the iPhone 4 and the latest iPod Touch, especially when it comes to the display resolution and the front-facing camera. I know there are many rumors that the iPad 2 will have a retina display (the name Apple chose for the high-DPI display used on the iPhone), and I really look forward to it. If this happens with v2, it will truly be a great device to read magazines and books on the screen. And having a front-facing camera will certainly be nice, but is not a must in my use-case.

I won’t spend too much time on the built-in apps as they are almost identical to the ones on the iPhone. Overall, Apple did a really nice job at leveraging the larger real-estate and optimizing the screen of the portrait vs. landscape mode. At the same time, why aren’t there calculator, weather or clock apps? I was hoping that these would make it in the iOS 4.2 update, but that is not the case. The one big negative with the built-in apps is that the iPad doesn’t support the concept of multiple users. Yes, I know, in the world of Apple, everyone in a household should have one of each, but seriously, would it be possible to select your username when you swipe to unlock, and then get access to your email, your calendar (or your Twitter if you have an app for that™). Perhaps with v2…

As mentioned, what makes the iPad such a great device is the amazing apps available. Instapaper (that I only started using recently) is really great to read long web articles, the Evernote app is cool (especially the offline mode for premium account holders), and Zinio is really nice to read a huge list of magazines. You can even subscribe to magazines with Zinio that you can only purchase individual copies on the iOS app. One example: Flying Mag has an iPad app where each issue is $2.99, but the Zinio subscription of the same magazine is under $13 for the year (12 issues)…

Watching videos (especially videocasts) and reading books / PDFs with iBooks is working really well. For those who recall one of my complain regarding improving eBook readers, the iBooks app actually tells you how many pages are left in the chapter you are currently reading… looks like Apple took the time to talk to people who actually read books like I do. And with DocumentsToGo supporting Dropbox and other online services for document syncing, you can read Office documents (and even edit / annotate them), PDFs and more on the go with ease (could DocsToGo add support for the WordPerfect format?). The only iPad optimized app really missing is the Remember the Milk iOS app, but it looks like Bob is hard at work eating bananas.

And this brings me to another of the improvement request for iPad 2: Enable apps to sync / download stuff in the background. I fully understand the policy set in place by Apple only to allow specific tasks to be done in the background in order to keep the battery life and user experience as unaffected as possible (Skype in the background in the iPhone is really horrible for battery life). I can also understand that there could be concerns about background data transfer over 3G (fewer and fewer people have unlimited 3G data plans)… but if my iPad / iPhone is connected to the power adapter and is on a WiFi network, why couldn’t Instapaper, Zinio and other content delivery applications such as The Economist app or even a podcast / videocast viewer apps download the latest stuff over night? The Kindle can do it with books, the Mail app can do it with emails… why can’t other apps do it (under conditions of external power and WiFi for example).

All in all, after two weeks of usage, I really like the iPad as a content consumption device. I even have a few ideas / concepts of iOS apps that I wasn’t able to find in the store, but I won’t share these in this public forum (if you are a serious developer and are interested, feel free to contact me). Will I buy one? I am really tempted, especially as Apple is doing their Black Friday promotion today. But with the next generation iPads expected for Q1 2011, I have decided that I will be waiting for v2, hoping that it will include a high-DPI display and a few other goodies before I make the jump.

Well, the laptop is now available in its standard form (the custom built ones will be available in about a week) and I decided to go on a field trip to the nearest Sony store to have a look at it. And after playing with the device in the store, I “borrowed” one for a few days before ordering the custom one (I was upfront about that with the sales guy at the store)… and I have to say, this is one impressive little high-end laptop.

I’ve been looking to replace my MacBook Air (the original model from two years ago)  for a few months and was really waiting for the i5/i7 generation of laptops to switch back to non Apple hardware (I have already switched back to Windows 7 as the primary operating system shortly after its launch). While I loved the size and weight of the MacBook Air, the form factor & design advantage does not seem to currently justify the price premium Apple is asking for their hardware. I will also add the disclaimer that at the time of blogging, Apple didn’t announce their i5/i7 models. Throughout this post, I will do some comparison with my existing 2 years old MacBook Air and will therefore not look at the performance (that just would not be fair).

Let’s start first with the screen resolution. The current generation (pre i5/i7) of MacBook 13” laptops (Pro and Air) have a screen resolution of 1280 x 800. Sony’s Vaio Z default resolution is at 1600 x 900 for the same display size. This means that the ratio is not 16:10, but 16:9 instead. In countries outside Canada, Sony also seems to have a version of the 13” display at 1920 x 1080 (in the US, this is only available part of the Signature Edition that is priced at $4,500… ouch). The interesting thing is that Windows is configured by default to have the display at 125%, which still gives large fonts. I always liked to have a high-resolution display and don’t mind small characters. I therefore changed the Win7 settings back to 100%. Once this was changed, I realized that going to 1920 x 1080 might actually make things unreadable (good thing I tested this, because the techno-geek in me thought that a higher resolution would be better ). Here is a comparison of 1280 x 800 vs 1600 x 900 screen estate:

Regarding the device size, I’ve taken a few pictures comparing the Vaio Z with a MacBook Air (in the form-factor that has been used for 2 years now and should get an update shortly based on Apple’s usual timelines). Keep in mind the the Vaio has a built in DVD Burner (Blu-Ray burner is an option) a Wireless On/Off switch (useful when you travel) and  following connectors: 3 USB, 1 VGA, 1 HDMI, 1 Express Card, 1 SD, 1 MemoryStick as well as Audio in and Audio out. The MacBook Air only has 1 USB, 1 Audio out (latest model support iPhone compatible headsets for the mic) and 1 display port (you need a cable to choose between VGA, DVI, …). This makes the size of the Vaio Z really impressive. The only thing I would comment is that the shell, while looking like it is aluminum, feels actually somewhat like plastic.

Even more impressive are the specs inside. In addition to the intel core i5 CPU (an i7 is available as an option), you can have up to 8Gb of RAM (2Gb max for the Air), and a Dual-SSD configuration (in Raid 0, with support for Quad-SSD from the controller) for up to 512 Gb of really really fast disk space (if you have a lot of money to spend). There are actually no configuration with traditional hard drives. And considering that the weight of the VPCZ1 isn’t noticeably different from the Air, this really makes the form factor Sony delivered with the Vaio Z an impressive one. The standard model I am currently trying out has the i5 520M at 2.40 GHz with 4Gb of RAM & 128 Gb of SSD space (actually 2 64Gb SSD drives), and comes with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Using it for a few hours, I am really impressed with the general speed and loading time (I am certain you can find detailed benchmarks on other sites).

Another thing on the hardware side that Sony has is what they call the “Dynamic Hybrid Graphics System”. Basically, they include both an intel graphics chipset and an nVidia GeForce GT 330M graphics card with 1Gb of VRAM. Even better, the Vaio is capable of automatically switching from one to the other (built-in slower but lower power graphics when on battery, dedicated faster graphics when plugged-in). You can also switch this yourself if you want.

There is a little thing I noticed with the form factor… for the first few minutes of using the keyboard, I had the impression that the spacing between the keys where slightly wider than what I am used to on the MacBook… but this feeling vanished after a few minutes of typing (this blog post is written with the Z on my lap with battery power, more on this later).

Another thing that I really appreciated with the Apple laptops is the noise the fan does, or should I say the lack of noise. Having played with an HP Touchsmart tx2 last year, I was a little concerned about another PC device that sounds like a jet airplane taking off on a short runway. Well, the Sony laptop is nothing the like. On battery and with normal usage, the fan noise on the Vaio Z is at about the same level as the one on my MacBook Air. And the impressive thing is that the bottom of the laptop is noticeably cooler than the Air.

From a battery perspective, the model I have been playing with has the standard battery. Sony claims up to 6.5 hours of life, which from the tests I have done so far will translate into a good 4 to 4.5 hours of continuous normal use on WiFi. There is also an option for a long-life battery with up to 10-11 hours of battery life according to the manufacturer (didn’t test it, but sure will order it for the custom configuration) which should keep the device going for flights across the Atlantic.

When considering a new laptop, I’ve been looking at two options: Either the Sony Vaio Z described here (actually its Custom version) or the Lenovo ThinkPad X201T, a 12” Tablet PC convertible device with an i5/i7 CPU. My dream configuration would be to have a touch-screen built into the Vaio Z (I don’t need the convertible aspect), but comparing the other specs, the Vaio Z wins my choice. And when compared to a MacBook Pro 13”  (pre core i5/i7 configuration), the Apple tax remains a good 10% for an similar configuration & lower screen resolution (assuming same pricing for the i5/i7 models from Apple which are bound to be release any day now). The one thing I will be missing from my Air (from what I can tell so far) is the multi-touch trackpad. (Update April 2, 2010: It actually seems that the trackpad supports at least some basic multi-touch gestures, but that they are disabled by default and can be turned on with the Synaptics drivers… to be confirmed)

All and all, it is now time to return the standard Vaio Z to the store, get a refund and place the order for the custom model. Looks like I will have a trans-pacific flight in April where I will put that little marvel of technology to good use.

Updage April 23, 2010: I’ve been traveling over the last two weeks with my Core i7 version of the Vaio Z and I have to say that this is one great little laptop. I also got the long life battery, which gave me a good 8 hours of life with some time to spare on board of a long-haul flight, including watching a 2 hour movie with the brightness to the max. I also love the screen resolution and the speed the SSD drives provide. And I really don’t miss the Apple trackpad that much in the end. All in all, I can only highly recommend it.

In a nutshell, I still prefer to read books / documents on paper, but the geek toy solution works quite nicely. The main reasons are, in no particular order: DRM, geo-specific content, no way to flip through pages and no way to annotate / highlight the text you are reading.

As previously mentioned, the reading experience is really nice with the ePaper technology as it mimics nicely how traditional paper interacts with light and the size of the device / form-factor in the hand. It is also very nice to be able to carry around only a small device with the big book you are almost done reading and the next one you absolutely want to get through, especially when traveling.

But there are a few things that I find annoying or even frustrating, that need to be addressed before I would ever consider getting an updated device or stop purchasing paper books all together (and I do buy a lot of books). So here you go:

1. DRM: Yes, it is possible to read PDFs on my eBook device, and there are sites that offer free eBooks, but still, the vast majority of the books I am interested in are protected, locked and only compatible with one specific hardware. The fact that I can read a physical book and then lend it to a friend / family member is a huge plus for the multi-century old technology. If DRM is a requirement (not that I think it should be), then why not at least evaluate a similar option as the one for movies… you buy the DVD/Blu-Ray and you get a free DRMed Digital Copy. There is no way I am going to pay twice for the same book. Some publisher are already going in that direction. For example, I just got an email from PackPub with the option do download the previously purchased eBooks in unprotected PDF format. Let’s hope the book industry as a whole will understand this soon based on the experience of their music industry counterparts who finally gave up on DRM (on a side note, I have stopped purchasing CDs since DRM-free music being readily available and am actually buying more music now).
2. Geo-specific content: OK, most of you might not experience this as a problem, but because the content is available in digital form and there is no shipping / storage limitation, why couldn’t I purchase European books while living in Canada (yes, I originally come from the other side of the Atlantic). I know, traditionally, there was a geographical breakdown set in place for the right holders due to the cost of distribution, but now that everything is digital, there is no reason for this… except if the book writers don’t want their works to be read and don’t want to get paid for them. This comment, just like the one above regarding DRM, is applicable for all digital contents including music and movies, not only books
3. Flipping through the pages: This is one of the biggest negatives related to the user experience of the eBook Readers in general from what I can tell. Here is a simple scenario that applies to me almost every every time I plan to read a chapter: I want to know how many pages I will read, e.g. how long it will take me, to go through this chapter. Do I have the time / am I not to tired / … to go through it? With a traditional book, it’s very easy: just flip through the pages till the next chapter, and then do a mental page count calculation. Yep, I can read through 20 pages tonight. With an eBook Reader, there is no way I can think of to get this information as flipping through the pages are really slow. Perhaps it’s just me, but I really like to finish a chapter before putting the book down. Why couldn’t there be a button on the eBook Reader that tells me how many pages are still left to the end of the section, chapter, book, …? And as this device has some memory and a built-in CPU, why couldn’t it tell me, based my average historical page reading time, how long this will take approximatively. My car can tell me how many more kilometers / miles I can still drive before I need to fill-up the gas. It sometimes feels like the device was designed by people who might not read that many books (no, programming languages reference guides don’t count).
4. Annotation / highlighting: When reading a non-fiction book, I usually have a market / pencil with me to highlight words, sentences or paragraphs that I might want to easily find later. With the eBook Reader, there is no easy way to do so. The new Sony Reader has a touch-based display, but from all the information I can see, this is still not possible neither. And once I have highlighted the text that I am interested in, could I get a simply summary sheet of everything I highlighted with links to the corresponding page. That would be a great improvement over paper. Think of if as a way to tag parts of the book based on what I want, not the Table of Content or Index that the publisher / author decided on my behalf.

All in all, eBook Readers are great for people who travel a lot and ideally are geeks, but there is still some progress to do before there will be mass-adoption, especially considering that the competition is a technology that has improved over many centuries and that brings a lot more flexibility to the user.

Update – March 13, 2009: Looking at the Sony site, it appears that the new version of the eBook Reader (the PRS-700) had annotation / highlighting available through the touch-screen. I haven’t played with it, but intend to go to a Sony Store shortly to give it a spin. Anyone knows is some of my comments are solved with the Kindle?

Update 2 – March 21, 2009: I’ve played with the PRS-700 for a week. Annotation works really well on the device, but there is no way to get the notes off the device to use somewhere else, not even a text file with the highlights. This means it is a good first step in the right direction, but it isn’t there yet. Combined with the fact that the screen contrast is a lot worst than the previous generation of eBook Reader from Sony, I returned the 700 to the Sony Store and will continue to use my 505 until something better comes up.

Update 3 – March 21, 2009: If you didn’t notice, Google and Sony announced that you can now get all the Google books in public domain in a format that is compatible with the Sony eBook Readers and will display nicely. Really cool.

The one thing they didn’t say is that you needed to sign-up for a voice plan of at least $35 per month to be eligible to the $199 / $299 purchase price for the iPhone 8Gb / 16Gb respectively. If you want a $30 per month voice plan, the phone will cost you an extra $50 (less that 1 year of $5 extra subscription if you do the math). In addition to that, they are offering Visual voice mail for $8 per month as a stand-alone offer or for $15 per month part of a pack that also includes caller id and way to many SMS messages. Therefore, the cheapest comparable monthly plan that you could go with a 6Gb per month data plan was, under this offer, CA$ 73.

So how does it look when you map this pricing against the others in the graph I previously used:

We have a clear winner there, except if you will only use less than about 400Mb of data per month. But then again, you need to hurry to get this plan as Rogers / Fido announced it would only be available until the end of August 2008… except if they decided to extend the offer.

One more thing, if you manage to exceed the 6Gb limit, pricing is identically to the iPhone plans, e.g. $0.5 per megabyte for the first 60Mb and $0.03 per megabyte thereafter. This means that 10Gb of data per month will still be under $225… OK, not as cheap as the unlimited data in the USA, but almost half of the original iPhone pricing offering from the canadian mobile network operator.

The one huge thing that is a potential show-stopper for me is the 3-year contract that you have to sign to be able to have an iPhone in Canada. I don’t know what will happen in 3 years time, but I am 100% certain that I won’t have the same phone (iPhone 4.0 should be out by then). I would not mind paying more more for the phone now so that I don’t need to get locked in for such a long period of time.

Digging further into the offering, I wanted to do the math behind cost for data usage, to get a better picture of what we are actually talking about… and the findings are quite interesting. All pricing below are in Canadian Dollars.

In a nutshell, if you expect to transfer more than 2.1Gb per month and don’t use the iPhone as a phone a lot (under 150 minutes per month), go with the $60 plan, it’s cheaper! If you transfer 5Gb per month, it will cost you $229.80, $234.30, $251.08 and $235.36 on the $60, $75, $100 and $115 plans respectively.

So what do the numbers tell us. Last week, Rogers / Fido announced the price plans they are going to offer for the iPhone in Canada. Here is a screenshot of their pricing as of June 30th (link to the page here):

My initial reaction was really negative based on this. Historically, I haven’t used my cell phones a lot as a phone, but am expecting to use the data option of the iPhone extensively. Therefore linking the included minutes with the data usage doesn’t make sense to me. I am, for the rest of this post, assuming that 150 minutes of voice communications per month will be more than enough for my needs.

And when it comes to text messages, I am planning to have CallerID on my phone, e.g. I will certainly end-up with the $15 Value Pack 1 that bumps the SMS count to 2,500 on every plan (not sure about the extra $5 for the Value Pack 2).

Therefore, the choice of the price plan really comes down to the data usage. To better understand this, I built a little spreadsheet that calculates the actual cost for different amounts of data transfered, resulting in interesting findings. Again, all these assume that the number of included voice minutes are irrelevant.

• You can immediately see the spike due to the first extra 60Mb at $0.5 per Megabyte vs. the $0.03 per Mb linear increase thereafter.
• First and foremost, avoid the $100 plan (green line in the graph)… it is the most expensive of all by over $20 per month, except if you are certain you will be between 800Mb and 1Gb every month.
• The $115 plan (purple line in the graph) only makes sense if you are going to be between 1 and 2Gb every month. Above 2.05Gb of data transfer, it will cost you about 6$ more per month than on the $60 plan.
• The $75 plan (red line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer between 400Mb and 800Mb. Above that, it is about $5 more expensive than the $60 plan, and it is $1 cheaper than the $115 plan if you transfer more than 2.1Gb per month.
• The $60 plan (blue line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer less than 400 Mb or more than 2.1Gb. Comparing the $60 and the $115 plans, you are better off with the cheapest plan except if you know you will be between 1.25 an 2.05Gb per month of data transfer every month for 3 years.

Update (June 10, 2008): OK, my unfounded rumor was completely wrong… that must be why it was unfounded

With the iPhone 1.0, Apple introduced a brand new business model for the mobile phone operators. Instead of massively subsidizing the devices, locking in the users for a multi-year period and keeping all the revenue, the new approach was to charge full price for the phone and then get a revenue share of the subscription. Not only did this provide a high perceived value by the end users as they had to pay for it (normal cell phones are considered “free” or at least “cheap”), but it also opened up a brand new revenue stream for Apple in addition to the one from the sale of the hardware… But to achieve this, it required the phone to be locked and only available to the mobile phone operators who agreed to the revenue share. Great model, except that the hacker community didn’t like AT&T or didn’t live in the USA and took this as a great challenge. They were able to defeat the mechanisms in place on an ongoing basis… I for example used ZiPhone to unlock my iPhone and use it on the Fido network (a fully owned subsidiary of Rogers) here in Canada without any problem.

So why would Apple go ahead with an unlocked iPhone and how could they protect the ongoing payment from the mobile operators, which enable them to double the revenue per device according to the estimates?

Regarding the why, my guess is that the adoption rate from operators around the world hasn’t been at the level that Apple had hoped, resulting in lower than forecasted unit sales of the iPhone. In addition, now that the Cupertino company has realized that you cannot win the fight against hackers (very similar to the intentional pirates in the software world, but that’s for another blog post), it has added cost to the development and had negative impact on the user experience with the brand and device to the reason why to unlock the device… With revenue soon to come from the distribution of third-party applications, having as many devices as possible out there is certainly a very attractive value proposition.

Regarding the how to protect the revenue stream, the answer is in the software. No, not in the software of the iPhone itself, much more in the software that is implemented by the mobile operator to deliver specific services for the device from Apple, which will be a lot harder to hack or pirate. For example, I don’t have (currently) visual voice mail in Canada. Now that’s certainly not a killer feature for me and I can live without it, but what if the iPhone 2.0 was to add more of these “unique” features that require to be on a network which provides a revenue share to Apple. A few examples that come to my mind are visual chats between iPhone users, instant messaging (remember, rumor has it that this will be one type of app that won’t be allowed to be developed by third-parties), or an access to your iDisk (hey, there are rumors of updating .Mac in sync with the WWDC iPhone announcement, so why not). Basically any feature that won’t be available on the iPod touch could require a subscription with an Apple approved mobile network operator (e.g. one who provides a revenue share to Apple).

And the good thing is that this “how” would also work in countries where iPhone 1.0 where introduced, except that there will most certainly not be other operators who will be able to offer Apple’s cell phone and won’t have the service. Finally, with the latest rumors about Rogers offering an attractive data plan price according to Electronista (at least for the HTTP protocol), looks like I will need to change mine for a new one soon.

OK, I know this is a stretch, but as mentioned in the title, this is a completely unfounded rumor that I just made out of thin air. If you don’t agree with my logic, feel free to let me know

When Apple announced the MacBook Air, I looked at it with an intrigued eye, but didn’t place the order immediately (I know, really amazing) as I was still quite happy with my original 15” MacBook Pro (the Core Duo version). But then, walking into an Apple Store in Montréal, I saw the Air and by the time I left the mall, I had one of the SSD based model in a small bag specifically designed for it, looking forward to experience it fully during a three weeks trip to Australia and Taiwan. In Summary: I love it!

First things first, this blog entry is not about benchmarking, so let me answer the battery question first: on a plane, e.g. without wireless connectivity, I get over 5 hours of battery time reading PDFs, writing documents, cleaning-up my inbox and catching up my offline Google Reader account, while listening to some music and podcasts in the background. Now with WiFi enabled, I appear to get about 4.5 hours (again, I did not time it exactly). OK well enough time for my needs. Yes, getting 15+ hours battery time would help to keep the Air alive during a Vancouver, Canada to Sydney, Australia flight. But in that case, first, I still try to sleep a little, and second, I had a power-plug near my seat to charge back the battery while sleeping. And the reason I wasn’t using the MacBook Air while having the power plug connected on the plane is that there seems to be, as previously reported, a conflict between the type of power provided while in the air and the multi-touch trackpad! And yes, I just confirmed it during the Air Canada flight home I am currently sitting on between Tokyo, Japan and Toronto, Canada. I will report this issue to Apple tomorrow as it really defeats the logic that a device aimed at the frequent travelers has issues when you actually travel!

On the subject of the multi-touch track-pad, I have been very positively surprised by it. Yes, I’ve been experiencing multi-touch on the iPhone for a few months now and am a strong believer of this type of interaction with the device, but I wasn’t clear on how that would work on a “computer” operating system. There again, the integration with the applications that Apple delivers is seamless (other applications will need to be update to react correctly to these events). For example, when I read to the latest PDF edition of the “Le Temps” newspaper with Preview, I can very easily zoom into and flip through pages, even rotating them is very easy, even if a lot less useful when it comes to reading a magazine on the screen. iPhoto also works very well with the track-pad. I can’t wait for tools such as Pixelmator to support the multi-touch events and build on them for an even better user experience.

Now when it comes to the keyboard and the screen, these are absolutely great to use. The keyboard feel is really nice (I am slowly getting to a North American keyboard as I’ve always been using a Swiss French keyboard before, and am getting better with accented characters). The LED glossy screen is really nice to work with. It is actually so bright when turned all the way on that I normally keep the brightness between 40 to 50%. That certainly helps with battery time.

I know that a lot of people have been complaining that there is no integrated DVD drive and no built-in Ethernet port, not to mention the lack of built-in EVDO or EDGE support. In all cases, having been on the road for three week, I didn’t miss any of them a single time. Regarding the DVD drive, I actually can’t recall the last time I used the DVD drive while traveling. I normally need it to install software, and the remote installation feature works amazingly well. But I only install software when I am at home normally. In addition, as I am carrying my work laptop anyway, I installed the remote DVD software support there just in case.

When it comes to built-in Ethernet port, I am very happy with WiFi support. Most of the hotels I stay have actually wireless access available these days. And for those who have only Ethernet access, I discovered a long time that the best solution is to have an Airport Express base station in my suite-case, so that I can actually use my laptop anywhere in the hotel room, and not only at the desk with the generally uncomfortable chair. Oh yes, and when it comes to EVDO or EDGE support, I live in Canada, do I need to say more? With a mobile phone provider who charges about 1$ per Megabyte before roaming charges, I don’t see this as an option any time soon anyway.

I know that it is, according to the specs at least, the slowest Mac currently available. But as a user of a laptop traveling to surf the web, answer emails, write documents and view the photos I captured during the trip, it is more than fast enough for my needs. And I’ve been using vmWare Fusion 1.1 (more on this in the future) with a Windows XP virtual machine to run CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT X4 on it very smoothly, thanks to the 2Gb of RAM that come standard. For the more advanced things such as advanced video editing or 3D modeling, I will be using the much faster and powerful machine I have at home.

The other factor to consider is the disk space. With the SSD option, the size announced by Apple for the drive is 64Gb. Oh yes, once formatted, it goes down to 55.4 Gb?!? Talk about maths that go wrong. Out of that, you’ll need about 10Gb for the Operating System, 10 Gb for applications (Xslimmer is a must-have application for Air owners) and another 15 Gb for the Windows virtual machine, which leaves 20Gb to play with. This means you don’t have enough space to store your entire music and photo library, but it leaves plenty for data when you are on the road. Here is how I’ve got it split currently: About 8Gb for iTunes (I sync my iPhone with the Air), about 2Gb max for all the photos I’ve captured during my trips and about 10Gb for a full sync of my iDisk. Yes, .Mac makes total sense for people with multiple Macs – the possibility to synchronize the settings and data on multiple computers is really great, and having the “Back to my Mac” feature of 10.5 enable you to access that one file you completely forgot to copy before leaving home. Even better, it works really well.

All in all, the MacBook Air is a fantastic device when traveling that gets people turning their head and asking about how I like it. The constraints are something you need to consider up-front and make sure they won’t be a problem for you. I cannot see it as the main computer for most of us, but as the machine to take with them for the road-warriors that syncs with the iMac they have at home, it is an amazing device – if only the price was a little more affordable

But after 5+ hours of usage, I needed to recharge the battery. Good news, there was a 110V power plug in the seat, so I connect my power adapter. And then, I get a huge surprise… the multi-touch trackpad starts behaving in a very strange way… the cursor starts jumping across the screen, when in the finder, the desktop icons change sizes… and as soon as I disconnect the power, everything is back to normal. I was therefore able to watch a movie on the Air, but every time I needed to move the cursor, I had to disconnect the power cord first???

I will try this again on my flight back, and if the problem is still there, I will report the details to Apple. It sounds really strange that a sub-notebook designed for road-warriors could have problems when used in a typical scenario for the target audience.

With all the noise about the Amazon Kindle these days (yet another device that won’t be available in Canada for the foreseeable future), I was really surprised by the bad press the eBook Reader from Sony was getting. Well, if Sony only sold a few thousands of these, I am one of the happy owners. Overall, the book reading experience is really nice, PDF support is bad and the Connect online bookstore has a long way to go before it can be at the same seamless experience level as iTunes.

I have been interested in the ePaper technology for a while. I do travel on a regular basis for my job, and the majority of these trips are on flights over 4 hours. In addition that that, I really like reading books (when time permits). One of the biggest problems I normally have when I travel is that I am in the middle of a book with normally 150 pages to go… this means that I will be done reading it before my plane lands at its destination. So the only option for myself is to take a second book with me. As I already carry a lot of “stuff” when I travel, I was looking for a way to avoid this.

The other thing that is part of my job is to read documents such as analysts reports or white paper, usually in PDF or RTF format. The Sony eBook Reader is supposed to support these formats, as well as Microsoft Word (but no Corel WordPerfect) and MP3 files for music and audiobooks. More on this later.

To stay true with Sony, the software that comes with the eReader only works on Windows. But the great news with this new version of the device is that you can simply drag&drop documents to the internal memory or to the memory cards through a USB connection and they will automatically get added to your available books. Even better, in addition to the expected Memory Stick format, the PRS-505 also has an SD Memory slot! Yes, I know, Sony supporting something else that their own format. And the other good news is that this device charges itself through USB! No need for a separate charger when traveling.

When it comes to openness, the PRS-505 can display RTF, DOC and unencrypted PDF files directly. This is great in theory, up to the point where you try to display a PDF document formatted for US Letter or A4 (e.g. the size of most of the PDF files). They look really bad on the Sony eReader. One work-around is to set the device in Landscape mode, but even then, the quality is not good enough to be readable. Sony recommends to re-generate the PDF according to their specifications to solve this problem! As if I could contact Forester to get this done… I haven’t noticed this problem with RTFs as the device is able to reflow the text to better match the screen. Sony could have supported the Mobile PDF specs and give the option to the user to either display the PDF in its original formatting or optimize the document for ePaper reading, but they did not. For those of you who have a similar problem, here is my solution: Use Corel WordPerfect’s PDF import feature. You can then save the document in RTF format and display it correctly on the eReader.

When it comes to closeness, the Sony device uses the proprietary BBeB format for its own eBooks. While some sites are looking at specifications and reverse-engineering of the format, there is no easy way to convert documents, especially PDF ones, into the BBeB format. Some free eBooks sites support the BBeB format. Integrated with the Windows software that comes with the eReader, you can buy books online (to browse the catalogue of available titles, go to ebooks.connect.com). Both the book library software and the online book store have a long way to go if they want to provide the same user experience as with iTunes, but then again, Sony is only at version 2.0, while Apple is currently at version 7.5. Very nice from Sony, when you register your eReader, your account enables you to download 100 classic books, including H.G. Wells, Shakespeare, and many more. I got myself Dan Browns’ Digital Fortress (in case you ask, this is not a free “classic book”) to conduct my “real-life” book reading test. Conclusion: I enjoyed the book

When it comes to reading books, you can feel that this is not a version 1.0 product. The device is light, its aluminum finish makes it comfortable to hold in your hand and the buttons to flip pages are conveniently positioned both on the right and at the bottom of the device. You can choose your font size and bookmark pages for future reference. The ePaper technology used makes it very nice to ready long documents: Because there is no backlight required, the eyes don’t get tired very quickly (just like with normal paper) and battery life is really great. Yes, the page flipping is a little strange at first with the black flash, but I found the reading experience really nice.

One thing I found out: Don’t leave the eReader connected to a computer that is in stand-by… it will drain the power of the Sony device very quickly and you will then need to recharge it. This is at least the case on my MacBook Pro.

Finally, I haven’t really tried the MP3 and photo-display feature. One thing that I noticed is missing is support for Audible audiobooks. It would be great to be able to read a book or to listen to it. As Sony isn’t selling audiobooks on its online store, why not partner with Audible who is offering a great service (and of whom I already have quite a few books)… Do I really need to manually convert all these files into MP3 before I can listen to them on my eBook reader?

All in all, this is a great little device. Certainly way to early for mass adoption, but it is showing the way to come. As the technology evolves, prices go down and companies think more and more about the user experience, this will become a viable experience for many of us who read a lot. The biggest problem (or advantage) is that my bookshelfs will not fill-up that quickly any more. I would love the option to buy the physical book and get the electronic copy for free as a download for when I travel. Perhaps that’s the power Amazon has over Sony when it comes to eBooks… wait and see.

Living about one hour north of the US border, I drove down to a small town in upstate New York last weekend to get my iPhone and activated it as a pay-as-you-go cell phone from a Starbucks (you know, the other Apple partner when it comes to this device) and updated it to the 1.1.1 firmware. As soon as I crossed the border back, I took the SIM card out so that the battery would not drain to quickly, especially as AT&T dosen’t offer international roaming on their GoPhone plans. Oh yes, Apple, I know I removed the SIM card… no need to remind me about that on a regular basis with a modal dialog box.

Having played with the iPhone for about a week, I have to say that the number one complain I have is the missing EDGE network connectivity. I thought about unlocking it, but with the current pricing offered by Rogers in Canada, the GSM mobile phone operator in this country, this is clearly not a viable option. For 10$ you get 10 Mb of data, and anything above that is charged at 3 cents per kilobyte! At the same time, Rogers offers a dedicated box for Internet access through GSM at 30$ per month for 10Gb of data… Where is the catch? All I want is a data-only plan through GSM

Back to the device from Apple. It took me a while to figure out how to type international characters: simply keep the key pressed for a while and you will get access to é è or ç. With this, I have to say that the keyboard is actually better than I anticipated. The predictive recommendation of the word you planned to type is really good, except when you try typing some French, at which point it really becomes an annoyance. My single biggest issue with the text editing capabilities of the iPhone is that there is NO selecting of a block of text an NO cut & pasting functionality on this device, or at least I didn’t figure it out yet. Come on Apple, you even had this on MacOS 1.0 and PalmOS had it as well since the PalmPilot 1000.

I know this has been covered by many other bloggers in there comments, but the user experience inconsistencies are certainly not what I would have expected from Apple. One example: landscape mode. In Safari, this works great to view web sites which have large areas of text. But why isn’t there the capability of turning the iPhone when using the mail application? Many of the emails I get, and especially those newsletters and other automated messages in HTML format such as the Google Alerts, would be much more readable in landscape mode. I suppose this will come with a future firmware update, or at least I hope so

And while on the subject of email, any chance the Junk mail feature of Mail.app on the desktop could be added to the one on the mobile device? I understand that this is a version 1.0 of the email client software, and I have high hopes that this will come in the (near?) future. Part from this, the email experience is almost as good as a blackberry in my mind, and better in some aspects (direct IMAP access for example).

Now about the web browser. In one word: great! It is, as many have already stated, the best user experience when it comes to surfing the Interweb on a mobile device that I ever had. Navigating, zooming and interacting with Safari is a real pleasure. Two missing things to make it perfect: plug-ins such as Flash or possibly Java, and off-line mode… And this is not only because I am in Canada. As pointed out by Alessandro in a recent blog post, the PDF support, as well as the MS Word reader, are working as well as on a desktop computer and are a real pleasure to use… a lot better than the Sony Reader or any other mobile PDF / Office format reader. Next step, support for the Corel WordPerfect formats

Regarding the YouTube experience, there are actually quite a few things missing. For example, you cannot login into your account, I don’t understand how to set the rating (both are available on the AppleTV). And more annoying is the fact that not every movie is available in an iPhone compatible format as of yet. But I have to say that opening YouTube movies by simply following the link from an email is cool.

Many things have been said regarding the iPod feature and I have to say that in my mind, the iPhone (and the iPod Touch) is the best iPod ever. The only problem, which is a design constraint, is that because this device is based on a touch-screen, you really don’t know what you are doing without looking at the screen. If you want to pause or skip the song you are listening for example, you really need to see the screen to do so, and that can be dangerous while driving.

Regarding the additional applications, the clock is really nice, but I am really sorry to see that you can only set a ring-tone as an alarm song, not any song from your iTunes library. The calculator is basic, but can be useful and the notepad is working very well, outside the fact that there is no landscape mode there neither. I can’t wait for MacOS 10.5 later this month as rumor has it that notes will sync with your computer then. The camera is good enough for a quick shot (I use it often to capture notes on whiteboards after a meeting) and the photo gallery feature is really nice, especially as it leverages the multi-touch capabilities of the device. The Calendar application still needs some polishing: Why can’t I have the various categories that I use in iCal show up correctly on the iPhone? And regarding iTunes, it is very hard to find iTunes plus songs to purchase (I am not purchasing DRMed songs). Oh, and when is Apple adding Podcasts, Audiobooks and videos sales through the Wireless iTunes store?

While Syncing works great, I am a little annoyed with the dialog box that pops-up every time telling me that this device is not certified for the iPhone and that I might have interferences… well, at least it works.

I can’t wait for Apple to start having third party applications for sale on the iTunes store… I was happy to see that my guess about native applications for this device is also coming from other bloggers now (I just hope they didn’t take my blog post as a reliable source of information as that specific post got a lot more traffic than average on my blog).

All in all, the iPhone, even without a SIM / EDGE connectivity is a fantastic replacement for both my iPod and my Palm TX (I didn’t use many third-party apps on it anyway). Looking back to my decision not to get the iPod Touch, I am happy with it. My biggest expectation is now that Rogers will start to sell iPhones with data plans in Canada, and that a firmware update of my AT&T locked device will enable me to use the phone features in the country I live

Well, it’s not stated in such an obvious way, but I thought it would be fun to apply the same type of translation as between the Apple PR and the geeks community. So what is actually included in this document. Well, there is a simple sentence that states:

Currently, developers create web applications for iPhone, not native applications (page 7 of the PDF published on Sept 27, 2007)

I highlighted the word “Currently”, but if that’s not the best source for the rumors to explode, I really don’t know what could make it happen

And if you wonder what for a crazy idea I have to read these times of documents, I always found the Apple UI guideline documents very interesting to read, especially when working in Product Management for a software company.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, opinion

In the long run, I believe that Apple will be offering an SDK to third-party developers. But it might actually not come in a format similar to Xcode or Visual Studio, e.g. software that enables you to create more software that you can redistribute without any limitations, except those you add. Instead, the iPhone SDK might actually follow much closer the model adopted by Gaming Consoles. This is a closed set of developer tools only available under non-disclosure and for a fee, that enables to create solutions specifically for that one platform. But even more interesting for Apple looking at this model is the fact that the the hardware manufacturers gets a cut for every game sold… that’s right: Apple already earns money on the hardware, the service as well as on the music and video (at least as the intermediary). Simply extending this to a percentage of the cost of the software isn’t to much of a stretch.

Even better, the distribution mechanism is already fully in place: the iTunes Store. Part of this iPhone SDK, third-party developers will be submitting the software to Apple for approval (hey, you wouldn’t want to have something on the iPhone that can bypass the process, would you?) After quality testing, Apple would post the application on the appropriate section of the store, enabling users to buy these as easily as music or video. And boom, it’s on your iPhone. Apple is only going to take an 80% cut from the $9.99 transaction, and because it is all managed in iTunes, it will automatically sync with the device just like games for the iPod do.

But why didn’t the Cupertino company announce this during the launch even in June 2007. For this model to work, you need to have a strong leverage. Apple already owns the eCommerce experience, from the store presentation to the installation on the device, including a seamless one-click transaction. What Apple is missing is the target market to be attractive to the third-party developers. Just like Sony is able to get more and more game developers to support the Playstation 3 platform with every unit of the game console sold (gamers need to buy 3-5 games for the hardware manufacturer to break-even from what I understand), Apple will gain a lot of strength once it has 10 million iPhone users and just as many iPod touch users one year after launch. Having a potential target market of 20 million users growing rapidly is a very interesting value proposition for very innovative third-party developers, even if he has to give a good part of the price the user pays… if you develop the killer application and get 1% of the iPhone / iPod touch users to buy it, there is a potential for $400’000 if you only make $2 per unit. Oh yes, and Apple would add $1.6M to the revenue stream from the iTunes Store with almost now work… that’s what I call monetizing the user base.

The web browser experience is really great (blogging from the iPhone right now) and Google Maps is fun to use. YouTube will be fun, but this small device won’t replace the AppleTV. I haven’t tried the mail client (it is not my phone) and the phone doesn’t work as this is a locked US iPhone with an AT&T pay as you go SIM.

Rogers, can you please speed-up the introduction of the iPhone in Canada? I would rather not want to buy it in the States and have to hack it. Well, let’s see how long I can wait

Update (Sept 18, 2008): the big question is much more iPhone 8Gb or iPod touch 16Gb… is a de-featured device with more space better? After trying out the email client with my IMAP server I’ve got the answer: iPhone, even one where the phone part doesn’t work

I was a few days in the USA for a user conference and had the opportunity to experience first hand the work done by Apple’s communication and marketing teams in preparation of the iPhone availability at 18.00 local time on June 29, 2007… Blogs and news sites are buzzing like crazy about this new device, Podcasts covering the whole tech world spend most of the show talking about it, and the daily nation-wide newspapers provide in-depth coverage of the convergence between and iPod, a Phone and an Internet device, some even doing so on the front page.

Technorati Tags: apple, hardware, iPhone, smartphone

The hype goes to the point that all Apple and AT&T (the mobile network on which the iPhone will work) stores will close at 16.00 and re-open at 18.00. According to the rumors, it’s during these two hours that the phones will actually be delivered to all the stores across the US. What a logistics nightmare.

Coming from a company who is known to be, in recent years at last, very secretive when it comes to new products, Apple has done a great job at orchestrating this whole launch, starting with a pre-announcement 6 months before the availability of the product. But June has really provided great examples on how to successfully launch a brand new product. Apple has been releasing regular press releases about the iPhone, addressing information that rumors were covering in long lengths without any fact. The marketing team at the same time released additional information on the web site on a regular basis, continuously teasing the audience. It almost feels like Disney / Pixar methods and techniques for a movie launch where applied for this new device, going from teasers (movies on Apple.com and on TV), merchandize (iPhone accessories coming shortly) and media coverage. The only thing missing is the video game… but that’s on the device itself!

As a side note on the ads, it appears that the guy holding the iPhone is actually a very tall person with huge hands, giving the impression of a small phone. Very similar to the strategy used in the luxury watches industry, having the time showing 10.10 to have a smile type shape (does not work with digital watches ).

My biggest wonder right now is if it has not been over-hyped, and that the actual product is under-delivering the promise. To bad I won’t be in the USA this Friday to see the line-up in front of the stores to get the phone, as everyone is expecting a Wii / PS3 effect all over again. And for its availability in Canada, Rogers will start selling the iPhone whenever Apple will be ready to deliver them, e.g. it will depend on the demand from the US market. No worry for me, I still don’t believe this will be a replacement for my Blackberry, even if I am sure that as soon as I’ll see it, I’ll want one… I’ll just have to rationalize that it’s a great device to blog, participate in the forums and update my facebook account all day long!

Technorati Tags: hardware, smartphone

I got myself a Mylo about two weeks ago. It’s a wired little piece of WiFi electronics that is targeted at the IM generation. The Sony Mylo is a device that is just slightly larger and thicker than an average modern cell phone, with a color screen, an 802.11b network connection and a sliding keyboard made for one thing: communicating through instant messaging and VoIP.

Technorati Tags: hardware, opinion, review, sony

With built-in support for Skype (both voice and chat), Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk and a peer-to-peer IM mode, the Mylo is easy to setup. And because it has a built-in web browser, you should be able to connect to WiFi networks in airports and hotels (I haven’t tried it). While the screen is way to small for professional browsing, it works quite well for the mobile email web interfaces. In addition, the mylo comes with music and video playback, as well as photo galleries. This device is also supposed to be able to share the content with other Mylo users… but as I only have one I know who has one, I didn’t try that.

Being a Sony device, the software to manage the mylo is only available for Windows and it seems to try to encode the music in Sony’s ATRAC format. I guess you can also play unprotected MP3 songs as well as WMA file, but AAC support seems to be missing… not a big problem for me as the 1 Gb built-in memory is no replacement for my iPod. From a video front, the built-in player seems to work fine to play the demo movie, but when I tried to play a movie encoded for the PSP on a memory stick (yes, there is a slot for that on the Mylo), it didn’t accept either the format (this devices only supports MPEG4 files, not H.264) or the resolution (you cannot exceed QVGA). In addition, there is a built-in text editor which enables to quickly take notes on the go.

But back to what this device is really about: Instant Messaging! And there, I have to say, even with my big fingers, typing is fast enough. It’s not as good as the Blackberry (or is it that I just got so used to that devices?), but it works great to have quick chats with friends online. The “What’s Up” screen gives you a quick overview of who is online, independently of the IM client they use. My only complain (and I know I am not the only one) is that the Mylo does not (yet) support MSN and AOL… I am much more interested in the IM protocol from Microsoft than the latter one as that’s a place I have quite a few contacts… Sony, if Gaim and Adium can get this to work, why can’t you hook into the same libraries… especially as the Mylo is running Linux in the background anyway from what I’ve seen. Please, put this on your list for the next firmware update. And for the firmware after the one with MSN support, could you add a LocationFree TV client to the Mylo?

When it comes to Skype, the sound quality is really good. Much better than the Netgear WiFi Skype phone I had before. Next step here: Conference calls

Finally, outside of the way-to-high price point of this device, the one big negative I’ve noticed so far is battery life. If you leave the device on and connected to the WiFi network, battery life won’t last a day… and that’s without talking or chatting. I would have expected much better here… at least 24-48 hours “stand-by” time, e.g. device with the screen turned off, but connected to the network and into the IM accounts, with a talk time of 2-3 hours.

One more thing: Sony Canada, why don’t you sell this device over here?

Technorati Tags: apple, hardware, opinion, telecom

This offering comes with a Nokia E65 phone that is powered by the Symbian OS. The phone will cost you GBP 49.99 (about US$100 / EUR 75) if you sign an 18 month contract, and the monthly subscription ranging from GBP 40 to 45 per month depending on the options you want. In addition to over 300 minutes of phone calls in the UK and 150+ text messages, this monthly charge includes, according to their web site, unlimited international calling with Skype, as well as support for streaming from a Slingbox or Orb for example. There is a “fair-use” policy in place, which allows for 1Gb of data per month to be transfered (for web surfing), as well as 5000 minutes of Skype calls or 80 hours of Orb and Slingbox streaming. Not sure how that would apply when roaming outside of the UK, but that would have certainly covered my expected usage… and would have made me switch to their service if only I was still living in England: Rogers, please, please, get inspired

An more importantly than Rogers or Bell in Canada, Apple, can you please look at this and make it a standard offer part of your iPhone? As mentioned before, one of the main reasons why I don’t expect to buy an iPhone when available is because of the “phone” capabilities which rely only on the traditional cellular network. Thank you in advance!

As for any new technology introduced, being the choice of the early adopters and the market leader while adoption hasn’t reached the mainstream users is in no way a guarantee for success. Offering the best or most advanced feature set is also a no indication of becoming the long term leader. We’ve seen this over and over again, from Apple Macintosh to the Palm. Being backed by Microsoft can help in the long term, but the iPod / iTunes offering is (so far) a proof of the opposite.

Technorati Tags: blu-ray, hardware, high-def, opinion, playstation, hd-dvd

Quick summary of the situation. Over the past few years, HD TVs has started to become mainstream in North America while Europe has been lagging behind on this. Satellite and cable providers west coast of the Atlantic have progressively increased their offering of High-Definition channels to make it an interesting choice when replacing existing so-called “Standard-Definition” televisions. While you could get HD content, the DVD format needed a replacement to be able to support the vast amount of data movies in 1080p require. To answer this need, two challengers are fighting for the domination of the High-Def off-line content (e.g. movies). On one side, HD-DVD backed by Toshiba, Intel and Microsoft (strange that www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com is the official HD-DVD web site… they should try tinyurl.com). On the other side, Blu-Ray, backed by Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Sony and most of the movie studios to mention a few. Looking at the specs, Blu-Ray seems better (50Gb of storage for a double layer compared to 30Gb, 9 hours of High-Def content vs. 5.4, 54 Mbit/s maximum transfer rate compared to 36.55 Mbit/s, …), but as mentioned before, having the best feature list is yet to be a guarantee for success.

The HD-DVD was able to be the first to market and there where a few players in the $1000 range by middle 2006. This gave this format a head-start and until November 17, 2006 when all indications pointed to the fact that they where outselling Blu-Ray players by a very healthy margin… But then came Sony with the new Playstation 3. While this console is the most expensive one at about US$ 600, it was also one of the cheapest High-Def media player available. While a lot of the focus at launch was about comparing the PS3 with a Wii or an Xbox 360 and comparing the sales figures of the gaming consoles, looking at it from an High Definition content player made Sony the clear Winner, with their latest device outselling HD-DVD players. Microsoft’s XBox 360 also introduced an HD-DVD add-on shortly after the launch of the new console from Sony. According to an article in ArsTechnica in mid-January, 270,000 HD-DVD Players had been sold since its launch (150,000 of which where the HD-DVD add-on for the XBox 360), while 425,000 Blu-Ray players found their way into consumers hands… but the most interesting part is that out of these players, 400,000 where actually Playstation 3s!

Early February, articles in ArsTechnica and in High-Def Digest pointed to research done by Nielsen VideoScan showing that the Blu-Ray content is catching-up very quickly with the first-to-market High-Def solution and is now outselling HD-DVD medias by a factor of 2:1. According to The Register, Sony has shipped way over 2 million Playstation 3s since its launch… pushing the number of Blu-Ray players in the hands of consumers way above the other format.

As both formats have been hacked in recent weeks, the movie industry won’t have a tendency to back one format over the other… and the adult entertainment industry seems to progressively support both formats as well, even with initial claims made around the fact that they would not be allowed to publish their content in Blu-Ray format…

So, to paraphrase Highlander, the question is: will there be only one? Or are we going to a world where both formats will co-exist, just like the DVD-R and DVD+R formats? LG has a High-Def player that will support both formats, Corel’s WinDVD supports both (if you have a compatible drive in your computer)… My living room will only have a Blu-Ray player for the foreseeable future, and the Online DVD renting company I use in Canada is having more and more of the format I can watch available. But in the end, when unlimited and always-on bandwidth becomes available, won’t the question of physical medias become irrelevant? Won’t the answer be a High-Def AppleTV?

I have been considering buying a console for a while, and my initial choice was to get a PS3, mainly because of its HD capabilities, the built-in Blu-ray player and the strong history behind the Sony brand when it comes to gaming. But with all the hype behind the Wii at launch, I almost went with that one as it seemed to be the least “serious” console. As they only had the PS3 in stock that morning, I came back to my initial choice.

Having enjoyed this device for just over a month now, my biggest problem with it is that I simply don’t have enough time to use it!

Technorati Tags: blu-ray, hardware, opinion, playstation, review

Not sure how much better the Xbox 360 is, but it seems that Sony is getting updated out on a regular basis, with version 1.50 released this week greatly improving the visual quality of PS2 games (it was really unplayable before). Online gaming is one of the big selling factors for the latest generation of consoles, but I haven’t tried this yet… I need a lot more practice first

From an online perspective, the built-in web browser works great and seems to do a great job at rendering the web pages I’ve tried so far (except a minor little display bug with my Blog CSS that I’ll have to fix one day). The Playstation Online Store is really nice, especially as you can download playable demos of games for free as well as smaller games such as Lemmings. With an average download of 800Mb to 1Gb, it is really annoying that you cannot have the download continue in the background while surfing the web, listening a movie or watching a DVD / Blu-ray disk… so many processor cycles seem waisted because of this.

Also, why can’t I listen to the music I’ve ripped on the hard drive of my PS3 while browsing the web… Sony, did you hear about Multitasking? With such an advanced hardware, it really feels strange that you cannot benefit of something that has been available in all operating system for years. And while I’m at it, please, please, let me listen to my ripped music when I play Ridge Racer 7. The few techno-tracks that come with this game are really not my kind of “music”

OK, enough complaining. The Sixaxxis, e.g. the wireless controller, has motion sensors. It might not be as violent as the Wii, but once activated in games, it adds a completely different level of interaction… it’s almost to sensitive for car racing and I’ve disabled it for now… just waiting for a PS3 steering wheel.

And when it comes to the graphics and sound quality of the games I have, there is only one thing to say: Wow! Considering that these are the first generation of games and that developers haven’t learned all the tricks of Sony’s latest console yet, I am really impressed by the quality. Downloadable for free from the Playstation store, Grand Turismo HD Concept is really impressive, and bullets are flying left-right-middle-center with a 5.1 sound system playing Call of Duty 3.

And what about Blu-ray movies? Taking “The Fifth Element” as a test movie, and trying both the HD version and the High Bitrate DVD version, I can clearly see the difference. To bad the Dolby Digital or DTS track are missing from the Blu-ray version of this movie as my sound-speaker isn’t able to process pure 7.1 digital signals. With upcoming titles such as James Bond Casino Royale, I expect the encoding to be a lot better.

All in all, there are still a few things for Sony to improve in up-coming firmware updates. Top on my list, support for multi-tasking, network sharing capabilities (access my music, pictures and movies on an other computer, and sharing the music and pictures on the PS3 with other machines on the local network), support for DiVX / Xvid encoded movies as well as a magical way to free up some of my time to enjoy the Playstation more

I must have been lucky as Sony just raised the price of the Playstation 3 in Canada… sometimes there are benefit for being an early adopter!

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, opinion, hardware, telecom

Yes, that’s right… a cool device that I don’t expect to buy as soon as possible! while I love the way in seems to integrate all the features and the beautiful design, I don’t see this device in my pocket any time soon. Three main reasons for this: Email, Audio/Video and Phone.

Let’s look at email first: the Apple iPhone will have IMAP and POP mail support. It will even have push-IMAP when used with a Yahoo address. It promises to include a fantastic web experience for such a device and it will certainly include great calendar and address book applications which will sync with your desktop (Mac and Windows). I can see the iPhone as a great replacement for a Smartphone such as the Palm Treo 680 or the Sony Ericsson P990i. After having previously looked at various smartphone options and finally ending-up with a crackberry, I expect that the Email / Web experience on the iPhone will be miles ahead of the one from a “traditional” mobile device. But the Blackberry is much more than a simple mobile email device when used within a corporate environment… it becomes an extension of your Exchange / Outlook account on the go, keeping email, calendar, contacts and notes in sync and enabling you to schedule meetings with everyone in your company. And the iPhone won’t enable you to access the corporate network on the go as there seems to be no mention of VPN support. Conclusion: Great mobile internet device for your personal needs, or even for small businesses, but not ready for the enterprise.

Second, Audio and Video: I can already hear you… I must be nuts to say that this isn’t the best device ever to play music / podcasts and watch TV shows / movies / videocasts! Well, I just don’t see the Apple iPhone replacing my Apple iPod any time soon, and here is why: I have a 60Gb 5G iPod that is full, and when you consider that a movie will consume 1.4Gb of disk space, even the largest version of Apples’ latest announcement will require a constant management of the content, requiring planning ahead of time when it comes to what I will take with me when I traveling. Yes, if you only go from home to the office every day, you won’t be in this situation (and you won’t really benefit from a Blackberry neither, e.g. the first reason why I don’t expect to get an iPhone won’t apply to you neither). But if traveling is part of your job description, especially when it comes to fly over oceans, you will be gone for a few days or a few weeks at a time. The iPod (not the nano) has become a great companion as I have my (almost) entire library with me. Conclusion: Where is the true Video iPod?

Finally, the phone capabilities: Yes, I know… it’s a phone! What could possibly be my reason for complaining at this stage as nobody really had a chance to try the sound quality? To make my answer short, the only way to make a phone call with the Apple iPhone is through the mobile operator network… while you can get unlimited price plans in some countries, these are not applicable when traveling (did you hear of the concept of roaming, or how to charge the user a fortune for a phone call?) or when placing an International phone call. the iPhone has WiFi built-in, but because this is a proprietary platform and all indications are that there won’t be a publicly available SDK for this new device, I won’t be able to place VoIP / Skype phone calls. And because this is sold hand in had with a mobile phone operator, I don’t see bypassing the revenue generator model any time soon. Conclusion: Unless I get a Skype and iChat client on the Apple iPhone, I don’t see myself getting this device.

Now if I had to make a guess, here is what I would want to see from the next generation of iPod: Take the form-factor / Operating system of the iPhone, remove the GSM support but leave the WiFi / Bluetooth. Leave all the applications, replacing the Cell-Phone and SMS capabilities with Skype and iChat respectively. Instead of 8Gb max size, go with a 80-100Gb hard-drive (it will make the device slightly thicker, but that’s OK from my perspective) and open-up the SDK for third-party developer to add solutions on this true Video iPod platform… hey, everyone can dream from time to time

In recent years, companies such as SplashPower have been trying to solve the problem of charging all these little gizmos that fill our e-Life. Their approach was to have a universal “wireless” power charger that would enable you to simply drop your cell-phone or PDA on a “Splash-pad” to get it to charge. Great idea, but I still wait to see a commercial adoption of this type of technology. It also means that you need to take your charging pad with you when you travel, in addition to the power adapter for the laptop.

Other companies have gone the route of providing universal power adapters. Kensington can be found in every airport I’ve travelled to. They sell a power charger that not only supports 110-220V as well as car and airplane connectors, but where you can change the connector to charge various makes of laptops, your iPod can cell phones. The idea here has been to combine all the various power adapters into one that you can take with you when you travel.

But the route that more and more manufacturers seem to take to charge their gizmos is the 5V power provided through a USB connection. To name a few, the Blackberry and the iPod both provide this “feature”. As both devices provide additional features when connected to the computer through the USB port, this makes a lot of sense. And the great benefit of it is that when you travel, you only need to take the power adapter for the laptop and a few USB cables to charge all your devices. No more need to get the five different chargers in your luggage.

Sounds like a great solution. But a problem arises when you run out of USB connections on your laptop. As I need to charge my Blackberry daily when I travel, one of the two USB ports on the notebook is gone. It therefore comes to a point where you need to prioritize which device to charge when… really fun

The good news for iPod users is that you can still charge Apple’s MP3 player through Firewire connection (if you have a Mac at least), even if the latest generations can no longer synchronize songs with iTunes on that connection.

Two solutions therefore: Either get more USB ports on the laptop / get a USB hub with a power adapter while you travel or stop buying all these little devices…

I’ve been using Skype for a while and really appreciate the user experience of the software… really clean interface, easy-to-use and at the cost of phone calls (especially Computer-to-Computer) make it a very attractive solution to talk with my family, friends and colleagues around the world. The biggest negative has always been the need to have a computer with the Skype software installed on it… not anymore!

Different solution existed to bridge the gap between the traditional phone and the world of VoIP communication through Skype. To mention a few, the headset / microphone, the USB “phone”, the wireless phone or even a polycom. But the common aspect for all of these is that each require a computer, with the user logged into his Skype account… and the more advanced options are Windows only. But now, with the Skype WiFi phone from Netgear (SPH101), you can make Skype phone calls without any computer. All you need is an 802.11g network connection (it should also be compatible with an 11b network). And it works great!

The out of the box experience is really nice. You get a phone that is about the size of a normal mobile phone, a charger with a USB connector (and it is small enough for travelers) as well as a small instructions booklet and a CD. The one comment about the CD is that this is only for Windows, e.g. I have no idea what is on it… lucky me that it is not required to use the phone.

After charging the phone for a few minutes, I already turned it on. You go through a simple step-by-step process to connect to a WiFi network and then to log into your Skype account… et voilà, ready to make a phone call. It takes 20 to 30 seconds to download the contact list. It is not stored on the phone, but downloaded every time. The sound quality is good overall, especially when I tested it with someone on the same LAN… no difference with the Skype software on my computer using a basic USB phone.

Pros

• Make phone calls for free to anyone using Skype… and it works with Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, Atari ST, Newton, typewriters as well as pen and paper (partial list) as there is no need for a computer to make these calls
• Straight-forward process to configure the WiFi access and Skype access. Works with WEP 128-bit and WPA-PSK and can be configured to connect to hidden SSIDs.
• The size is right (as small as a modern cell phone) and the sound quality is good, at least from the tests I’ve done so far.
• USB chargeable… this seems to be a requirement for all little devices and it is really nice to only carry a few chargers when traveling. Take your laptop, its power cable and a USB cable to charge your Skype phone. It only becomes problematic when you have more devices than you have USB ports on your laptop… but that’s the subject of another blog entry.

Cons

• No Instant messaging support. When you are logged into Skype using this phone, people get the message that you use a client that is to old to support IM. Netgear, please include T9 support for typing and add IM support. Until that’s done, I can understand that instant messaging would be really tricky (except for the SMS junkies out there). I still would love to get IM support on my phone for simple messages… well, for the time being, I’ve noted in my mood message that I only accept voice communication.
• I must be doing something wrong, but I am unable to get the SPH101 to automatically connect to a preferred network when it starts up… When the device searches for an available WiFi connection, it doesn’t seem to look for the preferred ones. This is a little problematic as my SSID is hidden. Well, only a few extra clicks at start-up to get it going.
• Battery life seems very short, but then again, I haven’t tested it enough to give it a thorough review. One thing strange is that the phone just died on me, without any annoying beeping warning that the battery was running low. Please, please, at least warn me when I only have a few minutes of battery left, so that I can tell the person I talk to that the connection might be broken shortly.
• the SPH101 gets rather warm during longer conversations. While it isn’t to hot to keep using it, it warms your ear nicely… might be useful in Canada during winter
• You need a WiFi access that doesn’t require web-login. This means you won’t be able to use it at most public hotspots (hotels, airports, coffees, …) as there is no web browser to go through the login process.

As mentioned before, it is really cool for a version 1.0 of a product… and I can only hope that some of the cons will be fixed with a revision of the firmware. My next challenge… to get IT to allow me to use it at work.