As most of you know, I run a small mobile development team (Bitsmedia) which has so far been focusing on the iOS platform (iPhone and iPad apps). One of our goal for 2011 is to diversify ourselves by offering development services for other platforms as well. If Android is the obvious new platform after which we are going, the January Blackberry developer conference was the perfect opportunity for me to evaluate the real opportunities and challenges of developing apps for the Blackberry platforms (the smartphones AND the Playbook).
The Blackberry DevconAsia (developer conference Asia) has now been over for a few weeks and I wanted to share with you why it’s left me with a very mitigated impression. Make sure to read more after the break… Read more…
Update: editing this post with the WordPress iPad app completely screwed up the HTML code in it (images and links). Proof that a real netbook still does the work better!
Since the iPad was released last year and despite its huge success (10-15 millions have been sold in 2010), there has been lots of discussions with regards to using the iPad as a work/productivity tool. It certainly rocks as a family and traveling entertainement device (music, web, movies, games, etc…) but it seems to lack a few things to act as your perfect work companion. If multi-tasking (introduced with the latest 4.2 iOS update) has helped, here is another way to bring that iPad closer to your business need: a keyboard. Read more to see how I have attached one to the slim Apple iPad case.
Read more…
Facebook has just announced their latest evolution: a newly revamped messaging platform. It groups conversations by friend and is modelled after chat rather than traditional emailing. With more and more people using Facebook on their phone, read more to see why I believe it is a real threat to Blackberry.
Read more…
Smartphones, PDA, Organizers, PIM (Personal Information Managers) have been trying to help you keep your professional and personal lives better organized. If early US Robotics Palm Pilots and Pocket PC shipped with a default task management tool, recent iPhones and Android devices leave it to you to choose the todo or GTD app of your choice. And there are tons for you to choose from. Read more to find out the ones that work best for me.
Read more…
Steve Jobs just revealed the long awaited iPhone 4 during the opening keynote of the WWDC 2010 conference. Despite creating no surprises with an external design leaked all over the net for the past few weeks, Apple has once again designed an amazing product, well ahead of its competition: highest screen resolution ever (retina display), thinest body, HD video recording, huge battery life, etc… (check out the iPhone 4 product video on the Apple website).
Apple may have failed (intentionally or not) to protect the secrecy around this iPhone 4 (lost/stolen in a Silicon Valley’s pub and disclosed in Vietnam), they remain nevertheless famous for religiously keeping their products from being disclosed before Steve Jobs himself gets a chance to reveal them to the world with his very own set of “amazing”, “great” and “fantastic” superlative adjectives.
Such secrecy around Apple’s truly amazing products contributes to creating huge expectations and rumours about the next big launch. Now that the iPhone 4 is here, we surely should expect geeks and techies of the world to start blogging about what they expect or believe the next iPhone (and iPad) will be made of.
As far as I am concerned, I honestly believe that this iPhone 4 doesn’t leave much space for an iPhone 5 and I can hardly come up with innovative features that next year’s iPhone could bring (Apple has been releasing a new iPhone every year since the initial 2007 launch). But there again, we can probably count on the Cupertino’s gang to surprise us.
We could however easily expect the next iPad (there will be an iPad revision 2 one day) to bring:
- High resolution retina display
- Front camera and FaceTime video calling
- iMovie for HD video editing
- iOS 4 (with groups, multitasking, etc…)
What’s your take ? Let us know what you either wish or think (or know?) the next iPad (revision 2) and iPhone (revision 5) might bring.
I left Paris 10 hours ago and I am 2 hours away from Singapore as I start drafting this post on my iPad. Usually a great sleeper on any short and long distance flight, the 12 noon departure time of Singapore Airlines SQ 333 flight from Paris to Singapore made it difficult to actually get more than 2 hours of sleep so far, leaving me more than 10 hours to experience and enjoy the Apple iPad as a flight companion. Read more to find out 7 work and leisure activities (and apps) that the iPad turns out to be the perfect match for while traveling on a long haul flight. Read more…
As most of you know, I run a small mobile development team (Bitsmedia) which has so far been focusing on the iOS platform (iPhone and iPad apps). One of our goal for 2011 is to diversify ourselves by offering development services for other platforms as well. If Android is the obvious new platform after which we are going, the January Blackberry developer conference was the perfect opportunity for me to evaluate the real opportunities and challenges of developing apps for the Blackberry platforms (the smartphones AND the Playbook).
