In just 24 hours, Steve Jobs will be opening the 2011 edition of Apple’s yearly developer conference (WWDC) which will focus on:
- Lion: the new version of Mac OS X (10.7), Apple’s desktop/laptop operating system (OS);
- iOS 5: the 5th major edition of Apple’s mobile OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad);
- iCloud: Apple’s 3rd attempt to crack online services and cloud computing (after Mac.com and MobileMe), as well as, should the rumours be correct, a new online music service.
As much as I love Apple’s products and my iPhone(s) (I believe I’ve owned them all since the very first one in 2007), I have recently surprised myself using Android devices as my everyday phone (my two favorite ones are the Nexus S and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc). Two main reasons:
- I never got used to the edgy and squarish design of the iPhone 4 (I miss the curved line of the 3G/3GS)
- I got bored of using the very same user interface for 4 years.
I therefore have very high expectations of tomorrow’s keynote, hoping that iOS 5 will finally feature some key functionalities which I believe have been missing. Make sure to read further to discover which ones. Read more…
Before the recent boom of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, the only list of friends or contacts most people would manage and interact with was their address book. The hardcover indexed address books and the electronic databanks (remember those cool Casio devices with enough memory to store 128 contacts) are the true ancestors of your social graph. Read more to understand why I believe the address book is still very much the key to success of any social network today. 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).
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…
