Tweet Facebook’s new Home on Android smartphone is an audacious attempt to demote the OS to a utility role, to keep to itself user data Android was supposed to feed into Google’s advertising business. Google’s reaction will be worth watching. Amazon’s Kindle Fire, announced late September 2011, is viewed as a clever “Android lock pick“. [...]
Tweet As they approach the one million apps mark, smartphone and tablet app stores leave users stranded in thick, uncharted forests. What are Google and Apple waiting? Last week, Google made the following announcement: Mountain View, February 24th, 2013 — As part of an industry that owes so much to Steve Jobs, we remember him [...]
TweetApple is doing it wrong, Apple is living on borrowed time! Apple will Fail Again! This idea, this meme, isn’t new. For more than 30 years we’ve heard a number of versions of the “Apple is doomed” requiem. December 12th 1980 — the day of Apple’s IPO, coincidentally — I’m in Geneva, signing my employment [...]
January 2, 2011 – 7:07 pm
Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée There are two ways to interpret the equation above. Doomsayers will sing the licensing blues. By refusing to license the operating system—iOS, in this case—the iPhone will drown in a sea of Android smartphones. We’ve seen it before: Apple is repeating the mistake that allowed Windows clones to scuttle the Mac. Others, [...]
October 3, 2010 – 8:00 pm
Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée Once upon a time, operating systems used to matter a lot; they defined what a computer could and couldn’t do. The “old” OS orchestrated the use of resources: memory, processors, I/O (input/output) to external devices (screen, keyboard, disks, network, printers…). It’s a complicated set of tasks that requires delicate juggling of conflicting [...]
September 26, 2010 – 5:18 pm
TweetBefore the Steve Jobs hypnosis session, AT&T ruled. Handsets, their prices, branding, applications, contractual terms, content sales…AT&T decided everything and made pennies on each bit that flowed through its network. Then the Great Mesmerizer swept the table. Apple provided the hardware, the operating system, and “everything else”: applications, music, ringtones, movies, books… The iTunes cash register [...]
TweetThe center of financial gravity in the computing world—the Center of Money—has shifted. No longer directed at the PC, the money pump now gushes full blast at the smartphones market. One of my colleagues, Bob Ackerman, calls smartphones the very personal computers. Measured by size and potential, they’re both smaller and bigger than today’s PCs. [...]
January 10, 2010 – 5:49 pm
TweetLet me state it at the outset: I understand the buzz generated by the Google Phone a.k.a Nexus One. But, the more I look into details and their ramifications, the more I’m puzzled. What exactly is Google trying to do? Make Android, their smartphone OS platform the “Windows” of the new era of really personal [...]
November 22, 2009 – 8:47 pm
TweetAs you know, Google proceeded with the second announcement of its Chrome OS this past week, the first one took place on July 7th, 2009, and the ship date being a year away, we can be sure to have more launch events: one of the first beta, a couple more for applications and partnerships agreements [...]
November 15, 2009 – 6:48 pm
TweetLast Friday November 6th, the much-awaited Motorola Droid came out. Powered by the latest version of Google’s smartphone OS, Android 2.0, the new handset is exclusively distributed by Verizon. The carrier backs Motorola’s handset with an aggressive marketing campaign on its website and on TV ads. For such a “gifted” (Motorola + Verizon + Google) [...]
