Today, the world of web and application development is packed to the brim with numerous technology backed solutions. Given such a confusing and complicated scenario, it is a cumbersome task for business owners to opt for the right technology for a given set of project requirements. At Fusion Informatics, we make it easy for our clients to have their apps and other web projects built to perfection – right from the scratch.

Our developers, web programmers and technical leads are fully equipped to face the demands that arise with every new client requirement. They go a long way in facilitating the right decisions and no unnecessary technical debt; thereby, making complexity simpler and less burdensome. Given below are some of the primary reasons for paving the grounds for good design decisions.

• The selection of right technology ensures better estimates and solutions for projects.
• By making complexities more manageable, we help our clients enjoy lower development costs and lesser Time to Market.
• Our developers have to inject less(er) coding efforts, which by extension leads to reduced number of bugs and development errors.
• Our clients can enjoy higher Return of Investments, which in turn leads to more conversions, higher traffic, better turnover, and more.

Our developers at Fusion Informatics always choose better technology for implementing the right solutions for the problems on hand. They believe in introducing only those tools that take care of the weight lifting in the simplest of ways. This way, our teams achieve a lot more than expected, and with little efforts from their side. At all times, our clients are assured of the high quality of all project deliverables. Our basic frameworks are technology and language bound to deliver optimum results; in other words, our solution bound technologies focus on the problems on hand and meet most client needs to the hilt.

Here are some simple steps that ensure project success for us:

• We go an extra mile to understand the end goals, pain-points and actual requirements of our clients.
• Thereafter, we break them all down into simple, logical modules that are based on the business logic of our clients.
• Once the logical design is ready, we identify the core modules and technology that a solution is dependent on the most.
• Once the right technology is frozen upon, we look for the best plugins or extensions after estimating the complexity of the technology/solution.

It is no secret that by opting for the right technology, programming language or platform, our developers can handle the real challenges brought forth by development projects. In fact, this is a win-win situation of our clients too. Don’t get left behind. Go ahead and make complexities simpler, only at Fusion Informatics.

Screen shine

The screen will completely capture the user’s attention. Sitting in front of a 27-inch iMac fills up a large part of your vision, and it’s almost difficult to focus on the entire thing at once. You’ll have to lower the brightness a bit compared to most other monitors since it’s shining in your face! Apple uses high-quality IPS panels and LED backlighting, and the colours are amazing.

The resolution, at 2650 x 1440, is comfortably larger than today’s HD panels. Viewing angles are also spectacular, with no colour distortion till you’re staring at it sideways. This is also the first time Apple has used a 16:9 panel in the iMac line. Photographs jump to life, movies are a treat, and Apple’s wallpaper images really shine. If you use professional applications such as Photoshop and Aperture, or if you work with design and content creation, you’ll never want to go back to anything else.

Initial concerns about cost and practicality are soon replaced with joy.

Looks

The black glass around the screen is now edge to edge, but it’s still reflective – you’ll need to twist around and tilt the iMac to get comfortable under fluorescent lights. Apart from its screen, the iMac looks only slightly different from the previous generation. The entire body is now aluminum, and the metallic “chin” in front is less obtrusive than before.

The DVD drive on the right edge now has an SD card slot for company, while all ports are still at the back. We would have loved to see at least the headphones socket and a couple of USB ports on the side for convenience now that the ones on the keyboard are gone. Features Our review model came with a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, 8x DVD RW drive, and an ATI Radeon 4670 graphics card with 256 MB of RAM.

A 21.5-inch model with the same specs had the same configuration, while the lowest-end one has an onboard Nvidia 9400M graphics and half the hard drive space. Interestingly, you can custom-order a 27-inch model with Intel’s new Core i5 or i7 CPU, giving you high-performance quad-core options for the first time – for hefty premiums though. All models come with Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, WiFi N, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, inbuilt speakers and a microphone.

However, Blu-ray drives are absent from all models, which is a massive letdown when you have the huge 27-inch screen at your disposal. With no official online source of HD material in India, it’s a huge waste of this device’s potential. The selection of ports is interesting: audio in and out (analog/optical combo), four USB ports, FireWire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, and a mini DisplayPort video output.

Mini DisplayPort will require an adapter for pretty much every TV or projector out there, which you’ll have to buy separately. But there’s a hidden trick: on the 27-inch model that we reviewed, this port can also be used as an input! The required cable isn’t on the market yet, but once available, you’ll be able to connect a DVD or Blu-ray player, game console, or any other video source to make even better use of the panel.

For those worried about the environment, the new iMac claims to be energy efficient, highly recyclable, and free of toxic chemicals including arsenic, mercury, and lead.

Usability

Probably the only sore spots are the bundled keyboard and mouse. The keyboard is totally wireless and uses Bluetooth to communicate. It’s meant to be used from across a room, but it’s quite uncomfortable that way.

For starters, it’s just too small and dumps not only the number pad but also the nagivation keys (Page Up/Dn, Home, End, Ins, Del) that most laptops pack in. You can choose the older style wired keyboard at the time of purchase, but bundling this shrunken keyboard by default is a very strange decision indeed.

The mouse is Apple’s new Bluetooth Magic Mouse, claimed to be the first one in the world with a multitouch surface. Again, it’s too flat and narrow to be comfortable in the palm; Apple envisions that people will push it around with only their fingers on the surface.

The gestures are also limited to flicks for scrolling and two-finger swipes for page navigation, not the full range that’s available on the current Macbook’s glass trackpad. Mac OS X looks wonderful, but it’s actually easy to lose the mouse cursor from time to time on such a high-definition screen. The iLife apps, especially Garage Band, are good fun, and using Photoshop and Illustrator was never more pleasurable.

However, for Windows 7 users, the new iMac doesn’t play nice without a few extra driver downloads. Your iMac screen will simply go blank midway through the installation. We spent a fair amount of time diagnosing the fault, which turned out to be a missing video driver. Driver disorder Further investigation revealed that we had to download the correct driver (100 MB approximately) from Apple’s website and unzip it to a USB pen drive, which has to be left plugged in during installation.

Windows will search through all available devices and then install the driver, after which you’ll be good to go. After installation, you’ll also need to install an update to the Windows Boot Camp utility (another 380 MB download) even though official instructions say nothing of the sort. Without the new version, you won’t be able to use the Magic Mouse. However, the update caused severe colour banding on screen as the colour depth dropped from 32 bit to 16 bit. So we had to roll back the graphics driver.

This is quite a hassle considering Boot Camp has worked so smoothly on previous Apple machines. All we’re unhappy about is the absence of instructions that might have prepared us for this ordeal. The new iMac is not ready for Windows 7, but if this is not what you’re buying a Mac for, there’s no need to worry.

Performance

Similarly, our audio and video compression tasks took 1 min 7 sec and 47 sec respectively, which are pretty respectable scores. You’ll be able to play even fairly recent games at low settings, but don’t expect earth-shattering frames at the screen’s native 2560 x 1440 with the default graphics card.

Resource:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20100223/1065/ttc-apple-s-imac-is-a-sight-to-behold_1.html

Flash may be closed and proprietary, but Apple is hardly the patron saint of openness. Nor has it ever seemed to care much about pretending to be anything other than religiously devoted to a beautiful consumer experience, regardless of open standards, open source, open anything.

What has changed? Developers. Lots of them.

Apple is seeing the “light of openness” now that it increasingly must cater to external developers. For years Apple was able to live within its shell, serving a narrow world of devoted consumers and a very limited circle of developers.

No more. With the iPhone, Apple hit the developer mainstream, and has had some growing pains getting comfortable with that audience, most recently with its increasingly restrictive developer agreement.

Apple has a tough sell for developers over the long term, particularly as it faces open alternatives in its various markets, including Google Android. Developers are attracted to the iPhone’s sales volume, but the trajectory of the company may make it increasingly harder to work with the company, a proprietary trajectory ZDNet’s Tom Foremski describes well:

Since the introduction of the iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad, Apple is becoming less and less open, is using fewer standard components and chips, and far fewer Internet technologies common to Mac/PC desktop and laptop systems.

The iPhone and iPad, for example, don’t support common Internet platforms such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. That means you cannot watch streaming video from Hulu, or Netflix.

And while iPhone chips are available from other manufacturers, the iPad runs only on the A4 processor–an Apple designed chip that no one else can buy.

This was OK when Apple was the most open smartphone game in town (RIM’s BlackBerry was hardly a paragon of openness), but it’s a tough sell with Google on the scene. Google Android, for all its problems and criticisms, has successfully attracted a host of applications recently through a more open approach, jumping from 6,000 to 25,000 applications in 2010 alone.

Apple may be its own best friend…and worst enemy.

Or, as Redmonk analyst James Governor puts it, “[The] company doing [the] most to grow the Android app base is Apple. The new terms of service are AWESOME for the Android team….”

It’s not that Apple needs to open everything up to compete. But it does need to present a more credible argument than random smears against competitors for being proprietary. After all, let’s be clear: None of these companies is open. Or closed. Not Apple. Not Adobe. Not Google. Each employs a hybrid approach, as CNET’s Stephen Shankland points out. Each includes plenty of openness, and plenty of “closed and proprietary” technology and business practices.

That’s the world we live in.

That’s why, as Shankland writes, we (and particularly developers) should be wary of any vendor bearing gifts of openness:

In general, be very cautious when you hear any computing company wrapping itself in the flag of openness as it promotes its products. There are different kinds–open interfaces, open source, and open standards, for example.

Apple’s reality distortion field afflicts us all at some point: it just makes beautiful technology. But developers aren’t so easily swayed, including Apple’s pot-calling-the-kettle-black moment with Adobe. Some won’t care. Others, like Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard, will.

Apple needs to figure out its developer story, one complicated by Google’s surge into the smartphone market. I doubt we’ll see Steve Jobs sweating to the Steve Ballmer beat, but Apple does need to up the openness quotient in its developer outreach, and soon.

Resource:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/google_the_server_chip_designer/

The company announced the development of the application in April. Although no timetable for its release has been set, the company did release its open source code when it made the announcement. The company cites the lagging wireless printing technology and its overall desire to make life in the cloud easier as the reason for the application’s development.

“Using the one component all major devices and operating systems have in common – access to the cloud – today we’re introducing some preliminary designs for a project called Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any application [web, desktop or mobile] on any device to print to any printer,” Google product manager Mike Jazayeri wrote on a company blog.

Following the hacking attack that the company traced to a pair of Chinese schools in January, it has focused tirelessly on improving customer services and security. An email glitch that affected messages sent from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook was addressed after several customer complaints in late March.

Resource:
http://www.edlconsulting.com/newsdetail.php?id=752&headline=Google_adds_remote_printing_to_cloud_computing_features

Ovum Principal Analyst Tony Cripps was quoted in a blog entry as saying that “while all five major smartphone platforms score well, it is BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile that currently lead the opposition, rather than Android or Symbian.”

By “opposition,” Cripps means non-iPhone (and now iPad) development. Ovum surveyed 217 mobile application developers and found that 81 percent are working on iPhone apps — or planning to do so. That continues to be where the money is, but developers know it’s not the only game in town.

RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS take second and third place, respectively, with 74 percent and 66 percent of shops building apps for them. Android comes next, at 64 percent, and Symbian, the OS for Nokia phones, brings up the rear of the “big five” at 56 percent. Symbian’s last-place finish is also a surprise, given that it has the largest installed base and highest shipments of any smartphone platform, according to Ovum.

“Over the last year or so, it’s been perceived that Microsoft and Symbian had been a little bit left behind in public perception of those platforms,” Cripps says, “and [there is] linkage between consumer acceptance of a platform and developer acceptance of that platform. The iPhone shows that.” But even though the iPhone remains king, the other major platforms are still thriving. That’s one indication of how big the market is.

One interesting finding of the survey, Cripps says, is that application development companies tend to develop around similar groups of platforms. The majority that develop for iPhone, for example, also tend to develop applications for both Google’s Android and BlackBerry. A smaller number of companies develop for four or more platforms, and very few have the financial and manpower resources to develop for as many as six platforms, according to Cripps.

That’s been a big help for BlackBerry, Cripps says. “It’s piggybacking on the success of the iPhone. If developers are writing for one [platform], chances are they’re writing for Android and BlackBerry as well.”

BlackBerry’s success hasn’t been all about riding iPhone’s coattails, however. Cripps says he was surprised at “How well BlackBerry came out of this. It’s not just enterprise apps it’s being used for.” RIM’s recently-stated goal of being more consumer-friendly and not just a business phone has “come true,” Cripps says. “RIM deserves credit here. Its showing is surprisingly good.”

Things aren’t so rosy for platforms out of the top five. For instance, Palm can’t seem to get much traction around its Pre smartphone. “It doesn’t look great either for palm or any other smartphone beyond the top five as things stand,” Cripps says. “To rise above will require significant investment in developing products and convincing developers to build an ecosystem around it.”

Resource:
http://adtmag.com/articles/2010/04/16/smartphone-development-is-more-than-just-iphone.aspx

The minor changes alter how senders are added to messages, and do not affect the native Gmail apps that most users of Android phones send email through.

The move builds on Google’s decision to rewrite the code on which the web app is based so that it is easier to adjust in future.

This stage of enhancements allows users to simply type a fellow Gmail adopter’s username and the programme will now automatically fill in the rest of the address. Other changes reveals the list of recipients of a message more completely, so that individual addresses are easier to remove even if they are towards the beginning of a long list. Contacts that have been entered into a Gmail field are now also clickable boxes, allowing users to inspect their details more closely.

A list of top contacts has also been added, and the app now fills the entire screen. These features are likely to be particularly relevant to iPad users, who have significantly larger screens at their disposal.

The moves mean that the official Google Mail app now has considerably fewer features than the web-based version. Google has previously said that a new release, however, is in production.

Resource:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7593108/Google-updates-Gmail-for-iPad-Android-and-iPhone.html

Out of the box, it’s immediately clear just how sleek and elegant the device is. No surprise there, of course. When it comes to design, Apple always bests the competition. Once turned on, the brilliant screen reveals the device’s various functions, highlighting the ways in which the iPad will help us re-think portable computing.

The iPad makes content consumption easy and fun. Sitting back in your chair in what I call the “lean back position,” the iPad is perfect for surfing the Web, checking e-mail, watching movies and TV shows, playing games, and reading books. Seventy percent of what we do on a computer already involves consuming content. The lean back is a more natural way to view most of the content we encounter in our digital lives.

The iPad delivers a great experience in each of these areas. This alone will make it hard for competitors to top the device. Add to that a plethora of apps created specifically for the iPad, and it becomes clear that the device is more than simple a giant iPd touch. It’s a new kind of portable computer that could cause a paradigm shift in mobile computing, making the tablet the preferred method for accessing and consuming digital content for many mainstream consumers.

The device is also versatile enough to deliver a solid experience in “lean forward mode.” When we sit at our desk and create content, we’re primarily hunched over our keyboard writing documents and working with spreadsheets. Apple was smart enough to create a new version of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, specifically for the iPad. With the optional keyboard dock, the device can also be used to create content. Reading e-mail on the tablet is a delight. The screen makes it possible to read long messages on a single page. The virtual keyboard makes it easy to respond to e-mails, even for someone with fat fingers, such as myself. However, if you are working with large documents or spreadsheets or creating a graphics-based project, you’ll probably want to stick to the desktop or laptop.

Apps At launch, there were about 1,400 iPad-specific apps available. By the end of April, I bet that number will be well over 5,000. Even without seeing one in-person, developers understood the device’s potential, lining up to create new and innovative apps for the platform. I downloaded the ABC app, which gave me instant access to many of the network’s most popular shows through its dedicated player. The CNN site has already taken advantage of HTML5, makng it possible to view CNN videos on the iPad. The optimized versions of USA Today, Time Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, make it clear that the publishing world is backing the iPad in a big way.

The complaints about the iPad’s lack of support for Flash are certainly legitimate, but Apple’s decision to make HTML5 the cornerstone architecture for delivering video on the device could cause the entire industry to shift in that direction. In fact, content delivery networks like BrightCove have created tools to convert Flash video into HTML5 for customers.

There is some real innovation happening in the games space, as well. I downloaded the iPad version of Scrabble and found that it could be played with iPhones and iPod touches through the Bluetooth feature. You place the iPad down on the tablet between yourself and a group of friends. The iPad serves as the board, and everyone around the table uses their iPhones and iPod touches to create words, which magically show up on the iPad in the center.

In fact, all of the games I tested for the iPad were stellar. Racing games come alive, and first-person shooters seem almost like 3D. Casual games like solitaire and Bejeweled are more fun to play on the iPad’s larger screen. A game/learning tool called The Elements demonstrates how the iPad could impact education. In fact, we’re already hearing stories about colleges that are going to make the iPad a part of their curriculum next fall.

Books and Movies

When reading books, the difference between the iPad and the Kindle is huge. With the iPad, books include color images. Reading Winnie the Pooh to my granddaughters, I was able to share all of the full-color images they are used to seeing in the hardcover version of the book. I fully expect publishers to utilize the technology to create multimedia books in the near future.

Reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker is very much like reading their hard copy counterparts. All of the color art, charts, and photos are in tact, and after a while I forgot that I was reading an electronic copy. The experience is incredibly similar.

And if you have ever watched a movie on an iPhone or iPod touch, you know that the devices deliver very good video experiences. I pulled up the Michael Jackson movie, This is it, on the iPod touch and the iPad, watching them side-by-side. Guess which experience was better. I did this little experiment on a flight back to San Jose. People around me stopped to see what I was doing. When they saw the iPad, they all agreed that they would prefer to watch the movie on that device.

Changing the Game

There are some drawbacks, however. The screen is sharp and clear, but it still reflects images in bright light. More than once I could see myself reflected back completely in the screen like a mirror. And since the iPad uses fingers to navigate through programs and menus, it collects smudges fast. I had to carry a glasses cleaning cloth around with me.

Because of the iPad’s weight (1.5 pounds), it can get tiresome if you hold it in one position for a long time. When I was on the couch, I had to hold it on my lap or rest it on my leg. When watching a movie, I put it in the cradle. I did the same when I ate alone and wanted to read. The iPad is a great dining companion.

In the couple of day I had the device, I found it a powerful and natural way to consume digital content. It delivers a great Web browsing, book reading, game playing, and all-around media-consuming experience. The iPad is still a bit pricey for mainstream consumers, but I think it will still manage to pull in a lot of people. And having used it on a trip, I can attest that it would be a marvelous gadget for travels who spend a lot time on planes and in hotel rooms.

It may take some time for the iPad to find its true audience, but it will likely eventually become Apple’s fourth billion dollar business. The halo effect alone will be massive. Millions of people will enter Apple stores this year just to play with the iPad, giving the company a chance to sell them on other Apple products.

I look forward to spending a lot more time with the iPad in the future. I sense that it’s a product I’ll want to use a lot both on trips and at home. And when it’s not in use around the house, it will also function as our family’s digital picture frame. The potential for the iPad seems virtually limitless.

Resource:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362277,00.asp

Apple’s highly anticipated tablet computer would not, after all, require purchasing all new applications. Instead, everything in the App Store would automatically work on the iPad. As Jobs explained, tapping one button on the iPad screen transforms apps made for the 3.1-inch iPhone/iPod Touch screen to a snugger fit on the 9.7-inch iPad.

Simple, right? For the iPad owner, sure. But the iPad means bigger changes for the people who create these apps. Though the iPad has been dismissed by some as an oversized iPod Touch, it’s definitely not, as those who attempt to make iPad apps or re-create iPhone apps for it will find out fast.

That includes people like Michael Groves, who is half of a two-person development team at Wandering Pig Studios. He currently has two apps on the store, TapBox and a snow globe app. Groves, like most of his peers, is excited about the iPad. The extra screen real estate on the 9.7-inch device is a big deal, mostly because apps that were a no-go on the relatively small iPhone screen might actually work on the iPad.

“We’re starting to work on a game we originally positioned as an iPhone app, and it died because of the screen size issue. Now it will be our next project,” on the iPad, Groves said.

But bigger isn’t necessarily better in all cases. Cameron Daigle, a Web and interaction designer for Griffin, which makes all sorts of Apple accessories, says that like moving from a cramped apartment to a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, it will probably take app makers awhile to get used to all that space.

"What those (developers) are going to find is that the iPad has five times as much screen space, and your little app is going to look funny on there," Daigle said. "It’s going to be interesting to see how people grow their apps to fill that space. You’ll see a lot of awkwardly sparse and awkwardly cluttered apps as people figure out how to use that space."

Groves is also dealing with this problem. One of his apps is a game called Tap Box, in which players tap various colored blocks as they fly across the screen in changing patterns. Players advance by tapping all of the bad blocks as they try to make it off the screen.

"The interesting thing, on a much bigger screen size the game becomes a lot easier " Groves said. "If you have larger targets with larger screen, you’ll not have as much of an appeal as far as maintaining a (certain) challenge level "

For Groves, just having users click the 2x button Apple will put on the iPad screen will likely kill his app–if it’s not fun, who will buy it? So he has to basically rework his app from scratch to make it a decent experience on the iPad. So he will have to figure out a way to make his game more difficult.

Daigle, who has worked on Griffin’s iTalk voice-recording app, among others, says very simple apps like Griffin’s (the entire app consists of approximately seven elements) also won’t automatically benefit just from being larger. Making a button three times as big as the one on the iPhone app might look silly. It’s figuring out how to fill all that extra space that becomes the most important hurdle to overcome. That means rethinking what elements go on the screen, how big they are, and how users will interact with each element, all of which are things they’re working on as you read this.

Of course, many apps will translate to the large screen beautifully, like the ones we’ve already seen at the iPad introduction. Visually rich interactive games like Nova by GameLoft can only improve by being reworked and magnified. And MLB’s At Bat app benefits from being able to surface more info for stats-loving baseball geeks. It’s obviously not a coincidence as far as the apps chosen by Apple to demo the iPad–they make Apple’s new platform look good.

The iPad introduction event was not just a marketing strategy, it was also a subtle challenge to would-be iPad app makers. Apple set the bar really high with its own iPad apps. By demonstrating the likes of iBooks and iCal, applications which are very rich, distinct, and interactive, Apple is signaling to developers what they can and should do with this new platform.

"The iPad will require much more effort from a developer standpoint,” Groves said. “You have to put time into designing a workable interface that feels like it uses the screen size."

Instead of a few weeks to make a cookie-cutter iPhone app, standing out next to iBooks or iCal will probably take a few months, depending on the number of developers who can work on it. For Groves, it’s just him and another designer. At a large mobile developer shop like GameLoft, which has 60 games on the App Store, and 800 developers who work on the iPhone platform, it still means more work to upgrade to iPad-ready apps.

GameLoft Vice President of Publishing Baudouin Corman said his company intends to rework as many of its games for iPad as it can, though all of them is not really an option. "We can’t optimize all 60," he said. "Basically we have to make some choices…the ones that make sense best on the big screen."

Though it’s extra work, it’s worth it, says Daigle, because App Store shoppers will take notice. "There will be a big difference between a good, paid app and a free app," he said. "Free apps are going to look pretty free."

And that’s not meant to denigrate free apps at all, but to say that the gap between well-designed apps and poorly thought-out ones should be very obvious. Just allowing users to click the 2x button to scale up is an OK solution, but it’s not something designers and developers should rely on, according to Daigle.

"Scaling up never looks good–it doesn’t look good in Photoshop, much less something you’re interacting with," he said. "Apple is doing that to provide a little bit of a transitional period. But people are never going to be happy with scaling."

But there are other things developers need to think about too. Increased size also equals increased weight–the iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds, the iPhone 3GS at just one third of a pound. Apps that require any sort of movement or shaking, like the Bump app for example, won’t be a natural way to use the iPad.

Groves says that worries him about his snow globe app, wpSnow. You shake an iPhone or iPod Touch with his app open and snowflakes float down onto the Christmas tree. "Not many people have held an iPad. My concern is that app (requires) the user to move the phone around a lot. With the heft of the iPad, will that cause an issue with user interaction? Will users drop the pad if they’re swinging it around a lot ? "

Clearly, this will be a learn-as-you-go process for iPad developers. While they have access to the software development kit (SDK), it only contains a simulator. Few people outside of Apple have yet to touch an iPad, and until April 3, when the device hits stores, app makers will likely have a learning process ahead of them. But for designers like Daigle who look forward to the direction the iPad is moving mobile computing in, it’s exciting, since it’s clear the iPad is just the beginning of a lot more changes in store.

"I think the iPhone/iPod Touch has been a training ground of sorts to get people used to this interface and concepts," said Daigle. "I think we’ll look back at when iPhone first came out, (when app design meant a) top bar, bottom bar, and space in the middle. Apple did that on purpose, releasing the smaller design (of the iPhone) first to get people used to it…If they had released iPad first people would have been overwhelmed"

Resource:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20000393-260.html

Google March 16 said it now selling a version of its Nexus One smartphone that runs on AT&T’s 3G network and Rogers Wireless, a move that could broaden the device’s appeal and put it more squarely in competition with Apple’s world-beating iPhone 3GS.

The Nexus One is now available from Google’s Webstore as an unlocked device without a service plan for AT&T’s 3G network in the U.S. and on Rogers Wireless in Canada. Nexus One devices can also now be shipped to Canada from Google’s Webstore and will work with a SIM from Rogers Wireless, the company said.

Google’s Nexus One is based on the search engine’s Android operating system, an open source platform around which more than 20 different handsets have been built. The device, which runs the latest Android 2.1, includes a speedy 1 GHz processor.

When Google launched the Nexus One from its Webstore Jan. 5, the company made device available unlocked for $529 and with a two-year contract from T-Mobile for $179.

Google officials also pledged to make the Nexus One available on Verizon Wireless and via Vodafone in the spring. Recent reports indicated Verizon could sell the Nexus One as early as March 23, with the device rolling out from Vodafone in April.

In February, mobile gadget blogs discovered that the Federal Communications Commission had blessed a version of the Nexus One smartphone that runs on AT&T’s 3G network.

Google designed the Nexus One to be unlocked, which means users can use it with a SIM card from most GSM operators worldwide.

While the device is compatible with 3G networks such as T-Mobile, carriers such as AT&T and Rogers have different 3G frequencies. Accordingly, users owning SIM cards from AT&T or Rogers devices could only access 2G or EDGE networks on their Nexus One.

That all changed today. Users may choose from two versions of the Nexus One: one with 3G coverage on networks that use the 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, and 2100 MHz frequency bands. This is recommended for use on AT&T in the US and Rogers in Canada.

Google also offers the Nexus One with 3G coverage on networks that use the 900 MHz, AWS, and 2100 MHz frequency bands. This is recommended for use on T-Mobile in the U.S..

This move is a bit of positive news in the wake of a dismal new report from analytics researcher Flurry, which found that the Nexus One sold only 135,000 units through its first 74 days of retail sale.

By contrast, the Android-based Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless sold 1.05 million units, while Apple’s inaugural iPhone shipped 1 million copies in 2007.

If the Nexus One can find purchase on AT&T’s network, it may be able to more directly challenge Apple’s iPhone, currently carried exclusively by AT&T.

With features such as pinch-to-zoom multitouch, the Nexus One has been compared to the iPhone with all of its functionality. This is big reason why Apple has sued Nexus One manufacturer HTC Corp. for infringing on some 20 of its smartphone patents dating back the last several years.

The idea is to take Android down a few notches as Apple seeks to defend its turf from Google-based phones.

Resource:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Nexus-One-Now-Runs-on-ATT-3G-in-US-Rogers-in-Canada-320991/

In the blue corner, wearing black, weighing in at 4.8 ounces, the 31-month champion of the touch screen phones: Apple’s iPhone!

In the red corner is the challenger, appearing on every carrier, a new entrant to the heavy-weight battle: Google’s Android!

It doesn’t take Michael Buffer’s “let’s get ready to rumble” introduction to know that Apple and Google are squaring off for what looks to be an epic battle of the smartphone platforms. Apple made that loud and clear on Tuesday when it announced it would sue HTC, the maker of the Nexus One “Google phone,” over 20 alleged patent violations.

Experts say Apple is an aging champion that is feeling threatened by the momentum surrounding new-to-the-game Google’s Android platform.

Steve Jobs: A man aggrieved

“Apple set the bar and now it’s being toppled,” said Will Stofega, program director of mobile device technology and trends at IDC. “Apple is playing defense, and Google is playing offense.”

Although it may seem that Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) are the only contenders battling it out in the U.S. smartphone market, that’s simply not true. In fact, neither is even the largest.

That “biggest” award goes to BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM), which commands 41.6% of the market, according to technology data tracker comScore. Apple’s iPhone OS is is second place with 25.3%, and phones that run Google’s Android operating system are in fifth with 5.2% of the market.

Battle for the data belt

But there is an all-important metric that sets Android and iPhone OS apart from the competition: data. Heaps and heaps of data.

The iPhone, iPod Touch and the handful of smartphones that run Android accounted for a whopping 86% of the data downloads from U.S. smartphones in January, according to a recent study by Web advertising company AdMob. IPhone OS downloads accounted for 47% of the data requests across the nation, and Android accounted for 39%.

That’s important for consumers, because it means they’re getting more functionality out of iPhones and Android-based phones, which is, after all, the point of getting a smartphone. Those phones give users a seamless, computer-like browsing experience, and they offer by far the most apps.

The iPhone App Store has more than 100,000 apps. Google’s Android Market has 20,000. The next biggest competitor is RIM with several thousand and Palm’s (PALM) WebOS just crossed the 1,000-app threshold.

It’s not just size that counts, it’s how you use it: iPhone and Android users download an average of just under 9 apps per month, according to AdMob. The next largest contingent is Palm, which sees an average of 5.7 apps per month downloaded.

“People are more engaged with their iPhones and Android phones due to the browsing experience,” said Soumen Ganguly, principal at tech consultancy Altman Vilandrie & Co. “That’s where BlackBerry generally lags by quite a bit.”

Data usage also gives Google and Apple an edge over the competition, because more data usage means more revenue. Apple takes a 30% cut from the apps that it sells, and Google makes money when people search on Google or visit Web sites that feature ads supported by Google.

It may be too soon to count out any of the smartphone players just yet, given how quickly new technologies develop. RIM recently said that it planned to improve its browser functionality and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) wowed spectators with its Windows Phone 7, which is set to be unveiled this fall.

But some say it’s Android and iPhone OS, more than any other smartphone platform, that are making the greatest strides in the race to be market leader.

“Looking to the future, it is primarily between Google and Apple to shape the future of the mobile industry,” said Jagdish Rebello, principal analyst of communication systems at iSuppli Corp. “When you look at what Google and Apple are doing with applications and creating an ecosystem … others are just playing catch-up.”

Blow by blow

Google and Apple have taken very different approaches to the battle. Here’s a look at how that bout is playing out:

Apps: Apple is winning the app war now, with about five times more apps than Google. But app developers have to get their products cleared by Apple’s standards police (remember the 6,000 sexy apps that got purged last week?) before they can appear in the App store. That’s a process that can take months.

Google has taken the opposite approach, opening its platform to developers. IDC’s Stofega says that developers are embracing Google’s approach, and as Android adoption grows, more developers are writing Android apps. That could bring some of the higher-quality apps to Google’s side. Google has a lot of ground to cover, but app war may just be beginning.

Devices and prices: IPhone OS runs on three devices: the iPhone 3G S, the iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch, with prices ranging from $99 to $299 with a new contract.

Android is currently available thorugh three carriers on on 10 smartphones in the U.S., with prices ranging between $79 to $199 with a new contract. It also runs on a number of other devices, including several netbooks and the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader.

6 ways iPhone and Android differ

ISuppli’s Rebello said Google’s strategy of offering Android on more phones, with more carriers and varying price points was the same winning strategy for RIM’s BlackBerry devices.

“Apple has a confrontational ‘our way or the highway’ strategy, but it’s the Google model that’s winning over carriers,” he said.

Availability: The iPhone is available exclusively on AT&T (T, Fortune 500) in the United States, and there have been well-documented problems with how that partnership has negatively impacted many customers’ experiences.

Google is carrier agnostic and, unlike Apple, allows wireless companies to take a cut in the app revenues. As a result, wireless companies are embracing Android. The only major U.S. carrier without an Android phone is currently AT&T, but the wireless company just announced it will begin to sell five Android phones by June.

“Google’s strategy isn’t about keeping one carrier happy but about enabling mobility, hardware and software to a variety of different tiers,” said Stofega. “There are advantages to serving a number of different masters, and that’s where Apple has some problems.”

Resource:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/04/technology/google_apple_mobile/index.htm