mobile

Apple has started to provide regular updates on the status of its MobileMe service, which is still causing problems for some users.

Some poor soul at Apple known only as David G. was drafted by CEO Steve Jobs to write every-other-day posts on the status of MobileMe, the successor to Apple's .Mac service that has caused no small level of frustration in the two weeks since it launched. In the initial post on Friday, Apple acknowledged that those affected by the outage lost 10 percent of their e-mail between July 16 and July 18, the height of the outage.… Read more

If you weren't aware, a war--more like a tug-of-war--is happening in the mobile space. The iPhone is quickly rising as the development platform to beat, despite its paltry share of market versus Nokia (Symbian), Java BREW, Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile. In addition, Google's fledgling open-source Android platform is also a challenger to the incumbents.

At a Mobile Web Wars Roundtable held by TechCrunch more than 20 mobile wonks discussed that state of mobile platforms (see the list of participants below). The purpose of the roundtable was to determine which mobile platform is best for developers. The iPhone has … Read more

Apple's MobileMe problems are now well-documented, most recently by Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. So much promise...so little delivery. A great idea that could be a great product, if it just worked. (I am a longtime Apple .Mac customer and am certainly not happy to see the service prove so incorrigible.)

So, what's the alternative? As you might imagine, open source provides a compelling answer.

Funambol has been offering its open-source "MobileMe" service for a wide variety of devices, not just the iPhone. In fact, Funambol now supports over 1.5 billion devices … Read more

On Thursday, I attended MobileBeat 2008, a new conference here in Silicon Valley focused primarily on cell phones broad enough to encompass closely related gizmos like Apple's iPod Touch and--at least in theory--mobile Internet devices.

The event was hosted by VentureBeat, where a great many blog posts can be found that go through all the sessions and significant announcements from the conference. (My thanks to VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi, who invited me to the conference.)

… Read more

A quick follow-up to my earlier post about the lack of Zune mentions in Microsoft's presentations to financial analysts today. Mobile market follower James Kendrick blogs that Microsoft is holding its first serious internal meetings to coordinate the development of a Zune phone.

I don't have any inside knowledge about these meetings, but I don't doubt it for a second. Kendrick's posting, which is based on an unsourced rumor, suggests that any such phone will be based on Windows Mobile 7, will have a touch screen, and will feature connections to Windows Live services.

My guess: … Read more

As if Apple wasn't having enough problems with its launch of MobileMe, its usually reliable friend Walt Mossberg has recommended that people stay far away from the service.

Mossberg's review on All Things Digital doesn't even take into account the service outages that have many former .Mac users up in arms over their inability to access e-mail. In his view, "it's a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises."

MobileMe does more than just give you e-mail: it's designed to let you access your contacts, calendars, and bookmarks … Read more

Is four processing cores inside a laptop overkill? Probably not for gamers. Intel is expected to meet this insatiable need for speed when it rolls out it first mobile quad-core processor.

An Intel executive is on the record stating an August roll-out.

And this may happen sooner in August than later. System vendors may go public with information about the quad-core mobile processor as soon as August 11, according to sources. This is when other processors, such as the Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3GHz), are expected to go public.

Many of the details of the quad-core mobile processor are public … Read more

I admit it; I've been in denial about my cell phone habit.

I'm a multitasker on the phone and I tend to make calls when I'm in transit. Why not get some of those calls I have to make out of the way while I'm walking or driving? (I really do try to not use the phone while on the bus so as not to annoy other passengers, but sometimes it just can't be avoided.)

Of course, I've known for months that I was going to have to curb the habit while driving because … Read more

A class action lawsuit against T-Mobile received new life yesterday after a Seattle federal judge ruled that it could move forward. The suit, which comes as text messages fees are on the rise, alleges that T-Mobile is allowing subscribers few options to avoid spam text messages. Since customers are charged for all incoming texts, whether solicited or not, the suit argues that subscribers must either eat the costs or end their service contracts early, which could result in an early termination fee of up to $175.

While some other carriers let customers block text messages completely, T-Mobile does not offer … Read more