Apple

For all the discussion of the importance of transparency and openness on the Web today, it's very telling that the world's fastest-growing mobile platform may also be the most proprietary.

Apple wins rave reviews (including from me) on its technology but certainly not for its commitment to sharing its innovations with the world...unless, of course, you fork over $299 and sign a two-year mobile service commitment.

Indeed, Apple has earned the dubious honor of being more closed than Microsoft.

And yet, as Marc Hedlund reveals over on the O'Reilly Radar, application growth for the iPhone dwarfs that of the former leader in the smartphone category, PalmOS:

iPhone OS app growth vs. PalmOS app growth

(Credit: Marc Hedlund)

If openness matters so much, why is Apple doing so well with its uber-proprietary iPhone, just as Microsoft dominates the desktop with proprietary Windows?

There are at least two answers. One is that while Apple's iPhone (like Microsoft's Windows) isn't open in the open-source sense, it is open in the sense that it's easy to create applications that run on it. The second reason is that there's a huge financial incentive to do so, given the momentum behind the platform.

For some, these reasons aren't good enough, such as Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker:

Many of us participate in closed systems where the rules are set for us and we don't see them, certainly can't change them, and aren't permitted to "participate" in building the rules. This is true of very popular web services. For example, I "participate" in Flickr and Facebook, but within the system and rules that those organizations set up to meet their own goals. That's fine; there's no reason for those sites to change.

Mozilla is trying to build a layer of the Internet that's different, where "participation" extends to the very core of what we build.

With 40 percent of Mozilla's Firefox written by outside contributors, it's clear that an open platform works for Mozilla to build a better browser, which is why Mozilla continues to improve the ways in which developers can contribute to it. But it's equally clear that there are other ways to be "open to participation," ways that pay the rent for Apple, Microsoft, and huge ecosystems of commercial partners.

Is one platform approach better than another?

While it's clear that the world has room for both proprietary-but-open-enough and pureplay-open approaches to platform building, I favor the more open approach. The reason is that eventually, it appears proprietary approaches can collapse under their own weight.

Take Windows, for example. To maintain its growth, Microsoft has had to include more and more functionality in the operating system, stepping on the toes (or outright devouring the toes) of its erstwhile partners. (Interestingly, while discussing whether openness matters for Apple over Google Android, Slate describes Microsoft's Windows approach as open.)

Eventually, Windows grew to such heft that the market, including Microsoft partners, started looking for open alternatives, causing then Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to dub Linux Microsoft's "most potent operating system competitor." The "good enough" operating system that performed certain tasks much more efficiently and powerfully than Windows has now grown to seriously threaten Microsoft in a range of applications and markets.

Eventually, even Microsoft's desktop dominance may be threatened by Linux as new classes of easy-to-use, cost-effective devices like Netbooks arise.

Back to Apple. Today, Apple's iPhone seems set to rule the world because it enables a huge community of application developers to reach a paying audience. Tomorrow, however, Google (Android/Linux), Nokia (Symbian, Linux), Palm (WebOS/Linux), and even Microsoft (Windows Mobile) threaten its cozy corralling of the mobile market.

Microsoft has made it clear that it's possible to build a massive business with an "open enough" approach to platform development. The question is, can Microsoft (and Apple) maintain that without truly opening up?

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Apple is well known for its simplicity, but the upcoming version of the iPhone's system software is exhibiting usability weaknesses that companies like Nokia solved years ago.

Earlier this week, as part of the ramp-up towards releasing this software to the public, Apple began running a stress test of push notifications--the hallmark feature of the new operating system. This system sends notifications to your phone whenever there's an update from an application, even when it's not running.

To manage the onslaught of notifications from each application, Apple added a new menu that lets users manage push notification settings for each application, as well as providing a quick switch to turn them all on or off. While handy, this introduces an annoying problem for business users that Nokia solved a decade ago by providing a quick way to toggle multiple settings without the hassle of menu hopping.

User sound profiles, something that Nokia has had in its phones for over a decade, do just that. These let you change multiple settings on the device with just two button presses, and include things like ringer volume, vibration, keyboard tones, and control over how much attention each type of alert can get.

The best part is, you can switch between these profiles by quickly tapping the power button and choosing from a pop-up menu. You're also able to make your own custom profiles with settings you choose. There's even the option to have them automatically turn on and off during certain times of day, so you can have it switch to silent after 10 p.m. so it won't wake you or your significant other up when you're trying to go to sleep.

On the iPhone, you have one profile, and one profile only. Even if you turn the ringer sound off by flipping the volume silencer switch, you will still receive alerts and vibrations for incoming calls, e-mails, text messages, etc. Worse, with iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has embedded some of the options to turn these things on and off a little deeper than they were in version 2.0.

The new notification settings now live where the e-mail push notification used to reside. That menu has been pushed ever deeper into the mail settings, which means that to tweak things like how often it fetches e-mail and pops up with calendar items and invitations, you have to dive three settings menus deep (not including the two or more actions required to wake and unlock the phone and get to the settings menu).

A small tweak to Apple's handling of e-mail fetching has a big effect on usability for business users.

(Credit: CNET)

So here's my problem with all this: when I start my work day I want to turn all this stuff back on after having to have turned it off so I wouldn't hear a buzz or have the screen light up every few minutes while I was asleep. I want it to get my work and Yahoo e-mail via push, and fetch all other mail every 15 minutes. I want to flip the push notifications back on, too. Now I have to go through two different settings menus, flipping each one of those things on, when there really should be one where I can manage both.

Even better would be ... Read more

The Web-based version of Gmail for the iPhone and Android phones brings a faster, more elaborate interface.

(Credit: Google)

Google has released a new Web-based version of Gmail that gives iPhone and Android phone users a more sophisticated version of the online e-mail service, including access to messages that's faster and that works even when offline.

Google demonstrated the Web-based mobile version of Gmail last week and announced its availability Tuesday on the Google Mobile blog. "You'll notice that it's a lot faster when performing actions like opening an e-mail, navigating, or searching. And if the data network drops out on you..., you'll still be able to open recently read messages and to compose over a flaky, or non-existent, network connection," said Google mobile engineer Joanne McKinley.

Although the new features are interesting, and I find them a big step up, what's significant in the bigger picture is that Google has shown just how powerful mobile Web browsers have become, not just for surfing Web pages, but for running Web-based applications. This mobile Gmail application doesn't have to be downloaded through Apple's App Store or Google's Android Market; it works after you point the browser to gmail.com.

The fact that one Web site can support iPhone and Android today and likely the Palm Pre tomorrow is significant for Google: by putting the application on the Web, the company doesn't have to create separate applications for different devices, as it has with BlackBerry and Android already but not the iPhone.

The relative universality of the Web app sheds light on Google's motivation for supporting Android, too. Google has a strong interest in making mobile devices first-class citizens on the Internet, a move that ultimately will open up new advertising possibilities for the search giant.

New features
The new version is much more elaborate than its predecessor--though not so elaborate that there are ads, as in the regular version of Gmail. Among the new features:

• Multiple messages can be selected then archived, deleted, and marked as read, unread, or spam.

• A floating toolbar--the "floaty bar"--travels with the page as you scroll through a message or through an in-box with selected messages, letting you take various actions without having to scroll to the top or bottom of the page.

• A search button appears at the top of the screen for easier retrieval of older messages. Previously it was buried at the bottom of the in-box.

But the offline access is what sets the application apart. The application stores e-mail messages on the phone itself using the still settling-down HTML 5 standard for Web page design and, in Android's case, using Google's Gears browser plug-in.

Faster e-mail
That makes messages readable while offline. But it also makes reading messages faster, since they don't have to be retrieved over the network as long as they've been cached on the phone. I noticed a very significant speedup in use--once I endured an initial wait for synchronization while messages were downloaded.

"Gmail for mobile allows common actions such as archive and send to be completed much more quickly than previous releases. The first time you visit Gmail, you may notice that the start-up time is a bit slower than usual. This is because we are downloading required files over the network. However, once the files are downloaded, subsequent launches will be more consistent regardless of connection type," Google told me in a statement.

The offline mode let me compose a message and push the send button; when network access was restored, the Gmail application took care of actually sending it without any intervention on my part. Also while offline, I could perform a search I'd done recently online, though a new search required network access.

The biggest missing piece in my quick test was the ability to add labels to messages. That's in the works, Google said:

"The new architecture of the Gmail web app will allow us to roll out new features much more quickly. The ability to add a label is not available at this time, but it's coming soon," Google said. That statement intrigued me, because Google's 2007 Gmail overhaul for ordinary browsers produced a modular design that permits extensive customization through Gmail Labs.

The iPhone and Android versions of Gmail worked identically once I installed Gears on my T-Mobile G1 after being prompted by a "get faster Gmail" invitation. The iPhone version was more responsive, and both had an awkward time showing HTML-formatted e-mail.

Update at 2:52 p.m. PDT, with a report from AdMob about global Internet traffic on smartphones.

With the popularity of Apple's iPhone mobile-application store growing and competitors Palm and Google teeing up their efforts, the number of smartphone users tapping into mobile-application stores are expected to reach 100 million in 2013, according to a research report released Tuesday by In-Stat.

(Credit: Apple)

Currently, the number of smartphone users accessing mobile-application stores is roughly a fourth of the projected 100 million users and is largely comprised of only iPhone users.

But with Google calling on third-party developers to embrace its Android smartphone and Palm with its highly anticipated Palm Pre smartphone set to debut this summer, In-Stat is expecting the number of users accessing mobile-application stores with their smartphones to increase four-fold by 2013, noted David Chamberlain, a principal analyst with In-Stat.

(Credit: Palm)

These smartphones are built on an open platform that can accept applications from any developer who writes programs for that particular mobile operating system and are sold, or distributed freely, via a mobile-application store, rather than through the phone's carrier.

By 2013, Chamberlain said he expects nearly one-third, or 100 million, of all smartphone users to have the capability to access mobile-application stores. The current slice of the total pie is a fraction of that and largely comprised of Apple iPhones, he noted.

(Credit: Google)

While a number of these mobile applications are offered for free, that could change as third-party developers and operators of mobile-application stores find it difficult to make money off advertising.

"If Coca-Cola buys a Superbowl ad, Nielsen can say how many people watched it," Chamberlain said. "But there are no independent third parties to audit mobile applications."

AdMob, a mobile-advertising marketplace, issued a report Tuesday that looked at February Internet traffic using smartphones.

According to the report, smartphones accounted for 33 percent of the global Internet traffic in February, up from a 26 percent slice six months ago.

And within the smartphone market, here's a ranking of which device grabbed the largest share of Internet traffic, according to AdMob:

(Credit: AdMob)

And in the U.S., Apple's iPhone has an even greater share of the Internet traffic among smartphones.

The iPhone holds a 49.5 percent slice of U.S. Internet smartphone traffic, followed by Research in Motion's Blackberry 8300 with a 9.1 percent slice and the Blackberry 8100 with a 6.9 percent piece.

And among mobile operating systems in the U.S., AdMob ranks Google's Android as holding a 5 percent slice for the smartphone market. And holding the U.S. lead is the iPhone operating system with 50 percent of the market share in February.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows not to blink.

On the desktop front, Microsoft is not discounting the approximately 1 percent market share gain Apple has garnered in the past year, bolstering its position as the No. 4 player in operating systems behind Linux, said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, during a midyear update with analysts Tuesday.

"We're very focused on both Apple as a competitor and Linux as a competitor," Ballmer said.

And concerns regarding Google's open-source mobile operating system Android are not far behind.

"I think the dynamics with Linux is changing somewhat," Ballmer said. "I assume we'll see Android-based, Linux-based laptops, in addition to phones, and we'll see Google more and more as a competitor in the desktop operating system business than we ever have before."

Last month, for example, a report surfaced that raised the question of whether the Android operating system had recently been successfully ported over to a Netbook.

"The seams between what is a phone operating system and a PC operating system will change, so we have ramped our investment in the client operating system," Ballmer said.

And on the mobile operating system front, Windows Mobile ranks third, with Apple's iPhone fourth and Google's Android currently a blip on the radar, but nonetheless a concern for the Redmond giant, Ballmer said.

"The truth of the matter is all the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android," Ballmer said.

He added he sees competition in the mobile arena occurring on two fronts: one is selling mobile-related software independently from the hardware, which may explain the software giant's reported interest in launching a Windows Mobile online applications store. The other front is a combination of software, hardware, and services bundled together, similar to Apple's iPhone or Research In Motion's popular BlackBerry.

The Android Market now offers the $200 'I Am Richer' application.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

An application that did nothing beyond showing a person was willing to spend gobs of money for it didn't last long on Apple's App Store, but now we'll begin to see if Google lives up to its more laissez-faire approach to its rival Android Market.

Apple banned Armin Heinrich's "I Am Rich", which cost $1,000 and only showed a red ruby, from its App Store last August. Now the conceptually similar "I Am Richer" has arrived on the Android Market from Mike DG.

Perhaps owners of T-Mobile's G1 phone are more cost-conscious, or the recession has hurt the market for inane software, or Android programmers are willing to offer greater value, though, because the new application offers basically the same feature set for only $200, a fifth the price of the app Apple banned.

"Prove your wealth to others by running this app and showing them the mesmerizing glowing crystal," the software's description says.

Google has some rules for Android Market--no malware is allowed, for example--but generally has a much more liberal attitude than Apple. While each application on the App Store requires Apple's approval, Google plans to let the world at large sort out Android applications through the mechanisms such as the rating system. Good applications will eventually sift their way to the top of the heap the way good YouTube videos do, Google argues.

Update 7:06 p.m. PST: The $200 price is as much as Google permits organizations to charge, the company said. And yes, Google appears perfectly happy to let people buy the application:

"We check applications for compliance with the Market Content Policies and Terms of Service (in order to remove malware, porn, spam, or profanity)," the company said in a statement.

(Via IDG News)

One of the chief complaints about Google's Android is its lack of multitouch support.

Did Google CEO and Apple board member Eric Schmidt knuckle under to Apple on multitouch?

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Now, according to a VentureBeat report by M.G. Siegler, we may have an idea of why Google skipped the feature on its mobile operating system:

Apple, which of course makes the signature multi-touch mobile device, the iPhone, apparently asked Google not to implement it, and Google agreed, an Android team member tells us.

Further, the Android team member went on to say that they were relieved that Google didn't go against Apple's wishes, given the legal storm that appears to be brewing between Apple and Palm, which is using multi-touch technology in its new Pre phone. Even if Apple ultimately decides not to pursue legal action against Palm (it's not yet clear how likely that is, but Apple does have an impressive array of patents), the situation has likely soured the relationship between the two companies. Google, it seems, wants no part in ruining its relationship with Apple.

While this all may sound a bit far-fetched, it's worth noting that last month Apple was awarded a patent titled "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics." Patent No. 7,479,949, originally filed in September 2007, covers the multitouch and all its gestures (swipe, pinch, rotation, etc.) that are used on the Apple iPhone.

A day after that patent was awarded, Apple COO Tim Cook warned iPhone competitors they should understand that Apple "will not stand for having our (intellectual property) ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal." Those comments, made during Apple's fiscal first-quarter earnings call, were believed to be intended for Palm even though Cook did not single out any particular company in making his comments.

Siegler goes on to address the Palm connection:

While the connection between Apple and Palm would seem like it should be strong, given how many former Apple employees now work at Palm, Google and Apple are actually more aligned. Not only does Google specially tailor a ton of its products for the iPhone (both with apps like Maps and Google Search, and specially formatted webpages), but its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is on Apple's board of directors. And don't underestimate the fact that both share a chief rival: Microsoft.

While the open-source Android can be modified to support multitouch with a few well-placed lines of code, one has to wonder why the feature wasn't initially supported and when Google will officially do so.

Safari's built-in search box now shows iPhone-optimized search results for Google.

(Credit: Google)

After revamping the iPhone's presentation of Google search results last month, the Internet giant has spread the change more broadly on the Apple device.

Previously, the new Google search results were available only when people typed Google.com into the phone's browser, then performed the search. Now the results also appear when using Safari's built-in search box, which, given that it's one fewer slow-loading page away from results, is how I use the service.

Google announced the change on its Google Mobile blog. The new results also appear on the T-Mobile G1, which uses Google's Android operating system. In addition to being better-suited to the devices' screen size, the mobile-formatted pages load more quickly, Google said.

iPhone customers can change their default search provider to Yahoo, if desired.

(Via Search Engine Watch.)

Google now can show search ads on the iPhone's browser.

(Credit: Google)

The iPhone and T-Mobile G1 come with pretty much full-fledged Web browsers, and Google now is according them that status by showing search ads on the phones.

Advertisers bidding for search ads through Google's AdWords service now can choose to have ad campaigns run exclusively on iPhones and the T-Mobile G1, the first phone with Google's Android operating system, which also has a robust browser. Alexandra Kenin, product marketing manager for Google's mobile ads team, announced the move on the company's Google Mobile Blog Monday.

By using the "iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers" option in AdWords, advertisers also can exclude this class of devices from their ad campaigns, Kenin said.

Unlike with display ads on mobile devices, search ads work the same. "Because the G1 and iPhone has full Internet browsers, you'll be able to display your standard AdWords ads and landing pages on these devices without having to modify them," Kenin said.