Showing posts tagged IPhone

NoiseTube - a noise measuring app for your smart phone

NoiseTube.

Provides a fairly accurate measurement of sound, in decibels (db(A)), using your smart phone. Android version available now; iPhone version has been submitted to the iTunes store but is not yet available.

Most people subject themselves to potentially ear damaging loud sound frequently. Several  years ago, I had a really bad ear infection that raised havoc with my ears for quite some time. Since then, I am pretty sensitive about the level of sound around me and generally carry and use ear plugs a lot when entering high noise environments.  This app can help you learn to recognize damaging high sound situation and take steps to protect your hearing.

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I switched to a Windows Phone

Really, I did.

My standard phone was an older, long ago off contract, “feature phone” with a little keyboard for text. I also have a low end Android phone (on month by month service) and an iPhone 3gs (no service). Both are used for software dev and test.

I bought a Nokia Lumia 710 (without service) for testing an app on actual Windows Phone hardware (yay! my preliminary app works!).

After six weeks, I found I prefer the Windows Phone to my Android phone - by a long ways.  I guess I am learning to “Think Different” since everyone else wants an iPhone and seems to march to that guy in the Apple 1984 ad. Oh, that hurts. Anyway, I’ve put the Lumia 710 on a month by month no contract plan. I could switch to a different phone in the future but for now, its fun not being a clone like everyone else :)

With the battery saver features turned on in the Settings, after a full day of occasional use, phone calls and listening to a moderately long podcast, my battery still has 83% capacity remaining. For a smart phone, that’s quite decent.

The 710 is a low end  Windows Phone but it does what I want in a phone very well. I also still use my Android phone, but the Lumia 710 is my default phone.

Disclosure: As a blogger, I do not have to disclose anything. But I own stock in both Nokia and Microsoft and presume that by my making these comments, both companies will see their share price increase by 50% on Friday!!! Yippee!

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Mobile app unit sales, plus privacy

only 20 percent of paid apps get more than 100 downloads and only 0.2 percent of paid apps have more than 10,000 downloads, while 20 percent of free apps get 10,000 or more downloads.

via In Mobile Apps, Free Ain’t Free, But Cambridge University Has A Plan To Fix It | TechCrunch.

and then there’s this

if the service is free, you the user are the product, and so you shouldn’t be surprised when your information is “sold” as part of that business model

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Survey says many iPad owners might upgrade to iPad 3

No kidding, what a silly survey: iPad 3: Who Will Buy One, and Why? [INFOGRAPHIC].

Unfortunately, I cannot make sense of their “Who will upgrade?” text so I have no idea what this means.

But the survey suggests bad news for software developers as illustrated in this graphic (click to enlarge):

About 1/3d of iPads are 3G capable but only about half are subscribed to a data plan, and 30% of those are not happy with the plan.

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Consumer advertising for Windows Phone

Yesterday I wrote that Microsoft had not done a good job of consumer-level marketing, such as for the Windows Phone. Apple, by comparison, is very effective at marketing to consumers’ emotions to attract repeat and frequent purchases of high end techie toys. Has Microsoft figured out consumer marketing - yet? 

This week, the company will launch another such campaign: “Smoked by Windows Phone,” a series of online ads challenging those who use iPhones, Android phones or other mobile devices to beat the speed of a Windows Phone in doing a browser search, sharing with their social network or shooting and posting a photo.

via Business & Technology | Microsoft sharpens its advertising sword to jab rivals | Seattle Times Newspaper.

This is valid marketing but focuses on the pragmatic features - not the emotional appeal that drives Apple sales.

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Are computers following the cellphone “replace every two years” model?

Apple’s OS X 10.8 announcement to “end-of-life” not very old computers caught myself and others by surprise. When we bought Apple products, we had expectation of a product longevity that exceeds Apple’s expectations for product longevity (3 to 5 years) which creates a disconnect for customer expectations.

As I looked at the expense over the years and set out a product life of about 4-5 years, converted to a monthly expense, buying a high end Apple product is sort of like buying an expensive smart phone on a two year contract where you pay by the month. Laying out the monthly costs made this obvious.

Perhaps the future is that computer products will be “leased to own”. After 3 to 5 years, you own a boat anchor and its time to repeat the “lease to own” cycle.

The Cellular Service Model

As Apple migrates their smart phone iOS operating system features into Mac OS X (in fact, they are dropping the name “Mac” and it becomes just OS X) they are migrating a lot of iOS features (and some drawbacks) into the Mac hardware platform. It is as if they would like to see the notebook (its not clear they will continue making desktop computers) hardware, software and services sold as a multi-year deal. Once locked in to their ecosystem, it will be hard to not upgrade every few years and you might even be pushed into upgrades you did not plan on making.

Also see Apple Mac App store apps get “sandboxed” starting in March. Apple is migrating the closed iPhone model in to the Mac platform as well.

The business model is becoming that a computer “purchase” is not a purchase but more like monthly “rental”, except you get to dispose of the boat anchor after a few years. The average physical life of computer hardware is about 9 years (IEEE Spectrum article from early last decade), and software itself does not wear out. Many users never use more than fraction of the software features and have little meaningful reason to upgrade.

Worse for the hardware business is that by adding software apps, new features can be added to old hardware, extending the useful life of the hardware even longer.

Emotional Versus Pragmatic Marketing Appeals

Ostensibly, new products emerge that do add value and consumers voluntarily upgrade. (By consumer I mean individuals and not business customers who usually measure value in terms of $.) Consumers choose new products for many reasons - some times because they add $ value, some times because they add coolness and some consumers want to be seen as “hip”, some times because they want to keep up with their peer group. There are many reasons consumers choose to buy products and they often (usually, actually) have little to do with $ value - instead, products often add fun, hip or cool values. In other words, consumer products are marketed to the emotions.

Apple has mastered the latter and appeals strongly to the consumer-oriented purchaser that assigns value based on things like coolness. Apple successfully appeals to “emotional” values as we would expect for a consumer product. Consumers do not usually make “rational” decisions which is why much market efforts are steered towards the emotions.

Windows, on the other hand, is pragmatic - the business mind-set, I think - where value is measured in terms of $s and productivity; hence, boring.

Apple is primarily a consumer products company and Microsoft has become primarily a business products company, if you think about it. While Microsoft has products in the consumer space (Windows Phone, for example), they have not mastered the marketing message for the consumer. Google seems to be straddling both emotional (different than Apple and Microsoft) and pragmatic demographics. Amazon is an interesting player too that should not be dismissed and has a powerful consumer brand.

How the Cloud Can Accelerate Product Replacement

Obviously computer hardware and software makers would prefer that you replace your systems - the more frequently the better!  Rapid evolution of product features and consumer-oriented emotional marketing campaigns are used to encourage rapid product turnover.

The cloud will be a central piece to drive rapid product turnover.

Each of the major players is working to migrate their customers to their own cloud:

  • Google and Android OS - in fact, they’ve always been a cloud company
  • Apple and iOS/OS X - migrating rapidly to the cloud
  • Microsoft and Windows 8 - migrating to the cloud
  • Amazon, yes Amazon - they operate a huge cloud service and are doing very interesting things with the Kindle Fire tablet.

Once consumers are tightly coupled to “cloud” solutions, switching to another product becomes difficult. They learned that trick from the cellular phone companies too!

Migrating your life to the cloud means that switching to another provider will be difficult. This is known as an exit barrier. Cellphone contracts are an exit barrier, as are “family plans” (since its hard to migrate everyone all at once).

But the cloud is potentially more than that.

By tying hardware and software products closely to the cloud, manufacturers can gradually add features (whether you need to use many of them or not) that will require you to upgrade your hardware and software systems. For example some users of recent Mac computers are using Apple’s MobileMe; however, Apple is replacing Mobile me with iCloud and some of these users will not be able to migrate their hardware to OS X 10.8. In effect, they are forced to upgrade to replace the disappearing MobileMe feature.

In other words, the computer industry may be moving to the “upgrade your cell phone every two years” business model. May be not 2 years, but perhaps 3 to 4 years.

Will consumers be happy to spend money, frequently, to update hardware and software? Time will tell.

I would guess that the big players are segmenting the market as:

  • Apple is after the affluent “Mercedes Benz” customer that pays premium prices. Money is not much of an objection to upgrading and Apple is very successful in this consumer space.
  • Google is after the lower tier with Android, where consumers pay attention to pricing, and “choice” where there are fewer restrictions on apps or even migrating your data out of their cloud.
  • Microsoft is likely going to go after the pragmatic consumer which is likely to be both an overlap with Google/Android and the business market where Microsoft is very successful.

Which kind of consumer demographic are you?

What are your consumer-oriented values and hot buttons?

Do your values match with your choice of consumer products, computer products and future cloud solutions?

Environmental Effects

A side effect of rapid product obsolescence and the perceived need to rapidly replace millions of perfectly usable systems is negative environmental impacts. First, manufacturing all the pieces of an electronics devices has a number of environmental impacts.  Second, when products are moved into end of life quickly (every few years), they may be recycled, they might not. And recycling does not recapture all of the resources that went into manufacturing the device. Extremely rapid product obsolescence - to fulfill consumer emotional needs - is not good for the environment.

A related view comes from Stephen Colbert, an obvious authority

The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Annie Leonard
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Wikipedia on planned obsolescence.

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Mac OS X 10.8 will obsolete slightly older hardware

Macs that will support OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

As usual, the newer the Mac the better:

  • MacBook Pro – 13″ from mid 2009 or later, 15″ from late 2007 and newer, 17″ from late 2007 and newer
  • MacBook Air – late 2008 and newer
  • iMac – models from mid 2007 and newer
  • MacBook – 13″ aluminum from 2008, 13″ from 2009 and newer
  • Mac Mini – early 2009 and newer
  • Mac Pro – early 2008 models and newer
  • XServe – early 2009 models and newer

Macs that are NOT expected to support OS X Mountain Lion

Older Macs and those with weaker GPU’s will likely be left behind:

  • Anything with an Intel GMA 950 or x3100 integrated graphics card
  • Anything with an ATI Radeon X1600
  • MacBook models released prior to 2008
  • Mac Mini released prior to 2007
  • iMac models released prior to 2007
  • Original MacBook Air
From OSXDaily. (Fixed broken link)

Hopefully Apple will reconsider and support more systems by the final release. This is a situation where secrecy is not in their benefit as it creates confusion for consumers and an inability to plan future decisions.

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Nokia Lumia 710 running Windows Phone

I received a Lumia 710 phone yesterday for software testing. I have no cellular service on this phone but can connect to the Internet over Wi-Fi.

In setting it up I discovered an obscure defect in someone’s software - I could not log in to Twitter using the Windows Phone People Hub, the downloaded Twitter, moTweets or Seesmic apps! None of these would log in but all my other Internet access worked fine including email, Facebook and web surfing.

I eventually discovered that in the Settings | Cellular options there is a setting for “data” which means to use, presumably, cellular data if available. With no service contract on this phone, there is no cellular data - which is why everything is working over Wi-Fi. Except this did not work for the Twitter service. Once I disabled the cellular data option, everything worked fine.

I like the People Hub - it presents me with a single timeline showing my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn status updates from those I follow.

I am also happy that as of a short time ago, a cross platform app that I have been working on, part time, for quite some time is now running on the Lumia 710. This is nice since the app, which is probably about 60% completed, is now running on an actual iPhone 3gs, an actual iPad 2, an LG-Optimus V running Android, and now the Nokia Lumia 710 running Windows Phone. That’s what we call a cross platform app!

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Consumers left confused by high priced cellular services

Analysys Mason surveyed 7,485 consumers about purchasing smarphones and cellular services and finds significant marketing confusion among consumers. About half of iPhone 4 customers think they have a “4G” cellphone (they don’t) because of the 4 in the name.  Consumers find prices and packages confusing and wish that companies would focus on useful product differentiation and be honest about full contract costs, which can run $2,000 or more over two years.

See the press release on the study.

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Apple App Store rankings appear to be manipulated

For a fee, you can buy your way to the top courtesy of a fake robot iPhone army that downloads apps: What You Need to Know Before You Download Another Free iPhone App.

One third of the “top 25” free apps are accused of having bought their “top 25” ranking. Once apps hits the top list, lots more people then see the app, download, and become new ad revenue targets.

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