The Palm Vx, a great mobile computer
Image credit: Amazon

I don’t pretend to know why Palm failed to follow-up on it’s early achievements.  I have heard that they let themselves be constrained by the limits of the original Palm OS for way too long.  I also know that, once they lost their developer ecosystem, the writing was on the wall.

The sale to HP was, no doubt, an act of desperation.  Sadly, today it ended badly, as such things are wont to do.  I’m so sad for old Palm, and so disappointed at the missed potential.

R.I.P. Palm.

I do miss you.

First attempted answer:

Hey idiot, just go to the browser app’s settings and toggle “Set as default browser”

Uhh, that used to work.  Unfortunately, the option is now grayed out in Skyfire.  So I head over and check their support pages:

“Set as Default Browser. For Android 1.5 to 2.1 Skyfire supports setting the default browser option within Skyfire. Unfortunately, Android 2.2 does not provide that option.”

OK, but just graying out the option (while leaving it selected) seems like the wrong response to a change in the platform.

Let’s see what Dolphin Browser HD does.  Yep, it has the “Set as default browser” toggle in its Settings menu.  Hey, it’s not grayed out.  When I select it, the Android “Complete action using” menu pops up.  There’s a message drawn on top of the menu directing me to:

“Click the checkbox and choose Dolphin Browser HD as your default browser.”

Umm, OK, that seems kind of backwards, I have to toggle the “Use by default for this action” check box before I pick the browser (If I pick a different browser, or select the browser first, the Dolphin settings menu entry is checked to show that it’s the default browser, but it’s not really).

Anyway, when I finally follow the instructions correctly, I can accomplish the desired results — Dolphin becomes my default browser — although the path is kind of convoluted.

Now comes the really fun Question:

How do I unset my choice for default browser?

Again, the Dolphin folks have been kind enough to put a bit of text over the menu telling me that the only way to accomplish this is to go clear out through Android’s settings, and, get this:

Settings >> Manage applications >> <browser app> >> “Launch by default / Clear defaults“

Wow, that doesn’t strike me as a particularly intuitive way to accomplish the task.  This seems to be a clear case where my fellow engineers figured out a way to accomplish something with absolutely no regard for the impact on users.

Sadly, those that choose to zing Android, and associated apps, for user experience issues certainly have a target rich environment.

Note: A version of this post also appears in “Deans Rants” over on Tumblr.  If you’re at all interested in the subject, I also wrote about a show stopper issue with the new “Priority Inbox” support in the Android Gmail app over on my rants page.

“…expect to see smartphones in 2012 that have about the same performance as a current business laptop.  The fastest phones at that time will have four 2.5-gigahertz processor cores and be able to handle things as complex as running virtualization software.“

This is exactly why we started BluMtnWerx, and why I’ve thrown myself back into mobile apps.  Clearly, much of what we currently think of as computing is moving to the very edge of the network, to the device formerly known as a phone, in your hand.  This is exciting stuff!

“…we’re hearing that it is in fact a system-on-a-chip driven by a Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU “identical” to the one found inside NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, while besting the iPhone 3GS significantly with its 1GHz speed and multicore architecture.  The A4 is composed of that Cortex barnburner, an integrated memory controller, and the Mali GPU, making it an all ARM affair…”

Engadget was even so kind as to publish a “photo:”

Lovely.

And then, today, Ars Technica tries to bring the whole dream crashing down:

“…it turns out that the the A4 is a 1GHz custom SoC with a single Cortex A8 core and a PowerVR SGX GPU.  The fact that A4 uses a single A8 core hasn’t been made public, but I’ve heard from multiple sources who are certain for different reasons that this is indeed the case.  (I wish I could be more specific, but I can’t.)

In all, the A4 is quite comparable to the other Cortex A8-based SoCs that are coming onto the market, except that the A4 has even less hardware.  The iPad doesn’t have much in the way of I/O, so the A4 itself can do away with the I/O that it doesn’t need.  In contrast, the typical Cortex A8-based SoC has more I/O hardware than a mobile phone can use, because you never know what customers will need which interface types.”

Now I grew up in the days when real men had big block V8′s in their cars, so I was excited by the original rumors.  On the other hand, the Ars Technica post makes a lot of sense — cram a simpler CPU in, jack the clock rate and let the software do its stuff.  In many circles, that’s just plain old good system design.

Image Credit:  Serious Wheels

While I absolutely agree with his primary conclusions…

“The era of the PC’s dominance is officially over.  We have crossed over into the age of mobile computing.”

and

“I’m not saying we won’t still have desktop computers.  But if you’re looking for the real action, the exciting innovations, it’s going to be in mobile from now on.”

… I can’t quite get on board with his assertion that the clear signal of this transition was Microsoft’s recent Windows Phone Series 7 announcement.  Instead, I think that most of us recognized the transition about the time that the iPhone hit 20M units.  By then, nearly everyone that we knew either had one, or was getting one.  Almost every major handset vendor had announced at least one “iPhone killer” and tens of thousands of us suckers were rushing to develop apps.  At that point, we saw iPhone use spanning all demographic groups, and people genuinely loved them (enough to put up with AT&T’s network).

Let’s face it, Apple may not be the dominant player in the long term, but, as they have so often before, they brought fascinating technology to the mainstream.  The truth is that nobody else could pull it all together in a compelling package.

Still, if you have any doubt that the future of computing is mobile, please go read Mr. O’Brien’s column.  If you still don’t believe it, consider that my 77 year old father is the very happy user of a new iPod Touch.

Image Credit:  Fast Company

In a past role, I spent time at both EA and Lucas Arts.  I’ve seen their production values.  EA will certainly raise the standards for games on the iPhone.  I just wonder whether there will still be a place for the humble efforts of small shops like ours.  If nothing else, as the Fast Company post suggests:

“…it’ll be harder for mom and pop games to get noticed…”

Is anyone else out there worried about how they’ll compete against the big game studios?

The Wired story linked to above has the money quote:

“This scam was so effective that the applications regularly rose to the tops of charts. One, called ColorMagic, even made it into the Staff Favorites section of the store (which brings some doubt as to whether these are actually staff picks at all).”

It does indeed make me wonder how they go about identifying their “favorites.”

The cynic in me can’t help noticing that Molinker produced 1 app for every 5 units of the iPhone sold during the launch with China Unicom (we’re told that Apple yanked 1000 of Molinker’s apps).  Oh well, 1% fewer apps are out there competing for attention.

Q:  Why did Apple change their minds?

A:  Again, only Apple can tell you their exact reasons. In our conversation with them, they indicated that our blog post, linked across the web and seen by tens of thousands of readers, was a force for change here. As for other problems that don’t generate this much exposure and backlash? They may be less likely to be fixed, and that’s unfortunate.

I’m truly happy for Rogue Amoeba (previous slightly critical post notwithstanding), but I absolutely don’t believe that this indicates that Apple will go any easier on the rest of us.  These guys just made enough noise to force Apple to blink.  Most of us probably can’t accomplish that.

“Presumably, such a check would be run at the beginning of the review process”

Any steps in the process that they can automate sound good to me.  I just wish that they would run this check in conjunction with submission (as they do for proper app signing).  Personally, I’d be thrilled if the whole process could be automated.  Unfortunately, software probably isn’t that great at finding objectionable content and trademark infringements.  At least this is a step in the right direction…

Airfoil Speakers Touch

I sighed when I read about Rogue Amoeba‘s recent decision to place their iPhone development efforts on the far back burner.  Normally, I would have just written the story off as yet another developer in a (perhaps justified) snit. Then, I read Jeff LaMarche‘s carefully written, and forcefully argued, defense of Apple’s actions in this situation.  My crude summary of Mr. LaMarche’s response is, “The rules were clear.  You broke them.  Stop whining.”

Then it got good.  Mike Ash (@mikeash), an engineer at Rogue Amoeba, tweeted his, less than pleased, response to Mr. LaMarche’s (@jeff_lamarche) post.  Through the 140 character at-a-shot dialog, Mr. Ash seems to assert that the images in question were served up from their desktop app, and pushed onto the phone.  The images are available to programs on the desktop and are permissible in desktop apps.  Thus, Mr. Ash argues that the iPhone app is just displaying an image, not unlike a browser.  Good point.

Does the computer on their iTunes Connect screenshot look suspiciously like an iMac?

Mike Ash Explains the Image Issue in Airfoil Speakers Touch

Here’s the bottom line for me.  It doesn’t matter what seems “right.”  It doesn’t matter what seems “fair.”  Apple has made it exceedingly clear through its actions that it owns the App Store.  It makes all of the rules and interprets / enforces them as it sees fit.  If developers don’t like it, they can follow Rogue Amoeba and the Facebook App guy out the door.  Apple has more than 100K apps in the store and they clearly don’t care about any specific individual developer (unless the individual can raise a big enough ripple, like Jason Snell at Macworld).  As they say, “There are a thousand other developers who will gladly take your place…”