It's not as fast as on TV

Products rarely work as well as advertised. Somebody tried out the new iPhone 3G and made the video below comparing it to the ad.

Turning point for Browsers

Both Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Firefox 2.0 became available around October 2006. Since then their rise has been fast and steady. At this point, it looks like they are not taking over each other's market share, rather they are replacing their previous versions - Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.5. Internet Explorer 7 may reach a plateau at around 80% at the most, then we'll see if starts going down as Firefox goes up.

These new versions are built to address the evolving changes in the internet. Whereas Firefox has been continuously changing with frequent updates, MS Internet Explorer development had been stalled for the past 6 years. I was able to attend a Webstock conference in May last year, where Tony Chor, the Program Manager of the Internet Explorer 7 team explained the circumstances. After the launch of Windows XP operating system, most of the Internet explorer team had disbanded and there was lack of expertise to pick up the threads again. The start of the Internet Explorer 7 project mostly consisting of bringing these people together again. Tony promised that they plan to issue updates more frequently in the future. Ben Goodger, Google employee and lead designer of Firefox, at the same conference, was focused more on the future, all the way up to Firefox 3 and its possible features.


Ben Goodger and Tony Chor

At Tony's session, one of the participants asked him, "If there was an arm-wrestling match between you and Ben, who would win?". After the laughter had died down, Tony good-naturedly replied, "probably Ben". In the conclusion of the conference, Kathy Sierra remarked that somehow Tony didn't look very sincere when he said it.

Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have implemented a plug-in architecture, where users can find other small programs that can be fitted into the browser to perform 'cool' features. In Firefox, many of these plug-ins go on to become part of the standard installation in the next version. Independent developer enthusiasts contribute these plug-ins. This architecture has already been around in Firefox for some time, and the browser has a large community contributing lots of plug-ins. Internet Explorer has just started on this path, and it's community is minuscule. Microsoft is actively encouraging corporate partners and its developer community to become contributors.

As for Safari, nobody except Apple technology enthusiasts use this, and that's restricted to 5% of the computers market for now.

If mobile phones become a significant platform for access to the internet, then the whole scenario might change. For example, if Apple's iPhone becomes as popular as the iPod, there will be far more people using the phone to access the internet than computers, and the mobile phone browsers will dominate and determine web interface design. A likely scenario is that all models of mobile phones are going to evolve to provide internet access. Whether that access is practical or satisfactory remains to be seen.

The future of browsers is important to us techies as browsers are increasingly the basis of delivering software services, and we have to design the web pages to work on as many browsers as possible. For believe it or not, not all the browsers follow the standards correctly or in the same manner - the same web page will behave differently on different browsers. In taking care of all possibilities, resource and time constraints force us to choose which browser to build for and which browser to ignore.

Looks like it's Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Firefox 2.0 for now.

Technology Interfaces of Tomorrow

Finally technology is coming close to what I had been dreaming in interface design. Interface being the part of the machine you touch and see. Such as a number keypad on phone, the keyboard/mouse on a desktop personal computer, the joystick/gamepad for video game devices, the touch screen on some Automatic Teller Machines (ATM).

A lot of you by now would have seen Apple CEO, Steve Job's keynote address introducing the iPhone (see previous post). It's an impressive concept and will hopefully serve to shake up the 'Yaaawn' sleepy mobile phone industry - that have been launching very boring devices. However I don't swallow Apple's claim of having 'reinvented' the mobile phone. A lot of parallel impressive initiatives are also due to be launched, but have had their thunder stolen by Apple.

Take LG's Prada phone, which will be launched quietly this year in Europe before the iPhone.



Also, waiting for adoption is Synaptics' Onyx Concept.




All of the above incorporate some form of multi-touch or touch-screen technologies to allow the interface buttons and controls to change depending on the feature being used - a keypad for writing text, number keypad for the phone dialing, play/pause/stop/forward buttons for playing music or video.

A full implementation of multi-touch technology can be seen in a research presentation by Jeff Han at TED in California. This goes beyond just mobile phones.



The future promises foldable screens, Rollout screens, further convergence of features and devices, and more imaginative way to facilitate that convergence.




Other great obstacles in adopting featured portable devices is the battery life and pervasive connectivity. A battery should last at least 48 hours with the gadget being in full use for true portability. Also, mobile connectivity to a telecom network and wireless internet is still very patchy. It is all, in a way, just getting started.

Till all of these technologies become available in the marketplace in some reliable format, I'll may probably stick with my trusty Kyocera 7135.

All Hail the iPhone

Apple finally throws its hat in the mobile phone design rink with Steve Jobs announcing the 'reinventing of the mobile phone'.



The device combines the following features - multi-touch screen (without a stylus), iPod (without the click-wheel), internet browser, and phone application. By loading the Mac OS X operating system onto the device, it should be able to add further applications and capabilities. Where Apple always scores over others is in the flashy interface design. The screen displays colorful glass-design buttons and there are transition video clips on moving between applications. Scrolling graphic-design is also made to look very smooth. I've seen almost all these features somewhere else already (see next blog entry). The nice surprise for me was the browser. According to the online demo the browser renders the whole online page on the small iPhone screen and then allows the user to zoom and navigate to different areas of the page. So far, this is the best compromise between the size of web pages and small portable screens.

Steve Jobs sniggered in the presentation that the iPhone doesn't need a stylus ( probably in reference to Palm devices) and you only need your fingers. I'd like to see him eating finger-food and trying to use his iPhone at the same time. Constantly sliding your fingers on the smooth screen of the iPhone is going to give it a very grubby used look. Maybe Apple can then also start selling portable iPhone cleaning kits including special cloths and solutions.

iPhone is due to be released US-only in June 2007 and slowly rolled out in the rest of the world in 2008. So I wonder, what was the reason of announcing the product this early? The fact is that there are already many such designs coming out there from other players. The strategy was probably to steal everybody else's thunder. Mobile phone companies are already incorporating media players in their devices, so the iPod is under threat. I know it doesn't look that way now, but the industry can shift very quickly. Now that all the competitors know what the iPhone is about, they are going to be releasing their parallel products sooner if not simultaneously.

Apple iPhone is going to be used with only the telecom provider Cingular in the US. Though they cover a lot of US they don't cover all of it. So there are online jokes going around about needing to shift homes just to get an iPhone.

More iPhone humour is found at this MadTV launch of the iPhone.