Convertcast Episode 37
April 12, 2010

Jerry Gets an iPad – Doh!

The “iPad effect” – From iPad to iPhone.

“casual computing”, “natural computing”, “a lifestyle device” , “you don’t think about the tool” – MobileTech Roundup

OS 4.0 – What we like, dislike, and are still wanting for….

Great Overview at TiPb - http://www.tipb.com/2010/04/11/iphone-4-preview/

1. Multitasking – “The Apple way”  (Developer must code for it via API type calls ie. Location, Audio streaming, etc.)

• Background audio (Pandora)
• Voice over IP (Skype)
• Background location (Mapping, Loopt)
• Push notifications
• Local notifications
• Task completion
• Fast app switching

2. Folders

3. Enhanced email

The third tentpole feature was enhanced email. In addition to a unified inbox that allows you to merge all of your email accounts into a single inbox, enhanced email also supports the ability to organize email messages by thread and the ability to open email attachments in other apps.

In this ZDNet video, Jobs talks about these new iPhone mailbox features.

4. iBooks

This tentpole feature didn’t really seem as interesting as some of the others. Even Jobs’ explanation of it lacked some of the enthusiasm of the other features. Basically, you have a “delightful” ebook reader and an iBookstore that allows you to buy a book once and read it across multiple devices. For some reason, Apple is throwing in a free iBook of Winnie the Pooh.

5. Enterprise
The fifth tentpole is where things started to get more interesting for business users. Apple outlined some “great features for the enterprise,” including:

• Even better data protection
• Mobile Device Management
• Wireless app distribution
• Multiple Exchange accounts
• Exchange Server 2010
• SSL VPN support

There weren’t a ton of details around each of these items, but I think tentpole number five shows that Apple is serious about moving more iPhones into the enterprise.

6. Game Center
The Game Center was one of the more surprising announcements for iPhone 4.0. In a nutshell, Apple is providing an XBOX Live-like experience for the iPhone. You will be able to invite friends to play games, find random players to compete against with Matchmaking, compare your performance with Leaderboards, and earn street cred with Achievements.

7. iAd
While the first six tentpoles were geared toward end users, iAd is aimed squarely at Google’s AdMob and other mobile advertising networks.

While iAd has been rumored to be in the works since Apple acquired Quattro Wireless earlier this year, this was the first official confirmation of the platform.

Jobs shared that the average iPhone user spends 30 minutes per day using apps. He said, “If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’s 10 ads per device per day. That would be 1 billion ad opportunities per day.”

In addition to taking advantage of that “serious opportunity,” Job wants to improve the quality of the ads. With iAd, Apple wants to marry interaction with emotion. Also, he claims that iAd advertisements will be interactive while keeping you in the app (unlike other mobile ads that take you somewhere else after you click).

Some key takeaways from iAd are:

• Emotion + interactivity
• Ads keep you in your app
• Built into iPhone OS
• Apple sells and hosts the ads
• 60% revenues go to the app developer

If Apple can deliver this functionality, it can be a game changer in the mobile ad space. It will also allow Apple to monetize the tens of thousands of free apps in the iTunes App Store.


1500 New API’s!  - Calendar access! – Yay!

Kin 1 and Kin 2 (Microsoft – WHAT were you thinking!)

Wanna buy Palm?

Letter from Jeff (Howard Forums member)

Hey Jerry/Alli,

Observations from a nine year Windows Mobile user trying out the iPhone

Here are a few thoughts. I’m liking the iPhone so much that it was hard to condense it down and articulate the highest points. But the main theme of my writing is SPEED and EASE OF USE. That’s what’s attracting me to this phone and I don’t see it letting go!

Let me start by saying that I’ve always loved and still love Windows Mobile (now Windows Phone). It’s kind of like a comfortable old shoe or favorite T-shirt. Yes it has plenty of holes and it’s worn out but it feels very familiar. I can do absolutely anything I want with it. And if I get bored with one set up, I can easily and completely modify it into something else in a very short time for no money with just a quick trip to XDA Developers.

However, over the last year or so, I’ve become more and more focused on finding phones and or ROMs that deliver more speed, stability and ease of use than bells, whistles and eye candy. Each subsequent ROM I flashed seemed to be more and more stripped down and relatively bare bones to give me maximum performance and minimal crashes and lag. I was basically happy with my setup but as absolutely simple as I made my phone, it never got to a point where is was unequivocally fast and easy to perform daily functions. The specs are fantastic, the hardware is fantastic but, as Simon Cowell says, “If I’m being honest” (British accent), it’s just plain cumbersome to quickly and easily navigate.

So I’ve been using the 3GS for about a month now. In short, I absolutely love it. Sure it lags behind in the spec department of current Windows Phones. BUT, what it lacks in hard specs it COMPLETELY makes up for it in two crucial features: SPEED and EASE OF USE!!!!! Bingo!, I finally found something that is absolutely painless to navigate and much more responsive than any other phone/platform I’ve tried. I used to call it “dummied down”. Now I call it “just about perfect”.

Just a few of the many things I like about the iPhone

The UI is fluid, intuitive and responsive. Bouncing from checking the weather to writing an email to surfing the internet is seemless and lightning fast. You can navigate through countless tasks or programs one after another after another without even the slightest hesitation. Whenever I would show off my new WM phone to friends I would whisper a small prayer to myself before my ‘presentation’ asking that the phone not freeze or stall. With the iPhone, it’s actually very difficult if not impossible to make the thing so much as hiccup!

The capacitive screen is effortless to use. The sensitivity is so good that I can’t even imagine going back to a resistive screen at this point. Thankfully, the trend is going in the right direction anyway. Also, I’ve always heard that resistive screens deliver more accuracy than capacitive. I totally disagree after using the iPhone. I can select the smallest link in Safari with pinpoint accuracy. And as for the keyboard, once I learned the little trick of pressing and holding the punctuation button and dragging to your desired punctuation instead of toggling, I was sold. This keyboard easily blows away any of the 15-20 I’ve used in the past. The auto correction is great and the key presses can actually keep up with my typing instead of lagging behind. Instead of avoiding typing emails on my phone, I now rarely use my laptop!

Safari is fantastic. The speed of the device, coupled with the pinch and zoom, smooth scrolling and intuitive browser features make surfing the internet absolutely painless. Again, I rarely pull out the laptop anymore while on the couch as the iPhone makes general surfing effortless. Many things I can actually get to quicker on my iPhone than on my computer. And the little nuances like automatically launching the YouTube client when clicking on an embedded video make the experience that much better. It’s simple to use, very fast and very intuitive on its features.

Yep, the apps are outstanding. Another reason I never wanted to try the iPhone is that I thought I’d get bored with it in about half an hour. I see now that well over 100K apps will significantly stretch that timeline! There is literally just about an app for anything you want. And I used to think that the “locked down” method of loading apps would tick me off. It’s actually just like everything else with the iPhone, simple and very user friendly.

The ability to syncronize multiple and separate calendars is a beautiful thing. Not saying there’s not a way to do it on WM but I never found one. Now I have both work and personal calendars on my phone and they’re always synced.

The very first skin case I bought for it is perfect and has been on for a month! This is unheard of for me. Out of around 15 WM phones I’ve owned, I always purchased a case or two, put it on for a day and then never used it again for some reason or another.

What I don’t like

The don’t likes pale in comparison but I gotta keep it real.

Backing out of menus is annoying. It reminds me of Kinoma for WM. And also, I guess I didn’t realize that the iPhone generally doesn’t use swiping in its navigation other than between home screens. There’s almost no swiping in the UI. This was a surprise to me. Everything is tap tap tap to get into a place in a program and tap tap tap to get back out.

Clicking on a new email notification takes you to wherever you were last in any of your email accounts. So coupled with the need to drill down and or back out of menus can lead to several taps to read a new email. Clicking a notification should at the very least send you to the inbox of that account.

There’s very little customization. You can’t even change the notification sound of a new email. So if you work in an office like I do where all four of your coworkers use iPhones, you never know which one just received a new email! Also, you can’t place a shortcut for wifi or bluetooth on your home screen. So everytime you want to turn on bluetooth, you have to dig down through about 4 menus to get there. I’d also like notifications and a clock to be available on the lock screen. And I’d love to not have to slide to unlock the phone everytime I turn it on. Never understood the need for an unlock. I press the power button to turn the phone on. That’s all I need. I realize I could jailbreak but, these little annoyances are nothing compared to the joy of speed, stability and ease of use.

The are no trials in the App store. Once you press install, your money is gone. Many apps have lite versions but I’d prefer a free trial of the full version.

Overall I’m absolutely thrilled with this device and platform. To quote a friend of mine, “It just plain works”. I won’t say that I’ll never use Windows Phone again but I can say that it will be quite awhile and take quite a bit. This is the first time in almost 10 years that I’m not anxiously awaiting whatever’s next. Yeah it will be great to have a bump in specs and some OS enhancements but with new Apps coming out by the minute and a completely painless and effortless user experience, I no longer have that “It’s not quite there yet” feeling. To put it simply, I used to look down on the iPhone…..until I actually gave it a try!

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