The state of smartphones
I'm really hoping something genre bending is in the works somewhere. I'm growing bored of cell phones.
When BlackBerry first came out they brought great new features to phones. Made email on a phone a reality and brought cell phones (both smart and not) much more into the mainstream. The iPhone revolutionized what BlackBerry started, but in some ways they weren't enough of a departure from BB and Mac OS (talking about WIMP without the W and P here). All Android brought to the table over and above Apple was a more open ecosystem (though arguably too open) and cheaper devices. Windows Phone brought what was a fresh new design, but which is slowly showing its age as well and BB10 has just stolen the best of what came before and packaged it in the most convoluted package to date.
So I repeat, I'm getting bored with cell phones.
There isn't much to say on BlackBerry pre-BB10. I think it is fairly universally accepted that that is too far gone now.
Apple. The company that basically prided itself on planned obsolescence hasn't made iOS obsolete in far too many years. And like I said, their interface is just the WIMP interface from Windows and MacOS but without the Windows or the Pointer. The Pointer is replaced by touch, but the functionality granted by having Windows is simply lost. For me, the novelty of having the level of functionality iOS brought to mobile devices has faded. And now it simply seems like an OS based on 15 year old concept. Combined with the closed eco-system, the pace of software innovation has crawled to a halt.
Android was never really much more than a rip-off of iOS. It is the Linux of the phone world. Literally and in a number of other ways. It suffers from the same problem as Apple and many of the same problems facing Linux in the PC sector. It is basically an antiquated OS and a terribly fragmented one, on new hardware. Again, the novelty has faded.
Another by-product of Android's open, Linux like architecture is app inconsistency. And this is an area where I have to laugh. I think the same people that complain that Android lacks consistency turn around and complain about the consistent functionality of things like the Search and Back button in Windows Phone. I'm sorry people... you simply cannot have it both ways. If Microsoft allowed developers to override the functionality of those buttons, the apps on Windows Phone would become just as infuriatingly inconsistent as those on Android. There are pros and cons to both.
Which leads us into Windows Phone. I was shocked that Microsoft was the first company to depart from the list of icons. Tiles aren't perhaps a radical departure. But they are different. The single scrollable home screen is also unique compared to the discrete pages/screens on iOS and Android. It felt fresh for a time. But they took the departure from the classical desktop too far and in releasing Windows 8 unveiled more things that could have been done in that OS as well. What you end up with is an OS that feels old before its time. The items I'm talking about here are the notion of a folder and the support for multiple orientations and groupings of tiles (and semantic zoom). I'm hopeful that they will resolve some of these things in an upcoming release. But as it stands at the moment, this somewhat revolutionary OS is also starting to feel old.
Which leaves us with the newest platform. BB10. Active Frames? Sure I understand that it does more than Live Tiles... but the concept is the same. And in some ways it does less. The bulk of the OS is really just the old BlackBerry OS/Android/iOS -esque static icons on screens. Hub is just a way to get lost deeper in an application, it isn't revolutionary, I'll wager their competition intentionally avoided that approach. Peek adds a complicated gesture in a world where the most gestures are frequently misinterpreted. It feels newer than previous BB OS's but it still feels old. And the new features look to be poorly executed.
Anyway... I hold out hope. If Oracle successfully wins their appeal against Google, perhaps Google will drop Android in favour of a new in-house mobile operating system (please nothing Chrome OS related). Perhaps Apple will get back to its roots and kill off the current incarnation of iOS and come up with something revolutionary. Perhaps Microsoft will get their Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 teams together to deliver a cohesive and complete experience. And perhaps BlackBerry will surprise me in some way I haven't yet conceived.
When BlackBerry first came out they brought great new features to phones. Made email on a phone a reality and brought cell phones (both smart and not) much more into the mainstream. The iPhone revolutionized what BlackBerry started, but in some ways they weren't enough of a departure from BB and Mac OS (talking about WIMP without the W and P here). All Android brought to the table over and above Apple was a more open ecosystem (though arguably too open) and cheaper devices. Windows Phone brought what was a fresh new design, but which is slowly showing its age as well and BB10 has just stolen the best of what came before and packaged it in the most convoluted package to date.
So I repeat, I'm getting bored with cell phones.
There isn't much to say on BlackBerry pre-BB10. I think it is fairly universally accepted that that is too far gone now.
Apple. The company that basically prided itself on planned obsolescence hasn't made iOS obsolete in far too many years. And like I said, their interface is just the WIMP interface from Windows and MacOS but without the Windows or the Pointer. The Pointer is replaced by touch, but the functionality granted by having Windows is simply lost. For me, the novelty of having the level of functionality iOS brought to mobile devices has faded. And now it simply seems like an OS based on 15 year old concept. Combined with the closed eco-system, the pace of software innovation has crawled to a halt.
Android was never really much more than a rip-off of iOS. It is the Linux of the phone world. Literally and in a number of other ways. It suffers from the same problem as Apple and many of the same problems facing Linux in the PC sector. It is basically an antiquated OS and a terribly fragmented one, on new hardware. Again, the novelty has faded.
Another by-product of Android's open, Linux like architecture is app inconsistency. And this is an area where I have to laugh. I think the same people that complain that Android lacks consistency turn around and complain about the consistent functionality of things like the Search and Back button in Windows Phone. I'm sorry people... you simply cannot have it both ways. If Microsoft allowed developers to override the functionality of those buttons, the apps on Windows Phone would become just as infuriatingly inconsistent as those on Android. There are pros and cons to both.
Which leads us into Windows Phone. I was shocked that Microsoft was the first company to depart from the list of icons. Tiles aren't perhaps a radical departure. But they are different. The single scrollable home screen is also unique compared to the discrete pages/screens on iOS and Android. It felt fresh for a time. But they took the departure from the classical desktop too far and in releasing Windows 8 unveiled more things that could have been done in that OS as well. What you end up with is an OS that feels old before its time. The items I'm talking about here are the notion of a folder and the support for multiple orientations and groupings of tiles (and semantic zoom). I'm hopeful that they will resolve some of these things in an upcoming release. But as it stands at the moment, this somewhat revolutionary OS is also starting to feel old.
Which leaves us with the newest platform. BB10. Active Frames? Sure I understand that it does more than Live Tiles... but the concept is the same. And in some ways it does less. The bulk of the OS is really just the old BlackBerry OS/Android/iOS -esque static icons on screens. Hub is just a way to get lost deeper in an application, it isn't revolutionary, I'll wager their competition intentionally avoided that approach. Peek adds a complicated gesture in a world where the most gestures are frequently misinterpreted. It feels newer than previous BB OS's but it still feels old. And the new features look to be poorly executed.
Anyway... I hold out hope. If Oracle successfully wins their appeal against Google, perhaps Google will drop Android in favour of a new in-house mobile operating system (please nothing Chrome OS related). Perhaps Apple will get back to its roots and kill off the current incarnation of iOS and come up with something revolutionary. Perhaps Microsoft will get their Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 teams together to deliver a cohesive and complete experience. And perhaps BlackBerry will surprise me in some way I haven't yet conceived.
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