adir1

The Apps Store is all the rage nowadays and everyone says how “Apple Invented this Revolutionary Concept”. As I recall – Windows had a Marketplace for Apps and Accessories going way back…

Still, the true revolution in Apple’s iOS is the seamless end-to-end experience of discovering and purchasing / installing Apps. And, in my opinion, the “installing” part is even more critical here!

It is pretty obvious that with Windows 8 Microsoft will take App Store to the next level to try and “stay with the times”. But will they be able to take the bold re-engineering steps necessary to make install / uninstall finally a Seamless experience?

Why is this critical? Because of “experimentation” empowerment – with iPhone users feel Free to install Applications (either Purchase or Demo) just to Check them Out. This, combined with social “What’s Hot Now” aspect, leads to huge Boom in the Marketplace – ultimately bringing huge payoffs to Platform ecosphere.

iOS appears to have this art down. In my experience iPhone can easily have hundreds of Apps installed, yet it starts up just as quickly, uninstalls just as cleanly once you’re “done with it” and really releases the space back to the user.

For Windows to get to the same place is a huge challenge, but if they do – perception is an even harder thing to fix. Today’s Windows Apps require weird “install” wizards, force themselves into PC Startup, add slow “Services” and buggy “Drivers”, seed computer with Temporary files and often create countless duplicates “per user account” to operate. Even worse, we accepted as “norm” the fact that our Shiny New PC’s come with Crapware from the Computer maker, and the fact that anything we install is likely to slow our computer down and we will never be able to fully uninstall it.

Meanwhile Google’s Android Marketplace is showing us that it is possible to keep an Open marketplace and still maintain decent platform quality. Microsoft does have some right ideas there, but I wonder how much will come to fruition and most importantly, how soon will it materialize for Windows to stay relevant.

Biggest thing that Windows has going for it is a large user base which is familiar with it. Few Great Games and MS-Office are also helping to keep Windows alive, but for how much longer?

Ok, here’s the summary: Wow!!

Overall I really love it so far, and although I experienced the famous disappearing bars issue first hand, I am really not concerned. One negative so far I noticed is the camera. There are comparisons to other smartphone cameras that say iPhone 4 is better, so maybe I just expected too much… Here’s best shot I managed today, judge for yourself (click for original). This one was outside, but inside photos not as nice, even with flash…

I listed below main positives that I did Not see in mainstream media. I feel that these are really Biggest innovations and they don’t get nearly enough coverage:

• Long Battery Life – Yes, it easily lasted 3 days with pretty heavy usage, including WiFi on all the time, steaming video over 3G and over WiFi, games, surfing, etc. This is amazing technological achievement and was main selling point in my considerations versus Evo and other competitors.
• Fast Internet – I felt that surfing is way faster, but couldn’t explain it. Today I found technical details, and I immediately ran my own SpeedTest to confirm: 4 Mbps down and 800kbps up!! Just in a random mall location! Interestingly enough, there was HTC Evo on Sprint 4G network on display at the mall today, and Internet on it didn’t feel any faster; in fact whole phone didn’t impress much…
• Reader Friendly Display – This is the Secret Feature; Sure everyone is talking about Retina display, but the truth is the screen is not only very sharp, it also feels softer, lending itself to effortless reading! The fonts are paper quality, think laser printer, and the backlight can be adjusted to soft luminance, making reading a joy! This definitely makes iPhone an ePaper competitive reading device – think 10 hours battery life, beautiful soft display AND colors! And of course interactions and video, what more do you need?

Overall – Amazing device and so far I am really satisfied with my purchase. Organizing icons into folders is fun and allows for quick access as well as ability to see what Apps I have in each category, to help me cleanup things I may not be using. I didn’t try the voice recognition features yet, but certainly planning to. I also noticed that typing is easier for some reason. Somehow it is even better at recognizing buttons I want to click, and I find myself able to type faster. Another win for Apple and shows us that closed hardware/software combination can achieve some amazing heights.

Yep, my iPhone 4 arrived via FedEx today and so far all I did was Shamelessly Fondle It all over. It is in the long process of synching with iTunes, and filling it up with Apps and Stuff.

So, Not much to report yet, but you know now that I decided to lock myself in with Apple and AT&T again, for perhaps as much as two years. Yes, Android EVO 4G from Sprint was really tempting option and I even tried to have educated discussion about it on Twitter. But my big concern was battery life and with my heavy usage it most likely wouldn’t last a full day even…

Versus advertised 10 hours video and Wi-Fi surfing on iPhone 4 with their custom CPU! And yea, there’s an App for almost anything, hard to resist that aspect also. And Gazillion games, many of which I paid for and now get to enjoy on two devices.

The new packaging is small yet still impressive – see picture with Sprite for perspective.

Stay tuned for actual usage reports!

Lately I use multiple browser, more so than ever, in this order: Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 64 bit.

This story unfolded literally few minutes ago, and I believe entire thing happened online within past few hours, at the most.

Some “entrepreneurial” guy registered blizzard-admin.net domain and setup a fake Login page to mimic World of Warcraft in every way possible, all in a classic phishing scheme. But, this time they took it a bit further. As I was catching up on my late night gaming, a direct message came in over from someone called “blizzrdadmin” within a Game, telling me to go to this web site to register for Rare in-game mount.

I think it took me about 2 seconds to report that account as Spammer, and from what Blizzard promised in the past, they review such complaints very seriously, often within minutes of complaining.

And here is where Google Chrome shines – I decided to still check out how clever these “phishers” were, and told my Chrome to show me the site. I was pleasantly surprised when a Warning came up, telling me to Stay Away! Excellent!

And here’s the kicker, neither Firefox nor Internet Explorer, which also contain anti-phishing technology, knew yet that this is a Phishing site! They both took me to the site…

This is just further reinforces my admiration for Chrome and I am sure I will be using it more and more as my primary browser. I don’t recall if I wrote about it before, but I also find Google Chrome under Windows 7 to be by far the fastest of browsers. I believe part of the reason is unique architecture of Chrome, as it creates separate Operating System processes for each Browser Tab or Window.

In unrelated news – I realize I haven’t been blogging much lately, apologies, and will improve!

As you may have heard from me in the past, I was very impressed with Beta and RC version of Win 7, so I was among the many people preordering a copy when special $50 offer was available for a limited time. In fact, local MicroCenter store offered $40 preorder option at the time, so I jumped onboard. I also decided to use this opportunity to migrate to 64 Bit and fully utilize my 4Gb memory (which I think I will upgrade to 6 GB or more in the future).

Knowing that 64 Bit Vista and Windows 7 RC don’t like my motherboard, I decided to replace that also. So had it shipped just in time for Oct 22 release date, and set out Friday night to rebuild the whole box and install fresh Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit. For those who care, here are some components I updated on my PC, via Newegg, of course: P45 Motherboard, nVidia 9600 GSO and 640 GB hard-drive for clean install. I kept other components, including my 4GB memory and my Intel Q6600 quad-core CPU.

It installed without a hitch, besides minor snag where it wouldn’t activate right. During the install, I disconnected my Vista hard-drive, as I didn’t want it to touch that boot loader (it has dual Vista/Ubuntu boot). When I later came to activate Win 7, even with fully licensed Vista right there on the other HD, it complained. Luckily there is simple fix for this bug.

Since I used mainstream components, it seems that 64 Bit drivers was mostly non issue. I had strange issue at first with my Motherboard embedded networking card. It worked, but then stopped. I later found that Windows Update decided to “update” networking driver to OLDER version. Once identified, a simple “rollback driver” button click resolved the problem.

I was happy to discover that Zune software has 64 Bit flavor, and so does iTunes (though it’s only drivers, I think. iTunes itself runs as 32 bit, blah). Steam works great, and this is again why I love steam, as I was easily able to reinstall games I wanted and purchased in the past. World of Warcraft works great also! In fact I saw FASTER FRAMERATES, on what is essentially the same hardware (but 64 Bit and newer drivers, faster HD).

Another HUGE improvement – SILENCE!!! This is both when it runs, the HD is not overused and generally fans are running low also. And Hibernate works GREAT! I can just walk away, it goes to hibernate after 30 minutes and I can just turn it back on when needed, entire resume is under 30 seconds.

I am still installing software and bringing over my documents, etc. I am reluctant to put Office 2007 on, and rather wait for Office 2010 (betas are planned soon?). Did you know that iTunes can sync contacts Directly with Yahoo! Address Book?! And Plaxo can sync directly with Yahoo! Get the picture, folks!?

To summarize, so far – very stable and fast! I am enjoying it!!! I’ll report more in the future!