iPhone OS beats Windows Mobile
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Apple's iPhone is used by 50% more people to browse the Internet than all the phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system, according to data from Net Applications.
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Microsoft  unveiled on  Thursday a new version of its Windows operating system for  mobile devices, making it look more like Windows Vista and  adding features previously only available on personal  computers.
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(InfoWorld) - No one ever said Apple marketers weren't clever. So if they wanted to start a firestorm of ISVs developing applications for the iPhone, how better to do that than to make development as simple as possible with the least barriers? Nevertheless, until we hear more details from Apple about the way in which applications are handled on the iPhone, we won't know how clever Apple really is. At WWDC07, Jobs promised that there will be a "new way to create applications for the iPhone" due mainly to the fact that it uses the full Safari browser engine. But a lot of developers are disappointed with what Apple is offering. "Web-based apps are cool for a lot of things. But what people were looking forward to was to to let them develop native applications," said Anthony MeadowÂ , president of Bear River AssociatesÂ , an ISV for mobile applications Without native access to facilities, you don't have storage or sharing of information between applications, or reading and writing from address book and iCal. "There is not any easy way to do that with a Web-based application," said Meadow. Overall, Meadow was not impressed. Although he admitted it is really not very clear what Apple intends. But, he added, "If they don't intend to have access, they should just tell us." Ken Dulaney, the senior mobile analyst with Gartner says Apple's Web 2.0 solution is likely to be similar to what RIM does now. "It avoids having to put code down on the device," Says Dulaney, which in turn protects it from crashing due to outside influences. On RIM devices, the application is rendered on the server side, and the cache in the browser reformats it and pushes it down to the device. "The code is only resident briefly on the device," Dulaney said. Similar technology is also used by device manufacturers using mobile Linux from MontaVista. Now resident on tens of millions of cell phones, the MontaVista design uses a "computing peer" design, Linux on the server and on the phone, giving developers the flexibility of partitioning an application on the client side and server side. An ISV can put a heavy load on the phone or a light one, says Jim Ready, CTO and founder of MontaVista. "Linux on the phone is every bit as capable as Linux on the server," said Ready. Certainly this supports similar statements from Jobs about Safari on the desktop and Safari on the iPhone. However, like Meadow at Bear River, Ready has some reservations about the future capabilities or the richness of applications running on the iPhone. When applications are developed solely using an "abstracted" development environment that doesn't talk to the lower layers of the device, such as the hardware and middleware, there is a dividing line in terms of the capabilities of the application. "Take video frame rates. The reason you back out of an abstracted environment is because you pay for the abstraction in performance. It is a tradeoff," said Ready. And not only for performance -- developers also need to write native applications that get down closer to access the hardware and the middleware for size and control reasons, as well, although Meadow doesn't see access to hardware as a major problem. "There is a handful of people that care about writing to the chips. It is possibly useful for really high performance graphic drivers and low level networking code," he says. So where does that leave gamers and business users whose need for rich network applications might be problematic on the iPhone? Unfortunately, until the full story is known, it is hard to tell what the software limitations of the iPhone will be. Certainly, if Apple wants the device to be a great mobile gaming system for use by millions of road warriors during those long waits at the airport, it will have to address the issue of how to get developers to write applications native to both the hardware and middleware. In business as well, cell phones are currently being used with customized software, such as bar code and RFID readers. "You can't do that with a browser interface," says Jerry Panagrossi, vice present of U.S. Operations for Symbian. "You need something more in-depth that can talk to IBM or Oracle middleware using native APIs for a richer experience." Jim Ready at MontaVista sums it up when he says keeping the development environment as simple as possible will facilitate the largest amount of applications. As far as the capabilities of those applications Ready says, "There are limits, but sometimes it's okay that there are limits."
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Blog: Exploring future product opportunities using the iPhone's components
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A beta version of Apple's Web browser is now available for Windows, and budding iPhone developers can use it to create applications.
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InfoWorld - 2007 could be called the year of the mobile operating system. Since Microsoft entered the scene around five years ago, the smartphone operating system industry has been fairly stable. Symbian, Linux, Research in Motion, and Windows Mobile make up the bulk of smartphone software, each to varying degrees of success in different regions.
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Microsoft unveils Windows Mobile 6, an update to its operating system for cell phones and similar devices.
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By Ganey, Jayme S  Apple iPhone, $499  Up your tech cred with this cutting-edge, multitasking device. The iPhone, featuring a sleek touch screen, does triple duty as a mobile phone, wide-screen iPod and Web browser.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft&#39;s recently announced Windows Mobile 6 software for smart phones is a step forward for the company, offering some important improvements over previous versions of the software. But just how good is the new software?
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PERSPECTIVE Regardless of whether or not you bought into the flash and hype that accompanied the iPhone's launch, Apple's newest device is important not for what features it brings, but for what it makes obsolete. The death knell has been rung for the mobile Web.
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Although the popular new iPhone from Apple is being hailed as a breakthrough device for the many features it offers, the key to its success is its extremely useful -- and way cool -- touchscreen user interface.
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After months of silence, Bob Levitus (Houston Chronicle) wanted to âshare my opinion of iPhone after seven months of heavy use.â After saying that he couldnât âimagine living without oneâ way back in July, Levitus adds âthat is still true today, as well.â Seven months later, he says, âI believe the iPhone is the best darn mobile phone money can buy.â âWhere else,â he wonders, could âcan you find a world-class phone, plus video, audio, Web and e-mail, all in a single hand-held device with an intuitive user interface?â
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Open-source strategies are gathering steam in the mobile computing realm with companies like Wake3 and Funambol leveraging open source to bring iPhone-style browsing and e-mail to devices.During a meeting of the Mobile Monday Silicon Valley group at Microsoft offices in Mountain View, Calif. Monday evening, representatives of Wake3, Funambol, and Wind River noted the rise of open-source software on handsets. Wake3, for its part, is bringing the open-source WebKit mobile Web browser to Windows Mobile systems."WebKit for Windows Mobile really is, in essence, a kind of iPhone browsing for Windows Mobile," said Daniel Zucker, CTO of Wake3.He and an official at Wind River stressed the paradigm shift brought on by the iPhone. Instead of persons inquiring about what type of wireless service someone is using, they want to know if they have an iPhone, said Bill O'Such, Wind River director of engineering."It's really changed the balance," O'Such said."The iPhone opened up everyone's eyes. For the first time, you could really get true desktop browsing on a device," Zucker said.Wake3 plans a public beta release of WebKit for Windows Mobile in a few months. It will have full support for JavaScript, but Adobe Flash support is not expected. "You pretty much need a license," from Adobe, said Zucker. Instead, Wave3 will support technologies like SVG.At Funambol, the company specializes in push e-mail based on the Funambol open-source project, formerly known as Sync4j."We're actually seeing a tremendous surge of interest in open source in mobile," said Hal Steger, vice president of marketing at Funambol. The company has commercial and open-source versions of its software.Technologies like the iPhone and Google's Android along with the upcoming available wireless spectrum have spurred interest in open source for mobile systems, according to Steger. Also, prices are dropping for data plans for mobile phones."All things are kind of coming together," he said.Open source has helped Funambol get its software into the hands of more developers, who can test the software, fix it, and contribute code changes back to the community,? Steger said."If you've ever developed a mobile phone application and you're trying to address the mass market, there's a fundamental problem," he said. Half the world owns a cell phone but there are more than 1,000 models and many operating systems to support. But developers via open source can test the software and try it on their own phones."What we like to say is open source enables the largest mobile developer community to make any device work on any network. That's probably the biggest single advantage at least from our experience of open source to mobile," said Steger.To give developers incentives, Funambol pays developers $500 to $3,000 to work on projects, such as a Google Android client for Funambol or a Google Gmail connector. The company also pays $25 to persons to test their phone to see if Funambol works on it.Funambol differs from Android, which is Google's open-source stack for mobile devices, in that Android is for the client while Funambol is a server application, Steger said.Attendees pondered how Android would stack up against LiMo. The LiMo Foundation is intending to build a hardware-independent Linux OS for mobile devices."It's a hard question to answer," O'Such said. The market will decide, he said.? Wind River Systems is part of the Open Handset Alliance, which has a hand in developing Android, as well as a member of the LiMo Foundation.
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The next great mobile hope for Linux, the Neo1973, has arrived. Wired News has a first look at the most promising open source alternative to the iPhone.
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With all the grumbling over Windows and its many shortcomings, why would anyone want Microsoft&#39;s computer operating system to run their cell phone?
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After testing the iPhone for two weeks in multiple US cities, Walter Mossberg and Katherine Boehret consider it âa beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface,â they say, âworks well.â In addition to combining âintelligent voice calling and a full-blown iPod,â iPhone also âoffers the best Web browser we have seen on a smart phone and robust email software.â It offers âthe largest and highest-resolution screen of any smart phone weâve seen, and the most internal memory by far. Yet it is one of the thinnest smart phones available and offers impressive battery life, better than its key competitors claim.â It is, the two conclude, âa pleasure to use.â
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If a Windows version of a Mac application seemed like an odd choice for one of Steve Jobs&#8217; trademark &#8220;One more thing&#8230;&#8221; keynote surprises, it shouldn&#8217;t be, analysts who follow the company say. Developing a Windows version of Safari not only benefits Apple&#8217;s high-profile iPhone, it also helps Apple build market share in the overall browser market.