Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
In a March interview, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, whose company's smartphone ambitions led to his vacating a board seat at Apple, claimed that he didn't use either an Android phone or iPhone. Rather, he uses a Blackberry, citing his affinity for its keyboard despite a number of Android models released over the years integrating physical thumb keyboards.
RIM devices had keyboards even before they had email; the feature was part of the BlackBerry's predecessor, the RIM Inter@ctive Pager. Indeed, tactile feedback was so valued by the company that it tried to integrate it into the touchscreen with the BlackBerry Storm. In reviewing that phone for The New York Times, David Pogue noted, "A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel." Imagine such a thing.
Filed under: Misc
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
When Microsoft introduced the original Xbox, the company had a lot to prove. The console newcomer promised that it was laser-focused on building a great system for games. There wasn't much to distract it. In a time of DVDs and dial-up, "convergence" in the space was focused on the ability for consoles to play back movies rented at Blockbuster.
But everyone knew that the new kid on the box had an agenda beyond taking its share of industry profits away from Nintendo and Sony. Particularly versus the latter, Microsoft knew it would be engaged in a war for the living room and the future of digital entertainment distribution including, but beyond, games. Nothing came close to matching the processing power that consoles had brought to the living room, but no one had really cracked the broader application beyond disc-based games. It surely wasn't web browsing, as Nintendo and Sony had tried. Still, as streaming services from Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and others began to proliferate across lots of different add-on boxes, it made sense to add them onto Xbox Live (even if the programming wasn't) as well as the PlayStation Network.
Filed under: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
The announcement of the Acer Aspire R7 was the best example of the company's assertion that it was moving from computers designed with touch to computers designed for touch. But if having a fancy, even unprecedented, hinge is what defines a touch-optimized notebook, Acer is a bit late to the party.
Last October, Switched On discussed the role that laptop-tablet hybrids -- namely convertibles and detachables -- would play in the differentiation of Windows 8 devices. Both types have seen their share of support. Detachables have included HP's Envy x2, ASUS' Transformer-inspired VivoTab and Microsoft's Surface. (Dell's XPS 10 is available only with Windows RT.)
Filed under: Apple, Microsoft
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
The television. The PC. The cellphone. We take the things in these sentence fragments for granted today, but they took many years to enter the mainstream. Could Google Glass herald the next great product that we will one day wonder how we lived without? Based on three days of not using the product, you may want to ask someone else.
Filed under: Misc, Wearables, Google
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
In the early days of the internet economy, the saying went that webpages were created on Macs, served on Unix and viewed on Windows. In the iOS app economy, it's often the case that apps run on devices by Apple, but connect to services by Google. With the exception of many games, at this point, apps increasingly strive to be internet services.
Google has been investing in more of these services for a longer time and in a way more directly tied to apps than Apple has. Google Maps has been the best example, but others include Google Drive (with its editing features), Google Voice and Google+. In contrast, Apple's biggest consumer online service success (other than the iTunes store) has been iCloud, which is less app-like and more of a silent shuttle for documents and files among iOS devices.
Filed under: Software, Apple, Google
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
More Info Microsoft reiterates that Windows 8 could see small(er) devices soon Windows Phone sees big gains at the expense of BlackBerry and Symbian Microsoft releases Surface RT and Pro updates
For example, if x86 chips were more competitive with ARM processors from a performance-per-watt perspective, then Microsoft wouldn't be as reliant on Metro-style apps for functionality. And if more developers were creating Metro-style apps, then consumers wouldn't have to go to the legacy desktop mode as much to get things done. (Until the company releases a Metro-style Office, Microsoft really can't wag its finger too much at third parties.)
Filed under: Tablets, Apple, Microsoft, HP
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
HEach week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Facebook's management doesn't see any dichotomy in the phrase, "Go big or go home," at least as far as it might pertain to Facebook Home. After being dogged for years with questions about whether the Land o' Likes would create its own smartphone despite consistent denials, the company explained that its own phone wouldn't give it the reach it would need for its more than 1 billion members. With the exceptions of the iPhone and the Galaxy S series, a successful handset today might sell 20 million units. That's a number that many services would dream of reaching, but it's just one-fiftieth of Facebook's user base.
And yet, Facebook Home will start out factory-installed on only one device: the HTC First, a mid-range Android device available exclusively from AT&T. Home is also available as a download from Google Play for a handful of other popular Android handsets, including the Galaxy S III.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Apple, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry, Facebook
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
For T-Mobile, March went out like a lion, a roaring one. With passion for both invention and invective, T-Mobile roared against the contract during its UnCarrier announcement. The nation's fourth-largest (post-carrier) wireless operator will support its move away from contracts with a television spot that shows it as one of four bad guys riding into town to get people to do things their way, but then trades in its "black hat" for a magenta one as it no longer seeks to enforce those policies. T-Mobile says to watch carefully as each of the other bad guys has a distinct personality that reflects one of its main competitors.
T-Mobile is in a battle for getting consumers onto a network that is described as 4G, but evaluating the appeal of its announcement comes down to looking at four S's - subsidy, selection, speed and simplicity.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, HTC, T-Mobile, Facebook
Comments
]]>
View the original article here
» Read More...
