Hardware

Hardware

The Complete History of Android

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Or near enough. There are reasons why the earliest days of the phone software will never been told and – this is the bit that interested me – there are reasons why the history has to be written now because soon so much of it will be lost.

Nonetheless, you do have to like Android. I managed about 10,000 words of this 40,000 and it is interesting, I just had little reference: I can’t remember which Android versions I’ve tried, I just have this vague memory of surprised how slow and unfinished they all seemed. Plus the article is very in favour of Google’s apparently very fast development cycles where it sounds to me like a cacophony of trying everything, then trying to fix everything, and just possibly noticing something that happened in 2007.

But the site Ars Technica has been promming ahead about this article and it is the big deal they say: they’ve done a good job and I’m fascinated by the top where they explain why it had to be done right now. Have a read, would you?

Who needs Siri when you’ve a $10,000 phone and a real assistant?

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I would totally buy one of these. If I had $10,000 and no sense, if I had a need for an assistant more accurate than Siri, and if this new Vertu Signature Touch phone ran iOS. As it is, I haven’t, I haven’t, I haven’t and it doesn’t.

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(Image from Vertu and via Wired.com)

Actually, I’m not even sure I like the look of it. For that cost – and please note that $10,000 is the starting price for the base model, you can spend up to $21,900 – I’d want to like looking at this plastic and metal embodiment of a bank loan.

Wait, I’m feeling the cost of this but only intellectually. Let me punch myself in the stomach with the Sterling prices. The base model is £5,972.41. The top one is £13,079.58.

Actually, that sounds reasonable. I’ll take two. Have you got them in blue?

Oh, wait, there is a tiny extra. Just £1,791.72 or $3,000 per year extra:

The Signature Touch’s Concierge service is what sets it apart from other phones. It’s free for the first year, then jumps to around $3,000 a year. Concierge makes the phone more like an American Express Black Card or a diplomatic passport. It works like this: You request (legal and somewhat reasonable) things via the Concierge app, and then a real, live person makes them happen. You basically have a personal assistant on call at all times. A little button on the side of the phone fires up the Concierge app directly. The assistant who helped me was Celine. She was great.

To commence my Vertu experience, the company offered to book me a dinner reservation at the members-only CORE:Club to show how the Concierge could gain access to exclusive places. I declined that offer, as I wanted to test the Concierge using my own requests.

Instead, I checked OpenTable at 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday and found popular restaurants fully booked that day and on the weekend. There was nothing available for dinner at ABC Kitchen in a few hours or brunch at Red Rooster the next morning. I opened the Concierge app and asked for reservations at 7:30pm that night and noon the next day, knowing it would be tricky. No problem, reservations booked. Thanks Celine! On another Saturday night, I was a head-nod away from getting a group of five on the VIP list at a fancy club called Avenue. If we’d been willing to pay $200 apiece for a table and bottle service—and had any intention of actually going—we’d have been in. Coincidentally, $200 is the price of a normal phone.

What It’s Like to Use a $10k Phone with a Real-Life Personal Assistant – Tim Moynihan, Wired (5 June 2014)

Read the full article: Moynihan is very conscious of the cost yet also able to step away from that and see the benefits and the problems of the phone and service.

And under the Surface

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I’m not sold. But the new Surface Pro 3 does address two of my criticisms of the range. Specifically, I’ve always found Surface tablets to be crazily heavy next to my iPad but Microsoft says this week’s new release is lighter.

Then I’ve had more of a jolt seeing the tiny screen. It’s not that small but it’s oddly shaped, it’s shaped like a long widescreen display which is good and is in fact better than the iPad’s, yet it makes any landscape work feel squashed. And you will spend most of your time in landscape because that’s how the Surface likes it. Fine, so do many people, including iPad owners. I’m not one of them, it just feels far more natural to hold and to use iPad in portrait that I resent any pressure to change.

But now the screen is bigger, so that may be fixed too.

It still runs Windows, though, and I don’t see that changing.

Take a look at Microsoft’s product page – and tell yourself to not keep spotting Apple-esque touches on the page – for the full skinny. Prices start at £639 UK, $799 US.

 

Put – the – phone – down

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UNICEF – seriously, UNICEF? – has released an app called PlayTimer which is specifically built to make you put that bloody iPhone down and go play with your kid:

Together with your child you can set how long you are going to play for and then take your child’s photo to set the playtimer. This will then lock your phone and show a black screen. If the phone is touched in locked mode – say, by a parent checking their work email – an alarm will go off. You can only turn the alarm off by taking another picture of your child – proof that you’re still playing with them. (In case of emergency, you will still see incoming calls and can make emergency calls, as no app has the power to over-ride your phone lock settings.)

UNICEF’s new app lets your children confiscate your smartphone Katherine Crisp (15 May 2014)

Read more on the UNICEF blog here or go straight to downloading the free app from the App Store

Fold-up phone concept

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I so clearly remember saying I would only ever buy flip phones. It’s not that I’m usually an angry kind of guy but it is that I so regret the fact how we have given up the ability to slam a phone down. At least with flip phones you can say “Here’s what I think of your idea” and scrunch the phone closed. What can you do with a non-flipping mobile? You can yell “Take that rejection and shove it, scum” but then you get your pinky out and tap a tiny button. If I have to have bleeps, I want it to be because this is a family show.

Nonetheless, I changed away from flip phones and have not once looked back since 2007. Can’t imagine why.

And now I think I would change to this. Or I’d change to what it’s going to become once manufacturers get to it, once designers take the raw idea and include it a complete system that works as well together as this concept does on its own. In other words, right now it looks awful – but it also looks fantastic.

Read more about it – quite a bit more – on the Human Media Lab website. And a nod of the hat to @GuyKawasaki for the link.

Overpriced

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It’s a discussion that comes up a lot. I’ve even joked about it in my book, The Blank Screen (UK edition, US edition). Every time it happens, it’s started by someone who dislikes Apple and they always say:

Macs are overpriced

And I or probably anyone who likes Apple, tells a tale something like mine:

My previous Mac lasted me seven years. I still use it for some jobs. Over that same period, X or Y replaced their PCs three times. Tell me what’s the better value.

I’m not sure which disappoints me more: the ease with which I come out with all this stuff or the ease with which people say Macs are overpriced. It’s the word overpriced: if they’d said expensive or just straight out that they cost more than PCs, I’d be nodding along with them. Well, there’s the stuff about MacBook Air knockoffs, how they still aren’t cheaper. But generally, Macs are more expensive than PCs.

It’s just that word overpriced.

That really disappoints me.

You can get a word processor for free now. So people call ones that cost £6.99 overpriced. They mean it costs more, they think it’s expensive – seriously? £6.99 for something you’ll earn your living using? – but they say overpriced. The word is used because it sounds better than calling the cheaper one cheaper. It implies a professional judgement: all things have been considered and that one is overpriced.

Anyone who disagrees has been consumed by the cult of Apple whereas you, the one making this overpriced judgement, are the sole voice of sanity.

Bollocks.

Follow:

Macs are cheaper than PCs therefore Macs are overpriced

Shoes are cheaper than cars therefore cars are overpriced

Hey, they both get you where you’re going, don’t they? But you look at that second one, you think I’m a smartarse, and you know shoes can’t do the same job as a car. That’s actually what I think when I look at the first line: PCs can’t do the same job as a Mac. You can disagree and there is every chance you will, but it doesn’t matter: that’s how I see it when I’m spending the money. All that matters is what you, specifically you, need. You’re thinking money matters too and it surely does, but:

If you love PCs and Windows, you have oodles of choice and you’re going to get a very cheap computer. I can’t see a single thing wrong with that.

If you don’t love PCs and Windows, why would you buy one? When you don’t like them, then the sole reason is price and I can see only wrong things with that. You’re choosing, you are electing to buy a computer you know you won’t like. That’s not a saving over a Mac, it is a waste of money. It’s one of the worst wastes, I think, because you then have to live with it every day you’re working.

I’m sure I’ll buy another Mac some day but when I do, I will be pricing it against what I need it for and what it will do for me. I won’t be comparing it to a PC.

I do thoroughly believe that you need to get the computer that works best for you and if that’s a PC, that’s a PC. I think I’m in a fortunate position that I’ve worked extensively with both so I know what works for me.

Buy a Mac, buy a PC, it’s completely up to you. But can we skip the bollocks about overpriced vs cheap and just get back to work?

What to buy the man or woman who has everything

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A book on humility. Or a pair of $350 sunglasses that go beep when you leave them behind. From the makers – who handbuild each set so give them a break over that price – comes this explanation:

Never lose your eyewear, or your phone. We embedded custom designed beacons into every pair of Tzukuris. This means your iPhone will alert you if you leave them behind and the app can show you where you left them. Using the iPhone’s motion sensor, the app recognizes if your phone is left behind and will ring extra loudly to alert you.

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They’re called Tzukuri sunglasses. Read more on the official website and also at Time magazine which has more to say about them.

New: MacBook Airs now from £749

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[Photo: Apple]

Give Apple credit: anyone else would be doing a big launch presentation about this but they just slipped it out with a press release and an updated website. And I’m kind of with them: there’s nothing new per se in these models. But it’s a lot of years since I gave much of a damn about a 1 pixel improvement or a 1 microhertz speed improvement, I am all for what you can do with computers.

And how much it costs you to do it.

That’s the news today: the new MacBook Airs are starting at £749. If you’re a PC user who has often spent no more than thruppence on a computer, you’ve just winced and I am just about to point out that you spent that thruppence often. Often. And added bits. Whereas I updated my Mac after six years solid, heavy use – and I still use that one for some jobs.

Spend your money wisely, spend it here – and remember when MacBook Airs came sliding out of manilla envelopes and were the most expensive things in the world ever:.

Snap everything to your phone

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Just launched on Kickstarter: a device called Snap that lets you connect things to your phone – or your phone to things. Keep your credit card wallet snapped to the back of your phone; snap your phone on to the back of a passenger seat headrest to watch films on it.

It's a neat idea but I also just like the wry, make-you-smile approach that the makers have taken to their video about it. Take a look at that and commit some cash to kickstarting the product here.