Cory Wiles Blog

Back in May Steve Jobs got into a wee bit of email confrontation with Ryan Tate over the finer points of whether or not Apple was still a revolutionary company based upon their recent actions of going after the Gawker blogger/journalist/thief/revolutionary/martyr/whatever for publishing and printing information on the yet release iPhone 4.  One of the most circulated quotes from sed email exchange was "freedom from porn".  Even as a big Apple supporter that I am I had to laugh a little.  I do think Steve and his band of merry men and women are making the right business decisions I thought that one particular reasoning was somewhat of a copout used by politicians who want to guilt voters into believing in some draconian policy.  That was until I was watching my 3 year old niece play a Snow White puzzle game on my brother-in-law's Android Incredible.  The app was free with ad support.

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Being that my passion for development and design are usually centered around mobile apps I am always interested in any new platforms and handsets that poised to make any impact on the current market.  As such I was really interested in the article posted over at Engadget yesterday: Dell Lightning: the ultimate Windows Phone 7 device leaks out. However, my enthusiasm faded after the first sentence and twindled down to zero by the end of the first paragraph.

"Hot damn, people. The mother of all Dell leaks just dropped into our laps, and the absolute highlight has to be the Lightning, a Windows Phone 7 portrait slider."

I can overlook the fact that the device is running Windows and some of the on screen usability issues because I haven't used one, but what bothers me the most is that handset manufactures can't seem to understand handset design.  This phone is presented as having a "revolutionary" device design, but once again you have the same tired, inefficient slide-the-handset to show the qwerty keyboard.  Really?! That is the best you have. That is NO different from all the other handset designs that are offered by ever manufacturer in the world for the past 5 - 10 years.  Dell and Microsoft combined have more money than most European countries.  Why they don't or can't find/recruit/steal the BEST designers and developers to come out with a real competitor to the iPhone is beyond me?  However, what this does mean that within 6 months of this device launching you will see it sitting next to the Dell MP3 player that was supposed to be so great.

Looking over some of the other features that the device offers, once again there is nothing that I can't get, and probably better, with an iPhone or Nexus One.

::NOTE::

When I was attempting to find a link to the dell jukebox from their website it didn't come up.

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Based upon the myriad of tweets over the past three months or so, most who follow me know that I have been working on my first iPhone app.  Well, first to submitted to the app store.  I have finished an app for work and have started on another for www.feedfootball.com.  Though the app hasn't hit the stores YET, I already have the inspiration to build more.  EraseUrX has by far been the most rewarding project I have worked on in the past three years.  Even if I don't make a lot of money, it truly has been self satisfying to just complete this project.  I can't wait to get started on the next one not only for the challenges that await, but also I know that I be able to put it in the App Store faster.

There has been a lot of criticism of Apple's approval process in the App Store, but over the past three months they have made great strides to improve this process and it has benefited developers greatly.  In addition, there are rumors floating around of a possible upcoming announcement of the 4.0SDK and a new phone device, which if the 3.0 release is any indication of the amount new features added to the phone, then the 4.0 release will give developers even more tools to increase the usability and features in our apps.

Hopefully, the saying is true...

If you build it they will come.

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I read a very interesting article yesterday that ranked the usability between Apple's website and Microsoft's website.  Granted, I am a little biased toward Apple, but I do feel that the author did a great job in their comparison. *spoiler: Apple won.  To add to the critique the Microsoft website does something that is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.

If a company claims to be in the "web" business then they need to create websites that look the same in all browsers.  Microsoft has a HORRIBLE reputation on releasing browsers that are not standards compliant, but are constantly giving non-IE users who visit their websites a second rate experience.  Case in point...their own website.  If you go their website with anything other than Internet Explorer, the visitor is presented with this ANNOYING alert in the upper left hand corner that is asks if you want to "Upgrade your Internet experience".  After few seconds it does minimize, but if you don't click the "Don't show me this EVER again link" the next page you navigate to will show it.

The fact is that I do want to upgrade my internet experience, but not by installing Silverlight, or IE7 or IE8 for that matter.  All of the before mentioned pieces of software are horrible, lack innovation, and do nothing but dumb down the web.  I want to upgrade my internet experience by not being harassed by Microsoft.

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