This is Swipe, a blog by pinch/zoom about mobile, design, user experience, usability, development and the future of technology.
In this segment we talk about the recent iPhone privacy scandal. Are we being tracked at all times? Is this anything new or are we just desperate for another iPhone story?
See the entire episode on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/22900281
Here’s an interesting piece of news this morning:
Netflix’s global subscriber base grew almost 70% over the past year, to 23.6 million users. With that audience, it dethroned Comcast as the country’s biggest provider of subscription video content. More than 7% of Americans now subscribe to Netflix.
I don’t think anyone ever doubted that this would happen at some point. But now that it had happened, like everyone else, I’m wondering: what does this mean?
I’m sure in the weeks and months ahead plenty of people will be using this milestone to herald either the “Death of ____” or the “Age of ____” or both. I don’t think such things are that black and white. But it does serve as important evidence that people are in fact changing how they consume content—beyond renting movies from a video store.
What I think is so fascinating is that many people are choosing to have both cable service as well as a Netflix subscription. If you assume that most people what cable in their homes for more than just sports or live events, this means the value of Netflix is greater then the risk of paying for content twice.
If true, then the most important question we should be asking is why?
As a mobile guy, I like to think that Netflix’s ubiquitous strategy—that being on all platforms and all screens—is their secret sauce. Their strategy seems to imply: no matter where you go, Netflix will be available.
No doubt a valuable message that I think very few companies are able to duplicate, but I believe is the future of everything.
One might say it is the Death of Rarity and dawning of the Age of Ubiquity ;)
(also check out the excerpt from my book on what I call The Ubiquity Principle)
I had a chance to review the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play aka “The Playstation Phone” at CTIA last month and I can’t say that I was too impressed. You’ll see in the video I had a hard time just starting a damn game. Once I did, playing a simple racing game was more of an Android game experience than a Playstation experience.
Using the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play was one of the worst experiences I had at CTIA. Not only was it a bad gaming device, it was a bad Android device too. The device is built around the gaming capabilities, so it has tons of horse power (and still managed to drop frames), a super crisp and large screen, a bulky slider configuration… you know all the things you need to make a phone call or play Angry Birds.
While it is said that PSP titles like Little Big Planet and Metal Gear Solid will run on the device, I saw no evidence of those games on the device I used. It was mostly ports of Android games by the big mobile gaming houses.
This whole experience is fairly reminiscent of Nokia’s failed N-Gage devices that produced two terrible mobile gaming devices and two notorious bad phones shaped like tacos. The first of this hell spawn produced one of the worst ideas in mobile history: sidetalking
So if you have a ton of money to spend on a crap phone… oh wait, this hasn’t been picked up by a carrier yet (even though it was been available to them since February of this year). Verizon had it, but removed it from their site
Who wants a taco?
Kevin joins host Brian to talk about a number of breaking or broken things.
The Honeycomb slate market is getting crowded. With new devices launching every day and current models getting incremental updates that put them on parity with just about anything else out there, manufacturers gotta have a gimmick.
(Exactly why the Android Revolution isn’t what you think it is.)
Kevin and Brian discuss the Magazine for iPad, iPhone and Desktop they built last year using adaptive layout and a whole lot of responsive design. Why was it hard? and will it ever see the light of day?
Mobile of course is a hot topic at the moment. But mobility goes way beyond just phones. Some interesting reports came out this week that reminds us that there is another titan of mobile out there that shouldn’t be taken for granted: Nintendo.
Flurry put out an interesting report on how mobile gaming is taking a bigger slice out of the portable gaming market. Engadget quickly reported on a pie chart and stated that smartphones (namely, iOS and Android devices) are slowly chipping away at the portable gaming market because in the world of douchlord reporting a 13% difference in two pie charts means market disruption.
They don’t note however that the most recent pie chart includes Android, whereas it didn’t the previous year. The Flurry report did not mention any firm financials, only that “from 2009 to 2010, iOS and Android game sales have spiked significantly, resulting in nearly a doubling of their market share.”
Like you, I’m not sure what to believe here. Common sense for us mobilers is that mobile gaming will rule. Nintendo aging DS platform appears tired and dated. However when Nintendo launched it’s new 3DS a few weeks ago they instantly shipped 400,000 in the US it’s first week of availability. This mirrors the 400,000 sold in Japan the first week. To put that in perspective Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 it’s first three days with nearly half being pre-orders. Keep in mind that games for the DS are mostly cartridges that sell for $30-50 US, a price point you aren’t likely to see in the App Store any time soon.
What does this tell us? The Nintendo still has a lot of pull and knows how to ship a lot of portable units. More than that, these games have considerable more consumer and market value than mobile games, in price and style of game play. Mobile is still very much casual gaming trying to grow up into real gaming with very limited success. Nintendo on the other hand has this market cornered and is able to eek out massive revenue from a 5+ year old platform.
I don’t see the tides turning anytime soon. Gaming will continue to be like sweet and savory pies—both technically pies, both delicious, but totally different from each other.
This transition amazes me.
It isn’t just the iPhone 4 is a year old and the prosumer Nikon D90 is three. Or that the iPhone is of course a phone and the D90 is a DLSR. It is that in the mobile revolution we are all creators. We all have important moments to capture and to share. This will be the new economy of the web.
The entire pinch/zoom team will be at Web Directions Unplugged May 12-13 here in “sunny” Seattle. Meet us there and learn about the future of mobile and the Web. Use the promo code pinchzoom at registration will get you 30% off your ticket price.
I often feel like the old man of mobile, shaking fists wildly in the air at things that no one else seems to care about. When I read posts like this one I don’t feel like I’m the only curmudgeon that believes there can be a better way.
In this lengthy rant, the author explains all the reasons he thinks the web is fundamentally broken. To deploy a web app you need to a programming language, a web server, a database management system, a server-side web framework, a client-side web framework—just to get started.
Then you have to factor in the complexities like operating systems, security models, external dependencies, documentation, scaling concerns—the list goes on.
Most important of all you need what the author calls the “glue” which I assume is made of unicorn hooves that will magically binds it all together. His list of reasons only scratches the surface when it comes to the mobile web, which can be far worse to contend with.
After a lengthy rant he calls for a manifesto for web development that works:
Long story short, if you ever wondered why native apps are kicking the mobile web’s ass? Then read this article.