It’s about time to upgrade my aging Palm Treo. Apple is evil, so I won’t buy an iPhone. Palm is lame, so I won’t buy a Pre. I am waiting for a good Android phone.

10.28.09, Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine

Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 nearly stole the show from Verizon’s Droid—and now it threatens every GPS company out there.

Who knew that the Motorola Droid phone and Android 2.0 would be a Trojan horse for Google’s latest tech salvo: turn-by-turn GPS navigation? Not me. Not most of my co-workers. Here we were gearing up for one of the most eagerly anticipated handsets of the last 12 months—the Verizon Droid—only to watch Google steal a good deal of thunder from a new phone with Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0.

To be clear, the free app only works with Android 2.0, and for the time being, there is only one Android 2.0 phone: Verizon’s Droid. It’s a nice phone, by the way. Mobile Managing Editor Sascha Segan gave me a few minutes with it, and I was impressed with the design and the highly responsive, high-resolution screen (the slide-out keyboard, however, seemed kind of meh). There are so many big touch screen phones on the market today, however, that even a new one for the industry-leading Verizon network may not be a game changer. Google Maps Navigation is another story.

I’m certain that the execs at TomTom, Garmin, and Magellan all sat up and took notice of the little e-bomb Google just dropped this morning. According to the Google blog, the free app (still in beta, by the way), has constantly updated maps, voice-driven commands and search, free traffic details, search for points of interest along route, 3D views, turn-by-turn direction—well, you get the idea. It has a lot of what you’ll find in the best stand-alone GPS devices. Plus it’s coupled with a big touch screen and something most GPS devices do not have: a keyboard.

The Droid and Google Maps Navigation aren’t perfect. Though large, the Droid’s screen is not as big as, for example, my Magellan 1470. That has a 4.7 inch screen and is designed from the ground up for GPS. Also, the Droid doesn’t come with a car-mounting system; you’ll have to buy that separately. Current GPS devices ship everything you need in one package. I envision more than a few early adopters putting the Droid on the passenger seat next to them (at least Google Maps Navigation does offer a simple “Car Mode” interface). Even so, I think Google’s latest beta mobile app will spark industry changes.

This should force cell phone service provider competitors like AT&T to rethink their strategies. If I want to, for example, enable AT&T Navigator on my Blackberry Bold 9000, I have to pay a monthly fee. Even Verizon may want to take another look at its own VZ Navigator. It wants $9.99 a month for that. I get that some Verizon phones don’t support Google Maps (and likely won’t support Google Maps Navigation). Still, consumers don’t always get these nuances, and Verizon customers may wonder why they, too can’t sample the free GPS turn-by-turn navigation goodness available on Verizon’s Droid phone.

I haven’t tried the Google Maps Navigation, but I have to assume that it’s deeply integrated with Google’s search platform. Local search is, as always, a critical part of any search provider’s business, and Google does it well, even without GPS navigation. Now put Google’s local search capabilities together with a powerful GPS device, and you have the biggest and, potentially, best POI database on the market.

I hesitate to call GPS a killer phone app, but I wouldn’t want to downplay its importance, either. It was a big deal when TomTom released their turn-by-turn navigation for the iPhone earlier this year. Plus, for pure utility, always-there GPS-based navigation is tough to beat. A couple of weeks ago I was walking in downtown New York City—in an area I’m not all that familiar with– when a hapless woman asked me for directions (when all else fails, people treat other people like their own personal GPS devices). She asked about a street, and while it sounded familiar, I’m 85 percent certain I sent her in the wrong direction. I considered taking out my phone to try and help her, but then remembered that I had not activated AT&T Navigator. If the woman had a phone with always-there, turn-by-turn GPS—well it’s unlikely she would have stopped and asked for directions.

Google’s sneak attack aside, the more salient question is whether or not they can win in this space. Or maybe it isn’t. Google doesn’t always arrive with the intention of winning. Sure, it wants to make a mark, but I think Google will be happy to win the war of attrition. It’s now introduced a product that will make Verizon’s Droid that much more desirable. Which means Google wins on at least three counts: people want Google Navigator (it’s Google, it’s free, it’s cool), and they also now want an Android phone. If they get it, they’ll be pounding more than ever on the Google search engine looking for good hotels or breakfast nooks as they drive from Poughkeepsie to Florida–which means more eyeballs to all those merchants hooked into the Google AdSense program, which, in turn, translates into more ad dollars for Google.

In the end, the arrival of Google Maps Navigation deals a major blow to dedicated GPS device manufacturers and one of the biggest, craftiest wins of Google’s decade-long existence.

How many kids still know how to build his own computer these days? Back in the old days, we build our own computers. We upgrade it and tweak it trying to make it run just a little bit faster. I wonder how may kids have ever seen how does a computer look inside the case.

09.09.09 by John C. Dvorak
Want to save some money and give kids a better understanding of computers? Have them build their own.
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Why don’t schools build their own computers from components? Why is there this incessant need to buy new machines? Here’s an idea: parts from old machines can be salvaged and new machines can be built inexpensively at the school by the students.

Make it a yearly project for various classes, giving students some understanding of the components and how they work together.

The first computer I had was a hand-built SOL-20. I recall when the first IBM PC came out there was a computer club that quickly reserved a meeting hall. Twenty of us met and put together an IBM PC with extra hot components picked from a laundry list of items. All the drivers and necessary software was added in a group setting with someone leading the way who had already gone through the process and knew all the obstacles and solutions. It was an educational experience. I have always thought that people should open the cases of their machines once in a while and add some components. Change the hard disk or add another DVD burner—anything. Just get in there.

The opportunity to build computers in today’s classrooms has all sorts of angles and benefits. Let’s say the kids put together a simple ATOM-based machine using inexpensive Intel motherboards. They can salvage hard disks from last year’s machines or buy a new hard disk, add memory, and drop it in a salvaged case or get a new case. However it is done, it should be cheaper than loading up the school with new machines from China.

If they really wanted to do it right, high schools could have the metal shop students (if there even is a metal shop anymore) make the cases for the machines.

When I was a kid our high schools all had an auto shop, wood shop, and metal shop for students on an industrial arts track. I’m not sure what has happened to school auto shops around the country—cars are nowadays specifically engineered not to be worked on. I get the impression that most schools no longer have industrial arts shops.

And what is seriously missing from today’s picture is the electronics or computer shop in the high school. Times have changed, and there is no reason that there is not a facility to build computers in school. Everyone could pass through this classroom to build machines of their own. Is any school doing this? And if not, why not?

One problem may be finding the necessary teachers to actually run these sorts of classes. However, we’re almost 35 years into the desktop computer revolution; computer-illiterate teachers really have no excuse anymore. What does it take to get with it?

And there is no reason that the hand-made machines cannot pass through the art classes and be rigorously decorated as items of art. Give the PCs custom designs in the metal shop and custom paint jobs in the art lab.

I know there is a bean-counter out there who can show that buying machines in bulk is cheaper than building machines. But factor in the recycled components, cases, and power supplies that students could use, and the equation changes somewhat. And what do schools generally do with their discarded machines? They pile them up and then junk them with one of the recycling companies that ships the things off to China, where they are disposed of in unhealthy ways. If any institution should be promoting responsible recycling, it should be our schools.

I’d like to hear from any schools which have a program like this. We can use it as an example for others to follow.

It is intriguing to know Apple owns 91% market share of PC over $1000. It more interesting to see Apples has the highest market share in Canada among all countries at 10%. Apple is the equivalent to the BMW or Mercedes in computer. It does not bother to get the biggest market share, it only wants the higher end market that gives fat margin, not the cut throat low margin market in the lower end.

by Dan Costa – PC Magazine

Apple’s dazzling new Snow Leopard OS won’t dramatically improve its market share. And that is just fine.
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Apple review, Apple commentary, Apple news… Everything AppleApple unleashed Snow Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS, late last night. PCMag’s early testing proves it’s a solid operating system—and at $29, something of a bargain. With Microsoft’s “Vista” nearing dirty-word status and Windows 7 ($120!) still months away, you might think this stellar new OS will have months, if not years to steal market share from Windows. You’d be wrong. In terms of market share, the Mac is going to stay a minor player in the PC world. But that is OK, because Apple is way out in front where it really matters: mind share.

Few people know Apple’s real market share in the U.S., let alone abroad. I asked five people here at the office and got estimates ranging from 15 to 30 percent. Everyone agreed it was rising—fast.

What is Apple’s actual market share? According to IDC, it is 7.6 percent in the U.S. That puts Apple behind Dell, HP, Acer, and Toshiba. Worldwide, Apple’s market share is even lower, probably around 2 to 3 percent. (Although Apple did recently pass 10 percent market share in Canada; Snow Leopard will find a welcoming habitat up North.)

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IDC isn’t the only research firm running numbers, of course. Net Application’s Market Share research shows just 4.86 percent of worldwide traffic coming from systems running the Mac OS. Even if you throw in iPhone users, the number barely passes 5 percent. Hardly a mass phenomenon.

I realize this is shocking to all those who walk into Starbucks and see MacBooks outnumbering PCs three to one. It is inconceivable to everyone who watches John Hodgman trip over USB cables while Justin Long boasts about being virus-free. I reveal these numbers not to bash Apple, but merely to make the facts known. It is for educational purposes only.(Speaking of educational purposes, I’m betting Apple’s market share among students is much greater.) The numbers don’t lie; well, at least they don’t lie much. The fact is, Apple has a small sliver of the market and it isn’t growing much. But here is the kicker: That’s a good thing.

Small market share helps Apple stay small. The company employs about 35,000 people. Compare that to Dell’s 78,900, Microsoft’s massive 93,000, and HP’s hulking 321,000 workforce. (See, there are practical applications for Wolfram Alpha.) Being smaller than its competition has helped Apple stay flexible and innovative. If it were the same size as Microsoft, it would move at the same speed. And then the iPhone OS would look like Windows Mobile.

Apple doesn’t want to attract new customers—it mostly wants to keep its existing customers happy. Now, you might think that Mac people are so self-satisfied they don’t need any help being happy. And you would probably be right. Still, these customers have proven they are willing to pay a premium for a product that is more commodified every day. In fact, Apple has a stunning 91 percent of the market for PCs that cost more than $1,000. Clearly, these are customers Apple wants to keep.

Plus, these extra funds fuel innovation.I don’t have space here to go into all the reasons the Mac OS is so great, but our review covers it pretty well. Likewise, Apple’s PCs have consistently been in the vanguard for performance and design, if not always features and value. Even market failures, like the MacBook Air, have spurred the industry forward and inspired copycats. If you doubt it, just count the number of one-inch thick, CULV-based systems that will be on store shelves this fall.

I’m not saying Apple doesn’t want to grow its market share, just that it doesn’t have to. The company has cherry-picked the most attractive customers, side-stepped price competition, and made everyone who isn’t using a Mac just a little uneasy that they are missing something. Snow Leopard won’t move Apple’s market share up much, but it will be enough for the company to maintain its mind-share dominance.

As a long time (10+ yeas) Palm owner, I am looking forward to the Pre. The first version seems not ready to compete with iPhone, Palm better fix it soon. I may deflect to iPhone if the next generation iPhone is attractive enough.

06.04.09
Palm’s Hail Mary pass of a product will win over current Palm customers first.
by Lance Ulanoff

Palm PreThere’s little doubt that the Palm Pre will become Sprint’s best and most sophisticated smartphone when it launches this week. I called it the most exciting product at CES 2009, and it is, in fact, the only product we’re still talking about six months after the show. Still, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about who will buy this phone and why those people might consider it in the first place.

But let’s get something straight first. The Palm Pre is not competing with the iPhone. I know that everyone likes to create this kind of buzz. Anything new, fresh, and exciting is always seen as “The [Insert Market Leader Here] Killer.” That’s why every new search engine is pitched or touted as a “Google Killer,” though none are.

When the Pre launches, it will have an App Catalog with as many as two dozen apps. The iPhone didn’t launch with any apps—or an App Store, for that matter. Actually, the iPhone SDK launched almost eight months later. But less than four months thereafter, the App Store arrived with 500 applications. As far as I can tell, the Pre is launching with an application store and some applications, but it has not delivered the SDK to more than a handful of select vendors. I have trouble understanding why hundreds of Palm Pre developers haven’t been working with the SDK for months. Seriously, I don’t think app development for the Pre is going to be rocket science or even as complex as it likely is for the iPhone. Most of the apps developed for the Pre will be based on HTML, for heaven’s sake, so what exactly do developers need to know? The SDK should be incredibly simple.

More interesting to me is the lackluster lineup of games that will launch with the Pre. When I asked Palm Product Line Manager Matt Crowley to show me a hot game, he brought up Connect 4 on the device. First you see a picture of the familiar, vertical Connect 4 game. To play, you touch one of the columns and a red or black checker drops into place. That’s cool, but when I tried to turn the Pre over to virtually shake the checkers out—well, you can guess what happened. Nothing. We both kind of laughed about it, but I was disappointed. I expected the Pre’s built-in accelerometer to tell the app that the phone was upside down and send the checkers tumbling out of the device and onto the virtual floor.

Other apps that will debut with the App Catalog include Fandango, LinkedIn, and APNews. Uh, okay. No barn burners here, either. Crowley insists that the Pre is plenty powerful enough to handle more intense apps. Apps built for the Pre, however, do need to be Web-based. Though the core OS is Linux, developers are getting access only to the browser-like layer. Of course, I’ve seen some pretty amazing things online, so the fact that the Pre is, at one level, based on a Web platform—and not pure programming code—shouldn’t be much of an issue.

As for Flash support on the Palm Pre—which would, as far as I’m concerned, seal the deal in terms of cutting-edge interactivity—there won’t be any on initial launch. This should change, however, by year end. There’s also the promise of an updated SDK, which will allow developers to build code that skips past the browser layer and possibly touches that nifty Linux core.

That said, Palm execs don’t seem particularly anxious about the relative lack of rich apps. Perhaps they’re just not all that interested in letting third-party developers stretch application boundaries and make full use of the Pre’s native capabilities—at least for now.

If the Pre were competing with the iPhone, this could be seen as a major failure. But it’s not. The Pre’s market is existing Palm customers. So anyone who owns a Treo or Centro along with Sprint users looking for a great smartphone, are all perfect candidates for the Palm Pre. If you don’t think this is a big enough market to support the Pre, remember that Palm has sold about two million Centros, alone.

Another false assumption is that iPhone owners might consider switching to the Palm Pre. This is laughable. No iPhone owner is going to give it up for the Palm. This is not because the iPhone is fundamentally better than the Pre (Mobile Analyst Sascha Segan’s final word on the phone is here). Instead, it’s because iPhone owners have too much invested in their phones already. They’ve likely bought dozens of apps that they love and cannot run on anything else. They’re not going to switch to a Palm Pre that won’t be able to run their apps, or even purchase similar apps that they can adopt instead.

Over time Palm’s App Catalog will grow, and I’m certain we’ll see developers build more intense apps and games, but that will take time. Initially, the app selection may not be even compelling enough for current Palm owners to make the switch, unless they get really excited about running the MotionApps “Classic” emulator on a Palm Pre—something I seriously doubt will be the case.

A clearer competitor for the Palm Pre would be virtually any RIM BlackBerry phone, with the possible exception of the physical keyboard–less Storm. RIM’s software catalog is smaller than Apple’s but significantly larger than Palm’s. As a new BlackBerry owner, however, I know that downloading and installing third-party apps is not an essential activity. Both Palm’s and RIM’s phones (the Storm excluded) feature a combination of brilliant screens and QWERTY keyboards. The Pre, of course, adds the touch screen and accelerometer—features you’ll find only on the Storm, a product that has not won a great deal of support in the tech analyst community. Even so, I have to wonder how many people will consider switching from, say, a BlackBerry 8330 with its clean, good looks, efficient interface, and, of course, industry-leading push mail system. Again, this leads the Pre back to its own waters for prey.

It would be naïve to think that Palm will not at least go after undecided smartphone consumers—the vast number of people still carrying around dumb feature phones. They’re rich targets for both the iPhone and Palm Pre, and I’d say the new Pre has a fighting chance in this market, too, even if that’s not its primary target. Obviously, the iPhone will still seem sexier and, until Palm clarifies (and enriches) its App Catalog, the iPhone will remain the better choice. However, the Palm Pre is an achievement in its own right, and as those changes come and good word of mouth spreads, I expect the Pre to give virtually any smartphone a run for its money. Just don’t expect any iPhone owners to switch.

I am definitely an insider. I know all the buzzwords and actually able to make sense out of them.

It’s no surprise that everyone in the Valley is so comfortable with insider and exclusionary code words, many of which make no sense.

by John C. Dvorak

Every business has its share of buzzwords and terms that help insiders spot other insiders and members of the milieu. It’s useful to throw these terms around arbitrarily so others who may be lurking can identify you as a fellow traveler (or, conversely, someone they want to avoid).

Years ago there was a cultlike personal growth training system called EST (Erhard Seminars Training). One of its catch phrases was, “They don’t ‘get’ it!” It was code for outsiders not in the loop. The term still lingers in Silicon Valley, which was heavily caught up in this cult and many of its ideas. So it’s no surprise that everyone in the Valley is so comfortable with insider and exclusionary code words, many of which make no sense.

One of the great businesses in history is the semiconductor industry, and it set the standard for code words and code words within code words. Here is a partial guide to the typical terms you’ll hear, and what they generally mean.

One of these words—”chip”—has become accepted by the public at large and serves no useful purpose as a term of exclusion anymore.

Glossary
The roadmap At first glance, if someone told you they had the Intel roadmap, you’d think it was driving instructions on how to find the offices. But no, the roadmap is a code word meaning a chart or diagram that shows the generational outline and development schedule of upcoming chips in the form of a time line. It should probably have a better name than “roadmap.”
The campus You’d think this had something to do with school, no? But this is actually the compound of buildings that house most of a company. It should be called an office park or compound.

The process This is usually used in conjunction with either the size of the chip trace lines, such as the 42nm process, or as a generality referring to the overall manufacturing process type, such as the CMOS process.

The strategic partners This term peaked when Intel announced the Itanium microprocessor. The idea was to make an announcement and then sucker any number of other companies to do a simultaneous press release saying that they are in bed with you and think this announcement of yours is just fabulous. It’s fallen out of vogue since it can be embarrassing, which is what it was with the Itanium.

Parts This generic term is used by the semiconductor industry as a synonym for “chip.” You’ll hear a sentence such as “Do they make all the parts for it?” This actually means “Do they make all the chips for the product?” It’s got nothing to do with parts such as screws and the printed circuit boards.

Glue/support chips These are the chips (parts) needed to make the centerpiece chip, usually a microprocessor, work. I have never been able to tell what sort of person uses the word “glue chip” as opposed to those who use “support chip.”

PIN-COMPATIBLE This means a chip that fits into the socket (see below) meant for another chip. It implies that the chip is compatible with the chip that was originally designed for the socket.

Socket The receptacle for a plug-in chip, usually a microprocessor.

Architecture An outsider would immediately think this was about buildings. But in Silicon Valley, the sentence “What do you think about the architecture” would almost always bring to mind the inner workings and design of a microprocessor or an entire computer. Each company has an architecture, and the term Intel architecture, for example, is generally used to describe its version of a microsprocessor, or it is sometimes a synonym for the x86 architecture in general.

Code name In the semiconductor business, code names are commonly used not to hide or conceal a product under development but to describe products that have no official name. This sort of convention is also used by software companies such as Microsoft.

Wafers These are not cookies but slices of a silicon crystal that has been specially doped with contaminants to become the foundation for a semiconductor “chip.” The wafer, which tends to be 300mm in size (but isn’t always) could have hundreds of chips etched onto its surface.

Fab A truncation of the word “fabrication,” it refers to a factory or fabrication plant that manufacturers semiconductors. It consists of a long line of extremely expensive precision equipment into which a blank wafer is introduced at one end and is processed and eventually chopped up to make individual chips. Today’s fabs often cost over $1 billion to build.

There are even more terms than these, but consider this a basic bluffer’s guide to get you through most geeky conversations. Ask someone how much wafers cost nowadays, and watch them go off! Have fun.