It’s about time. I haven’t written here in some time. Partly because I took most of the summer off and didn’t feel much like focusing on anything that felt like work. And partly because there really wasn’t all that much to talk about. We’ve entered what I think is a “war of attrition” phase on communications. The bloom is off the rose on VoIP. Microsoft and Cisco have enterprises buying into unified communications visions that are neat but can’t actually be implemented. Nothing major has happened on the wireless side. Until finally, something of real meaning: an open source mobile development platform that might actually have some legs.
In fact, with all due apologies to Apple and their nifty iPhone, the Open Handset Alliance is probably the most important development in wireless in the last 10 years. For all the iPhones coolness, it actually furthered most of the things that suck so bad about wireless: locked hardware, phone tied to a netwrok, applications that even when cool are still separate and unequal from what you use on your desktop every day, and an unnatural wall between voice calling and other apps. In fact, the more I think about it, unless Apple can get out of their 5 year deal with AT&T, the iPhone should soon be relegated to the graveyard of “missed it by that much” devices like the Newton.
The reality is that your portable phone-like thing is just way too much of a phone-like thing than it should be. My 12 year old daughter could care less about whether she can talk on her phone; just don’t take away her ability to text, her camera, and games. Ask her what would be really cool to add on and she’d say access to MySpace. The talking part is just a bonus. She and millions of her generation are as tied to their cell phone and provider as their grandfathers were to their wallets – yet they don’t care about talking. And they can only do what their provider lets them do. It’s pretty bizarre. We all know it shouldn’t be that way. I think Android is the first step to changing it.
Posted by hbart 
