Smalltalk with James Robertson

This is pretty cool:

With Square, anyone can accept credit or debit card payments by downloading the app and plugging a little plastic cube into the headphone jack of an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android phone.

That's not only disruptive; for people who can meet to arrange payment, it pulls action away from sites like EBay. I'm not sure how widespread this will become; you still need the card swiper gadget. Things will really change if and when you can use your phone directly, without additional gizmos...

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This is the kind of usage pattern Apple hopes to see:

All the PCs and laptops are basically not being used. All the Macs are not being used. All have been powered off. Everyone in the family is waiting for their turn at the iPad.

...

I don't think I'll be buying any more desktops going forward. I don't think I'll even be buying any more laptops going forward.

The big thing that a lot of tech folks don't get is that we aren't the target audience here. Apple built this for everyone else - the part they cast us in was "developer".

I know this much - since my wife got ahold of her iPad, her Windows PC has been sitting unused. She still uses her Macbook, but it looks like the iPad is getting more use. I still need a laptop, but I accept the fact that I'm an outlier in this :)

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Adobe is touting Flash on Android based tablets (set to release later this year:

While Adobe does not have any Appleproducts on the show floor at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, the company is showing off prototypes of upcoming Android-based tablets. The Google Android Tablet, even in a pre-release form, is capable of running applications and features based on Adobe's Flash and Air codes.

What will be interesting is seeing what HP will do with their WebOS (Palm) based tablets, widely anticipated to debut next year. I expect they'll support Flash - in which case, we coud be seeing a rerun of the PC vs. Mac game. Apple has a head start this time with the app store, but the more open devices will have advantages as well.

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It looks like the iPad is a semi-mobile device in the "video streaming on the go" side of things:

The iPad’s built-in YouTube application strips both standard and HD videos to a dramatically lower resolution over the cellular data connection, something that iTunes Store video previews notably do not do, instead staying at a higher quality and consuming a greater amount of data. Other third-party applications, such as the ABC Player, refuse to work at all over the cellular connection, producing a notification pop-up that states, "Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time."

So... if you had a Netbook and one of the 3G cards you can slap into a USB port, does this happen? I suspect not. Steve Jobs might want to hop on this, as it's clearly a bigger part of the experience than whether Flash supports touch well or not...

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Dvorak gets this right - what if Microsoft played the mobile game the way they played the PC game twenty years ago?

Microsoft's key to success with a Zune Phone would be the addition of all sorts of screwball features. An easy way to do this is to do what Microsoft has always done: copy other people's work. In this case, the handset should come preloaded with 100 apps. It wouldn't take a lot of time to find out the top 100 iPhone apps. Clone them and pre-install them on the Zune Phone—or make them a part of the phone's basic functionality.

It's not as if they lack the resources to do that - they have money galore, and tons of talent. What they apparently lack is leadership.

Technorati Tags: apple, microsoft, zune

Looks like people are ceding the tablet field to Apple:

HP has conceded the tablet war before it even engaged in battle by terminating the HP Slate project.

This device was supposed to be one of the major Windows based answers to the iPad - now it's a non-answer. Whatever you think of Apple's moves on Flash and language development restrictions, it looks like they'll win the early stages of that battle - simply due to the fact that they'll be the only ones playing the game.

Technorati Tags: apple, iPad

Well, it looks like we're about to find out just how secure (or not) the iPad is - it's big enough that hackers are starting to target it:

Sabina Datcu, technology writer for anti-virus firm BitDefender, wrote in a blog post today that the threat arrives via an unsolicited email urging the recipient to download the latest version of iTunes as a prelude to updating their iPad software.

"A direct link to the download location is conveniently provided. As a proof of cyber crime finesse, the web page the users are directed to is a perfect imitation of the one they would use for legitimate iTunes software downloads," Datcu said.

And we're off to the races. I wonder whether anti-virus apps for the iPad (once non-Apple background apps are allowed in OS 4) are the next step?

Technorati Tags: apple, iPad

Seriously, Apple - it's 2010 now:

Following Opera's script in building grassroots hysteria to goad Apple into approving a contentious app, developer Greg Hughes is teasing a video of his Wi-Fi Sync app to the peoples of planet internet. As the name implies, the app promises a complete sync of your iPhone or iPod touch with iTunes without having to tether and looks pretty straightforward

Can we get this out of the box?

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Numbers like these out of Japan help:

The iPhone, offered by Japan’s third-largest wireless carrier Softbank Corp., accounted for 72 percent of smartphones shipped in the country in the period, the Tokyo-based researcher said in a report yesterday. Taiwan’s HTC Corp. was second with 11 percent, followed by Toshiba Corp. with 6.8 percent, it said.

Lots of people are unhappy with the new development rules for the iPhone/ipad - but has that unrest translated into lower sales? Based on the Wired story I linked to last night, I'd have to say no. Apple has realized something pretty important: their target market loves these devices, and based on the size of the market, there's simply not going to be a "developer strike".

Technorati Tags: apple, iPad, iPhone

Spotted in Wired Top Stories

Just three weeks after its launch, the iPad already accounts for almost 1 percent of Wired.com's overall traffic -- and more than a quarter of our mobile traffic

That's an astonishing percentage given the fact that it's only been out for a few weeks.

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