The Telegraph claims, in an article that sounds unlikely to me, that mobile phones could soon be charged by talking into the handset:

Electrical engineers have developed a new technique for turning sound into electricity, allowing a mobile to be powered up while its user holds a conversation.

The technology would also be able to harness background noise and even music to charge a phone while it is not in use.

If true, this is also good news for The Telegraph itself. Assuming we really can generate electricity by talking hot air, the newspaper’s HQ could become the Middle East of generating electricity by the power of regularly spouting garbage at volume.

Harry Marks on ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough:

Google’s philosophy: “How much stuff can we cram into this thing that works well enough?”

Apple’s philosophy: “We can’t do everything, but what features can we perfect so they’re easy and fun to use?”

Apple’s far from perfect, and it has some seriously questionable desktop UI ideas in the upcoming version of Mac OS X (including an absolutely hideous new ‘skin’ for iCal), but it often works hard to get the details right.

Justin Williams on trading an iPad for a Xoom:

Honeycomb as an OS supports rotating the device into both portrait and landscape, but rotation is not nearly as fluid and instantaneous as on iOS. In fact, it is so slow I often wonder if the device has registered that I changed the device’s orientation. After several days, I ended up just setting a preference to disable rotation on the device and have it stay in landscape permanently.

When Apple dropped the rotation lock from the iPad, I was annoyed, but only because I wanted the option to periodically lock it. However, to think of a device almost forcing me to lock its orientation because of poor performance is just crazy.

Mind you, it remains to be seen whether ‘good enough’ will do regarding tablets. It certainly has when it comes to PCs, but less so with smartphones—many users seemingly demand a good experience now. I hope that this will be the case in the tablet space, not so Apple can beat Google, but so Google will strive to better the experience and so challenge Apple to keep bettering its products too. The worst-case scenario is when ‘good enough’ wins the day and companies continue shovelling out third-rate crap, enabling everyone—including the field’s leaders— to become complacent and lazy.

Greg Sandoval for CNet.com on Google Music:

While Google and Levine have negotiated to obtain licences from the four top labels for over a year, the service will appear first in beta without licensing from the labels.

That’s sure to go down well with record labels, just like Amazon’s cloud service is going down well with them. And by well, I mean ‘well’ in the sense of ‘not well at all, due to them spitting fury and going GRRARRGGHH’. Apple’s trying to get record labels on board for its cloud music service, so will record labels go with unlicensed models just to screw the big evil (Apple), or will they finally recognise that Apple’s domination in the digital music space is also making them money? I wouldn’t bet on the latter, sadly.

It’s also worth noting that these online services appear in part to be relying on fair-use laws. This is why they are rolling out in the US. In the UK, they’ve a much tougher battle, given that the UK essentially lacks even basic fair-use law. For example, it’s not legal in the UK to copy any media, even for personal use. The only exceptions are time-shifting of television content and backing up software, although more recent legislation demands that the second of those things not circumvent copyright protection. That the BPI has in the past been quoted as saying it won’t sue people for ripping CDs to use the music on iPods is irrelevant, because that’s very different from legal precedent.

The CNet.com article also quotes Google exec Zahavah Levine:

While the service is still in beta, users will be able to join by invitation only. Initially, to access the service, users will require a browser that supports Flash — that means no Apple devices — or on any Android device that’s version 2.2 or higher, Levine said. Currently the service will start off in the United States only and will be free.

Sounds great. I can’t wait to get stuttering music playback on a Flash-based browser. Still, luckily for Google, Amazon hasn’t updated its own cloud player so that it works with iOS, or Google’s decision to run with the ‘open’ technology of Flash for the future of music playback outside of Android would look a bit stupid.

*cough*Amazon Cloud Player works on iOS devices all of a sudden (9to5 Mac)*cough*

Oh.

According to Hunter Hillegas of Hanchor LLC, having his app in the Mac App Store hit number six in a category chart (‘Developer Tools’), zooming past BBEdit and Coda, wasn’t reason enough to break out the champagne—nor did it provide enough revenue to even buy some champagne:

At the end of that Monday, I couldn’t wait to see the AppFigures.com report in the morning. I was excited enough that it was a little hard to sleep that night. When the report came in the next day, I was surprised: 11 copies had sold. Eleven. I had made enough money to buy a pizza… as long as it was a small one… without toppings

Hillegas wonders if Apple’s algorithms are broken, and if his experience points to greater problems with the Mac App Store:

As far as I know, Apple hasn’t released any stats on the Mac App Store since the day after it opened. Maybe that’s because they’re not that all that great. As a user, I love the convenience of the Mac App Store – I setup a new machine recently and for the apps purchased through that channel, it was super easy to get going. I hope all my software is delivered this way in the future.

That said, if this is the future of Mac apps, based on my experience it seems like it has a ways to go.

It’s easy to make excuses (or not) for Apple, but in this case I do think it’s necessary. The Mac App Store is a very different proposition to the iOS store, which Apple’s crowed about from a revenue standpoint at every opportunity:

• The iOS store was available on iOS devices as of iOS 2.0.1, prior to which third-party applications were, to all extents and purposes, non-existent. By contrast, the Mac App Store is only available to Intel Macs whose users have upgraded to at least Mac OS X 10.6.6.
• Ignoring jailbreaking, the iOS store is still the only place to get new software for iOS devices. For the Mac, you can buy boxed software or download from myriad locations.

I think as of Lion, developers like Hillegas could see some big changes. It’s pretty clear that the Mac App Store will be more heavily pushed by Apple as the place to download new software (possibly, by Mac OS X 10.8 or 10.9 becoming the only place), and as more users upgrade, the audience will grow.

I also suspect many holdouts—people used to the ‘old way’ of doing things—will change their habits soon enough. I’m in the process of installing a new Mac now, which has involved downloading a ton of DMGs, rifling through drawers for DVDs and locating serial numbers. But the few apps I’ve bought from the Mac App Store were installed by clicking an install button. The process was painless and convenient; in the long term, that alone should guarantee the Mac App Store (and developers capitalising on it) enjoys at least some measure of success.

Hat tip: The Brooks Review.

Eric Ogren for Information Week, in April 2008:

I am beginning to despair that Nokia will ever understand the U.S. market. As its recently revealed quarterly earnings tell us, its share of the market here dropped yet again. Despite the fact that Nokia is building a touch-enabled device that looks eerily similar to you-know-what, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo called the iPhone a “niche” product.

Matt Hamblen for Computerworld/Macworld, yesterday:

Nokia sold 24.2 million smartphones in the first quarter, maintaining its global smartphone lead despite announcing it will move in coming years from Symbian to Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system, IDC said. Nokia “may find itself in danger of ceding market share as the competition ramps up,” IDC said.

Apple shipped 18.7 million iPhones in the first quarter, IDC said, a new record for a single quarter “and inched closer to market leader Nokia with fewer than six million units separating the two companies,” IDC noted.

Apple’s not there yet, and Nokia may well manage to battle alongside Microsoft, but 18.7 million is a pretty big niche.

The Macworld article adds:

Overall, 99.6 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter, out of 372 million overall mobile phones.

How long will it be before we can just call ‘smartphones’ mobile phones (or just phones) and relegate mobile phones to something else? Dumbphones, anyone?