While farting around online, I stumbled across this 2008 Time Capsule from Stephen Fry. In it, he discusses the state of mobile phones - diving into the problems with BlackBerry's and Apple's latest offerings. BlackBerry had released the Storm and Apple's 2nd iPhone was now 3G capable. It's quite the glimpse into what we thought the future would be like. Halfway through, he says: When the first generation [of iPhone] came out I offered the view, based on my experience of releases and…
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It has been four years since Unicode officially accepted our Power Symbols proposal into the standard. Now I’m delighted to announce that users on iOS 14 are finally able to use the full set of Power Symbols. ⏻ ⏼ ⭘ ⏽ ⏾ They’re available to use in the browser, in emails, and messages. Here’s how they look, in both dark and light mode: Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentAnyone with iOS 14 able to see these 5 symbols?If not - who do I still know at Apple that is willing to listen to me grouch at …
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A decade ago, I was invited to the UK launch of Windows Phone 7. It was Microsoft's attempt to compete with Apple's iPhone and Google's Android. Sure, Microsoft could make a brilliant OS and had excellent hardware partners - but could they convince developers to use yet another system? At the time, I wrote: The revenue share is 70/30. I really think MS have missed a trick here. It’s an “industry standard” price point because no one wants to get in to a price war. Increasing the share th…
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I was working in the mobile phone industry just as smartphones were taking off. I saw the Palm Pilot rise and fall. I witnessed NEC and Sagem and a host of companies launch smartphones and then disappear. But the greatest tragedy of them all was Nokia and their Symbian Operating System. (Actually, Symbian's ownership and relationship with Nokia is complex. But let's gloss over that for now.) Symbian was, for its time, a brilliant OS. It ran 3D games smoothly, had terrific hardware support, a…
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I don't often play games - and I rarely pay for Android apps. Blackbar got me to spring a couple of quid based on a single screenshot. That's it. Read a letter, type in which words have been redacted. If you get it right, you're rewarded with the next letter. I can't understand why this game hasn't been made before. There's literally nothing to have stopped this game being developed on early 8-bit microcomputers. It is interactive fiction - but unlike any I've played before. Rather…
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I like predicting the death of the iPhone. I've been doing it since the device was first released - and I'm sure, one day, my doom-mongering will be proved correct! Apple is at an interesting nexus with its iPhone. It's hugely popular, vastly profitable, beloved by millions, and plagiarised by its competitors. The only fly in the ointment? It's just a little bit dull! Dull is, of course, another word for consistent. Predictable. Comforting. Pick up an original iPhone and the newly released…
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I love Android, I really do. I'm chuffed to bits with the Galaxy Nexus I won recently. I've had a dozen Android phones before that - stretching all the way back to the HTC Magic. But it's getting obvious that Android has a serious design problem - even with the gorgeous new "Holo" theme for ICS. The issue is one of consistency. Users have limited cognitive surplus and often rely on muscle memory to perform tasks. So anything which forces applications to behave in a similar way is often…
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Last week, I posted this tongue-in-cheek suggestion. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentPrediction*: iPhone5 & Samsung Galaxy S 3 to have IDENTICAL hardware. Battle of the OS / ecosystems!*Well, wishful thinking!❤️ 0💬 0🔁 008:22 - Thu 26 April 2012 Wouldn't it be great if there was a proper show-down between the two major players? You could really compare which OS was best given the same hardware. Is iOS's camera software better than Android's when given the same lens and CCD? Which runs faster…
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