Mobile & Wireless

Microsoft has concluded that last week's story about batteries failing due to a Windows 7 bug is bunkum. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have satisfied the users, who are complaining louder than ever. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers try to figure out why. Not to mention GNILLEY: gaming by yelling...
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Ever since the MacBook Air, a machine made for 3G wireless access, was released without built-in ability to connect to mobile wireless, I've been waiting for Apple to put 3G access in their laptops.

Will my wait be over soon?

A couple of things have happened in the last month that give me a bit of hope.

By selling the iPad at a low price, Apple risks cannibalizing its Mac business.

Is refusing Flash in the best interests of future iPhone 4G and iPad customers? The growing war of words between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch is amusing to watch, but how helpful is it? In IT Blogwatch, bloggers take sides.
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Sometimes, there's more going on than will fit into one post. Here are a few more links that caught my eye over the past 24 hours. In IT Blogwatch, Facebook un-munges email addresses, Fraunhofer lets you sign contracts on the phone, Symbian goes free, and Jonathan Schwartz tweets his final goodbyes.

While technology blogs nitpick the iPad over missing features and inadequate specs, they're missing the point of the device, which is to create a tool that people love to use.

"From a techie point of view, one could say, oh, my gosh, it didn't have this feature, it didn't have that feature. And I think a lot of the blogosphere has gone along with that line of thinking. But I think [Apple] is after a different market entirely," said ArminasX Saiman, an Apple enthusiast and IT manager for a large multinational company.

I have a 16-month old who loves books.  He also loves playing games on my iPhone and typing keys on the family computer.  He knows a few letters and numbers but clearly he's nowhere near learning to read. 

But I have to wonder: In two or three years, when it is time for him to learn how to read, will he be learning on old fashioned books or will he be learning with interactive exercises on iPad-like devices?

Having a security freeze in place slowed down my approval for an "instant" 12-month interest-free loan on an iMac -- and gave me time to rethink an impulse purchase.

My favorite navigation app for the iPhone is MotionX-GPS Drive, because of its low cost, small footprint, and attractive and usable interface. The software just got upgraded to v3.0, with the new version fresh in the app store this week. I've been trying it for the past few days.

Maybe I'm not thinking out of the box enough on this one, but one of the things I am most looking forward to on the iPad is the ability to use remote desktop to control my larger computers.

Did you know that Google's ChomeOS is taking the form of a Tablet?  I covered a previous report on the matter, but now we are starting to get images of prototype OS shots.  And they look very tablet- y.

On Google's ChomeOS User Experience page,  you'll find many prototype OS screenshots and mock-ups of Chrome running on 5-10 inch tablets.

...or price of the device (starting at $499) and price of the data plan ($30/month for unlimited data).

If you were worried about the demise of the Apple-Google business relationship, the iPad announcement gave you some reason to hope that there is still a lot of cooperation.

Apple's upcoming iPad includes the iBooks apps, which combines e-book reader software with an iTunes-like service for selling books. I was somewhat surprised by iBooks. I had just assumed that Apple was going to let existing e-book distributors like Amazon.com and FictionWise install apps on the iPad and sell books that way. But I should not have been surprised. Why wouldn't Apple want to have its own e-book store?

As a Second Life enthusiast, I really want the iPad to run Second Life. There's no reason why it shouldn't. As my friend Wagner James Au points out on the blog New World Notes, the iPhone already has a couple of rich, text-only Second Life clients, and the iPad now has the horsepower and screen size to support Second Life graphics.