Tag: windows phone

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

#RandomAppOfKindness #PayItForward #WPDev Challenge

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Yesterday, I happened to be at the Panera Bread café down the road with my family.  We took a table next to a sign that boasted an iPhone / iPad app for the company.   Out of curiosity, I checked to see if there was a Windows Phone app…  the search in the app store turned up four apps, none of which had much to do with Panera Bread.  

On a hunch, I redirected my phone’s web browser to appstudio.windowsphone.com, and drafted a new project… a wrapper for Panera’s mobile site.   In minutes, I had used my phone to generate and sideload a brand new app.  I realized I could publish the app with only a few tweaks, and from the time I sat down to eat to the time this new Panera Bread app was certified & available for download only about two hours had passed.

I’ve decided to issue a challenge to the Granite State (NH) Windows Phone Users Group (and anyone else who wants to join in) to a “Pay it forward” style friendly ‘competition’.  

Whenever you see an app marketed for platforms other than Windows Phone, see if you can’t whip up a respectful/respectable presentation of an app that provides some approximation of the functionality advertised… for the Windows Phone platform… and publish it as a free app with no advertising or in-app purchases.  It should be a “gift” of sorts in honor of the subject.

Then feel free to let the folks who might be interested that they are subject to our #RandomAppOfKindness pay-it-forward activity. 

If the subject of your app complains of copyright issues, you may be required by copyright holders to remove the app…  and you should comply.  After all, this app was created and published out of good will.

Here’s my first #RandomAppOfKindness…
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/panera-bread/2b1e2cd1-a440-4657-910d-a0eec15ecc5e

I’d love to turn this into a real competition… Perhaps in the future we’ll discuss crating a list of #RandomAppOfKindness apps and set a finish date to see who’s published the most qualified apps… but I don’t have a budget for that (as of yet)  🙂

Have fun!

Addendum:
Three new #RandomAppOfKindness entries since the Panera Bread app:

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Thoughts on the Surface Pro 3: One Device To Rule Them All

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

I never got in on the GPS craze… or pagers…  or the portable media player craze…  or the netbook thing…  or the ebook readers…  or even the tablet thing.  My first cell phone was the only non-smartphone I ever suffered.

As a technologist, I saw the serious value in combining devices… to the point where I decided that I would only ever carry one electronic device… a sufficiently powered, hand held computer for which I would have development tools.  My current oversized smartphone even suffices as a tablet, reader, and semi-connected third display for my PC.  

I now carry all of those individual fad items (and far more) as one unit.  Watches, GPS’s, pagers, portable media players, ebook readers… all fully redundant to the power of my contemporary smartphone… and I can (and do) write apps for it.   I will never waste resources buying smart watches or smart glasses… my smartphone offers just the right amount of accessibility and utility without needing yet more.

I have a similar relationship with my computer.  I have long struggled to find value in a game console.  Sure, there’s a nice Xbox One in my home now, but I definitely don’t log any significant time on it;  it really more or less belongs to my kids.  I have a PC…  The one and only thing it lacks for function is the ability to fold it up and take it with me… which is what I have a smartphone for.  (Yes, work provides me with a laptop, so as the some-time code warrior, I have a laptop that suffices as a desktop… but it’s definitely no tablet.)

I don’t feel I need the best in every technology, but a few things are very important to me in a PC.  I’ve long said I need visual bandwidth…  multiple displays are a must, and not just any.  The displays must have at least 1200 lines of height resolution… width only depends on aspect ration from there, and 4×3 and 16×9 describe the pair I have on my desk as I write this.   Touch would be nice for this, but I don’t have touch now…  I can survive without it.  As a software developer, having a display dedicated to my development tools and another dedicated to alternate info (communications, email, technical documentation, work queues, server desktops, or debug UIs) is a must.  The more I can see on the surface of a monitor, the less time I have to waste hunting for the window that has the info I need in it…  my PC is a content creation station.  I can still take advantage of my oversized smartphone to offload communications (email, video/teleconf/chat, music playlists, etc)  I could easily make use of more displays…  I just don’t physically have room for more on my desk.

My PC is more than just a PC… it’s a workstation.  A laptop won’t even suffice for it…  whenever I am reduced to working on my laptop alone, I feel constricted… like being forced to do detail level work while wearing a diver’s mask and welders gloves.  Work goes much better when I connect a full size keyboard, mouse and displays to the laptop in one form or another.

Of course, my workstation being my own actual personal computer, I also like to play games on it, and so it’s yet more than just a workstation… it’s also a game console.

Needless to say, it’s the things that a tablet can’t do that make a normal tablet superfluous to me.  Most importantly, I can’t fully replace my workstation/gamer console/PC with it…  If I can’t do that, it’s just another display that doesn’t fit on my desk… and I already have a phablet that satisfies my  portable computing needs…. anything more than that would only leave me wanting to just take my workstation with me everywhere.

When I go into Best Buy, or Staples or shop on Dell, I’m asking for a device that bridges the gap between the portability of a tablet, the creation-centricity of a workstation, and the gamer power of a console.  Worse, I get way more bang for the buck out of a desktop system than anything that even claims to be mobile, so replacing it with a mobile system that has close to the performance will be pricey. 

With the release of the Surface Pro 3, it’s very clear that Microsoft is hearing me, and fighting hard to do something about it.   I’m not sure it fully balances cost with my requirements, yet, but the Surface Pro 2 was tempting…   The 3 may get me to bite.   The ability to convert a tablet into a workstation and/or gamer console is definitely on track, plus it has some nice features that make it a better tablet than an iPad.  To match my current set of requirements, I would have to go with at least a mid-range (i5) unit.  The docking station would be a must.  If I kept my current non-touch, 2k display, using the tablet’s 2k display as well, it could finally be the tablet to bite on.  If I could find a good 4k touch enabled display for a reasonable price, that may be the clincher.

Is Surface Pro 3 a breakthrough product for you, or are you already rocking a more complete range of hardware?

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Feb 2014 Meetings for the Granite State NH Users Groups

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Two things for the Granite State Users Groups for February 2014…

  1. The Granite State SharePoint Users Group will be meeting on a special night in a special place for a special speaker. Monday, Feb 10th, Daniel Webster College, Eaton Richmond Room 100, Joel Oleson will be presenting “Your Enterprise Social Journey”.  Alexander Technology Group will have the pizza hot at 6 PM, the presentation will begin at about 6:30.  Please RSVP (FREE) Here:  http://granitestatesharepoint.eventbrite.com
  2. The Granite State Windows Phone Users Group will be meeting at its regular date & location (6 PM, Microsoft Store in Salem, NH on February 20th), but our format will be a bit different from the normal.  Instead of a feature presentation, we’ll have an exercise in community app reviewing & rating.  This semi-dynamic RSS feed represents the list of apps known community published apps:  http://www.kataire.com/gswpug/gswpugservices.svc/getdata .  Please, bring your friends, phone(s), and RSVP for the meeting here:  http://granitestatewinphone.eventbrite.com

Hope to see you there!

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Aggregating Windows Phone Store Apps into RSS

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Naturally, there’s an app for the Granite State NH Windows Phone Users Group.   🙂

I recently added the ability to aggregate listings from the Windows Phone app store to create a list of apps published by our members.  RSS seemed the natural way to present the info, since it was consumed easily by an App Studio app.

I showed it off a bit at the users group, and got a few requests for some of the code.

Once published, you should be able to go to http://{yourserver}/{optional}/GSWPUGServices.svc/GetData to load the RSS feed.

It’s currently published at http://www.kataire.com/GSWPUG/GSWPUGServices.svc/GetData

Here’s the project.

http://sdrv.ms/1cNYO9T

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Alaska, Undiscovered Country

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

There’s been a note of surprise in the money news of late about Alaska. 

It’s become a bit of a surprise that the most sparsely populated state in the US has suddenly become the hottest opportunity for corporate growth.  Alaska is a place where consumers have been largely ignored and fully under served…  yet suddenly logistics technology caught up with economists.  The change in tide has come about so suddenly that there’s actually a race to get established there before the market gets saturated by competition.  (For Example)

What’s a tech blogger doing, pointing out an economics topic?  Well… here’s where the post turns into a geek post…  🙂

I can’t help but notice a parallel between the Alaskan boom and the Windows Phone boom that’s also under way.  Corporations in saturated markets (IOS and Android) meet the growing, underserved market, and the realization that both past investments and new technologies can be leveraged…  and suddenly there’s a whole new customer base waiting to be conquered in terms of apps and customer attention and loyalty in the company’s native space.

Unlike Alaska, the Windows Phone market is global.  It’ll likely literally take something earth shattering to make Alaska a bigger part of the US market than one of fifty states.  Windows Phone Store is already serving over 100 markets world wide.

Unlike Alaska, the Windows Phone market growth opportunity is virtually unlimited.  A company that conquers an Alaskan market will see growth, but it will not likely ever exceed the established markets in the lower 48.   In the Windows Phone market, a company could make it’s big break there in the relative scarcity of competition, and even as the Windows Phone platform market share grows, could end up seismically shifting the landscape in their market.

Unlike Alaska, there’s no logistics challenge.  Many companies already have all the elements required to make the jump to Windows Phone…  the talent pool, the code base, the infrastructure, very likely existing network services and even binaries.

Microsoft and Nokia have already taken the Windows Phone platform to the many Alaska’s of the world, and the platform’s already beating out the likes of both IOS and Android in many of them.   The US market is critical, but Microsoft (and Nokia) know that these the Alaska’s they’re winning in will eventually unite, and overwhelm from the edges as the incumbent platforms fade past their maturity.  Those with vision beyond this quarter’s numbers would be wise to jump on board before their competition saturates their market.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Windows Phone Email Sync Error Code 8500201F

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

A reminder to myself, and anyone else who may encounter this issue.  I have occasionally run across it and finally nailed down the symptom and work-around solution…   The problem is that in rare (maybe once in six months or so) I would get an error while syncing my mail in Windows Phone.  It’s an Exchange server, getting at the mail through OWA, and the fact that the error appeared & disappeared without warning, and only affected me, made it very mysterious. 

To make a long story short, sent a message to a fictitious address on my own email server trying to test something, and naturally got a administrator’s “non-deliverable address” message back.   This NDA message in my in-box was causing the error code 8500201F, making my phone fail to sync.  I discovered this by cleaning out my in-box, which got sync working again.  I then started putting messages back a few at a time until sync failed again.  I eventually narrowed it down to that NDA message.  Not sure why it’s a problem, but that’s what it was.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

The Lumia 1020: Threat to the Status Quo

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

I stopped by my local AT&T store today [Saturday, July 27, 2013] (the corporate store at the Mall of NH in Manchester) to check out the Lumia 1020.  I’d heard lots about it so I was pretty psyched…  I already have (and love) my Lumia 920… it was released back in December, so it hasn’t been a year yet.  No real hope of upgrading just yet, but being a founding member of the NH Windows Phone Users Group, I take the supposed obligation to checked it out, as I did with Verizon’s 928, and T-Mobile’s 925.    🙂

I know the competition between mobile devices is a bit hot, despite the decline in popularity of iPhones, the non-restart of the Blackberry, the fragmentation of the Android, and the slow rise of the Windows Phone, but I never thought the competition might be this hot until today…  I came to hypothesize that there might be sales reps who, for whatever reason, have their favorites, and possibly….  just maybe… feel threatened by devices that rival them.  

Walking into the store, I was really happy to see the Lumia 1020 display…. they had a yellow and a black unit out.  

Getting closer, I had to second guess myself that these were actually 1020’s.  They looked much like my 920, and these units looked… worn…  like they’d been on display since… December of the year before.   The yellow unit was powered on, at the start screen.  The black unit was off.  Both had been scratched pretty heavily, especially at the point where the security device attached to the face of the display…. (hindering some of the UI, I noticed… the search button was fully obscured.)  especially the black one.   Given how tough the surface is… I can only imagine that someone spent some time working at scratching up the unit.   (If you examine the image below carefully at full resolution, you can just about make out the scratches… I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time taking the picture with my 920’s great-but-not-1020-awesome camera…. but they’re there.)  

I ignored the scratches for the time being… these were brand spanking new units that clearly almost no customers had been shown in the less than 24 hours since it was unboxed and put on the shelf.  I was just excited to see the 1020.

But still, I was unsure… could these be 920’s?   I had to pick it up and look at the back to see the 1020’s camera spot…  yes, clearly 1020’s.   It was the yellow unit I’d picked up, since the black unit was not powered on.   I asked my son to pose for me, so I could take his picture with the awesome 41MP camera.

The unit powered itself off almost as quickly as I fired up the camera.

OMG….  Did it just crash?

No…  this unit is not charging.  It has this big honkin’ lit-up security device attached to it, but that’s not providing any power to the Lumia.   Someone had failed to provide power to the devices;  they were on the factory charge and had run dead.  Yes, batteries on both Lumia’s were dead as doornails.

 A rep finally approached me, and asked if he could help.   I asked him if we could please get some power to these Lumia 1020’s so that I could take a look at them.   After a few minutes, the rep returned with the power cords (as seen attached to the USB ports in the image, below.)

I waited several minutes for the devices to charge enough for the power to come back on, and played with them for a few moments.   There was a box on the left of the display bay designed to allow you to take a picture of a picture within it, simulating various lighting conditions.  It wasn’t much more than a simple box, but it was misassembled, and the point of it was lost unless you read a bit.

I enjoyed playing with the camera a bit, taking a few different photos, and experimenting with the new zoom gestures & such… and was duly impressed with it.   It was also lighter than my 920, and I found myself wishing I could just bite the bullet and upgrade.  🙂

Most Windows Phone devices, I’ve noticed, when put on display, get set up with demo accounts so you can download apps from the app store and try them out.  I often like to see how my apps behave on newer devices.  Neither of these units were set up with connectivity… no cellular, no Wi-Fi.

The final bit that really got me thinking about how someone at this store might really feel threatened somehow by the Lumia 1020 was because I realized, as I looked around the store….  no other unit in the store had a big honkin security device obscuring part of the UI as both these 1020’s did.   The security devices for every other unit in the store was entirely attached to the back of the devices with nothing else on the faces of them…  so it felt like someone spent time to fit these particular devices with these old security rigs that they used that also damaged the devices and hindered any demos…

Really, I’m a big Windows Phone fan and Nokia Lumia fan, but this display was almost enough to make me think AT&T doesn’t want folks to see this as the flagship upgrade in the Windows Phone lineup.   In any case, I don’t think I’ll send friends & family to that store to check them out.

So my only problem with my hypothesis…  why, really, might a rep at a mobile store want to sabotage their own products?   Could they really feel the 1020’s a threat to… iPhone?  Android?   Any other hypotheses on that level?

[Edit: 7/30:  I got a response from this… (Surprised… unexpected… humbled… but appreciated!)   If I understand it correctly, the suboptimal demo experience was officially deemed “accidental”, and the units have been replaced…  and so have the security devices… so that the demo experience will be as it should be… and I’ll be happy to recommend to friends & family to go to the AT&T store & check the 1020 out.  🙂   ]

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

No Kid Hungry, Resolution To Renew My Commitment

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)
It’s New Years Day, 2013. 

My kids made a comment, this morning, about how commercials on the TV were the same today as they were yesterday.  Without thinking about it, I flatly told them that it doesn’t really work that way; that today isn’t really much different from yesterday. 

I realized right away, even without my wife’s reproving look, that I’d blundered a bit as a dad just then.  I remember being disappointed when I was a kid by how things failed to change over night between New Years Eve & New Years Day.  I had to explain to my kids that the real difference between 2012 and 2013 was not the messages in TV commercials, but what they, themselves, resolved to change…. and the work they put into making that happen.

That, of course, got me thinking about my resolutions for 2013..  I’d tweeted a couple cute ones last night, on New Years Eve…  but there’s one that I’ve been thinking about for a while now that I’ve only hinted at otherwise.

In 2012, I saw how much deeper problems seem to be running, economically….  how even some of my extended family would consider my immediate family’s lackluster financial situation to be a blessing compared to what they’re facing. 

Media news reports that the economy is improving.  That may be true on Wall Street, but it seems hollow on Main Street.  Indeed, the so-called improvements of 2012 feel like they’ve come at the expense of folks who have been on the brink of needing help.  Clearly trickle down economics have failed.  News of improvement only means that people are slower to give… because we’re not in such financial distress, anymore…  right?  Well… worse, with fiscal cliffs and inflation factors threatening to take hold in 2013, who can give?   Sadly, trickle up poverty seems to be in full effect.  

In the meantime, one thing that didn’t work out the way I’d hoped in 2012, was the results from my charity project. 

As a product, I’m very pleased with what I was able to publish in my spare time.  It’s an honest to goodness Sudoku puzzle game for Windows Phone…  no spyware, no malware, no ads, no personal information used or transmitted…   just the kind of game I wanted to play, and something I wanted to share.   I built it using tools that I wanted to work with.  I published it globally for free, and also for the U.S. for $5 with my own personal commitment to donate all proceeds to charity.  (Folks in the U.S. have a choice…  there’s no difference between the free and the paid editions of the app… it’s just if you want to donate to charity or not.)

As a tool for charity to raise funds and/or awareness…  well…  I’m hoping to change it’s past performance.  I understand that it looks bad that I can’t market the app with official cause logos & such from the charity I’ve committed to support…  I asked for permission for that, and for legitimate reasons, I couldn’t.  My hope was that the app would earn the privilege by the contributions it generated.  It’s been tempting to shoot first and apologize later, but in a world of “no good deed goes unpunished”, I didn’t want to take risks I couldn’t back up.

After an experimental social media campaign that mostly just annoyed friends & family on Facebook, I gave up.  There was too much real work that needed my attention.  I couldn’t let an effort that was getting nowhere cause me to fail at stuff like my job.  

I’ve decided to renew my efforts with the hope that it gains some traction at some point… I’m not fighting for the product; I have nothing to prove there. 

It’s the cause.  Helping hungry kids. 

I have yet to figure out exactly what this means… I don’t want to annoy friends & family… but the cause needs hands.

Even if you have no interest in my charity project as a fundraiser, please seriously consider contributing to the cause. Even if you can’t do that…  please help spread the word. 

This is their website:
No Kid Hungry

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

My Windows 8 Adventure So Far

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

I had different reasons for doing each of the upgrades I’ve done so far… Here’s a list of the upgrades I’ve done so far, and why… maybe something I talk about will resonate:

My home PC (desktop):
I upgraded my computer initially to see what it was like. For $40, you don’t even have to go to the store to buy it.  That’s the Pro version, you can buy that to upgrade XP, Vista, and Windows 7 computers…  and it’s a way better price than the $200 upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 for example.   It’s a relatively easy web-based upgrade. (I encountered some quirks with Symantec/Norton anti-virus, but Windows 8 includes security apps which make a good replacement.)  I’ve found it to be as solid as Windows 7, and once you get used to the mouse gestures and the way “Modern UI” works, navigation is easier than it was in Chicago-era UI’s (The UI we’ve basically had since Windows 95).

I also intend to explore app development with it. 

I’m also deciding my hardware upgrade path.  It’s an inexpensive way to get a grip on what devices I might want to invest in, going forward… for example, do I want to upgrade my current PC, which is great but has no touch screen support, lacking virtualization support, or do I want to bite the bullet and get something more current. 

I’m still deciding on a tablet, and it’ll either be “Surface Pro” or “Surface RT”…  I don’t want to invest in iPad or iPhone because they aren’t going to provide the level of integration I’m seeing and liking with the Windows 8 generation of devices.   Right now, I’m actually leaning toward maybe getting a Surface RT tablet, which are already available at Microsoft Stores at the mall…  the Surface Pro will be more fully featured, but cost more.  I’m thinking for what I want to do with a tablet, the RT will suffice, and if I need more horsepower from my tablet, I’ll just remote into a regular computer.
 
My wife’s PC (laptop):
I upgraded my wife’s computer because she & the kids loved the free games they saw me get from the app store… which works a lot like app stores on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone… they all mastered the “Modern UI” the first day, and found it to be an improvement, as well… so she got the “shiny new” experience on her older laptop.

That experience also enabled me to check out how Windows 8 devices (this includes computers, laptops, tablets, and phones) all communicate through the cloud…  I was easily able to transfer my profile from my desktop to my own login on my wife’s laptop.  This is something that Microsoft has been trying to make better for years, and used to only be available to Enterprise users, but now, thanks to the cloud, it’s something anyone can take advantage of.

My sister-in-law’s PC (laptop)
I upgraded my sister in law’s machine to get a less-involved, not quite so technical perspective on it. She picked up the new features right away, and is enjoying things like the free apps… Fresh Paint is one she mentioned as being a favorite, which is one my daughter is particularly fond of, as well.  She’s had an odd behavior with it that I have to fix next time I get the chance, but it’s just that startup takes longer than it should. 

My work machine (laptop)
I upgraded my work machine because I use Virtual Machines a lot, and Windows 8 has an updated version of Hyper-V in it… I was a bit nervous about this at first… my work depends on not screwing up my VMs, but after getting my first VM migrated from VirtualBox, I’m really glad I did it… Results so far are that performance seems better, and it’s just so much more flexible than VirtualBox was.  I’m hoping to see some bugs I encountered in my VirtualBox hosted machines go away too, haven’t tried that just yet…  (Stepping through code was a bit flaky in VirtualBox VMs)

To come…  My Mom’s machine (desktop)
I’m upgrading my mom’s machine for more practical reasons.   I think the UI will be easier for her to get around.  That said, it’s mostly the fact that Windows 8 has better apps included than what she’s using. (For example instant messaging, email, news… the web-based apps she’s using are limited in comparison.)  She’ll be able to toy with the apps from the app store, as well, which will be relatively a new technical freedom for her altogether.

Still…
If you want to see Windows 8 in action without risking a computer, I recommend stopping by a nearby Microsoft Store.  They have them set up so you can spend a bit of time playing with them, and plenty of people around to bounce questions off.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

If the iPhone is “The Turn”, It’s Not “The Prestige”.

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

A week ago this past Saturday, I presented at SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire on the topic of integrating Windows Phone with SharePoint in custom apps.   I got sidetracked for a moment or two… chatting about why I see Windows Phone as being a viable platform.   So far, it’s been rough.  As an anecdote, everyone I know who has a Windows Phone bought a copy of my charity-bound “Jimmy Sudoku” app.  Sadly, the contribution to the charity from it is… not what I hoped. 

Still, I think the cool-aid was worth sharing…   To be fair, all the people I know who have a Windows Phone are relatively outspoken fans of it… and that includes a number of folks you’d never suspect of being “Smart Phone” users.

Anyway, a few days before SPSNH, I ran across a relatively insightful article on TechCrunch (I’ll post the link at the end).  It opens by quoting the opening dialogue of Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film, “The Prestige”:

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.

The TechCrunch’s MG Siegler makes a great point.:  Apple’s iPhone magic is in “The Turn”.   Apple has taken an “ordinary” item, the smart phone, and turned it into something “magic”. 

Indeed, I agree, it is magic, and everything that goes with it.

MG’s article was a commentary of the iPhone 5, and it captured the sentiment I’ve been hearing over & over again about it.   The Apple’s iPhone is starting to run a bit shy of manna.  (Update 9 Feb 2013:  Slashdot, Woz says iPhone Features are Behind. )

It shouldn’t be a surprise though…  we’ve seen it all before, in fact…  we saw it first with the Mac.  It struck again to a lesser extent with the iMac, and dug in big for the iPhone.  There’s a lot to be said for the brand of magic that Apple has wielded over the past several decades, and many would argue that Steve Jobs was the one who brought focus to that magic.

Admiration aside…  If Apple’s past and present magic is in “The Turn”, (and we agree that the iPhone is a hard-won magic trick)  it follows that, within the market, there must have been “The Pledge” and “The Prestige” as well.  That’s when I started to get excited… it seems pretty clear to me where “The Prestige” is, but I’ll get back to that. 

So what of “The Pledge”?   MG’s article points to Samsung as a weak imitator.  Maybe it is (by it’s association with Android), maybe it isn’t…  I guess the courts, and maybe even the public, are done deciding this.   In any case, Samsung never represented the promise of “The Pledge”; it only ever wanted to join in on Apple’s magic.  It’s not “The Prestige” either.

The role of “The Pledge” has been played before, as well, in popular technology of days gone by.  In the early PC wars, this role was played by a small number of makers.  The most memorable of them were the Commodores and TRS-80’s.   This cadre of early PC makers had one thing in common…  the average hobbyist (aka geek) could make them do magic in fits and starts, causing loyalty that ran deep (just ask the Amiga fans), but they didn’t have much, if any, magic for the popular user.  

I would argue, despite the fact that Google’s Android came at about the same time, late 2007, Android represents the promise of this magic…   “The Pledge”…  a Phone, integrated with a pocket computer, that anyone could have a satisfying user experience with.  Open, available, and accessible, it would be… it was everything a “Smart Phone” should be, and it appealed to exactly the market that Smart Phones were made for in 2007.  Despite its fits and starts of magic and a fierce geek following, it, like the Amiga (in its day), is still too immature to be the enduring solution.  Any time I mention the idea that the Android might fade into the realm of the Amiga, the geeks in the room threaten to get belligerent.    I remember getting the same way over my TRS-80 CoCo.

Between issues with platform versions & compatibility, components that don’t integrate well, visually or functionally, and malware/spyware, Android is excellent if you’re a technical person who’s not intimidated by compilers and is savvy enough to avoid spyware & malware… but that’s not what the popular user will go for in the long haul.  (Update 9 Feb 2013:  Slashdot, Fragmentation Leads to Android Insecurities)

So what does it take to become “The Prestige”?  It takes that maturity… the ability to allow the average user to make magic with it, affordably, easily… commonly, and, well, normally…  on some level, it restores normalcy, ushering in commoditization of the magic that once was so amazing.

If you take into account that Microsoft was the successor of the IBM compatible legacy, it starts to become clear that Microsoft holds the title to a long history of taking Apple’s “magic”, and refining it into maturity.

In some ways, it’s a bit sad:  iPhone’s manna is indeed running out…  there’s a little less magic in the world…  
…or is there?  This magic will soon be in the hands of friends and family who are just starting to get the itch for a mobile device that can play Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds on.  All those late adopters who wanted maturity, affordability, reliability, and ease of use over “magic”, but now they get both.  When they get their Windows Phone /  Surface RT / Windows 8 device, they’ll get to see magic that geeks and power users have been using for years now…  and that’s the hardest part  “The Prestige”, putting “smartphone”/tablet power and flexibility in the hands of every cell phone user.

As promised, MG Seigler’s article on TechCrunch:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/13/the-iphone-5-event/

(Update 1/9/2013 clarified PoV a bit on Android)
(Update 2/9/2013, linked back to Slashdot on various posts that supporting my position)