Video Kinect….Redmond delivering where Cupertino has failed

As those of you who read my last article know, I don’t think much of Apple’s “new” FaceTime video calling feature for the iPhone 4 – aside from a ridiculous name, it is highly limited only supporting iPhone to iPhone calls and only over WiFi. Kinect Video on the other hand, announced at E3 with the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 looks like a genuinely useful and well conceived implementation of video calling.

Microsoft are really capitalising on their ecosystem by allowing video calls not only just between Kinect users, but also to their massive Live Messenger community. This feature alone instantly makes Video Kinect hugely more useful than FaceTime.

Imagine if you will a pair of grandparents who live far away from their growing grandchildren – in Apple’s world grandkids and grandparents alike would need iPhone’s to see each other on tiny displays, you’d think they might have at least allowed you to call iChat on a Mac…but no. In Microsoft’s world the grandkids can use the Xbox with Kinect and see their grandparents on the family’s flat panel while the grandparent can simply use a PC with a webcam…..no additional investment required. Grandparents may even purchase an Xbox with Kinect purely for the purpose of staying in touch, and as an added bonus the kids can play Xbox when they visit.

I can see small businesses installing Kinect in their boardrooms to keep remote workers feeling included – people working from home have the choice to Kinect into the board room and utilise their panel to feel a part of things -but they also have the option to just be on their laptop, using messenger, from anywhere they like with a 3G modem. With the ability to have multiple participants in the call this could be far more efficient for SMBs than installing expensive Cisco and Polycom video conferencing solutions.

While there is no announcement yet, given the other integration being done between Windows Phone 7 Series and Xbox Live I find it hard to imagine down the track Windows Phone 7 won’t also get a piece of the Video Kinect action. Who knows, they might even allow it over 3G.

Well done Microsoft – Kinect is a clever name for what looks like a great innovation. It might actually be the first step in bringing video calling mainstream (Jetson’s style) and perhaps even making it useful.

iPhone 4 – it doesn’t actually change anything…..again

2010 is an extremely exciting year to be alive in – if nothing else it just looks futuristic – 2010. And indeed it is futuristic, with battery and processor technology advances we are finally seeing useful, portable tablet computing such as that seen in SciFi for decades. Data can be accessible anywhere for FREE using ‘cloud’ services such as SkyDrive, Google Docs, Flickr, Picasa, DropBox. With flat panels everywhere, touch screens becoming main stream and now even 3D hitting the general market…..we really are living in Gene Roddenberry’s world and holodecks surely can’t be too far away. Never before have we been as functional and capable while away from our homes and offices, never before has technology been so mobile and accessible, and what isn’t cool about saying you’ve got an Android in your pocket! We truly live in halcyon times in the year 2010.

There is a ‘small’ company however in Cupertino, a company that shutters out technological advances made by other companies, a company that believes user functionality in their product is a privilege and not a right, a company who believes bringing 7 year old technology to the market is revolutionary and somehow changes everything….again.

It may have just been me, but the iPhone 4 release video was offensive on sooo many levels. I’m surprised they didn’t cite creation of the universe as something they’ve done as they were taking credit for pretty much everything else, video chat, video recording (on the 3GS), folders, a camera flash, application stores  - c’mon guys wake up to yourself.

Living in a country where 3G Video calling has been around since 2003, and the general uptake of it is fairly minimal the quote “Even if facetime were the only new feature we were delivering, this would be an amazing new iPhone” is just laughable – especially as they go on to talk about the mobility of it being in your hand IF you’re in WiFi. In other words a 7 year old Motorola with 3G video calling would have served me better in the hardware store when asking my wife which kitchen tap fitting she wanted than the ‘revolutionary’ FaceTime. Which brings me onto the ridiculous moniker ‘FaceTime’ – who invented that, Barney Stinson? Sorry NPH, I take that back….Barney would have something much cooler than FaceTime.

Ii its nice to see them trying to compete with Google’s Android OS  introducing features new to iPhone such as Folders, Direct Dial Shortcuts, Widg…..oh, sorry, no widgets – maybe iOS5 Steve? It’s OK, it’s only your 4th attempt….it did take 11 Apollo missions to put a man on the moon…if NASA could do it I’m sure you can as well.

From a hardware perspective it looks like they might have done a really nice job, some really good ideas in a slick package. Personally I’d still rather have a real keyboard but then again I’d also rather have an Android. Apple, call me when you’re ready to stop playing games, stop drip feeding us features and build a serious OS. We know from our jailbreaking friends that iOS is capable of so much more – stop being a prisoner to AT&T’s demands and serve the remaining 5 billion people that don’t live in the USA.

Y? – Samsung Omnia ICON i8000

On a day to day basis I have used a lot of different Windows Phones (as they are now called) and each and everyone has had its pros and cons.

The popular trend is for every device to be a ‘me too’, to the iPhone which is starting to get a little old. In some instances you have to wonder why OEM’s like Samsung are even still using Windows Mobile as a platform – given the extraordinary lengths they’ve gone to, to hide it.

I’m not going to ask why Samsung have done this, its obvious – they’re trying to steal market share from iPhone….good luck. I actually think in doing as much they’ve succeeded far better than HTC with their TouchFlo 3D. I generally find TouchFlo 3d to be awkward and cumbersome and much preferred the original TouchFlo system with the rotating cube.

Many of  the reviews for the original Omnia i900 lauded its ‘finger-friendly’ nature but then whinged and moaned when faced with a ‘normal’ windows mobile screen. The i8000 has taken care of that with pretty much every single menu, sub menu and options dialogue re-created by Samsung in a ‘finger-friendly’ way. Unless you know what you’re looking for you’d be hard pressed to even disable the Samsung TouchWiz UI which masterfully conceals Windows Mobile.

Overall I think Samsung have actually done a remarkable job in re-skinning Windows Mobile. I am big fan of stock WinMo 6.1 (with touch scrolling of course) and often my first port of call on devices such as the HTCs is to disable their ‘special magic’ and let me see behind the curtain. Not so with TouchWiz UI, I actually mostly like it. This is the first Windows Phone released this year that has actually gotten me excited again.

The screen is beautiful and responsive, the haptic feedback on the touch-keyboard far from being obtrusive enhances the experience. The widget based home screen is customisable and actually useful (especially when compared to the F480). There is a whole bevvy of pre-installed apps to make your device useful out of the box (take that Apple) some of greater use (Qik) than others (Dice). Everything is so easy to tap away at sans-stylus - the menus, the calendar, the excellent media player….but….

And here is the why. Why did they ruin it with such a rubbish Messaging application? Why is messaging locked into being a ‘high-contrast’ white on black colour theme? Why can’t I smart search lookup contacts when writing a message? Why is messaging the only place (and only when in the message body) I can access the beautiful landscape keyboard mode? Did nobody learn that mistake from Apple? Why have you deprived me of threaded messaging? Why, why, why!?

The keyboard thing is a bit of a recurring bug bear I have. It was a primary complaint of the early iPhone software that landscape keyboard was only available in Safari – Apple actually got it right and allowed usage of the landscape keyboard almost everywhere. For some reason Samsung, HTC, LG etc. don’t seem to think they need to pay attention to this. Why can’t I get a full-touch windows mobile with auto-rotation throughout – why limit my experience?

I continue to hope one day an OEM will put it all together, until then I will continue to ask – why?

Y?

Why does the world need another blog? Why is the iPhone so popular? Why can’t Windows Phone manufacturers just get it right? Why must things be so hard? Why didn’t someone think of it earlier? Why didn’t I think of it earlier?

So many fads, trends and technologies come and go and so often we are just left thinking why? Why do companies like Microsoft feel WiFi should be a paid for accessory on the Xbox 360 while Nintendo feel cat 5 should be the paid for accessory? Why do Apple feel its OK to still make mice with only one button? Why does Samsung think we need yet another mobile OS? Why did someone milk a cow in the first place and what possessed them to drink it?

Ideas come in all forms, but in the technology industry it seems so many ideas are sent to market half-baked - or even worse at 90% leaving us desperately wishing and hoping that in the next release they’ll find the last 10%…yet so often left hanging. This weblog or blog as they seem to be calling it out on the interwebs these days, will be my point of view on some of these whys. You may care, you may not, either way I look forward to your comments and hope at least one of us gets some amusement out of the process.