Ever since Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan published their discovery in the Where 2.0 conference, the popular press has been abuzz with sensational articles on how iPhones and iPads are recording your location in a secret file. The article itself misstates some key technical details. For one thing, the database is “hidden” because all the internal files in iOS are hidden and only visible in a jail broken phone; the file itself is only accessible to the root user. For users who make unencrypted backups of their iPhones using iTunes, this location data is exposed on their desktops. One hopes that users do not make unencrypted backups of their iPhone contents on a stranger’s desktop. If, on the other hand, an intruder had control over my account, they could access far more private data than just my location history.

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I suppose I’m a Mac. I have an iPhone, a MacBook and an active iTunes account. Even though I’m not a PC, I do want Windows Phone 7 to be every bit as good as Microsoft claims it will be.

Since the launch of the iPhone, the iOS has really defined what a smartphone UI is. This leaves Apple in a unique position to dictate the evolution of a new class of consumer electronics. Apple does many things well, and those things tend to get refined over time. Like any company, they also tend to ignore or gloss over their weaknesses. Android phones have forced Apple to address various hardware deficiencies by introducing models with desirable features. Thus far, there have been very few challenges to the iOS itself. I suppose multi-tasking would be an obvious exception. But even then, the basic premise of an application centric UI remained unchanged. After all, “There’s an App for that”.

Windows Phone 7 might be just the competition that the iOS needs.

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Apple.com has a lovely article here on the iPhone app we built so our collaborators at TCHO could monitor and control their chocolate lab machines remotely. This work is part of our explorations in mixed reality for industrial enterprises, in particular the Virtual Factory project. Below you can see a few screenshots from the iPhone lab app (click for larger image).

Lucky me. I a few months ago I won a ticket to Google I/O by posting a comment on Techcrunch.

Google gave each attendee an Android phone; the new ones are due out this August. The phone came with a one-month SIM card from T-Mobile, including 3G connectivity. It initially looked like a cheap iPhone: the touchscreen doesn’t respond well while scrolling web pages (I still don’t know if it’s a bad hardware or slow software, or a combination), the soft-keyboard is slightly too small and suffers from the same problem as scrolling pages.

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Fairly recently I became one of those iPhone types. You know the ones – gaze ever downwards, fingers poised to pinch or pick or tap-tap.  I love the thing, though I’m not sure I love what I’ve become with it. Continue Reading