Is the iPhone Apple's answer to the netbook?

I've been having a most interesting conversation with a friend about the current state of the market regarding netbooks. Microsoft would dearly love to have manufacturers choose Vista to sell with their netbooks, unfortunately Vista is way too bloated and slow to suit even the latest netbook models. This is why Microsoft have extended the life of XP. If they did not do this, then Microsoft would have nothing to sell to netbook makers.

Windows 7 looks to be improved in this area, being as it is lighter in weight and faster, even at this early stage. If you have pretty good IT skills you can build a tripple or quad booting netbook, running Windows 7, Ubuntu, or even OSX. OSX would arguably be a fantastic OS choice for netbooks, unfortunately Apple does not make a netbook.... or do they?

Some may say that the iPhone (in a way) is the ultimate netbook.

1. It's battery lasts for ages. Considering how much I hammer mine 7-8 hours is not bad.
2. I can run all my buisiness needs from it, with full licenced Microsoft exchange support.
3. It is powerful enough to run desktop quality 3D apps such as google earth.
4. It is location aware, which many apps take advantage of. How many netbooks have GPS?
5. I can fit it in my pocket.
6. I don't need any accessories with me if I am on the road. Unless I would like to project video from it, for presentations.
   
7. I will be able to run Windows programs through a citrix client soon. http://www.macwindows.com/news_citrix_iphone.html
   
8. I can remote control Windows, Linux and Mac machines from the phone.
9. The web browsing experience is stunning!
   

Is the iPhone really a smaller netbook? Do you consider it usable or as useful as a netbook?

Test post from iPhone

I've no idea of this is going to work well, or indeed at all. This is a post fro my iPhone. I have not corrected any mistakes on purpose, and I javenot tried to be at all acutate in hitting the keyboard properly. Just to see what happens.

Interesting, the auto correction fictions (oops) work pretty well. Certainly easy to type at speed, nice blogging machine this iPhone!
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Additional

I forgot to mention the software I was using to blog with on the iPhone. The application is called 'Blogwriter lite' a speedy no fuss free blogging app. I will most certainly be buying the full version.

Vista, the good bits

I have just installed Vista Enterprise manually (I've not done a manual installation in a while) and was very pleasantly surprised that Windows downloaded all required drivers, I didn't need to install any drivers by hand as Windows had made a great set of driver download choices.

This shows that Microsoft has been working hard to make driver support not only easier, but also better by using enhanced modern drivers and the ability to deliver them through the standard Windows update process. The only drivers I would think about installing manually are graphics card drivers. Vista seems to do an excellent job of finding and installing drivers for you automatically.

When you think about the diverse range of hardware Microsoft has to support they are doing a very impressive job.

Windows 7 to support new codecs

At last Microsoft seems to be adopting standards in the codec arena. For a long time, MP4 video formats using the open H.264 video standard has been an optional download and treated as an afterthought in Windows. The same goes for the recent AVCHD standard used in modern digital video cameras. These have not only been adopted on the Mac platform for some time, but they are default video standards used within OSX. This is one of the reasons that the Mac is used so extensively for movie making and visual effects with the aid of linux server farms for rendering.

Now Windows will no longer be the odd one out, choosing as it did, to support only Microsoft formats. Windows seven is due to support MP4, AVCHD, and HDV amongst others, out of the box!

Well done Microsoft, although I can't help noticing where is Mpeg2 for DVD support?

Details are available here, with more Windows 7 news available at the excellent website http://windows7news.com/

Windows 7 seems to be shaping up to be a much better version of windows, although it is still based on the Vista ground work. Vista is bound to be labeled the new Millenium Edition, shareing similarities with Microsoft's failed version of windows 2000 based on windows 98.

Some new features of Windows 7

Listening to the PCPro podcast recently announcing some of the new features of Windows 7, I can't stop thinking that I've heard it all before. In fact I am using several of the features mentioned now... on my Mac!

1. Multi-touch

Apart from multi-touch working very well on the iPhone is there much of a point to being able to smear your fingers over your monitor on a desktop machine, or even a laptop? Apple has been using multi-touch and gestures on its laptops for a while now, and I would certainly prefer using the rotate feature on the touch-pad than the screen itself. Verdict: Have been using this technology for a while now.

2. Large icons

So icons that are a bit like the Mac 512pixel icons? Or icons like the scalable ones used in Ubuntu and other versions of Linux? Large icons may seem trivial but it certainly helps when you have very high resolution displays and can set your desktop to look great at any size. Verdict: Been using large icons for years on the Mac and Linux.


My Mac's hard disk icon is so detailed you can read the label!

3. Virtual hard disks

"Windows 7 will offer the option to create virtual hard disks, both fixed size and dynamic. You can attach vhd's from XP and Vista and boot from Windows 7 vhd's natively." - PCPro Podcast 28.

The Mac has had this feature for years. The virtual hard disks the Mac uses are called dmg's. These disk images can be mounted, read and written to, they can be a fixed or dynamic size and they can use real-time encryption. The only thing you can't yet do on the Mac is boot from a dmg, unless you do so with VMWare, Parallels desktop or Virtual Box. Linux also offers the ability to mount virtual hard disks. 95% of virtual disk functions can be done on the Mac already.

4. Device stage

3rd party manufacturers will be able to have more control over what is displayed during device installation and usage. The PC Pro team seem to think this will just be abused by manufacturers wanting a chance to sell you more stuff. Verdict Mac and Linux don't have this, thank God.

5. Homegroup

Making home networking easier. "New PC's added to the home network can automatically share their documents photos and video with other Windows 7 PC's in the house with the ability to search other PC's as if they were on your own machine." - PC Pro Podcast 28

All the Mac users out there will be screaming, "but isn't that just bonjour?" Bonjour does precisely this and more, including the ability for inter-machine remote control (using VNC built into the OS) and zero config network printer setup. Spotlight (the Mac's central search facility) is able to search across machines on the network. To cap it all, Apple make the bonjour software available for Windows for free!

Apple's implementation of bonjour is an adaption of Linux's zero config open standard. Since this is an open worldwide standard, shouldn't Microsoft by adopting zero config so that all machines can share data easily on any network? No of course not, they want to make their own incompatible version and ignore open standards!

Blast - and there I was telling myself not to have another rant!

If Microsoft do not succeed with launching windows 7 to the masses then I believe they will be dead in the consumer market space. I'm using those and better features already, these announcements are at best "meh" and at worst just a blatant copy of technologies that have existed on other platforms for ages!

What's wrong with Ubuntu?

I had hoped to have been able to report on how well the installation of the new version of Ubuntu went. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex - I kid you not) after a bit of a struggle with booting the live CD as it appears to not like my hardware, even though Ubuntu 8.04 works like a dream with it. On the plus side at least ubuntu was able to ignore minor errors, and carry on through to install and update itself. Once booted, it works very well indeed, it just takes a while to get through the boot process hanging on occasion, unlike Ubuntu 8.04 which boots with incredible speed getting to a log on almost as fast as my Mac at about 15 seconds.

Windows Vista on my laptop has an issue with the graphics card driver whereby it pauses the boot process for 30 seconds while it does something deep and meaningful. Technically I have installed the wrong driver so I don't blame Vista at all. I can't help having to install the wrong driver since nVidia in all their wisdom does not make a graphics card driver that is compatible with the card it made!

I have a Sony Vaio top of the range (in its day) GRT996VP, which has an nVidia 5600m gfx card. The driver provided by Sony for Vista does not address video ram correctly, leading to a low res display, it is also increadibly slow. The driver provided by nVidia does not recognise the mobile version of the card pointing you back to the manufacturur. By forcing the installation of the desktop 5600 nVidia driver everything works perfectly apart from a pause during boot and very slight corruption when not using Aero (Vista's 3D desktop).

Ubuntu 8.04 on the other hand automatically finds and installs the correct driver to support the features of my strange graphics card. Ubuntu 8.10 does the same, but also suffers from hanging during boot although there is no corruption switching between 3D desktop mode (compiz) and 2D.