Michael Broukhim

Go west, young man

Notes &

Fred Oliveira is blogging more actively these days and is always a good read; definitely check out his new(ish) blog Helloform. I happen to disagree with him on his take on the iPhone though. The iPhone vision to me has evolved beyond some notion of ‘3 devices in one’ to, simply, a mobile computer. What the device is actually used for needn’t be dictated by Apple; if people want games, then gosh darn it, let them have games. Apple’s primary role is in ensuring that the device & platform combination are powerful enough, flexible enough, and lucrative enough to develop for. The markets can handle the rest. It’s precisely in making itself attractive as a platform (to developers and to users) where the Palm Pre has to prove itself, and where everyone else - Blackberry, MS, Nokia - is currently losing the battle. From Fred’s post: “Games are not a part of the original vision for the device (”A Phone, an iPod, an internet communicator”), and would only be spreading that vision too thin. Why lose two battles (the phone battle and the gaming battle) when you can blow everyone else out of the water by doing one thing right at a time?” (via Helloform » Why Apple needed the Palm Pre)

Fred Oliveira is blogging more actively these days and is always a good read; definitely check out his new(ish) blog Helloform.

I happen to disagree with him on his take on the iPhone though. The iPhone vision to me has evolved beyond some notion of ‘3 devices in one’ to, simply, a mobile computer. What the device is actually used for needn’t be dictated by Apple; if people want games, then gosh darn it, let them have games. Apple’s primary role is in ensuring that the device & platform combination are powerful enough, flexible enough, and lucrative enough to develop for. The markets can handle the rest. It’s precisely in making itself attractive as a platform (to developers and to users) where the Palm Pre has to prove itself, and where everyone else - Blackberry, MS, Nokia - is currently losing the battle.

From Fred’s post: “Games are not a part of the original vision for the device (”A Phone, an iPod, an internet communicator”), and would only be spreading that vision too thin. Why lose two battles (the phone battle and the gaming battle) when you can blow everyone else out of the water by doing one thing right at a time?” (via Helloform » Why Apple needed the Palm Pre)