Recently I met a few people which use iPhone but have no additional Apps installed. They use what comes on the phone and are basically unaware that Appstore even exists, they do not have Apple ID account and are pretty much satisfied with that.

Apple is releasing iOS5 soon, and it will feature plenty of small improvements and couple of big ones.

Let's just focus on the big ones, particularly, the new software that will come bundled with iPhone. From the first version of iPhone operating system, till iOS4 little changed regarding preinstalled Apps. You got your Maps, and Calculator and Safari browser and Mail and all that. And in iOS 5 Apple will load each iPhone with:

iMessage - a web based chat that does not eat money like SMS messages operators provide. It will be integrated into SMS App, and it will detect if you are sending to an iPhone or to some other phone.

Newsstand - one location to hold all of your magazines.

Reminders - ToDo list with cool location based features which enable this App to alert you when you enter or leave specific area.

Combined with the new philosophy Apple introduced about activating iPhone (no iTunes required, you can use it out of the box) this will make iPhone a pretty hard-core dumbphone (feature phone).

In addition, Twitter will come preinstalled and deep integrated into system. And do not forget, iOS5 will enable you to access camera without unlocking your phone, right from the lock screen. Of course, they improved Camera App mimicking (stealing?) functionality from other great camera Apps.

Apple checked download statistics from App Store, saw which Apps are used the most, made their version and are now bundling that software with iPhone. In essence, Apple killed instant messengers, ToDo lists and camera apps (I somehow doubt it will be possible to change which camera launches from lock screen).

With iOS5, if you do not take into account games, iPhone will become excellent dumbphone. Quite a lot of people will be able to use it as it is, right out of the box. No Apple ID, no credit card locked into their account.

Why is Apple doing that?

Money. Shocking, huh?

Apple is earning more cash from each sold unit than it could ever earn through App store selling Apps.

Gizmodo says "Apple Gets $831 for Every iPhone Sold Thanks to AT&T Payments". But even if you do not take into account the payment telecom makes to Apple, if you just take iPhone price when you buy it clean from the Apple Retail store (or online store) Apple earns quite a lot of cash on the unit itself. Around $250. Combine all the Apps you bought - what Apple earned through that is miserable.

Apple just wants to sell more units.

And by making iPhone a dumbphone Apple can reach further into the audience, everyone can now use iPhone even without a creditcard or Apple ID, as quite a lot of people will find preinstalled Apps to be sufficient and the wall to Appstore is pretty hard to jump over if you are technically impaired.

Furthermore, mark my words, Apple will improve GameCenter to enable easy download of games. I believe it would even be possible in the near future that users would get three tokens per iPhone Serial Number and could use them to download three games for free through GameCenter. Of course, Apple will pay to the developers those few dollars, what do they care. This would make iPhone the best dumbphone on the market.

With iOS5, Apple reversed the game of Smartphones back to being dumb.

I really do not know, but how useful is Android as dumbphone, if you do not have any accounts (Google, Facebook, Twitter...)? What do you get out-of-the-box?

So, Google+ is here. Everyone is on it already, clicking and making Circles. It actually looks nice, but nice is a subjective term, I have actually heard from some folks that "it is too white and too simple".

I would really like for Google+ to make it big. To stand shoulder to shoulder with Facebook, and maybe one day overthrow the giant Zuckerberg. But, from what I see, it will not be able to do it. Why?

Simple, Google+ is set on wrong foundations which came from wrong assumptions. All the features of Google+ available at launch day are here to completely differentiate G+ from Facebook. The logic of all starting features are here to plug a hole in Facebook.

Circles? They plug a hole in Facebook's inherit problem that basically all of the people you have are in the same relationship to you - they are all your friends on the same level.

Hangout? Video chat, plugs a hole which Facebook did not have covered.

Mass chat? Yup, Facebook does not have that, it has only 1-on-1 chat.

So basically, Google designer(s) *gasp!* and engineers sat down, made a checklist of what is missing from Facebook, and made a site that covers that checklist, or at least big spots on it. And I really do not understand the logic behind such a move. Google just assumed that Facebook is dumb. Did they think that Facebook overlooked those features? Did they really think that Facebook did not come up with those ideas on it's own? That the product development department in Facebook is sitting on their asses doing nothing?

No, Facebook tested that, and more!

Facebook knows Circles is a clever idea but it takes too much effort to neatly organize people you know into separate lists. Dump everyone into same list, then remove them if they are annoying. Simple.

Video Chat? Oh, yes, video chat. Stuff we see all the time in Enterprise and SF movies. Not in reality. I have never EVER EVER saw anyone use video chat except for testing purposes. Be it over Skype, Apple's Facetime, MSN Live or any service. Video chat is complicated. It is technically screwed up (requires camera setup) but more than that - it requires you to be in a situation where you can video chat. You must always look at the camera and smile. You cannot browse porn sites in the background. You cannot lie to your boss "Yes yes, I am just on my way to work" while in reality you are still in bed. It is just too much situational to be mainstream. Yes, I understand that a soldier in Afghanistan could find video chat nice invention to see his newborn baby, but for common folks - video chat is INCONVENIENCE. It is just a bad thing.

Mass chat? IRC does that. Who uses IRC today? Nerds.

Remember Facebook Lite? Clean and simple version? It is closed now, and it is closed for a reason.

In short: Google+ believes that Facebook is doing it wrong, and is trying to plug those "wrong" holes. Silly Google.

Overall, Google+ is a noble attempt. I would like to see it do something. But I believe it is going in the steps of Buzz & Wave. Sadly.

Living with an iPad for the last month I finally feel comfortable to say something about them Tablets. This will be a general rant about Tablets, not Android vs. Apple/iOS flame war.

Tablets are here to stay. They are not a passing trend. Apple realized that the technology is powerful enough to enable us this new format of computer, thus they opened up a whole new hardware field and made it publicly available. Yes, I know there were a lot of attempts earlier but none of them were good. They lacked both good hardware and good software.

Apple also realized that Tablets are not here to replace computers as they are not Creation type devices, but rather Consume type. Tablets will not endanger desktop computers, they will endanger TV. We need desktop computers to create stuff, computer mouse and keyboard are very good interface devices enabling us to work with precision and ease. So far all of the computers had to be workstations (or in case of laptops – mini workstations), but with the invention of good Tablets it became possible for some users to stop using workstation type of computer. Why would you want that huge piece of powerful machinery just to check mail and watch new Justin Bieber video? Our workstations are like huge trucks, and you do not use huge 4x4 to drive to a nearby store to pick up one chewing gum. Not everyone needs 4x4 truck, not everyone needs workstation type of computer. Some of us can do well with just an ordinary small car and with a tablet computer.

But tablets (especially iPad) bring with them two really nasty features.

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So here I am 6 months later, installing Firefox 4 and transferring all the bookmarks to it from Chrome. I switched to Chrome half a year ago (or maybe even more) when Firefox 3 became so slow and bloated I could not take it anymore. Chrome seemed like a refreshing drink after a boxing match; me vs. Firefox 3, where Firefox 3 was punching me in the face over and over again.

Few days ago, as we were doing a site for a client, I saw the site in HTML/CSS coding state at one of our coders. He was using Firefox 4. Then I went back to my computer just to see if the site is looking OK in my Chrome. Shazam, the ugly-stick hit me in the head.

Here is a small test platform for you to test out the difference in rendering. It is a pure CSS example, with no images. Visit it with Firefox and Chrome and see what happens.

Here is a screenshot so you can compare, just in case:

You would have to be blind not to notice the difference. Firefox has much smoother shadows and gradients, Chrome just slaps them on screen. I guess it is a typical Google engineering thinking - "let's just make it work, no need to make it pretty".

You could argue now that this is a Webkit "feature" but A-HA! No it is not! If you open the same test page in Safari, you will notice that Safari renders shadows, both outer and inset, much smoother (still not as smooth as Firefox). It seems that the folks in Mozilla did something exquisite this time considering rendering.

I have checked all the usual pages I go to, from Wunderlist and all sorts of news sites, to Facebook & web Twitter clients, and the difference is obvious. Firefox makes stuff look pretty. Paired with the fact that it is blazing fast, has smooth scrolling with scrollbar ease as it approaches bottom/top, it is good bye Chrome, hello my dear old friend Firefox. I missed you. Do not bloat too much this time, you silly you.

You could say now "who cares, these are too small issues", but I say "I care". It is those little polished details that separate good looking website from great looking one. If we developers are moving away from using images to using CSS-only technique to accomplish something, this quality of rendering means a lot. From time to time such differences force us to fall back to using images for buttons (for example) instead of doing it all in CSS. And that matters.

Our friends at the bonbon network, knowing my deep hate for Android phones, have sent me this little phone.

Ideos, by Huawei.

Apparently, it is a joke on their side to send me one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) Android phone to try to combat my iPhone 4. But, I went open minded into it.

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So Microsoft and Nokia decided to get married and develop a new ecosystem to combat Apple and Android. However, I firmly believe they are too late, but not just that - they no longer have a position on the market to take.

Let's presume that Nokia can make hardware good enough to combat iPhone, y'know, something slick, fast, responsive, with nice responsive screen. And let's presume Microsoft can back this up with good software, good platform for developers, even good marketing (something Microsoft is very good at /sarcasm).

What they will face is what I (and others) call "The Opera problem". Opera is a good browser, it really is. Almost all of us here have it installed. We have it installed just so we can start it once a month to see if our work still holds water in Opera, and then we shut it off. Opera is just not excelling at anything, it is just good at everything. If you want something to customize and beat the living hell out of it: you will get Firefox. If you want something lightning fast with minimal interface distractions: you will get Chrome. There is no third option necessary for the users. Oh, I'm sorry, yes there is, the option "this crap came preinstalled so I am using it".

This is, in my super humble opinion, what will happen to the child this Microsoft and Nokia marriage will produce. It will just sit there not knowing what it is. It will be good, do not get me wrong, but it will not excel in anything, because both Nokia and Microsoft will aim to please everybody and in that way produce standard-level-of-quality product.

If you want something super customizable, you will get Android.

If you want something sleek, fast, and use it out-of-the-box, you will get iPhone.

Edit, I forgot:
If you want something super safe for enterprise level, you will get Blackberry

Microkia's child will be Internet Explorer or Opera of mobile phones: you will get it from someone (on your work, your mom will buy it by accident for your birthday, ...) so you will use it just because you got it. And if you buy it on your own, you will not love it. There won't be a single lovable feature about it, it will just be an OK phone.

But, let's see what will happen.

We have just launched a small humanitarian project "Banka Krvi" (Blood Bank). The purpose of this bank is to collect phone numbers of willing blood donors so that in crisis situations The Red Cross can dispatch SMS messages directly to the donors. The Croatian hospitals have a steady influx of fresh blood, but in case of any dramatic accident involving lots of wounded - there will be problems.

Hence we have helped with our donation of website. Check it out at www.bankakrvi.hr

I recently had white iPhone in my hands and just for test I wanted to put white background on Homescreen. Just to see how would an all-white device look like.

Check this out, this is a screenshot (reduced to 50% pixel size) of pure white wallpaper set as background.

Crazy stuff, eh?

So, what iOS adds is this:

1. hard drop shadow on icons
2. hard drop shadow on App name
3. super smooth and very blurred drop shadow behind each icon
4. gradient over whole background with light gray at the top (look carefully above icons, it is not white, it is light gray)
5. leaves middle part unchanged
6. hard gradient at the bottom, I guess to emphasize the bottom 4 icons
7. of course, reflection of bottom 4 icons

This is not so visible when you are using your everyday wallpaper as it is most likely dark, but even in those dark wallpapers (unless they are completely black) you can notice these additions. Try scrolling between screens slowly and you will see the blurry big shadow behind each icon move. And this pretty visible bottom gradient becomes more obvious now that you know it is there.

It is pretty neat that Apple tries to increase visibility and architecture of interface as much as possible no matter what wallpaper you use. The icons will always stand out, and the bottom row will always be emphasized.

(But, yes, I have to agree that it would be cool if you could turn off this overlay somehow.)

Update:

Here is the full list of images that interface overlays on elements. Found it here.

WallpaperGradientLandscapeBottom - The shadows at the side of the wallpaper.
WallpaperGradientLandscapeTop - The shadows at the side of the wallpaper.
WallpaperGradientPortraitBottom - The shadows at the side of the wallpaper.
WallpaperGradientPortraitTop - The shadows at the side of the wallpaper.
FolderShadowBottom.png - The shadow present at the bottom of the folders
FolderShadowTop.png - The shadow present at the top of the folder.
FolderShadowBottomNotch.png - The shadow that is inside the bottom arrow of the folder you opened
FolderShadowTopNotch.png - The shadow that is inside the top arrow of the folder you opened
SBBadgeBGMask.png - When you open a app, the notification is pushed.
SBDockMask.png - Reflective dock
spotlight-full.png - The shadow that appears whenever a notification is received.
spotlight-keyboard.png - Similar to spotlight-full, but happens when you use the keyboard.
SwitcherIconShadow.png - Shadows present underneath the icons in the Multitasking switcher
SwitcherShadowTop.png - Shadows present underneath the icons in the Multitasking switcher
WallpaperIconDockShadow.png - Shadows under the dock when Homescreen wallpapers are enabled
WallpaperIconShadow.png - Shadows under the icon when Homescreen wallpapers are enabled

That is just scary. The amount of graphics which you do not even notice, but they are here to make sure everything is neat-o.

Time tracking is an integral part of any organization. It is just impossible to remember at the end of the month what all the people did for a client with any certainty. Even if you are a one-man-band, I can bet you that you are losing track of spent hours if you keep them only in your head. As Nivas grew over the last years from couple of people up to today's number of ten(ish) and with that grew the number of active clients, it became obvious that we will need some software to help us keep track of spent hours.

Name subject to change. Or not. Maybe. =)

So we decided it is time to build our own service to track time. You could now ask "why not just use one of the existing ones available online?". And that question is perfectly valid, there are some great time-tracking products available! However, there is this little thing called - Croatia, and Croatian laws. You see, our law system is out of the touch with reality therefore out of touch with how time tracking should really work. They passed a law for time tracking in companies that requires very specific things to be tracked in case of inspections. Commercial available systems do not have all those details built in, as they were designed to do one thing only, and do it good - track time spent on projects/clients.

You can read all about it here in full bizarre detail. Even if you do not understand Croatian, you can just quickly scroll and see the number of bullets, that will give you the clue.

Nivas Time is in use here locally for the last 3 months, and it is going heavy development and beta testing. It is "Soon™" ready to be released into world as invite-only beta. After that, it will be released into public with two way model - free for small users (one-two man forces), and subscription based for bigger companies. It will be available with English and Croatian interface, of course.

A small preview:

---- Time Dashboard

---- Smart Client/Project search

---- List of clients

If you are interested to be in the first batch of invite-only testers, send us a mail, we will keep you in mind.

Keep on tracking!

update1 (16.1.2011.): Time is now online at time.nivas.hr address and we are preparing test accounts for all of you who contacted us.