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CNET pits the HTC DROID Incredible against the iPhone 3GS and determines that the Incredible is "The best phone we've seen". The kicker, just like I've been saying since the release of the iPhone, was call quality. Going into the final round, the phones were essentially tied in terms of overall features, construction, performance, etc. It was that crappy AT&T network that lost the iPhone the top spot. That's the #1 reason why I don't own an iPhone. Of course there's about 10 other reason that are just as important to me, but the #1 reason is still that it runs only on the horrible AT&T network. 

Check out the full prizefight on YouTube.

Last week I took the plunge and finally ordered my first smartphone. I went with the HTC Incredible, which runs the latest version of the Android OS. I was hoping the iPhone would come to Verizon in time, but I gave up waiting and now I'm even happier that I went with the Android OS -- according to a story posted on Slashdot today, the iPhone OS is #3.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/05/10/195251/Android-Sales-Surpass-iPhone-OS-Sales

Seems to me like Apple is quickly painting itself into the same corner it always does. Regardless of the whole Flash controversy, developers really don't appreciate the way they are being manipulated and manhandled by Apple. Developers are being told they can't use particular development tools such as Flash even though Adobe spent the past year creating a way to compile Flash apps to native iPhone apps, thus negating the whole need to run Flash on the iPhone, but Apple killed that, saying they won't approve any app that was not created on their platform with their tools. So, developers are also being forced to buy a Mac even to run the development tools. Then they have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get an app added to the iPhone app store, assuming it doesn't compete with one of Apple's own apps or contain some feature that Apple doesn't want users to have. I see the beginning of a massive market slide for the iPhone as more and more developers focus on the truly open Android platform.

Apple has done this kind of thing every time it gains a foothold in a new market and it has always hurt them in the long run, forcing them to come up with yet another new market for another new gadget every couple of years just to stay ahead of all the bad will they create by taking an "Apple knows best" approach with the geeks who ultimately influence decision makers. I can see corporate customers moving completely away from the iPhone in the next 12-24 months as developers jump on the Android bandwagon. Of course, Apple's never had this much cash in the bank before either, so maybe they will be able to throw enough marketing money at the problem to prop up their platform for years to come, but if it remains a "closed" platform I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone platform ends up becoming a small and shrinking niche within 3 years. Consumers are already somewhat annoyed about Apple's strong-arming the publishing industry (Amazon in particular) to increase pricing for e-books to coincide with the release of their iPad. Apple is always making enemies out of those who should be their allies...it's nothing new for them. I suspect that the Apple koolaid won't taste so good once there's a bunch of other comparable devices available on open platforms.  

In keeping with my tradition of IE-hating, I just noticed this post on SlashDot claiming that YouTube is stopping IE6 support on March 13.

• http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/24/1353205/YouTube-To-Kill-IE6-Support-On-March-13

Can I get an A-MEN?!

As a followup to my prevous post about IE losing the browser war, it looks like Google is going to start phasing out support for IE6 in Google Apps over the course of this year. I just received this notice from them:

"...In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar...."

Thankyou Google!

We win!...and by "we" I mean all you web developers out there that have been at the mercy of fragmented browser market share, buggy browsers and lack of standards compliance which has needlessly taken much of the fun out of coding web sites for many, many, many years. I've been coding web sites since 1994, so I've seen pretty much every browser bug and ever other form of BS that browser developers have come up with over the years. So, I was pleasantly shocked to discover that Firefox 3.5 recently surpassed Internet Explorer 7 as the #1 browser version worldwide....and I've been seeing lots and lots of articles like this one lately too: Is Internet Explorer Doomed?

It seems that IE usage has practically fallen off a cliff in the past few months. Firefox still lags behind IE in the United States, but if you develop web sites for a worldwide audience, you now have a new primary browser to worry about and a great excuse to dump your support for IE even faster than you probably already wanted to. Since you were probably already doing most of your development and testing with Firefox (unless of course you are a complete massochist), this means you can now feel much better about blowing off testing your sites in IE. I suspect that within the next 9 months I'll finally be able to quit testing web sites on IE6 altogether, and with any luck I can follow suit with IE7/8 shortly thereafter. That's right, I said it....I see a future where we can completely DROP (or severely curtail) support for every fracking version of IE (unless of course MSFT comes up with a version of their browser that renders pages and handles Javascript exactly like Firefox). Prospects are looking quite good for Firefox usage to surpass IE in the United States sometime next year. Can I get an A-MEN!? Could it be that the majoriy of internet users are finally coming to understand what a browser is?

I really never thought I'd see this day. Soon, we might finally be back to where we were in 2000 in terms of the number of browsers developers have to debug and test on. This time though, it won't be due to a lack of other browsers, it's simply that the new generation of browsers that will remaing after IE is dead are much better at rendering pages the same way thanks to a relatively strict adherence to web standards. Thank you to all the web developers out there who wouldn't stop bitching about standards compliance because it's FINALLY starting to pay off (until recently it only COST us effort but returned little benefit). Back in 2000 it was a nearly completely market-dominanting IE browser that started to make web development easier, not because the browser didn't suck, but because it was the only one you had to worry about. Things started getting hairy again over the past 9 years as Opera and Firefox emerged on the scene, Apple released Safari, then Google tossed Chrome into the mix for bad measure. Fortunately for everyone, the only two browsers that currently appear to be GAINING market share as of today, December 24, 2009, are Firefox and Google Chrome. Every other browser is currently losing market share. I couldn't be happier. I'll be a little sad to see Opera die off because it's really a great browser, but if it has be a casualty of Firefox's success then so be it. With any luck, Mac users will eventually stop using Safari and jump completely on the Firefox bandwagon because Safari is just a flat-out waste of developers' time and effort that would be better spent elsewhere. There's simply no need for it anymore except possibly on the iPhone which, as usual is Apple's fault and another perfect example of why some people like me actually switched from Mac to PC in 2000 and have been thrilled with my choice ever since...but that's another story. The Mac has gained enough traction recently thanks to an operating system that people actually want to code apps for, so now Firefox is a first rate browser on the MacOS and there is simply no need for Safari. Safari clearly hasn't kept pace with Firefox, it doesn't render pages as reliably and forces developers to write more platform-specific bug fixes and do needless platform-specific testing when they should just be testing on the cross-platform standards-compliant browsers. Mac users are starting to understand this though, and Safari usage just started declining for the first time since it's initial release. I could rant about Apple all day though and that's a completely different topic, so I'll end this post by saying my hope for 2010 is that Firefox will surpass both IE and Safari use in the US on both Windows and MacOS and continue making cross-platform web development less painful and more creative for everyone involved. 

I like to listen to various tech podcasts to help keep myself up to date with the latest happenings in open-source and PHP worlds. Two of my favorites are the FLOSS weekly podcast (Free Libre Open Source Software) with Randal Schwartz and Leo Laporte, and the PHP-Abstract podcast . If you haven't checked out the FLOSS podcast, here's a great interview with Linus Torvalds to get you started. Every week FLOSS interviews a prominent figure in the open source world, or they interview the developers working on some interesting open-source project. Of all the general interest open-source podcasts out there, I think FLOSS is one of the best.

PHP-Abstract used to be my favorite PHP podcast before it was taken over by Zend, but it has become much more Zend-centric than it used to be. It's still informative though.

PHP-Architect also has an excellent PHP podcast that was somewhat sporadic for a while, but it looks like they are back to doing regular episodes so definitely check that one out too if you're looking for a decent PHP podcast.