Category: 🖥️ Tech

You've likely heard that Apple has made the Swift programming language open source. Of course, this means that developers could potentially be able to use Swift to make software on other platforms. That could eventually include Linux, Android, Windows, and web applications. I'm not completely sure of all the reasons why Apple has made this move. But here are a few ideas and thoughts.

Popularity Means More OS X And iOS Developers

Likely, Apple would simply like Swift to become more popular. If Swift becomes so popular that it is used for other platforms, then developers who have learned Swift might be more likely to build native apps for OS X and iOS at some point.

I believe Swift's first and foremost role at Apple will continue to be building native OS X and iOS apps, likely using Apple's XCode development environment. And Apple's main goal is still likely to get developers making native apps for their devices and computers. But anyone who learns Swift will likely think of building an app for OS X or iOS at some point, even if they first used Swift to build an app on Android or another platform.

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I guess Mozilla just couldn't wait until iOS was 10 years old. The Firefox web browser has finally been officially released for iOS, eight and a half years after iOS was first introduced with the first iPhone.

Syncing Bookmarks To Mobile Is (And Was) Important

In my mind, the release of Firefox for iOS is important for one main reason. We now have the ability to sync bookmarks to Firefox on iOS. For the majority of people out there, that is all that really matters.

You can count me as one of those people. Like many other people I'm sure, I used Firefox as my main browser for quite a number of years. When I bought my first iOS device, a 2G iPod Touch, I had to figure out which browser to use. For quite a while I still used Firefox on the desktop. My journey took me to drop Firefox on my desktop for Safari, then to Mercury which used Firefox Sync, then back to Safari, and finally to Chrome.

The only real reason I switched was because I couldn't easily sync my bookmarks in a fully supported way with an iOS Firefox app. I really think that Mozilla unfortunately underestimated this impact and  lost a boatload of dedicated users simply by not having an iOS app that synced bookmarks. While it might have mattered to Mozilla, it wouldn't have mattered much to users if it was a little slow or didn't use its own rendering engine. And a large majority of those people who switched to sync their bookmarks to their desktop aren't going to go back to Firefox now because they already switched.

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We may have Android PCs and laptops by 2017, which could compete more directly with Windows and Mac computers. This has been rumored before, but this time it comes from the Wall Street Journal, a pretty reliable source.

Android PCs Make Sense

It makes complete sense to me that Google will eventually make "Android for PC". Android is an extremely popular mobile OS, so a lot of those apps could also run on a desktop OS. Google has been making an Android OS for pretty much every other platform over the last couple of years, except for the desktop. This includes their decision to make Android Auto, Android Wear, and Android TV. And thirdly, even though Google has focused on the cloud for desktop, there are still limitations to a desktop operating system like Chrome OS which doesn't support native applications.

Native Apps And Games Have Advantages

It's great to run software in the cloud so it is cross-platform. But there are still cases where native apps work better, and we can have the best of both worlds. Games is one of those categories. Google could make a large amount of money just from Android for PC games. Also any applications which could benefit from locally saved data will also work better with a native desktop OS. This includes productivity apps and even apps for photos and music.

I know browsers continue to get better with saving data locally, but just being able to have your own files on your computer is still better in many cases. Or to be able to install Dropbox for your Android PC if you use Dropbox instead of Google Drive. While most software is also moving online as well, there are still many people who will buy a Windows 10 computer instead of one with Chrome OS, just because they like having their files offline on their computer as well.

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Could this hidden "ASUS E205SA" reveal an upcoming Windows 10 laptop to replace the excellent 11.6" ASUS eeeBook X205TA notebook?

While reading about Windows 10 budget notebooks I came across this interesting tidbit. It's a reference to an "ASUS E205SA", which has not been announced or mentioned anywhere by ASUS. I wonder if it could be the possible replacement for the 11.6" eeeBook X205TA, which was one of the best reviewed budget laptops with Windows, and a bit of a revival for ASUS of their old eeeBook netbooks. Here's what I found out, along with an overview of a number of cheap budget laptops that ASUS could release later this year with Windows 10.

Earlier this summer, it looks like ASUS announced or released information for three different lines of Windows 10 notebooks in the E series, some of which were previously known as eeeBooks. They have product pages for each of these laptops, with features and specifications.

However, I don't believe any of these have been released yet and their product specs could even change possibly. For instance, the 14" E402MA is listed with Windows 8.1, but I would guess it will come with Windows 10 when released. These laptops will most likely all be released later this year, as a whole line of new budget Windows 10 laptops from ASUS.

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Since the Apple Watch launched, it hasn't sold quite as well as some people thought it might. Here's my quick take on the key reasons why the sales for the Apple Watch might be lower than expected. From what I've read it sounds like it hasn't been as big of an initial success as the iPod, iPhone, or iPad. I wonder if the low sales could be boiled down to just one or two reasons, even though reviews focus on so many technical specifications and cool features.

The Apple Watch Is Simply Too Expensive

Like any tech product or gadget, the Apple Watch has been reviewed and analyzed excessively and in-depth. Every review has a different opinion about what features should make you want to get yourself an Apple Watch. Or conversely, reasons why it isn't worth buying or isn't selling well. Things like battery life or features that don't work perfectly.

And with a typical price of about $600 US, and a low price of $400 US, I think it is likely much too high of a price to reach any kind of mainstream adoption like we saw with the relatively low-priced iPods, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

But often in the end, I think the large majority of regular consumers focus on price first. And the price of the Apple Watch might simply be too high over competing products, even in its lowest price version. So it might not matter that much if you need an iPhone to use all of the Apple Watch features, or how great the interface is, or even that the battery might not last long enough. While Apple can get people to pay a certain premium for their products, they also may need the price to be in the same vicinity of the products it is replacing or competing with.

And with a typical price of about $600 US, and a low price of $400 US, I think it is likely much too high of a price to reach any kind of mainstream adoption like we saw with the relatively low-priced iPods, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. While the smaller size is $50 less, it doesn't actually hit a significantly lower price point. Which leads me to the other reason why I think the sales of the Apple Watch haven't been as great as previous products.

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One thing that I didn't see mentioned in the newest rumors about the next iPad Mini is how much it will weigh. I have a feeling that the new iPad Mini could have its weight reduced significantly, to somewhere around 250 grams or lower. Maybe anywhere from about 220 to 260 grams. Here's how I came up with that number, along with my thoughts about the potential release date.

I figured this out from looking at the weights of previous iPads and previous iPod Touches.

iPad Mini 4 Weight

When Apple released the iPad Air, the WiFi version went down from the 650 gram iPad 4th gen to just 450 grams. Apple also reduced the weight of the iPod Touch over two generations from the 115 gram 3rd generation to the 88 gram 5th generation. The drop in weight for each was around 70-75%.

And now it looks like the next iPad Mini should be much thinner and have the same thinner design that the iPad Air and iPod Touch 5g used. So I wonder if the iPad Mini will go down in weight to 70-75% of the 330 gram weight of the iPad Mini 3rd generation. So somewhere around 250 grams or lower.

It would be amazing if they figured a way to get the iPad Mini to be under 200 grams. That would be asking too much I think. But I wouldn't doubt if Apple has thought about 200 grams as a target weight for the Mini. However, for this release I think getting it to under 250 grams is a more realistic possibility.

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