* I had dinner last week with one of my tech insiders, who hadn’t actually seen and handled the Moto X yet (he carries a Nexus 5). He was impressed with the density of the phone, and didn’t realize the screen was only a 720p AMOLED, and it occurred to me that the thing that continues to draw me to the Moto X is that it’s got the best hand-feel of any phone since the original iPhone and for the same reasons. Solid rounded comfortable feel in the hand. Not coincidentally, the Moto X also had one maximum priority: battery life. The various technological tricks to squeeze out 24 hours off the charger in the Moto X are the natural progression from the original iPhone’s lack of GPS, 3G, video recording or third-party apps: if the battery doesn’t last all day, the phone will be DOA in the market.
* He also concurred with me that battery life is the future of everything. If the battery can’t be made to last – and right now the only way to get more battery life is to either cram in a bigger battery or else do some heroic things in chipset engineering – the product will be DOA. And right now, I’m still struggling to parse out how much of my battery woes are the device, how much are the carrier, and how much is just me actually trying to use the damned thing as intended. The fact that I never get more than three bars signal at work has to be a thing, simply because even if I’m using Wi-Fi for data, the phone has to burn extra power to cling to that weak CDMA signal for voice.
* New York magazine nails the Ponzi scheme of the modern tech bubble – not that it’s new, of course. Back in the dot-com boom, everything was going for free and making it up on volume, to the point where there were free cars wrapped in advertising and free DSL at a time when DSL was new and rare and pricey. That ended about like you’d expect. But the lack of institutional memory around here, coupled with a flood of VC money looking for returns, has enabled a bunch of startups to go down the PimentoLoaf.Com route of providing goods (or more likely services) at a loss by just burning their capital and getting ever more funding – on the presumable promise that when the bubble bursts, they’ll be the viable service left standing like Amazon or what have you. At some point, though, I doubt investors will be happy to feed the beast with no prospect of return, and it’ll only take one economic jolt to put us back in 2002.
* I’ve said it over and over again, but what the iPhone 6 needs: 2 GB RAM, AMOLED 4.7” display, 2200 mAh battery, dedicated coprocessors for speech and location beyond just the M7. What the Moto X2 needs: better power management, a mail client and a ringtone store that both don’t suck, improved camera performance in low-light situations, and a headphone jack on the bottom (and I wouldn’t say no to a legit iMessage client, but that’s never happening).
* There’s a major IQ test tomorrow: public sale of Google Glass for $1500. Like cocaine, or the Fisker Karma, the current version of Google Glass is God’s way of telling you that you’ve got more money than sense. Google has managed to combine the worst of Microsoft and Apple: ubiquity plus reality distortion field. If they had just one person who’d paid attention to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and the opprobrium heaped on “gargoyles” therein, maybe they would have tailored the thing any better. As it is, Google Glass is to this boom what the Segway was to the last one: a potentially useful device with niche applications at present that over-wealthy techies are managing to turn into a symbol of arrogance, detachment and social ineptitude. After all, walking around in the Mission with $1500 strapped to your face isn’t really a good idea at even the best of times.
* After three months and change, I can say in all honesty that I haven’t missed the larger iPad at all. The iPad mini Retina is absolutely the perfect device of its type and it’s only warm weather that prevents me carrying it everywhere. (Although I still prefer the Kindle Keyboard for long-term reading, obviously – assuming the lights are on.)
* Let’s be honest, all I want out of my next phone is to feel like Tony Stark designed it for SHIELD. That’s how you know you’re legit cutting edge these days. =)