Tian Bai

I got my iPod Touch on Jan 2nd.  I’m not very into entertainment, but for what I spent $300?  Just a portable browser.

There are complains that compared to iPhone, iPod Touch does not have Email, Stock applications installed.  So what?  It supports JavaScript!  I don’t understand with Gmail, Google Finance, why we still need those applications (doing emails when you are offline is the only scenario on top of my head).  Also I cannot understand why things like Mobile Windows Live Messenger and Mobile QQ are still under development.

On PC, compared to RIA web pages, applications locally installed may be more responsive.  However, when it comes to handheld devices, this is not necessarily true.  AJAX makes Rich Internet Applications (RIA) widely adopted.  Flex will probably take it to the next step.  I guess in future, we need local applications only when we need daemon processes, like to capture service messages or to prompt a coming event.

GPRS->EDGE->3G->4G, these will enable us to access Internet anywhere, anytime.  I would say if we could only choose to build 1 excellent application on Windows Mobile, we have to choose IE for sure.  The others will eventually not matter much.

With all these being said, looking at the mobile experiences with which Google are surprising end-users, the web API’s with which Google are inspiring Dev community, I can’t help worrying about the future of Microsoft.