apple

Two excellent articles in All About Symbian:

• Ewan Spence questions whether whether Symbian needs a new user interface
• Steve Litchfield goes against the trend that puts the touch screen as the best phone interface.

To this, let me add my two cents worth.

I like my N900 for what seems like the wrong reasons:

• Resistive screen. Possibly because of the I am a Palm veteran, I find I like having a stylus handy, mainly for sketching, but also allowing for higher density applications or checklists.
• Hardware keyboard. Maybe Fat fingers; maybe a history with Psion and the E61; maybe the need to actually see whats on screen without the virtual keyboard hogging all the space.

Apple and Android developers would benefit from those articles. Nokia should pay more attention to them as well. If I understand it correctly, Nokia would benefit from having both MeeGo and Symbian with distinctive hardware and interface.

This year will be the year in which all consumer electronics will be judged in the shadow of Apple.

• Everyone seems to need an app shop. The shops will be judged by the numbers of applications available, and not by the quality of software provided.
• Any new tablet device will be judged by the Apple tablet. If Apple neglects to bring one out, it will be judged by how Apple would have made it... And, of course, by it's application shop...
• The new iPhone will most defiantly be an iPhone killer. 

All of this will be both good and bad for Apple. It will strengthen it's position as a market leader but will also create end-to-end user experiences (device to service) in which apple might not have a hold, or even a share. This will not be a terrible plow to Apple, as it's availability on more US carriers will, at least in the short run, compensate for that.