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I like to keep a watch out for 'stuff'; those seemingly innocuous things which end up changing all of our lives. Something of a techie, I enjoyed exploring the developmental boundaries of whatever happened to be my current advocation. A good example is found in skiing where the epitome of my wankdom was skiing on ESS bindings. Another comes from when I was into stereo equipment and just HAD to have a Dolby Surround Sound system. It is perhaps the single most surprising and telling sign of my reluctant aging that I have not embraced the cell phone. Perhaps that will be changing.

Zeichick's Take: IPhone, You Phone, We All Phone for GPhone
The battle of the programmable mobile phone is about to begin. And if Steve Jobs isn’t careful, Google will clean Apple’s clock.

Apple makes great platforms. The Mac (with Mac OS X) is a better PC than a Windows Vista box. I haven’t seen a music player that can compete with an iPod for ease of use, though most other vendors make devices that are less expensive, have more features and have more capacity.

By contrast, while the iPhone is an incredibly impressive piece of consumer electronics, it’s not a platform. It’s just a super-cool phone with a browser and music player.

In fact, during the past six months or so, Apple has done everything possible to dissuade developers from even thinking about the iPhone. The only way to develop apps for the device, Apple insists, is to build interactive Web sites that are optimized for the phone’s Safari Web browser.

Sorry, Steve, but that’s the wrong answer. A pint-sized browser does not make a platform.

Apple doesn’t want you to write software for the iPhone. They don’t want you to support their platform. Just write Web apps! That’s all they want, period!

That, my friends, is not going to drive the iPhone into ubiquity. A decade ago, Microsoft’s Windows crushed OS/2 and Mac OS because Microsoft understood that third-party developers are essential to the success of a new platform. Developers of all stripes were invited to write software for Windows 2.x, 3.x, Windows 95 and Windows NT, while IBM and Apple shunned them.

The tidal wave of Windows applications totally blew away its technologically superior, more secure and more stable competitors.

With that background, read Alex Handy’s SDTimes.com story about Google’s mobile phone efforts, “Gphone Rumors Hint at Broad Mobile Strategy."

As Alex explains, third-party developers seem to be front-and-center of Google’s platform. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure what’s happening at the Googleplex; the company is known for its secrecy. Maybe the Gphone won’t even appear. Maybe it will be radically different from what Alex’s sources say.

From where I sit, the iPhone is in peril. It’s thriving today because it’s cool, it’s new, it’s from Apple, and there’s no viable alternative. But it’s also closed, which means that it’s not a platform. Unless Steve Jobs opens up the iPhone to true native applications—and does it soon—the Gphone is going to blow the iPhone away.

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And a bit of the tech from that link within the story:

Gphone Rumors Hint at Broad Mobile Strategy

October 23, 2007 — Google, the darling of Silicon Valley, could soon become the belle of the mobile service provider ball. According to unnamed sources inside Google, the company is embarking on a strategy to join its nationwide fiber optic networks, the 700MHz spectrum, an x86-based handset and a brand-new JavaScript engine as a platform underlying its "Gphone" project. But even without these leaked details, Google's broader business moves are already telegraphing the individual pieces of the puzzle.

Specifically, Google CEO Eric Schmidt's bold offer to purchase the entire 700MHz spectrum in the upcoming FCC auction hints at a broader wireless play from the company. Although his initial bid of US$4.6 billion for the whole kit and kaboodle will likely fall short of the final price for this chunk of the ether, Schmidt’s willingness to commit such a large amount of Google's money to wireless spectrum shows just how much the company is banking on a mobile future.

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Did someone just say 'Buy'?