iPhone vs Windows Mobile

I'm very pleased to have recently upgraded to an iPhone 4 handset. It really is much better at running the v.4 software than the iPhone 3 and reminded me of the reasons I was pleased to leave Windows Mobile behind and how some of those things are starting to bedevil Apple.

1. Windows Mobile was effectively unsupported from the moment you owned the handset. In seven years and six handsets I never had a manufacturer-pushed upgrade. On a couple of occasions I managed to find slightly hookey versions (from other networks etc) than upgraded versions slightly but it never worked well. This seems to be playing out again with WM 'phone 7 for mobiles (or whatever they're calling it!); a year out of the gate and there has been one update that bricked a lot of handsets! MS are still asleep at the wheel when it comes to cell 'phones.
   
2. With Windows mobile you have to hit the right hardware/OS version combo; A couple of handsets I owned were early in OS cycles (the first WM6 ones for example) and they weren't man enough for the new version of the OS. A couple (the HTC M1000 and the Vodafone V1615) were right before OS upgrades and worked brilliantly. The iPhone is starting to suffer this; nobody should run V4 on a v3 handset and expect the nice experience they remembered when they first got the iPhone.

It's an interesting time in smartphones; I wonder who will take third place after the iPhone and Android (or the other way around) - Blackberry or Nokia/Windows Mobile?

"Schneier's Law"

Anyone can invent a security system that he himself cannot break. I've said this so often that Cory Doctorow has named it "Schneier's Law": When someone hands you a security system and says, "I believe this is secure," the first thing you have to ask is, "Who the hell are you?" Show me what you've broken to demonstrate that your assertion of the system's security means something.

Bruce Schneier is such an insightful chap - his blog is required reading if you have any interest in security or crypto; and really that should extend to anyone who is involved in networks. The grain of truth I take from this law is that you have to have to certain level of understanding of a subject to recognise your own ignorance. My dad had an expression "...you're not even wrong" - being so far removed from the truth that you're not even on the same field as people who understand the problem (even if they've come to the right or wrong conclusion).

I'm so busy at work at the moment I'm not blogging to much.