Maybe the best example of the differences between iPhone users and Android users is the difference between the top apps for the respective devices. Here are the lists of top apps from Retrevo:

Top 10 iOS Apps

1. Angry Birds
2. Angry Birds Rio
3. Tiny Wings
4. Fruit Ninja
5. Where’s Waldo?
6. Tetris
7. Words With Friends
8. The Sims 3
9. Cut The Rope
10. Plants Vs. Zombies

Top 10 Android Apps

1. Beautiful Widget
2. Rom Manager *Premium*
3. Root Explorer
4. Fruit Ninja
5. Better Keyboard
6. Robo Defense
7. SetCPU
8. Weatherbug Elite
9. Titanium Backup Pro
10. Power AMP *Full Version*

As much as Android fans love to tout how customizable their phones are, I think the fact that the top apps are almost all ways to change CPU settings, manage RAR archives, and other random hardware tweaks is a little crazy. I’m not sure what a normal Android user thinks when they first check the app store and sees this kind of stuff.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26778/

A great article talking about the many advantages of the mobile web. A couple of great notes from the article. First, on the reach of the World Wide Web compared to the app stores:

One word: distribution. There are 2 billion web users versus 50 million iOS users.

And what’s in it for developers…

With web apps, developers could code once and be reasonably confident their app will work on any object — phone, tablet, laptop, etc. — with a standards-compliant browser. The implications for developer time and resources are profound.

Toyota Scion theme for the iPhone

There are lots of reasons to jailbreak your iPhone. Getting this official Toyota Scion theme is no longer one of them. It wasn’t actually good looking or useful, but it was interesting to see a big company like Toyota putting something out of Cydia. Of course Apple didn’t like that, and has forced Toyota to pull the theme down and it is no longer available. (via MobileCrunch)

Awesome review of Color^TM (yes they have the nerve to trademark the word Color^TM) found by Mike Cohen.

Color is a ground-breaking new entry in the new genre of MMPRLMG (Massive Multi-Player Real-Live Marketing Games).

Imagine yourself emerging from the dense forest of the App Store(™). In a clearing ahead you see a shiny new icon, a multicolor wheel. Its name is Color. In the distance you hear marketing dogs yelping buzz. “Social!” “Find Someone.” “Party!” You press Install, and your adventure begins!

You tap the app and you’re presented with your first challenge. The gatekeeper. You must enter you name and have your picture taken before you can continue. “What will my name be used for?” you ask. No response. “Who will see my picture?” Silence. “You must give us your name and image or you cannot proceed” the interface insists. You acquiesce, wondering if you haven’t made your first mistake. But there’s no going on until you do, and you WANT to go on.

You are whisked through a portal into a chamber. Along the border are strange icons. In the middle a large, jaunty, mural in the seat-pocket-emergency-evacuation-instructions drawing style. It shows intent people in pants all taking pictures with their phones. The capture reads “Take photos together.”

You decide to explore the icons. One’s sort of an infinity/Ying/Yang. You wonder what that’s supposed to mean. You tap the icon and find yourself on a blank screen. The icon changes to overlapping ovals. What does this new icon mean? You tap that one. You return to the mural room.

You examine the third icon, clearly a clock. You tap it. You see your face, name, and the date. Nothing else. The clock icon is now lit up. You wonder what that means. You notice that questions are starting to accumulate. Should you be writing them down? You tap the clock icon again. It turns into a white screen with the words “No messages.” The icon has turned into a sound-wave. You wonder what that means.

You continue to poke around the interface. There are no settings. No info button. No hints. You start to sweat a little. No tutorial. No about screen. No credits. No link to a website.

Then you remember the warning. The one written next to the install button: “Do not use Color alone!” You call up a friend. You both look at the interface together. There’s no change.

Now things are getting spooky. Is this all there is? Is there no one to explain what these things are or how they work? Is this interface really so simple and obvious that it doesn’t need any kind of guide? The thought suddenly crosses your mind that you might not be technically savvy enough to understand an interface that’s so simple it doesn’t need a manual!

But this is a Real-Life Adventure game, and you have assists! You cast the Google spell. You discover that the developers spent months developing advanced analysis and data-mining technology. It analyzes location, and position, and light, and ambient noise, and bluetooth signal strength so it can… so it can… “What?” you ask out loud! “What on earth is it going to do with all of this informa…” and you shut your mouth. Is it listening now? Is it analyzing your level of frustration, the shaking in your hand, the defeated angle of the device? Is somewhere a database recording your inability to solve this twenty-first century enigma that you hold in you hand?

You find the company web site. It has no instructions. No “About us!” link. No tutorial, or feature lists, or forums, or support, or contacts, or FAQs. You can almost hear the developers laughing at you! “Silly user, sniffing around our website looking for information! We gather information, we don’t give it out!”

You conquered Myst. You understood the end of Lost. You can do this! You’re not going to let this new adventure game genre get the best of you! You will master this if it takes all weekend. You discover a button to create a group! You wonder what a group is. Progress, of sorts.

But at least you know it’s just a game, and not actually an app to share photos. And now you also know that you are alone. And you’re uncool. And not very clever. Because Color told you so.

http://designthencode.com/

I worked through the “from scratch” article and learned the basics of C and Cocoa programming and then immediately purchased the rest of Mike Rundle’s iPhone/iOS design & development resources.

The New York Times’ David Pogue has launched the “Take Back the Beep” campaign aimed at making phone carriers end the anti-consumer practice of adding 15 seconds of babble to every voicemail message you leave or retrieve. Read on…

Over the past week, in The New York Times and on my blog, I’ve been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by American cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.

Suppose you call my cell to leave me a message. First you hear my own voice: “Hi, it’s David Pogue. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you”–and THEN you hear a 15-second canned carrier message.

Do we really need to be told to hang up when we’re finished!? Would anyone, ever, want to “send a numeric page?” Who still carries a pager, for heaven’s sake? Or what about “leave a callback number?” We can SEE the callback number right on our phones!

Second, we’re PAYING for these messages. These little 15-second waits add up–bigtime. If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That’s your money. And your time: three hours of your time a year, just sitting there listening to the same message over and over again every year.

Learn More

Ever reach into your pocket because you think your phone is ringing only to discover you’re losing your mind? Check out this article from the USA Today on “phantom cell phone vibrations” to learn more about this 21st century phenomena. I constantly think I “feel” my phone and check to find out it’s only in my mind. It’s probably a sign of insanity, but might also be due to my many drives back & forth between Austin & Dallas to see my future wife with the jams up loud.