iPhone 2.0 and beyond.

Probably the best thing about iPhone 2.0 is Android. Or maybe I should say, no Microsoft.

The iPhone is a good example of the post-PC (computer, keyboard, mouse) world, but if Apple were going that road alone, things would move slowly. With Google entering the field, there is now, or soon will be, serious competion – both for technology and vision. Stuff.tv has an nicely written article on 10 things you didn’t know about Android. Details aside, the basic case made is “anything you can do, I can do better.” Missing is the important reply, “so can I.” Both are unix systems, and, when push comes to shove, both are open systems. The result will be good, a variety of “choices,” or at least a semblance of choice.

Today being Sunday, the application du jour is the New York Times. Again, they did it right. It does not emulate the webpage experience but gives you New York Times articles that are perfectly readable on the iPhone. The articles had a small mini-banner at the bottom, taking up maybe 2 or three lines of article text. But when you scroll through the article, the ad stays fixed and is totally unobnoxious. The only annoying things about it is that, like a lot of NYTimes ads, they are for things I’m not really interested in – the Westin Hotel Chain, Hewlett-Packard Printers, Sun Servers, etc. I’d almost prefer real ads from the real sunday newspaper. Book ads on editorial and review pages, music ads on arts pages, and hey, while you’re at it, if I’m in the city, how about a link to MOMA or the Met so I can buy a ticket on my iPhone, and just go there and show them the ticket on the screen when I show up. (And then, yes, buy the program and museum guide and install it on my machine.)