Ecosystems

I've spent the last few months submersing myself into various aspects of mobile apps.  Particularly the API's, be it Flash, or iOS, or XNA, and the key word I come away with is eco-system.

First, let's look at the Apple/iOS ecosystem. Apps like Pages, Keynote, and games like Rage give you pretty good interoperability between the iPad/iPhone world and the desktop Mac (I have several. Guilty as charged.)  What's lacking is Apple's version of the XBox. The Apple TV could become that, but so far, no luck.

Since I mention the XBox, let's look at that ecosystem. The XBox is one of the most exciting products ever to come out of Redmond. It's my go-to source for games and video. If the twitter app were a little more civilized, and if there were an interface to gmail, that would be my answer to all of life's little problems. The interoperability between XBox and Windows Phone 7 is very promising. I'm even tempted to ditch my iPhone for WP7.  We'll see how that turns out.

Did I mention I have a Zune HD?  Why I have a Zune HD is a complicated question, but let's just say that curiousity got the better of me.  Within about 20 seconds of playing around with it, my reaction was: this is a brilliant device. I still prefer it as a portable music player, and would say that the 3d games are better than their iOS equivalents. It didn't surprise me when it was announced that WP7 would be based on the Zune. Why Zune HD hasn't been updated to support the XBox Live marketplace is beyond me.

The Android ecosystem is still in the process of coming into being. More on that soon, but the recent generation of Android tablets, both 7 and 10 inch varieties using the Nvidia Tegra processor, look like the future of mobile. What I like most about the Androids is that they're tied to cloud apps in a more methodical way than the iPhone/iPad.  For those of us who've followed Nvidia's history of graphics processors, the Tegra looks good, if not as powerful as the iPad's A5 chip.

The principal point here is that there's not one complete ecosystem. Sometimes that's frustrating. And, it's curious that Apple, Microsoft, Google, and let's not forget players like Sony, could own it all, but have chosen not to.