Siu Lun

I recently had to look into mobile application developments and straight away, I thought, iPhone Apps.

iPhone Apps has been gaining ground and becoming ever increasingly popular. In my office, I reckon all the male have an iPhone. 3G, 3GS whatever.

And all of them buys and downloads apps!

Then somebody suggested to me to develop mobile apps as offline web-apps, then I thought straight away, that’s not right, I wanted offline access and web-apps on the iPhone are slow… then I decided to do a search anyway, as with technology, you never know what’s possible and I went and utilised the power of the world…

I found that… though I should’ve remembered as I read it a while back too… that mobile Safari does include offline access support therefore can deploy web-apps on the phone.

And there seems to be a lot of ‘evangelist’ for the mobile web-app ‘camp’. To a degree I think it is just over-hyped.

Still, the pure idea of click through Safari, then through to the mobile address still haunts me.

The art of UI and IA design is to minimise click through. One click more is a click too many.

So I think I’ll stick to my native apps until somebody develop a cross-platform web-app ‘platform’. This should be possible. Though whether Apple allows it, is a different story.

Later.

Old news now. But you can already try and get a running version of Google Chrome OS booting from your USB stick.

You should try it out. Admire, and plan for the eventuality that Google Chrome OS will power lots of low-end and borderline between mobile and laptop devices.

Go Go Go!

The USB booting Google OS image is brought to you by: Hexxeh

I searched the net the other day for iPhone 3GS information in Hong Kong. Some people has posted some different information to what I was told today by a Three iPhone 3GS sales person.

Here is the information on their official website

I was told that for the top-of-the-range price plan (HK$398 p/m). The handset cost is HK$3580. Plus you have to pay a HK$1100 which is rebate to you over 12 months.

Now then I am on the $268 price plan. The handset cost for me is HK$4180. Plus I have to pay an extra HK$500 which is rebate to me over 12 months.

This basically means. Regardless of price plan, you have to pay HK$4680. It is just that over time, the guys with the high price plan gets more money back (roughly as you can see HK$500, which isn’t much).

PLUS. You have to sign up an additional 12 months contract AND a HK$28 “value-added services” to your price plan (it doesn’t matter if you already have VAS in your current plan the $28 is on top of). This would bump my plan to $296. Over a year it is HK$366 extra. (bear in mind this isn’t just over a year, this is actually over the course of your remaining contract).

I already have a 24 months contract and I’ve used about 6-8 months so far.

Any how..

Net Payment then is actually HK$3580+HK$366 for ($398 price plan) and HK$4180+HK$366 for ($268 price plan).

For me, this means I have to pay HK$4546 to get the upgrade, but the cost of the 3GS on the Apple Store HK is HK$5388.

HK$5388-HK$4546 = HK$812

For that price difference. I would much rather buy the handset standalone than to upgrade my phone and be forced into extending my contract. (I can see a release cycle of 178 days which is around about 6 months for the iPhone, if I keep doing this, my contract would be longer than my life expectancy -.-”)

I have either been told wrong, or the guy at http://hongkongphooey.wordpress.com/ has got it wrong. It isn’t HK$2,480 net price but HK$3946 for the HK$398 price plan.

The above information is all for the 16GB version