Steve Jobs Retires From Apple, But Very Little Will Change

One of the biggest tech news stories of recent months broke early in the morning (Australian time) when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs formally announced that he was stepping down from his role as Apple’s CEO.

Jobs’ time as Apple CEO was marked by a profound change in the company; when he regained control of the company having been ousted in the mid 1980s, it was in dire straits, with most observers thinking it would be a mere matter of months before Apple was no more. With a focus on industrial design and cutting back on the number and scope of Apple’s projects at the time, Jobs was able to turn the company into what it is today. In ten short years Apple’s brought industrial design in computing to the fore, be it with integrated iMacs, the ever-popular iPods (which only celebrate a decade of existence this year) or the profound shakeup of the mobile industry that was caused by the iPhone. There’s no doubting that Apple is one of the genuine power players in the IT market, and Jobs can rightly claim a lot of that credit.

But having said that, while Jobs stepping down was news, it was neither unexpected (his illnesses are a private matter, but as a company CEO his medical leaves of absence weren’t, and his successor in the CEO role, Tim Cook, had been acting in that role for much of this year anyway) and neither will it make a huge difference to Apple’s fortunes going on. That’s partly because the CEO role is the only one Jobs is stepping down from; he’s still chairman of the Apple board, a director and an employee. He might not be signing all the pay cheques any more, but undoubtedly his influence will continue to be felt. Equally, Apple’s not a company that moves particularly quickly; it’s likely that the next couple of years worth of projects, including new iPhones and iPads are already more or less set in stone.

Apple Lion OS X Roars, But It Can Also Bite

It’s been a couple of weeks since Apple released the latest version of its particular computer operating system, OS X 10.7, more informally known as “Lion”. Apple uses the names of the big cats for its operating systems, which is why previous releases have been named things like Tiger, Panther or Snow Leopard. Which means that presumably, a few years down the track, Apple may release OS X Ocelot.

At $31.99, Lion’s very cheap for an operating system, but that’s more a function of it being part of Apple’s overall computer strategy. It makes money from hardware rather than software, and while that may be changing with the wild success of the iTunes App store for devices like iPads and iPhones, it’s a slow change, and for now the software’s just an inducement to buy the hardware, the same way that car retailers will offer “free” air conditioning… as long as you buy a thirty thousand dollar car. That kind of price might make it seem like an automatic upgrade option compared to the hundreds of dollars a full version of Windows goes for, but there are still some catches. I’ve had some serious time with Lion now, and while there’s definitely some good stuff in this big cat, there’s also some areas where it’s all too easy to get bitten.

Apple’s main focus in Lion has been to slowly merge the kinds of experiences its customers on iOS devices have with its Mac userbase, and as such, touch gestures are now system-wide. This includes the curious decision to reverse the direction of the scroll wheel to match how your fingers move on an iPhone or iPad; Apple rather optimistically calls this “natural” scrolling, and it was amongst the first things I switched off, which thankfully isn’t too hard.

Not surprisingly, my test Lion system has been quicker than it was before, but I’m still unsure if that’s a function of it being a freshly optimised system; I could well have the same speed boost in a freshly installed copy of Windows. Some applications are definitely perkier; Mail in particular may look drab but runs well and now has search capabilities that make it a pleasure to use. I’m also getting a lot of utility out of the app resume feature, which allows you to shut down the Mac and have every window, application and file spring up as it was the next time you power the system on. Likewise, system-wide autosave is a feature that’s been a long time coming to Macs, and so far, seems to work well.

Then there are the things that don’t work so well. Any Mac users of long standing with older applications may find they work unpredictably, or in the case of any code written for PowerPC Macs, that they don’t work at all. This includes some quite high profile applications, including Microsoft Office 2004; if you’re running that particular version of Office (or any older version), you’ll need to weigh up the cost of upgrading the suite as well as Lion.

I’ve also hit a smattering of application and hardware incompatibilities, some of which will hopefully be ironed out sooner rather than later. One of my multifunction printers works for printing, but hangs trying to scan documents, for example. The solution to this, by the way, for any prospective Lion upgraders would be to check with the vendor prior to upgrading for OS X 10.7 compatible drivers. Thankfully for my purposes I can access the scanner from another system.

So does that mark Lion up as a beast that roars, or a whimpering kitty? I’d say that as a new operating system on balance it does fairly well; I’ve certainly seen the same kinds of issues on new versions of Windows when they’ve emerged, with a mix of fixes and applications left by the wayside. It’s certainly worth doing your homework with regards to applications and hardware to ensure it’s compatible before switching over, but at the asking price if those apps aren’t an issue for you, Lion’s something of a bargain.

Take Two Tablets And…?

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been testing out Apple’s new iPad 2 against its most immediate competition, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1v. I should point out before I start this that I’ve been using an iPad (version 1) since Australian launch last year, whereas the Galaxy Tab 10.1v is much more of a newcomer. Android tablets have been available since last year, but the 10.1v is the first model in Australia to use Google’s tablet-specific version of Android, informally known as “Honeycomb”. Make of that potential bias what you will.

Pricing:
iPad 2 16GB: $579/$729
Galaxy Tab 10.1v: $729

The two pricing variants on the iPad2 are there as Apple offers it in both a with and without 3G option; if you see the cheaper iPad2, it’s the one that doesn’t offer mobile broadband, just WiFi. It’s pretty obvious that this is a clearly tied pricing race for comparable tablets, though.

There are catches to both approaches that may not be immediately evident. It’s possible to spend quite a bit more on an iPad2 — up to $949 — but that comes with increased storage capability, up to 64GB, where the 10.1v is a stock, set, unchangeable 16GB. On the flip side, the 10.1v, which is exclusive to Vodafone, is offered by the carrier under contract from as little as $39 a month with data included. From a budgetary perspective, that’s pretty compelling.

Look & Feel: Apple’s whole marketing schtick behind the iPad2 is that it’s slimmer than the original iPad, and this is indeed true; at 8.8mm thick it’s slender and tapered beautifully. The Galaxy Tab 10.1v is by comparison a chunky beast, but this hides something of a hidden advantage. The back of the tablet is textured and gently contoured inwards, making it easy to grip even without a case. By comparison, the iPad2’s back is relatively slippery unless you pop it in a case — at which point the thickness advantage goes away.

Base specifications: iPad2:  Screen: 9.7” 1024×768 Processor: Apple A5 Dual Core 1Ghz Memory: 16GB-64GB Galaxy Tab 10.1v: Screen: 10.1” 1024×768 Processor: Nvidia Tegra 2 Dual Core 1GHz Memory: 16GB  Again it’s pretty neck and neck; the larger screen of the 10.1v and improved resolution are nice, but the fact that it’s a fixed memory size is an oddity in the Android world and sticks out like a sore thumb.
Performance: This is a considerably more subjective thing, and a lot harder to call. There’s no doubt that Honeycomb is a much better version of Android than the previous tablets offered, as the native applications make better use of the screen space, the onscreen navigation is very snappy, the mail client works well and the browser is just that little bit quicker than the iPad2. Using the online Browsermark benchmark, I recorded a score of 88717 for the Galaxy Tab 10.1v compared to 70310 for the iPad2. If your application needs are modest, the Galaxy Tab 10.1v delivers nicely. The problem for Android is that there’s still a dearth of genuine “Honeycomb” applications for Android, and running older Android applications is a very hit and miss affair. Some scale up to the full screen neatly, while others occupy only a tiny area of the screen, or shrink everything down so small as to be useless. Comparatively, the iPad2 not only has a rich array of native applications on offer, but also scales up the vast majority of iPhone applications with only a little bit of pixel chunkiness as a drawback. Honeycomb should improve over time in this regard, but right now it’s not quite there.

Conclusions: The 10.1v is a solid iPad2 competitor, but it’s not quite there yet, and it’s something that Samsung’s all too well aware of. The company has already announced that newer models of the Galaxy Tab 10 will be forthcoming in slimmer frames and possibly with more storage. It’s good to see competition to Apple in this space, but for right now, I’d still say that the richer application infrastructure supporting the iPad2 makes it a better buy. If you’re staunchly anti-Apple for whatever reason, I reckon it’d still be worth saving your money for more Android tablets, and critically more native Honeycomb applications to hit the marketplace.

Smartphones Head To Head

If you’re in the market for a new phone, you’ve got two choices. Buy outright, or pick up a phone on a plan. If you buy a smartphone outright, you’re typically looking at between $500-$1000 out of pocket; there are models that are both cheaper and more expensive than that, but it’s a fair average across the most popular models. That’s why contracts make a fair amount of sense. Not only do you shift the handset cost over a longer term (and potentially gain the ability to write it off against tax rather simply under certain business circumstances — but check with your accountant!), you also get the most generously provisioned rates for calls and data compared to most pre-paid plans on a handset you own yourself.

The problem is, most smartphone contracts cost pretty much the same irrespective of the model of phone you choose. Entry level points are now down around twenty dollars, but those are typically last year’s handsets being rushed out the door while they’ve still got stock. Between fifty to seventy dollars a month can get you the handset of your choice, including cutting edge models. It’s easy enough to test the physical layout of a phone by simply gripping it, but what about on the software side? With so many choices, which smartphone operating system do you go for? Here’s a brief rundown of the most prominent smartphone platforms and their pluses and minuses.

Apple iOS

Representative Handset: iPhone 4

Pluses: The largest applications marketplace for any smartphone, hands-down, which gives iOS a lot more flexibility in what can be done with it, especially in the realm of entertainment applications. The fixed hardware platform — basically just the nearly-obsolete iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 — also means that all apps run optimally across handsets. iOS upgrades are regular and not subject to the approval of the carriers, meaning they’re usually a little faster than on competing platforms.
Minuses: Apple controls the iOS environment with an iron glove, which some folk plain don’t like; certain applications will never be approved for iOS as a result. There’s also no such thing as a “live” iOS application displaying twitter feeds, weather or the like. Everything is icon-based using push.

Android

Representative Handset: HTC Desire HD

Pluses: Google’s “open” smartphone OS is being rapidly picked up by just about every handset maker out there (excluding Apple and Nokia). That gives you a huge choice of handsets and price points, as well as a wide variety of features. Google’s tailored Android applications for its core search and gmail utilities are incredibly slick, and the applications market is growing rapidly. Applications can act as live widgets displaying up-to-date information constantly.
Minuses: The variety of handsets can make some applications behave in unusual ways, especially as application development isn’t a rigidly controlled as it is with Apple or Microsoft. Operating System software upgrades must be carrier approved before you can get them, which can lead to long delays in getting the latest version of Android for your smartphone — if it ever appears at all.

Blackberry OS

Representative Handset: Blackberry Torch

Pluses: Blackberry has long been the smartphone of choice for the business crowd, and its core competencies have remained the strength and speed of its email client, which simply blows the competition away. If you need email quickly (and want, on most Blackberry models, an excellent physical keyboard), the Blackberry is the one to get.
Minuses: Operating system upgrades are once again at the mercy of operators, and some handsets will get stuck over time. The excellent email service is part of a specific paid service, which (depending on the carrier) might not be the most cost-efficient way to get your email. The application library, like the devices themselves are largely productivity oriented, although this has changed slowly as more consumers have taken up the Blackberry brand.

Windows Phone 7

Representative Handset: Samsung Omnia 7

Pluses: Windows Phone 7’s “tiles” arrangement is amongst the simplest smartphone visual layouts of any smartphone platform, making it very easy to pick up and use. Xbox Live integration is built in for the gaming crowd, and the application market, while still quite small, is growing rapidly.
Minuses: There’s a relative dearth of available handset choices, although that’s likely to change with Nokia recently making the shock declaration that it would start building smartphones utilising Windows Phone 7. As yet for the existing models from HTC, LG and Samsung the full operating system upgrade path is quite unclear; even the patches to date have had a rocky history. At the time of writing, Cut & Paste functionality still wasn’t present, despite being promised as “coming soon” when it launched.

For any of these platforms it’s certainly well worth having a test run in a mobile phone shop to see not only which one may suit your needs, but also your style of smartphone use. Some users will prefer the full touchscreen setup of the iPhone or most Android models, while other users may favour the keyboards found on most Blackberry models.

Apple unveils iPad 2. Should you care?

That Apple had a revision of its iPad line of Tablet computers ready to go wasn’t a particular surprise, although the exact details of what they were going to release weren’t known until they announced it late last week. It’s not, despite anything that Apple might say, a revolution in tablet computing, and much more an evolution of the concept, adding a faster processor — a similar step to what you’d see in laptop computers, and even Apple itself did the same thing the week before with its Macbook Pro line — inbuilt cameras for Apple’s Facetime video calling solution and an overall thinner and lighter body.

Sight unseen, I’d have to say that if you’ve already got an iPad, this is a pretty easy iteration to skip. Sure, it’s faster, but the only other major new technology feature is the inbuilt camera, and the utility of these on tablets is questionable at best. It’s also worth noting that last year’s iPads — still very capable machines — are being sold out all across the land at what amounts to fire sale prices. For the capability you get, last year’s iPad at this year’s fire sale prices might just be the tablet bargain of the year.

At the same time as Apple’s unveiling the iPad 2, its competitors are lining up competing tablets at a fair pace. Blackberry has its Playbook due out before the middle of the year, Motorola has the Android-inspired Xoom tablet, Viewsonic has the Viewpad 10s already out on store shelves and Samsung’s taking a bet both ways. There’s an upcoming iteration of its Galaxy Tab Android-based tablet due out in a 10” form factor, similar to the iPad, as well as the 7 Series “Sliding” tablet, which runs full Windows 7. It’s a “Sliding” tablet because behind the screen lies a full keyboard and trackpad, so you can fairly quickly convert it from a straight up touch-based machine to a small notebook. Touch on Windows 7 has been one of those features that’s been baked in from the start, but not all that well set. Most Windows 7 applications simply aren’t built with touch in mind, so while it works, it’s never — to date — worked well. Having had a brief review session with the 7 Series, it might just be the tablet to break this particular curse, with more than a passing effort put into providing it with useful touch-based applications.

If touch-based computing makes sense for you — whether you’re looking at it from a pure consumer web-and-video style “consumption” model, or even as a portable productivity tool — it’s going to be an interesting year. As it stands, Apple’s decision to not radically tinker with the iPad 2 leaves the field quite open to competitors, and it could be worth waiting to see what comes to market, and at what price point before committing yourself.

Macbook Air: Is Thin Enough?

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks testing out Apple’s second take on its ultra-portable laptop concept, the Macbook Air. When Apple launched the first model of the Air, I was somewhat interested by the very thin form factor, but totally taken aback by the price; more than two thousand dollars for a machine that wasn’t, to put it bluntly, even poking at the sides of being cutting edge a couple of years ago.

The Air comfortably fits into the category of what used to be called “ultraportables” right up until the first netbooks hit the scene and radically reinterpreted not only the size of notebook systems but most markedly their pricing. It’s undoubtedly something that’s affected the pricing of the Macbook Air (and many of the competing ultra-thin Windows equivalents), as the new models start at a much more moderate $1,199.

For a system as innately portable as the Air, that’s a pretty good buy, but it’s still not without its catches. The processor still isn’t cutting edge — an ultra-low voltage 1.4GHz or 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo — although the internal storage, which now only comes in solid state drive (SSD) format, is. Solid State Drives contain no moving parts, so they’re rather more durable than traditional hard drives, as well as drawing less power and running much cooler. The catch there is that they’re more costly, and as such, the entry level Macbook Air that I’ve tested comes with a slender 64GB of available storage. An external, older normal USB hard drive would seem like a very sensible choice for any Air purchaser.

The first model of the Air infamously had a single USB port that had to service any external peripherals, including ethernet ports, external drives and adaptors. The new model doubles that number, which at least means you could (for example) use a USB modem and USB storage drive at the same time. Like its predecessor, an optical drive is noticeably absent, although you can install software on a client PC or Mac to share an optical drive to the Air over a network.

I’ve used plenty of netbooks over the past couple of years, and the Air does neatly overpower them in terms of raw processing power. Where it’s technically feasible to, for example, edit a spreadsheet or adjust an image on a netbook, you need plenty of patience, and the Air does manage that a little better. Then again, Netbook prices have continued to tumble over time, so there’s still a fair pricing gap between a standard Netbook and the Air, or for that matter a fatter, more regularly specified PC notebook.

For heavy travellers, the light carrying weight, full sized keyboard and very quiet and relatively cool operation of the Macbook Air make a reasonable buying case. Those on more limited budgets, or who want the even smaller form of a netbook would do well to trawl the online stores, where some of last year’s models can be had for less than $500.

Is Touch Going To Be Enough?

For a very long time, there have been pushes to move computing beyond the confines of the keyboard. The mouse as a computing device actually dates from 1963, but it was the mid 1980s before mice in computing became particularly widespread. In recent years, even the mouse has been updated, improved and worked upon, whether it was the switch from mechanical, ball-based mice to laser-guided devices, or the move from cabled to wireless mice, or even the more oddball mice concepts out there, such as Air Mice that double as 3D pointers.

Mice themselves might become a technological oddity as (if you’ll pardon the rather obvious pun) touch really does take hold. Tablet PCs are the obvious place where touch is most prominent, but it’s not the only “digital” platform; a number of vendors offer PCs and notebooks with inbuilt touch capability, thanks to the fact that Windows 7 natively supports touch based input. To date, I’ve not been thrilled by touch on Windows 7, largely because while it works, there aren’t that many applications that make as much sense within the way that Windows 7 applications are written to use touch rather than a mouse and keyboard. That doesn’t mean a new application can’t use touch sensibly, but at this stage it’s a nice thing for Windows 7 rather than a key feature.

Operating systems that use touch as the basis for everything and are written that way, such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS fare better in this regard, because software developers think of them in those kinds of terms.

Touch still relies on physical contact, and one of the other reasons why I’ve yet to be really wowed by a touch-capable notebook is the physical effort involved in reaching over to the screen. Not that this is an onerous task per se, but simply because on a regular notebook, you’re still reaching right past a perfectly usable keyboard and trackpad to press an onscreen button that could be clicked on instead. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Even that effort might rather rapidly become something rather quaint, however, and via a rather unusual agency: Console gaming. Specifically, Microsoft’s Kinect, an add-on camera for the Xbox 360 console. The Kinect is intended (at this stage) for games, as it allows a gamer to wriggle, jump, box, or do whatever the game commands, and see those movements mapped onto an in-game character. That’s the theory, but it took very little time at all for intrepid hacking types to grab hold of the USB-connected Kinect camera and use its body-mapping technology for all sorts of other purposes on a PC. Interestingly, Microsoft hasn’t jumped on the lawyer-heavy bandwagon to stop this kind of thing, and some press interviews suggest that a Windows version of Kinect might not be that far away. Suddenly, all those cool sci-fi images of people working on virtual floating computer displays that don’t exist at all are very close indeed.

Augmented Reality Makes Reality Easier To Understand

There’s a phrase used in software all to describe a utility that’s so essential, so brilliant, that it simply sells the hardware around it: The Killer Application.

Not as deadly as they sound, it should be pointed out. Windows, in its time, was a killer app. So was the original Netscape browser, so (arguably) was id Software’s Doom. Killer Applications don’t even have to be applications that launch a new idea as much as they refine an existing one, and if you want proof of that, look at Google. When Google launched, there were a plethora of general purpose search engines on offer. These days, if Microsoft wasn’t pouring buckets of money into Bing, there’d only be Google.

One of the big buzzwords that has been labelled as a killer application in recent years has been the concept of Augmented Reality. This is taking a device with an inbuilt camera (typically a smartphone) and often location awareness (usually GPS), and matching the two to enable the screen on the smartphone to display additional information about the location around you. To date, it’s largely been used simple games and for navigation-style applications, such as pointing out where nearby restaurants are, or for interacting with Wikipedia entries for local points of interest. Reasonable stuff, although the number of people actually willing to wander around unfamiliar environments holding an expensive smartphone up to their faces is, not surprisingly, rather low.

I’ve recently been testing out something that could well be the next great killer augmented reality application, even though it’s on a platform that’s very well established: The iPhone. As with all things iPhone, it’s an app, and in this case, it’s a translation application called Word Lens. And as with most killer applications, it’s not really in what it’s doing — which is essentially just crude machine-based single word translation — but in how it melds existing technologies with new ones to achieve its purpose.

The use of software to aid in language translation goes back decades, but until relatively recently it was largely limited in use to those in fixed positions. What Word Lens does is use the iPhone’s camera to capture text, then translate it on the fly and superimpose it over the onscreen display. The end results can be a little shaky depending on how well you’re focusing the camera and whether the font used on the text is easily readable or not, but for basic translations, as long as you’re aware of the essential context of what you’re looking at, it’s surprisingly good. For those with a sense of the impish, it’ll also reverse words or blank them out altogether in the free demo version. For now, it’ll only support English to Spanish or Spanish To English, but apparently other languages are in the works.

Word Lens isn’t the only augmented reality application with utility at its core on the market, even though it’s one with immediate impact for any traveller, especially as it works without an active data connection. Google’s been slowly improving its Google Goggles application (available for Android and iPhone), which uses the same kind of image recognition for immediate searching as well as simple translation via optical character recognition, although its text-handling capabilities are nowhere near as good as that offered by Word Lens.

Where Augmented Reality applications like Word Lens or Google Goggles get it right is by reducing the need to interface with the application down to a few seconds, rather than a constant connection. You’re much more likely to pull out a phone and take a quick snapshot than you are wander around with your phone on prominent display. Equally, by providing a genuinely useful service, such as translation or the display of a quick search to help you understand something, they’ve got the real ability to provide genuine value.

What does 2011 hold for the Tablet?

2010 was, if anything, the year of the Tablet. Apple kicked matters off convincingly unveiling the iPad in January, although it would be a couple of months before anyone could buy an official model locally. Since then, we’ve seen the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and a couple of very low-cost Tablet alternatives from Telstra and Optus, along with a lot of noise about potential models from other manufacturers, but precious little to actually put your hands on.

2011 will see some of these models come to market. I recently attended the launch of Viewsonic’s range of tablets, called (not that inventively), Viewpads. Viewsonic will launch with two models; the Viewpad 7 and Viewpad 10. The 7 inch Viewpad 7 isn’t that dissimilar to the Galaxy Tab; it’s a 7″ Android based tablet running on Android 2.2, and at an RRP of $699, it’s also a fair chunk cheaper. That’s at least partly because it’s a lower specification tablet, with a slower processor, lower resolution screen and less internal storage. My brief initial hands-on suggests it’s a decent enough machine, although the units I tested with were early production samples, and it did show. I suspect there’s a solid enough market for lower-priced Tablets, although it’s still more than the comparable Telstra T-Touch Tab or Optus MyTab, both of which sell for less than three hundred dollars.

The Viewpad 10 is a slightly different critter. At $799, it’s not that much more expensive, and it pops the screen size up to an iPad-competitive ten inches. It’s also dual-boot capable between Android and Windows 7 Home Premium, which at least sounds interesting. To accommodate both operating systems, though, Viewsonic’s limited itself to Android 1.6, which limits the applications that’ll run on the Android side. On the Windows side, while Windows 7 is touch capable, that’s a different thing to being touch optimised. Windows software will run, but not always as you’d expect it to, and often in a way that’s less than ideal, as you struggle with onscreen keyboards and software that just assumes you’ve got a real mouse and keyboard. From my brief hands-on with the ViewPad 10, it also didn’t appear as though you could easily swap data from one boot partition to the other, although again this was an early unit and that might change.

Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry line of smartphones, also have an upcoming tablet product that should be made available here in the first half of 2011. The Playbook’s a WiFi-only tablet, which in itself is an interesting gamble. The idea is that RIM will sell it primarily to existing Blackberry owners, and most Blackberry owners enjoy unlimited Web access via their Blackberry smartphones. Tether a Blackberry to a Playbook, and what need do you have of inbuilt 3G? Other than the lack of 3G, the Playbook certainly sounds like it’s decked out with impressive hardware, including a dual-core processor, two HD cameras and inbuilt Adobe Flash support. Whether the larger, non-Blackberry using market will get all that excited about the PlayBook remains to be seen, especially as the device pricing remains a mystery.

Speaking of mysteries, there’s Apple. The company is famous for not saying anything about upcoming products, but the rumour mills are churning right now with speculation that an iPad 2 (for want of a better name) announcement is likely in early January. It’s taken most of 2010 for competitor tablets to catch up to Apple’s first iPad release. Whether Apple will reinvent the category again, or merely tweak around the edges with a new release will be very interesting to see indeed.

ABC’s iView app spells the death of the couch potato

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recall the mascot of the “Life Be In It’ campaign: Norm. Norm was fat, lazy, and essentially interested only in sitting in front of the TV eating pies and drinking beer. Norm was a character of the seventies, although the Life Be In It organisation that promoted him has stepped away from the Norm character in recent years for fear of emulation. For our own health, we should get up from the couch and get mobile.

A recently released application from the ABC might make the couch potato stereotype an obsolete historical oddity, offering TV in a mobile format. Sure, it’s not exactly a trip to the gym, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and TV addiction is a tough thing to beat.

For years, one of the promises of mobile television has been that it’ll be not only mobile but watchable and engaging, but for years all we’ve had is tiny little grainy screens and high data charges, making mobile TV rather off-putting. Most of the solutions have relied either on heavily compressed data or specific mobile broadcasting solutions that have so far failed to really take off.

ABC’s led the field in IP-based TV solutions with its Web-based iView catchup TV service, and last week launched an iPad version of the iView service. iPhone and Android versions are likely additions, although no timeline is promised. The application itself delivers smooth video playback across the iPad’s screen, and even on a moderate broadband connection I hit no real playback problems. The range of programs is naturally limited to the stuff that the ABC broadcasts, but there’s a wide library to pick from.

Unlike many of the stabs at mobile television of years gone past, the iView service simply uses the same internet protocols as your other internet applications (which is why it’s IPTV), so as long as your net connection stays up, so does your stream of Bananas In Pyjamas, or whatever suits your tastes. IPTV is slowly making its way worldwide as a way to deliver television services, especially as the quality of our internet connections improves. The UK equivalent of the ABC, the BBC, has announced plans to bring its iPlayer (which uses a similar technology platform to iView) to international viewers sometime next year on a subscription basis.

There are some catches for what we’ve got right now. The iView iPad application won’t run over 3G as yet, so you’re still stuck using it only in places where you have WiFi. Like many coffee shops, McDonald’s and your own home or office. Where, the thought strikes me, you’re normally sitting down and not getting all that fit.

Perhaps the couch potato isn’t quite dead yet.

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