Well, we’re into day three and a half of the Chrome experience. And as the initial excitement dies down, we’re starting to notice a few niggles – plus some nice little features that aren’t immediately obvious.

Thankfully, most of our problems are minor bugs, which will hopefully be fixed in short order, either by Google or by website developers. For example, the button for switching between the old and new Facebook interfaces doesn’t currently work in Chrome. And despite its multi-process cleverness, the whole thing grinds to a halt when it tries to launch Adobe Reader (though in fairness, what doesn’t?). (more…)

The constantly-evolving nature of technology is, for me, a source of endless fascination — and frequent amusement when it catches us off guard.

Just last night, our own Dear Leader was on the radio talking about Microsoft’s latest salvo in the browser wars. This morning, the battlefield has changed completely, thanks to the surprise arrival of Google Chrome.

To be precise, Chrome isn’t here quite yet: the beta is due out later today. For now, I’ve had to content myself with reading the product notes, which Google has oddly elected to release in cartoon form. Cute, but hardly practical.

Still, it looks like a lot of good ideas have gone into Chrome, and there’s one idea that excites me in particular:

As I say, we’re still waiting for the beta, so we don’t yet know how this works in practice. But running each tab, and each extension, as an independent process should, in theory, enable Chrome to make very effective use of multiple CPU cores.

Thus, not only is Google set to shake up the browser wars; it could actually make “cloud” computing as stable, efficient and responsive as local software – or more so in many scenarios. That would set the scene for a revolution in our very model of personal computing.

Of course, for now this is all just speculation. But even without seeing the software, I can confidently say this much: Google hasn’t lost its knack for disrupting the market.

I admit, I was among the first to scoff.

When Intel declared, a year or so back, that the next big thing in technology would be mobile internet devices – or “MIDs”, as they’ve inevitably become known – I wasn’t having any of it.

I mean, I already have a phone for on-the-go communications and web browsing. And I already have a laptop for running “proper” applications. I simply didn’t see what I could do with a MID that I couldn’t already do – better – with my existing devices.

And it seemed Intel didn’t really know either. The MID homepage they put up was packed with buzzwords but distinctly light on killer reasons for choosing a MID over an existing device. MIDs didn’t look like an imminent revolution, more like a marketing concept that accidentally got made. They certainly didn’t look ready to go up against the likes of the iPhone and the Eee PC. (more…)

This week in the office we’ve been talking a lot about Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment. In case you missed it, this is Redmond’s new attempt to dispel negative perceptions of Vista. The central claim is that “people would like Vista if they could only see it for themselves.”

And, in fairness, the experiment does show that people do like Vista, so long as they can only see it. There’s no indication of how they feel once they actually start using it, which is probably for the best. (more…)

1. The fact I have to use it at all
In the normal, grown-up world, there are standards for things like MP3 players. That’s why every MP3 player I’ve owned in the past five years has worked, right out of the box, with both the manufacturer’s own library software and Windows Media Player. Every MP3 player, that is, apart from the one built into my iPhone.

2. Its high-handed approach to my system resources
iTunes is a program for managing your music files. All right, it does other things too (though I’d prefer it not to), but there’s absolutely no need for it to be running all the time. So why does it need to secretly install services and startup items? (more…)

Bad news from AMD this morning: a quarterly loss of $1.2B. That’s rather worse than last quarter’s losses of $360M, and it’s led to the departure of CEO Hector Ruiz.

It’s a shame, but really not that surprising. AMD has some great products, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. In fact, its behaviour in general hasn’t made a lot of sense lately. (more…)

Before the iPhone 3G came out, I was telling anyone who’d listen that I thought it would change the smartphone game. I reckoned it would finally make internet access via mobile phone a mass-market norm - rather than a geeky proof of concept, as it tends to be with other smartphones.

It’s not just that the iPhone actually makes the internet pretty usable on a pocket device. That’s certainly a big part of the formula; but for me, the coup de grâce is that, in the UK at least, it comes with a simple, standard unlimited data package.

That means you don’t need to ration your mobile internet usage. You can use the web the same way you use it at home – for looking around, for trying things out, for exploring. For browsing. (more…)

What on earth is going on with iPhone supplies? Earlier in the week, O2 revealed that some 200,000 people had signed up online to register interest in an iPhone – and apologetically announced that “Apple can only supply us with a small proportion of that number to start with.”

Indeed, supply is apparently so far short of demand that the company can now say nothing more encouraging than “we are confident that all customers who want an iPhone 3G will get one by the end of this summer.”

Yet at the same time, Apple stores are somehow flooded with the things. An employee at the Regent Street branch confirmed to our reporter that there was no stock shortage in the company’s own stores. “Hey, we’re Apple,” he boasted: “what do you expect?” (more…)

I bought an iPhone this morning. I awoke to an email saying they’d start taking orders at 8AM, and not much after that the deed was done.

I admit, perhaps I’m being a little over-eager here. After all, none of us has actually yet tried out the new 3G iPhone. And there was no need to pre-order the original iPhone – indeed, it ended up undershooting sales projections.

But I think things are different this time around.

Back in November, when the first iPhone was launched, people liked what they saw, but few were genuinely motivated to migrate. It was certainly a very pretty and usable handset, but it was hard to see a knockout argument for jumping on board – especially with the original 8GB base model coming in at £269 plus an eighteen-month contract. (more…)

I tried out a TomTom for the first time at the weekend. I realise I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, but like many Londoners I don’t own a car (that’s my girlfriend’s Clio in the picture), and there doesn’t yet seem to be a bike-friendly GPS system that has all the bells and whistles I’d want.

The device actually did a lot more than I’d expected. Naturally, it directed me to my destination, but it also provided a handy reminder of local speed limits, and beeped alarmingly whenever I approached a speed camera. It also unnerved me a few times by mistaking bends in the road for turnings, but mostly it was a very positive experience.

But there was one feature that really freaked me out: the ETA display. (more…)