Get ready to throw out that WAP browser on your mobile phone (if you haven’t already). The iPhone, with its fully-functioning Safari browser, showed us that mobile browsing need not be a compromise. Now, the folks at Mozilla are working on a mobile version of Firefox.
A Firefox Web browser already exists for the Nokia N800, but this effort will expand Firefox’s mobile reach to many more handsets, especially as they come standard with more memory. (64 MB of DRAM seems to be the minimum that will be required). Mobile Firefox won’t be available until next year, at the earliest. But just as on the desktop, it will be an open platform on top of which anyone can build add-on applications. And that’s good news for mobile computing.
The decision to throw Firefox into the mobile ring is just one more piece of evidence for something that is becoming increasingly clear: The phone is the computer.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Firefox for the Macintosh. I don’t use a lot of plug-ins, in any case, but the user interface feels kludgey and Windows-like to me. Even so, I love this turn of events, particularly if developers continue to have problems delivering pages to Safari. In the long run, I want to control my world from my phone. (In the long-long-run, I want my phone to be mounted at the occipital bone in my skull, with the display hanging in virtual space about nine inches in front of my eyes.) Having robust browser power on smartphones is one more step in my direction.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Daniel Rothamel says:
Firefox on my phone would be SWEET. I already love it on my Mac.
October 10, 2007 — 11:25 am
Mike Price says:
Greg,
You already know what a huge fan I am of all things Apple, but when it comes to Safari, I have to be honest…It’s exasperating at best. It’s hard enough to deal with the problems of coding for IE on the PC…Safari is even worse. It’s a real drain on time and resources. I really would like to see Safari take it’s place in the browser landscape, but until Apple steps up and starts covering some real basics, it will remain an also ran in a crowded field.
October 10, 2007 — 12:28 pm
Jeff Brown says:
Greg – Not being a house agent, I’m not sure if I’m imputing too much importance on this. Being an avid Mac user, i gotta know.
Why would any house agent go gaga over an iPhone, WHEN IT CAN’T ACCESS THE DAMN MLS?
If they’re getting it for another reason, ok, the phone’s cool. For business though – and it can’t access your main product?
What’s next a car with the best drive train ever, but no starter?
October 11, 2007 — 11:56 pm
Greg Swann says:
See my post later this morning. Next July, smartphones will access the MLS in Phoenix.
(Q: What’s the difference between gloating and exultation? A: Vocabulary.)
October 12, 2007 — 6:55 am