Hasta La Gadget!

Currently, there are plenty of Android tablets. The problem is the lack of tablet apps. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Despite the flood of tablet debuts this year, Google’s Android slates aren’t taking off. It’s not the hardware — in part, it’s the lack of tablet-optimized apps.

Google wants that to change.

Beginning Tuesday, Google is hosting a series of workshops tailored specifically for programmers who want to bring their apps to Android tablets. Dubbed Android Developer Labs, or ADLs, Google will host the one-day workshops in three different cities in the United States, as well as one in Bangalore, India.

“It’s specifically aimed at optimizing Android apps for tablets,” wrote Android developer Tim Bray on Tuesday in a blog post. “In particular, creating high-quality tablet apps with an emphasis on polish and user-experience.”

Google’s app workshop is one of many recent efforts to rally support for the mobile platform. Last Friday, Google rolled out a new version of its search engine optimized specifically for tablets, mainly focusing on user interface tweaks focused on adapting to the tablet form factor. Google has also attempted to make the Android Market more user friendly, rolling out major site changes — which include a revamped interface and the inclusion of featured app categories — over the past few months.

While aesthetic changes may help to spurn a customer-friendly app environment, there’s still hardly any tablet-specific apps in the market. At last count, only 292 tablet-optimized apps were available for Android Honeycomb users, according to mobile enthusiast site AndroidCentral. Apple’s App Store boasts over 100,000 iPad-specific apps.

There’s at least some explanation for this: Some developers say that when taking screen size into account, iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone are easier to develop apps for.

“In terms of layout, iOS is pixel perfect,” said Jake Mintz, co-founder of Bump technologies, at Tech Crunch’s mobile conference last Friday. Essentially, Mintz speaks to the fixed ratios of Apple products: While there’s only a handful of devices offered by Apple, there are over 400 different Android phones and tablets currently on the market. “On Android,” Mintz says, “you end up needing to design on multiple screens and multiple layouts.”

This may change, however, with the next software version release of Android codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich. Though details on how this might happen are scant, some at Google have given hints of what we should expect.

“We’re trying to make one-size-fits-all, and there are different products for different needs,” Director of Android user experience Matias Duarte told Wired.com. “Ice Cream Sandwich gives you a lot of tools to help build one app that works more seamlessly across a variety of screen sizes and different form factors.”

Regardless of what happens with its software in the future, for now Google’s proposed workshops aim for quality first, quantity second. While anyone can register for the tablet-centric workshops, space is limited at the events, with priority given to those developers whose Android applications have “the potential to be a top-tier tablet app.”Though it’s not clear what that entails, it’s apparent Google doesn’t want to populate its application store with shoddy merchandise for the sake of filling online shelf space.

Google’s list of dates and cities in which the workshops will be hosted can be found here.

Samsung's first Galaxy S smartphone was the company's most successful Android device. Until, that is, the release of the Galaxy S2. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Samsung has its sights on being the king of all things Android.

The company announced Wednesday that its Galaxy S 2 smartphone reached record sales numbers for the company, with more than 5 million handsets sold in the first three months since the smartphone’s debut. And that number accounts for only a quarter of the company’s total smartphone sales over the past three months.

“[Samsung is] claiming that they shipped 19 million smartphones in the second quarter,” IDC mobile analyst Al Hilwa told Wired.com in a statement. “That is a great number of devices, and assuming that most of them are Android phones, then it is a feat for Android.”

The numbers are only going up from here. Thus far, the Galaxy S2’s release has been limited to South Korea (where Samsung’s global HQ is located), parts of southeast Asia and a handful of European countries. The phone’s U.S. release is slated for some time in August, according to Samsung president of mobile business and digital imaging Shin Jong-kyun. The news was first reported by Korean news agency Yonhap.

“In just a few months the Galaxy S II has led the way in driving Samsung’s unmatched performance in the smartphone industry” Shin said in a statement. “This reflects the strong support from carrier partners globally, who in choosing the Galaxy S II as their flagship device have reaffirmed the device’s status as a premium, market-defining Smartphone.”

A little perspective: Samsung’s first highly popular smartphone, the Galaxy S, hit the five million mark at around four months, with the lion’s share of those sales occurring in the United States. And after six months of global sales, the Galaxy S hit 10 million units sold.

Compare that to Motorola’s Droid One smartphone — once considered the most successful Android phone — which sold 1.05 million devices in the first 74 days of release. Since its first major successful Android phone, Motorola has strived for another hit device. The Atrix– the smartphone-cum-laptop hybrid device which Motorola first introduced in January — looked to be the company’s next hit phone. But high prices for the accompanying peripheral hardware that made the phone unique deterred customers, keeping the Atrix from gaining any significant following.

“Device makers have always craved being platform owners,” Hilwa told Wired.com, “which is why they end up developing as much software and tinkering with the UI’s, so that they can move up the food chain.”

And that’s exactly what Samsung is doing. The company plans to unveil a major revamp of its TouchWiz user interface at an event in New York next week. It’s a timely release, considering Apple’s iOS 5 revamp announcement just over a month ago.

Aside from competing for customers with rival Android manufacturers, Samsung is fighting battles on other fronts. Apple is currently suing Samsung in a bitter ongoing patent dispute, claiming the South Korean company is ripping off Apple’s product designs. Samsung quickly filed countersuits against Apple, claiming Apple was encroaching on Samsung’s intellectual property by using a method to improve connections between cell phones and cellular towers.

Samsung’s battles with Apple extend outside of the courtroom, of course. When measured against Apple’s iPhone sales, Samsung’s numbers pale in comparison. Apple sold over 20 million iPhone 4 smartphones in the past three months alone, according to the Cupertino-based company’s last earnings report. That’s over 100 million iPhones sold to date.

A straight apples-to-apples comparison (so to speak) is misleading. Samsung isn’t just competing against Apple and its iOS platform. As one of many manufacturers producing hardware running the same operating system, customers can choose between Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson and others to get their Android fix. That’s not to mention the other competitors in the space like RIM, HP and Nokia, though the latter two admittedly have a negligible market share.

If Samsung continues to pull ahead of other Android devices in the pack, the company seems to be the only true competitor to Apple’s skyrocketing smartphone success. In the first quarter of 2011, Samsung accounted for 13 percent of all smartphones sold globally, up from just three percent during the same period of time the previous year. That’s more than any other Android manufacturer, according to IMS Research. It’s important to note that rival manufacturer HTC isn’t far behind, however: The Taiwan-based company is just three percent behind Samsung in market share, according to IMS.

There’s also competition on the tablet device front, where Samsung may be putting out some of the best hardware. DisplayMate president Dr. Raymond Soneira recently compared five of the leading tablet devices on the market — four of which were Android-based, with the last being the iPad 2. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 came out ahead, touting the best display out of all five devices, including Apple’s (though it should be noted that Soneira found Samsung’s colors oversaturated to a noticeable degree).

The devices themselves, however, are just one part of the overall package. “Samsung has done a great job on making compelling hardware, the look, feel and capabilities,” Gartner mobile analyst Phillip Redman told Wired.com in an interview. “But the total ecosystem is not in its hands like it is Apple’s. It really isn’t just about the hardware. That’s important—but it’s the ecosystem that includes the OS, the application stores, the developers, content—all of that that will make something successful.”

Apple certainly has a leg up on its competitors in the overall ecosystem. The company has approved over half a million apps for its App Store as of May, double the amount currently found on the Android Market. And of course, Apple owns its software, hardware and retail stores. The company also keeps strict control over its app ecosystem, with final say on what is and isn’t acceptable for its store.

So even if Samsung can corner the Android landscape, can it stand up to Apple, a company which seems to have the entire package going for it?

“Samsung and Motorola Mobility will be great competitors to Apple,” Redman says, “but they aren’t of the same leadership caliber, position and vision.”

Look forward to many hours of frustration with Lion's Launchpad

Both of the new Macs that Apple shipped today come with the latest version of OS X: 10.7 Lion. The update brings many new features, as you’d expect of a new operating system, but there are some fundamental changes both to the user experience itself, and the way Apple has chosen to deliver the new OS. One — the lack of any physical install media — is both convenient and annoying. The other — adopting UI metaphors from the touch-only iOS — is likely to appeal to new users and upset old ones.

Download Only

The very first thing that is impossible to ignore is that Lion only exists in the ether. There are not, nor will there be, physical media carrying the installer. Instead, you have to either buy a new Mac with Lion pre-installed, or download the 3.5GB installer from the Mac App Store. [UPDATE 2011-07-21 09:49:45. Apple will sell a Lion USB thumb drive for $70, starting in August. It will still be a lot cheaper to make your own]

There are ways to make this file into bootable USB sticks and DVDs, but that’s for the nerds and sysadmins who want to install on multiple machines. For the regular customer, the installer disk is dead.

And what happens if your computer goes belly-up? Is there a recovery disk in the box? Nope. Apple gets around this by partitioning the boot drive and putting a utility called Lion Recovery onto it. When you have trouble, press Command-R when you start up and you’ll be booted into recovery mode. From there you can repair the disk, reinstall Lion or restore from a Time Machine backup.

I know what you’re thinking. What if the drive is completely dead? How do I rescue my Mac then? Well, the news is good and bad. The good is that, even if you slot in a brand-new, bare hard drive, the Mac will boot into “Internet Recovery” mode. This connects to Apple’s servers and grabs a copy of Lion Recovery, and you go from there. This works thanks to firmware installed on Lion-capable Macs bought from now on.

The bad news is that you need an Internet connection to do it, and we all know that hard drives always fail at the most inconvenient moment. The worse news is that, even if you have an Internet connection, it’s going to take a long time to download that 3.5GB installer file.

It Looks Like iOS

The other big change is the look of the OS. Apple titled it’s introduction of Lion “Back to the Mac,” signaling that many new discoveries made in iOS are being folded back into the Mac mix. Thus you’ll find Launchpad, which turns even the giant 27-inch screen of the iMac into an icon-infested home screen. Just like on your iPhone, only way harder to use.

You also get full-screen mode, allowing you to concentrate on one app at a time, again like iOS. Windows users will chuckle at this “new” feature — Microsoft’s OS defaults to full-screen windows, but it is great for certain kinds of app — photo and video editors for example. Our own Brian X Chen praises it in his Lion review, but I’m not sure how useful it will be for a blogger’s simultaneous, multi-window needs.

There are plenty of other tweaks, from Resume (which lets an app pick up where it left off last time you quit it) to Autosave, which does what you’d expect. For more details, check out Brian’s review. And if you’re not sure if your favorite apps will be compatible with Lion, check out this rather handy wiki from Roaring Apps to find out.

Lion is available now in the Mac App store for $30.

Lion Features [Apple]

Off with his head! Serial blinkers are no longer a problem with Photoshop Elements 9

Grab your coats: Hell has just frozen over. Or rather, Photoshop has come to the Mac App Store. For $80, you can now download Photoshop Elements 9 from the App Store.

Ever since the Mac Store was announced, there have been two standout examples of apps that would “never” be sold through Apple’s strictly-controlled channel. The first is Microsoft’s Office suite. The second was Photoshop. The reasons? Price and compatibility.

The thinking goes that Adobe and Microsoft wouldn’t want to give 30% of the revenue of their flagship products to Apple. The second, and more sensible reason is that these monster applications would never be accepted into the Store thanks to their deep and “illegal” ties into OS X.

Elements isn’t the full Photoshop, to be sure, and is clearly compatible with Apple’s rules (either that or Apple has bent them). More interesting is the price. The full Elements 9 costs $100, making the App Store version cheaper. It is missing the Adobe Elements Organizer, but as Elements is designed to complement apps like iPhoto, this is probably a good thing.

Elements is like a power editor for your snaps. You can tweak the basics, but the gimmick is that you get to use Adobe’s fancy-pants image processing features. You can paint out mistakes with a brush that uses Content Aware Fill to fill in the gaps. You can make panoramas. You can even switch in people from various group shots to get one picture with everyone looking good.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is available now for $80, the same price as Apple’s Aperture.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 [Mac App Store]

See Also:

• Photoshop Crashes onto iPad
• Hands-On Review: Pixelmator, a 'Photoshop Lite' for Mac Shutterbugs