I’m not so sure that the smart phone battle between Google and Apple isn’t exactly like the Windows vs. Mac battle of the 1990s. Jason D. O’Grady in ZDNet points out a number of distinct differences:

1. App Store: Apple has four times the number of apps as Google’s Android (many of higher quality and capability). Selection rules.
2. Customer Service: Apple has it, Google doesn’t.
3. Consistency: The iPhone OS is pretty much identical on every device. Not so with Android devices.
4. Fragmentation: Apps distributed in the App Store behave pretty much the same across all iDevices. Performance will differ between models, but most apps will run on all devices.
5. Software Updates: Apple releases its iPhone OS updates simultaneously for all devices, Android, not so much.
6. Copy & Paste: Apple took forever to deliver it, but it works really well. Android has had it forever but it’s a kludge…
7. Media Player: Apple’s built-in iPod app beats Android’s Music app handily
8. Ease of Use: The iPhone “just works” for most people, Android is a little less seamless and can be more daunting to novice users.
9. Unified Inbox: Coming in iPhone 4.0. Android has separate apps for Gmail and Mail. Fail.
10. Skype: Skype for Android only works on Verizon devices, and doesn’t work on WiFi.

In the end, Google vs. Apple isn’t quite the same as Windows vs. Mac. Yet.

Europe’s financial instability seems to have infected Wall Street. From WSJ Online:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 225.06 points, or 2%, to 10926.77, its worst daily decline in both point and percentage terms since Feb. 4. The decline also represented the Dow’s fourth straight triple-digit point move, underscoring that volatility is returning after a long stretch of trading that had been defined by modest daily moves and light volume.

This will get worse before it gets better.

In another sign of the changes in Microsoft’s fortunes, the popular Internet Explorer browser, once boasting 95-percent market share, is now below 60-percent and falling quickly. NetMarketShare:

Microsoft’s browser dropped to 59.95 percent of web use in April after Google Chrome leapt half a point ahead to 6.73 percent in the same timeframe. Firefox and Safari also ate into Internet Explorer’s share with small gains that put them at 24.59 percent and 4.72 percent each.

Change is good. Good change is better.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt in Fortune:

If you buy the digital editions of Popular Science or TIME Magazine on the iPad, they cost $4.99 each — same as on the newsstand. However, one-year subscriptions to Popular Science (the paper magazine) are currently selling for $12 — or $1 an issue. And TIME subscriptions can be had for $20 — around 35¢ an issue.

Why the disparity? And, why so much money for a digital version vs. a paper version?

Because that’s what the market will bear — at least for now

With all the verbal sparring between Apple and Adobe regarding Flash videos, one important statistic floated quietly to the top. Most videos on the internet don’t use Flash’s proprietary codec. Most videos are the open standard H.264. Erick Schonfeld in TechCrunch:

So how much video exactly is available in H.264? The H.264 format went from 31 percent of all videos to 66 percent, and is now the largest format by far. Meanwhile, Flash is represented by Flash VP6 and FLV, which combined represent only 26 percent of all videos. That is down from a combined total of 69 percent four quarters ago. So the native Flash codecs and H.264 have completely flipped in terms of market share (Flash also supports H.264, however, but you don’t need a Flash player to watch H.264 videos).

Goodbye, Flash.

Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce in Fortune:

As we try to keep pace with these changes to a new computing industry, we are left with only two choices: innovate or die. Microsoft like DEC before it, and IBM before it, tried too long to hold on to its Windows model believing it was permanent in an industry of impermanence. But it didn’t work out that way. Google outsmarted Microsoft into the Internet, and it dominated the next Internet paradigm. Now Apple is the clear winner in the new mobile paradigm.

The only constant is change.

Dan Frommer in Forbes:

HP wants what Apple has: One operating system, which it completely controls, at the heart of all of its consumer electronics—phones, tablets, lightweight PCs, perhaps music players, digital cameras, televisions, etc. And HP doesn’t want to have to license it from Microsoft anymore, always having to wait for Redmond to make a move before HP can.

Why will HP’s move to Palm’s webOS fail?

The problem is that WebOS, despite its nice user interface and some nice technical qualities, is a failed platform. Consumers haven’t found a need to buy Palm devices instead of Apple or Android devices.

The result of most successful plans hinge on execution, not strategy. It’s a crowded field of OS wannabes, not completely unlike the CP/M and DOS days of the early 1980s.

In another sign that HP gets it and realizes that Microsoft’s tablet efforts, after 10 years of failures, won’t lead the company to compete against the iPad:

HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

This is about Palm’s webOS. Why not just use Android, Google’s free operating system for smart phones and tablets? HP doesn’t want to make the same mistake it made by hitching itself to Microsoft’s Windows. Differentiation is a key factor in products. If every product runs Windows, how are the products different? If every tablet and smart phone runs Android, how are the products different?

Apple’s products—Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod—are different, in many respects better than competitors, so Apple can charge a premium. With PCs and Windows, HP cannot differentiate their product line. They won’t make that mistake again.

Did Apple just get into the search business? Dan Fommer in Business Insider on Apple’s purchase of Siri, a mobile assistant app maker:

Basically, you type stuff into your phone, and it connects to APIs across the Web to bring you a result. Sure sounds like search. (Without having to scrape and index the web, build a formal search engine, etc.)

Apple vs. Google.

In another episode of The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Apple nemesis Microsoft says Google infringes their patents in HTC’s Android smart phone. Ina Fried in CNET:

Microsoft and HTC announced they have inked a new patent deal that specifically provides the Taiwanese cell phone maker with the right to use Microsoft’s patented technologies in phones running Google’s Android operating system.

HTC was sued by Apple for infringing on patents.