We all want the iPhone 4 to come out on Verizon, but do Apple and Verizon want that to happen?

Let’s make these assumptions, based on what I’ve heard and read:

• A sizeable amount of AT&T iPhone users would switch to Verizon if they offered the iPhone.
• A sizeable amount of Verizon Android users would switch to the iPhone if offered by Verizon.
• Android phones are made available to Verizon cheaper than the iPhone is made available to AT&T.

Given that, what incentive is there for either company to grab the iPhone? If Verizon gets the iPhone with a deal similar to AT&T’s, its more lucrative Android users may switch to the less profitable iPhone, causing Verizon to lose money on the deal. On the other hand, a deal more like Motorola’s could cause Apple to lose profits because all its users are switching to a less profitable carrier, which would probably outweigh those on Verizon who buy the phone.

Using this logic, it would be risky for either party to agree to any of this, and that’s why I’m skeptical, though hopeful, that the iPhone will come out on Verizon. I’m hopeful because it would still be great for the customers. What’s great for the customers might not be great for the companies, sadly, and that’s where the skepticism comes in.

That said, I think that even if they decide not to get the iPhone on Verizon, they’d still be in negotiations, or at least let it leak out that they’re negotiating, if only to make the other carriers and manufacturers squirm.

Roughly a couple weeks ago, I decided to do an experiment: full-screen browsing at 125% zoom. After 12 days, here’s my thoughts.

The upsides:

• Cleaner and sharper text that I can read from farther away from the screen.
• It’s easy to concentrate on the browser window when there’s nothing else to look at.

The downsides:

• Images are blurry and less sharp.
• Javascript bugs can occasionally render a page useless.

And the ugly downsides that shouldn’t be happening:

• Safari has no fullscreen mode, though you can add one with Glims.
• Chrome’s fullscreen mode does not let you change the default zoom (you need an extension to handle that), and on pages like Facebook the tab-bar may not slide down like it is supposed to. (I am, however, running the Chrome 6 Beta.)

I did list twice as many downsides as upsides, but as I type this in the browser at 125% I love how the text looks. The Tumblr logo only looks slightly goofy at this zoom level. When I fall back to 100%, everything seems too tiny for me, although I know I was fine with it until the experiment. Now? I find myself growing to like the increased zoom level.

I’m going to try Glims with Safari next, and see how that works out. It would be nice to have a trouble-free full-screen experience, even if it takes a little initial setup. But overall, I’m calling this experiment a success.

I would recommend that my readers try this out. The experience is decidedly not trouble-free, but those willing to take the plunge may find that they love browsing this way.

UPDATE: I’ve just run Safari with Glims, and it’s missing these key features in fullscreen mode:

• The tab bar and other nearby bars do not autohide on full screen mode. The OSX menu bar does, but when you’re using Safari on the secondary monitor on a dual-monitor setup this only causes more problems.
• Safari is just like Chrome when it comes to setting a permanent zoom. Unfortunately, I don’t think Safari extensions have been around long enough to have an autozoom fix available. You can change the default font in Safari preferences, but text-zoom and browser zoom do not work identically, unless things have changed since the IE6 days when text-zoom was the only zoom available.

So, I’m pretty sure that Google Chrome remains the best full screen browsing experience on the Mac. Too bad it isn’t wonderful out of the box.

Imagine your desktop screen was a large multitouch touchscreen, and the computer driving it was powered by iOS or Android, optimized for the desktop. You have no mouse, but you have a hardware keyboard. For things like Photoshop, you have a pen that you can use on the screen for more precise work.

Also, for the sake of argument, assume that all your favorite applications were ported over to a desktop version of iOS/Android.

Now, here’s the question: are there any things that you use your computer for that you could not use this imaginary iOS/Android desktop for?

I don’t expect the answer would be zero, but I’ll bet the answer isn’t a lot.

I mainly use my computer to play games, check email/rss/Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr, do IM chat, write HTML, create images & print layouts in Adobe CS5, browse the web, and listen to music. Given that somebody ported Adobe Creative Suite to iOS and made a good code editor for it too, the only hurdle for me would be the lack of a decent filesystem. I could replace my computer with this imaginary iOS machine.

Granted, for someone like me, there wouldn’t be many obvious advantages. But the intuitive UI and raw speed of iOS are things that people love. It’s something that Windows and even OSX don’t have, and you have to wonder if iOS on the desktop isn’t such a bad idea.

I’ve switched browsers yet again, this time to the Chrome Beta on the Mac. The thing I really like about it: a very usable full-screen view. With a dual-monitor setup, I can use one display just for browsing, and remove all the needless UI elements. If I need the monitor for something, I simply use Spaces to clear it off the screen and pull up another window.

This means that I have a 1600x900 browser window, however, and that’s a bit much for efficient use. So, I decided to do a little experiment: I’ve bumped up the zoom from 100% to 125% in Chrome.

It’s not really necessary - I have no problem reading text at a normal size - but doing this adds detail to vector elements on each site, such as the text and lines and shapes. This has tradeoffs, though: images are blurry, and I’ve noticed navigation issues with some sites like Amazon.com when zoomed in.

The goal of the experiment is to find out if those advantages are worth the tradeoffs, given a good-sized screen. I’m gonna try it out for a few weeks and report back on what I’ve learned. Here’s a few discoveries, however:

• Daring Fireball is one of the few sites I’ve seen where the images are high-res by default - in this case, the logo image is at least twice as big as it is rendered at 100% zoom. There is no noticeable degradation apart from the sidebar ad image.

• Tumblr seems to work pretty well - though there are a lot more images, I suspect that many elements use CSS border-radius for rounded corners, and most of the site looks quite good at higher zoom settings.

• On sites such as the New York Times that have a ton of small links piled on each other, a higher zoom setting makes them more comfortable to use and read.

• Google Chrome requires an extension to maintain zooming - there’s no option in Chrome to set a standard zoom. This is still better than Safari, though, where there’s no full-screen option at all without editing its .plist file.

• Ars Technica has its footer embedded in an iframe in its HTML, which in Chrome cancels out the zoom and leaves the page with an awkward structure. If I see this bug more often, it’ll probably be enough to convince me to bring the zoom back down. This is the most serious issue I’ve seen unless photo clarity is a deal-breaker for you.

That’s what I’ve found out so far, and I’m liking it. What do you guys think? Got any questions about zoomed browsing for me?

Twitter is launching official Tweet buttons for your websites!

A little disclaimer: At time of post, there’s no official announcement from Twitter itself about these buttons, so Twitter could theoretically yank this. Also, the Mashable article I linked to above says that the ability to retweet does not work for all users, though I have no issues with it so I can’t verify that this is the case.

These are really nice buttons that I’ve already implemented on my website. I’ve taken the code I used on my Tumblr blog and posted it below for you to use on your own Tumblelog:

<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<div>
<a href="http://twitter.com/share" 
    class="twitter-share-button"
    data-url="{ShortURL}"
    data-via="@jimcloudman"
    data-text="{Title}:"
    data-related="{block:Tags}{Tag},{/block:Tags}"
    data-count="horizontal">Tweet
</a>
</div>

Just stick this right below the {body}, {quote}, {description} or {caption} in your Tumblr theme code blocks to place this button right below your content. Remember to change the via= to your own username, or I’ll be getting a lot of retweets for articles I didn’t write!