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Read a book. It costs less and lasts longer.

(I realize that this is completely uncalled for, but it's the first thing that came to mind, sorry...)

I wouldn't say what you said is rude - its right on the mark. The last thing the brain needs is over stimulation after a long day. I second a book as well. I remember when I was on the train going into Wellington; coffee in one hand, news paper in the other - nice and relaxed trip in (whilst the sheeple were stuck in their cars).

Back ontopic, one viewed the 'prohibition of native applications' at the beginning as 'Apple being evil' - has anyone thought that they didn't offer the capability because they couldn't guarantee interface stability, there were no tools, and that they wanted to create an ecosystem that was 'done right' rather than a hack fest of additions.

Books are so boring!

I no longer have the attention span for them unfortunately...

To each his own, I guess!

I would go to your local GP and get him to prescibe some ADD meds.

Get some audiobooks with a good narrator, those can make a good story come alive and keep you interested. I just finished "American Gods" by Gaiman it made me wish my commute was a half hour longer sometimes :-)

Edited 2007-10-18 16:04 UTC

and I need to pass some time while on the subway.

...and after trying to surf the web on that P.O.S AT&T network you have to connect to. That, in and of itself, is reason enough to throw it against the wall.

My condolences.

It works quite reasonably depending on where you are. In midtown atlanta I've certainly found the network to be fast enough for casual browsing. Hardware-wise/software, I have yet to see anything that touches the iPhone. Browsing on any Palm platform sucks, and I have yet to see a Pocket PC device that didn't make me WinCE...

Couldn't agree with you more?

and I have yet to see a Pocket PC device that didn't make me WinCE...

Nice one.

I've used lots of Windows Mobile platforms, and it just seems that Microsoft is hell-bent on trying to prove that the start menu and transplanting Windows from a PC on to a mobile is the way to do things.

In all fairness, hers didn't really get hacked, it was a combination of someone knowing a) her phone number, and b) guessing that her password was the name of her dog or something stupid like that and thus managing to log into her account on the web, which has access to all her SK's data. Can't really protect against stupidity.

That doesn't really wash with me. Everyone in IT these days have used mobile phones of years and there is plenty of examples to to use as case studies when developing new ideas. It's not like they're developing NASA technology - phones have been a tried and tested technology for year.



They've also had it relatively easy having a *nix framework and not being as high profile target as Windows (on the desktop) or UNIX/Linux (Servers)

That doesn't really wash with me. Everyone in IT these days have used mobile phones of years and there is plenty of examples to to use as case studies when developing new ideas.

Existing smartphones have had almost no impact outside the business market, at least in the US. You don't see teenagers walking around with Treos and Windows Mobile phones. The iPhone is aimed at a fundamentally different market than those smartphones. Those phones started out as PDAs, with added phone functionality. As such, those phones became popular with people who already owned PDAs --- business users. They retained programability, which was a vital part of the original appeal of PDAs. The iPhone starts from the iPod, and adds phone and web browsing functionality. It's target market, at least for now, is obviously general consumers. It's certainly not obvious that programmability is a vital feature for that market --- certainly, being closed hasn't hurt the iPods popularity much.

Edited 2007-10-18 07:38

That's completely besides the point where the origins of smart phones are because they've already evolved beyond the confines of their original target.

The fact of the matter is the technology (regardless of where its roots begun) is not new technology. It's been tried and tested many many times.

All the rest if just marketing and packaging the device to appeal to your target.

That's completely besides the point where the origins of smart phones are because they've already evolved beyond the confines of their original target.

I think your view of what a smartphone does is valid, but it's not what Apple is looking at. They're trying to build an iPod with phone capabilities. Add in web browsing, calendar, and a game or two and you've covered everything my non-smartphone does, but the iPhone does it wildly better. That's what J. Random Consumer wants, smartphone users are a different breed.

That's completely besides the point where the origins of smart phones are because they've already evolved beyond the confines of their original target.

No, they haven't. In the US (where Nokia and Sony phones have almost no impact), there is no other smartphone that's playing in the iPhones market. Treos, WM devices, and Blackberrys are complete non-starters there.

The fact of the matter is the technology (regardless of where its roots begun) is not new technology. It's been tried and tested many many times.

In the computer market, the technology is almost never the hard part. Productization and marketing are the hard parts. The technology of the iPhone is pretty stock (ARM processor and big touch-screen, geez, we've had those since the Newton!) The trick is to turn that technology into a product that your market will actually buy. So far, Palm, Samsung, etc, have not been able to make a smartphone that appeals to the iPod crowd. Apple has.

Getting back to the SDK issue --- the hard part of integrating one isn't the technology. After all, the iPhone had to have an SDK From day one --- people had to write the apps for it somehow! The trick is figuring out how to integrate custom programs into what is otherwise very much an appliance-style product. How do you manage applications? How do you launch custom ones? How do you preserve UI integration? The existing solutions make sense for PalmOS and WM smartphones, which are basically PDAs with phone capability, but downloading installers manually from websites and dealing with an "add/remove" programs applet isn't going to hack it for the iPod crowd. Moreover, apps that happily crash your machine are something that Palm users have learned to deal with (I've owned a couple of Palms myself), but again, it's not something that's going to hack it with the iPod crowd.

I think iTunes gives Apple quite a leg-up here. Unlike ActiveSync and Palm Desktop, iTunes is, well, not a piece of shit, and actually has a large userbase. If Apple can make downloading apps from iTunes as easy and reliable as downloading songs, then custom apps on the iPhone might see some real widespread use.

Edited 2007-10-18 22:08

"It's difficult to be open and closed, at the same time."

Not if you're using quantum physics.

It's interesting how Apple learns. If it were most other tech companies, I doubt that they would have the brains to figure out that even if they weren't going to release an SDK,people would develop applications. In fact, they would probably deploy methods for preventing said developments. Apple, on the other hand, sees this, and releases their own SDK.

Edited 2007-10-17 19:39

Apple have tried to prevent third party apps (1.1.1 update), and just because they will release an SDK, it doesn't mean people are going to use it. If there's too many restrictions that prevent equal-rights to first party apps, then the hackers will still have plenty to do.

For example, will Apple allow Skype or other VOIP apps? These could threaten AT&T profits at the end of the day.

Man I know, I've been waiting forever for an SDK to develop apps for my Windows Mobile phone... wait, what?

Nice try at spin, but face it Apple dropped the ball on this one.

how did apple drop the ball on this one? please explain!

yeah. Too bad Windows Mobile is terrible in comparison to Palm, Blackberry, and now mobile OSX.

Having used several iterations of Windows CE, Pocket PC, WM5, and WM6, along with several versions of Palm and BB each, I feel qualified to say that.

Do yourself a favor and build WebKit. Look at the scope of the many projects inside it and then review your "Apple dropped the ball on this one" again.

I'm not so sure. Apple is not a content vendor or a service provider. They are a style-oriented consumer electronics vendor. Any content vendor or service provider that deals with Apple must realize they only care about selling beautiful objects.

Apple doesn't want to make big bucks selling ringtones, but they know that more people will buy iPhones if there's a way to buy ringtones. They also know that more people will buy iPhones if there's a way to use your own music as ringtones.

The aspect of open platforms that doesn't appeal to Apple as a way to sell more objects relates to their somewhat obsessive desire to prevent third-parties from sullying their beauty. I suspect that "malware" is AppleTalk for add-ons that tarnish the elegant usability of the standard functionality.

I wouldn't be surprised if the SDK clearly separates the Apple software from the alien software at the user interface level. As the saying goes, separate but equal.

Yes, I think so.
Apple and we all need this feature.

Right. It's simple: ``Promise less and deliver more.''

Edited 2007-10-18 00:10

I think users have been doing some suspect things to be honest.

Apple presented a product, take it or leave it. From Daring Fireball:

"If anything, the lesson to be drawn is that Apple is quite trustworthy — iPhone 1.1.1 is and does exactly what Apple has claimed the iPhone is and does. To be trustworthy is to do what you say you will do; to do whatever someone else wishes you to do is to be obsequious."

Has anyone actually heard of one of these being bricked? There's a very fine line between "being honest" and spreading FUD to try to dissuade people. I wouldn't put Apple above FUD.

First, I never said "Apple is Evil", but rather stated a fact, Apple is a business.

Second, the letter makes a point of mentioning digital signing of apps, yet mentions it as just a good "first step", which clearly indicates Apple intends to control the apps that run on the iPhone (perfectly understandable, btw). To which extent is not yet known, but if this involves "getting permission from Apple", then there are several categories of apps that simply will never be available since they'll hurt Apple's bottom line or business deals. Example: file sharing over WiFi or bluetooth.

I think you're confusing marketing with advertising, but anyway, "Marketing, marketing, marketing" is exactly what it takes. There's a lot more to marketing than advertising. Like the development of a product with features that are desirable by the mass-market. Like choosing the right price point. And of course, advertising.

In the end though, hardly anyone, save for the type of people who read websites like OSNews, is going to buy a phone because an SDK is scheduled for release next year. I can only comment for North America, but you'd probably be hard pressed to find someone walking down the street who even knows what SDK means.

And besides the odd game, most people only have a vague awareness that they can install and run applications on their phone. And very few would even know how to do so.

Edited 2007-10-18 06:12

Half truth, segedunum.

I too own an E70 and every application that goes beyond the trivial must be signed. You must have already seen application managers that require "dev cert", meaning that you must go to symbiansigned.com and apply for a developer digital certificate yourself and sign it.

You might never have bumped into applications that need it, but it doesn't mean that they don't exist. FExplorer is a prime example of a ridiculously popular S60v1/v2 app that needs a dev cert to run on S60v3. The S60 phone browser needs a certificate that Nokia doesn't provide for free, so no one outside Nokia's close partners can build a phone version of Reindeer (so open source my 4$$, may I add; what good is it to make sources available and make it impossible to run the customised software on the platform it was created for?).

I for one am eager to see what Apple is going to do there. As long as they provide ample access to the bluetooth stack and wifi, I'm almost happy. The camera may have a level of restriction. GSM access may be further restricted, I don't really care... And if they enable someone to build a J2ME VM, I'll be pretty happy. And if they provide OpenGL and Core Animation-level access to that PowerVR MBX chip they bundled, I'll be in heaven.




<irony>
Yeah, right. I just counted 171 sensationalisms here:
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/mobile-description-index.shtml
even though this sensationalist page here: http://mobile.f-secure.com/news/september_07.html
counts 376 sensationalisms in the wild.
</irony>

And I'm not even touching the subject of bluejacking...

Edited 2007-10-18 22:26