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No Third-party Apps on iPhone Says Jobs
wyldeone writes "In an interview with the New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms reports that the recently-announced iPhone will not allow third party applications to be installed. According to Jobs, 'These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them.' In a similar vein, Jobs said in a MSNBC article that, 'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.'"
What he was saying "no" to is having a plethora of buggy software out there that would endanger the user experience of the phone. I still expect to see non-Apple and non-Cingular developers having access to the tools to build applications for the iPhone. Now it's just a matter of sorting out the protocol (as in "administrative process") for getting the application that I write for my 100 users, installed onto the iPhones that we're going to buy, for the purpose of using them as small tablet computers.
One easy way is to provide the ability for user-added applications to run with lower privileges (just like they can already under Mac OS X - I can run my own programs as me, but not as "root" or any other user). Though that opens up the avenue for local root escalation vulnerabilities to be exploited.
Of course, for my immediate needs it would be enough to have some way to scan barcodes and interact with web pages. But then, Steve is pushing the line that it's the phone reinvented, not a tablet PC.
Cisco, which owns the iPhone trademark, has announced what they want for it.
An "open approach". Interoperability.
Fundamentally we wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future. In our view, the network provides the basis to make this happen--it provides the foundation of innovation that allows converged devices to deliver the services that consumers want. Our goal was to take that to the next level by facilitating collaboration with Apple. And we wanted to make sure to differentiate the brands in a way that could work for both companies and not confuse people, since our products combine both web access and voice telephony. That's it. Openness and clarity. - Cisco's general counsel.
Maybe Pear or something...It was a long time ago when they actually published the full schematics and source code of their Apple II ROMs. Of Course, if Jobs had any real say, that would have never have happened. He constantly was trying to close the systems more and more (the Apple III was closed). Woz told him to stick it in the early days, but then he left and we got the Mac. In every case, the closed systems flopped while the old, but open, Apple II kept the company afloat for years until they convinced everyone that open was bad. Well, they did a good job. No one seems to really care that their iPods are completely unprogrammable, and that their phone can only run software from JAMDAT. Meanwhile, the whole idea of making computers work for you instead of the other way around has gone the way of BASIC interpreters. People are being USED instead of being USERS. It is a real shame, and I think it bodes very poorly for the future of computing. I dread the day that ALL systems are closed and only a privileged few will be able to program them in any meaningful way.
It is such an incredible shame that such an enticing machine is all look, but no touch. It's like being given a piano and told that you can't try and play it, only look at it. It's just wrong in so many ways.
Well, I guess Jobs thinks that I should be happy that he is saving me from myself. Unfortuntely, it seems the rest of world IS happy about it and that just makes me even more depressed.
I never liked that guy... he still owes woz some money for breakout...
Thanks,
Mike
I mean, where are these "Desktop Class Apps" touted in the keynote? All I see on the phone is Calender, Maps, Notes and a Web Browser. That's it? And we're supposed to be excited it took OSX to run those? How can this phone *not* be considered a tablet PC/phone?
Argh.
The obvious answer to iPhone closedness is OpemMoko's openness. Vote with your dollars: go buy an OpenMoko when they hit the market in a few months. http://openmoko.com/
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The US- wireless carriers are all scared shitless of a device like this.
Sorry, you just don't have this kind of shit dictated by European phone networks. Phones sold here (with and without plans) have no such restrictions.
They also don't have any restrictions in uploading your sounds, images, movies or (in case of smartphones) applications.
They also don't come with criplled Bluetooth stacks or some of the other stunts of which US carriers seem so fond of pulling off.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
You seem to have little to no experience with Apple's handheld devices. The entire iPodLinux project was started because, among other things, there is no native support for Vorbis or FLAC in the iPod firmware. If people do not hack the devices and write the code, there won't be any support for unpatented free formats. There will only be locked AAC audio and MP4 video. MP3 will appear (with the inferior Fraunhofer codec) because of popular demand, but that's it.
(Note: Fraunhofer is ironically not the highest quality encoder for MP3s anymore. LAME is considered much higher quality.)
~ C.
In the very same article, however, he goes on to say:
"That doesn't mean there's not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn't mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment."
Steve's obviously playing control freak here, but I can understand his reasoning. Sony does the same thing for the PlayStation platform. An SDK ~is~ available, if you pay the huge fee for it, and Sony still gets to decide if your title is good enough to get their PlayStation branding. If the iPhone is going to work as a product for Apple, it really does have to work just as smoothly as its demo. Just like Sony, Apple gets to vet/check software before it goes out into the wide world.
The hacker geeks aren't going to like it, but, hey, it didn't stop Sony from owning the world with this very same model for the PSX and PS2.
Oh, and you can bet your bottom dollar this isn't the only device in this area that Apple will be bringing out. Expect to see this techology in a more hackable, computer-like form very soon.
I say let the iPhone be an iPhone -- that's what's it's going to be good at.
Using the holy grail of OSes...
I'm holding out for Trolltech's Greenphone. It runs Linux, and the point is openness... you can recompile the kernel if you want! Paired with KDE 4, I think it's going to blow the iPhone out of the water
Well, I have a Trolltech Greenphone on my desk because we develop software for it. And while it is hackable, Linux based, and a nice geek gizmo, there is no way I'm going to use it as my primary mobile phone. Teeeeny stuff to hit with the stylus. Lots of buttons that you don't really know what they do. Difficult to enter text. (It's a development platform after all.)
Personally, I'm using the cheapest Motorola cellphone available (monochrome display, does nothing more than phone and SMS), and I'm holding out for the iPhone to hit Europe. Because I don't WANT to hack a device to use it as a phone/PIM, even if I COULD.
)9TSS
Okay, so just about every single response to this post ranked "5: Insightful" can be summarized as this: "I'm not going to buy the iPhone because Steve won't let me write my own programs!" Sure, fine, great, whatever. Sorry you're disappointed, hope you find another solution that works for you. But after reading this same general attitude a couple dozen times, I am compelled to respond with an alternate perspective: Contrary to Commander Taco's (much quoted) original assessment of the original, the iPod has indeed gone on to become the most popular MP3 player ever produced, to the point that its impact has risen to impacting the music retail business itself. (iTunes now sells more music than Amazon, etc. etc.) All this not only *without* many of the more sophisticated features many Slashdotters may have wished it had - but *because* it doesn't have those features! I for one am glad to have an MP3 player with a simple interface, and innovative (click-wheel) navigation. And while I have no intention of buying the current iPhone - ...because it's out of my price range ...because I hate Cingular's customer service (and have grown quite loyal to my new carrier because of theirs) ...because I want something a little more rugged and less "precious," and ...because I frankly don't need to read the New York Times Online on my phone....
I *will* be *quite* happy, in a year or so, when I can get a nice touch-screen driven, visual-voicemail equipped cell phone in my price range, perhaps called something like an "iPhone Nano" - whose technology was made possible by this initial market entry model!
Sheesh, call me flamebait if you want, but I don't get this tone of entitlement in some of these posts! Cingular (whom I HATE), had to re-jigger its infrastructure to make visual voicemail possible, not to mention committing to the iPhone sight unseen.
Frankly, if they demand Steve not let users upload ringtones for free because they'd rather make money selling them, I simply won't buy any ringtones, but I won't feel like Steve/Apple/Cingular is "ripping me off" for not providing me everything for free.
Sure, you buy the phone, you own the PHONE. Crack it open, get out your banana clips and soldering iron and do whatever you want to it. But if a "closed system" is what Steve/Apple/Cingular decide for whatever reason *including making money* is what they require to bring this tech to market, so be it.
Your palms, et al are still out there for you. Enjoy. And enjoy trying to motivate them to produce a comparable device like the iPhone. I'm sure it'll be any day now. /rant
"if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate"
The iPhone is aimed squarely at the US market. They'd have to make an iPhone 2 to sell it in Europe anyway.. No 3G, No MMS, Mediocre Camera, Camera on wrong side of phone (so you can't make video calls)..
So expect an iPhone 2 in about 12 months time with these features if they want to launch in the Europe/Asia (which is a larger market than the US by a long way so they'd be stupid not to).
(The Apple TV is also aimed squarely at the US market also, given that itunes doesn't support video downloads in any other country (and 'a selection of pixar short films' does *not* count) - sensing a pattern here...)
While EDGE is certified by the IMT-2000 initiative as "3G", it's seen as a transitional technology for 2G networks, networks that have EDGE are better than networks without them, but over-all, a 2G network enhanced with EDGE is still 2G. Or 2.5G if you want to get really into the marketing terms (2G with packet switching.)
The 3G version of GSM is called UMTS. HSDPA is an enhancement to two of UMTS's air interfaces (W-CDMA and TD-CDMA.) This offers better bandwidth and far lower latency than EDGE. Call quality, thanks to higher bit rates, is good too.
So... why wouldn't the iPhone sell in Europe? Because most GSM operators have UMTS networks as well as 2G GSM networks, and most people want a phone that isn't limited to 2G GSM. Tariffs encourage use of 3G services - as an example, the only unmetered mobile Internet access option in the UK is from T-Mobile, where the tariff requires use of T-Mobile's 3G network.
If you're selling a device one of whose primary advantages is Internet access, selling one that doesn't support UMTS in Europe is ridiculous.
Now, in the US, Cingular are trying to roll out a UMTS network but have been hampered by lack of spectrum. The only other major GSM network in the US is T-Mobile, and they've specifically waited for spectrum, planning to launch 3G in the next few months. That'll take time to deploy too. So releasing an EDGE phone is acceptable here, because a UMTS phone would be more expensive, would probably operate on the wrong frequencies initially, and offer few advantages given the lack of a viable network to use the UMTS side on.
That argument cannot be made for Europe, and it's going to bite Apple in the rear if they don't put UMTS in the European version.
Apple thinks it can make 10 million sales of this thing in a year. Unless they take the rest of the world seriously, recognizing that 3G is big outside of the US, that people outside the US are used to unlocked, carrier-neutral, phones, that the smartphone market is actually under active development outside of the "free cheap phone with two year contract" US market, they're going to have to make almost all those sales in the US. I don't think they can pull that off, especially given they've locked their fortunes to Cingular's.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.