Slashdot Mirror
Inside the iPhone — 3G, ARM, OS X, 3rd Partyware
DECS writes "After heading off the top ten myths of the iPhone, Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted has written a series of articles looking 'Inside the iPhone,' exploring (1) why Apple didn't target faster 3G networks, (2) a substantiated look at how the iPhone is indeed running OS X (contrary to reports that it isn't), and (3) what it means to users and developers, and how ARM is involved, in Mac OS X, ARM, and iPod OS X, and why the supposedly 'closed' system Apple describes for the iPhone won't preclude third party development."
People who argue about numbers or bullet points are probably unaware of the bigger picture and what difference customers will actually see.
I can UNDERSTAND why Apple thinks HSDPA is not necessary for their iPhone. Most people will not use it. And the iPhone is not a notebook. But please state the real reason and don't start the "Apple Distortion Field" and try to tell us that EDGE is as fast as 3G. There is a difference and customers WILL actually see it.
In theory EDGE seems almost as fast, but I can assure you that in the real world, HSDPA/3G is the only game in town that FEELS like a normal broadband connection.
I work for mobile phone operator. We have tried to push people to use data services on their mobile devices for years now. Why? Because we charge enormous amounts of money for data and it makes us a lot of money.
In all our commercials we promised people broadband expierience. Up until we had HSDPA/3G, we KNEW that we were fooling everybody. We advertised EDGE-speeds that were only realistic if you live under a GSM-antenna. It's only with HSDPA/3G (and i've done a lot of testing) that we don't have to lie anymore. HSDPA is really fasters and customers notice it (certainly those customers that use their cellphone as a modem for their laptop.
Even HP starts selling notebooks with the HSDPA chip in it. Not EDGE. Why? Because only HSDPA is relly workable. But then again, the iPhone is no notebook, maybe apple prefers putting 3G in its notebooks?
> It does everything I need a phone to do, and third party applications allow me to use if for things I didn't imagine I would need it for when I got it.
Indeed. I wonder if the iPhone will ever run Skype, for example (XDAs sold in the UK do). The article in the submission goes through embarrassing contortions to 'prove' that a walled-garden approach to software is good in the face of all evidence. Even the iPod marketplace is a bit of a joke, given that device does half as much as it could if given a free marketplace.
In many ways, this approach is the anti-thesis of Open Source: valuing spit and polish over flexibility and the freedom to tinker. Now I value polish, I just don't think it should mean as much as it does to Macheads.
Go somewhere random
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Writing "An unlocked phone can make GSM calls and send basic SMS. No MMS, no Internet," shows disgusting lack of GSM knowledge that is really shocked. Mr Eran, probably never went out of US (or other country of crippled GSM services) - all above things are standarized and all phone are able to switch providers without any problems. definitely this is 3 myth is plain stupid (needs for an exclusive agreement), and the only reason for doing so, was this stupid visual voice mail (geee, who on earth uses voicemail today???). Not willing to read rest of article after such errors at start...
The claim that "An unlocked phone can make GSM calls and send basic SMS. No MMS, no Internet, no iTS." is just wrong. Woefully wrong. See, for exampke, the Nokia gateway for pushing these settings to a phone (for example one which is new and unlocked.
He correctly stated that we won't be seeing EVDO because that is the realm of CDMA handsets, not GSM ones. But then he goes on to talk about HSUPA as being 3G.
In GSM phones, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is considered 2.5G
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) is simply an expansion on GPRS and is sometimes referred to as 2.75G, but is really still 2.5G
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is referred to as 3G. It builds on W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), so that is sometimes refferred to as 3G too (Not to be confused with regular CDMA network phones).
High Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Upload Packet Access (HSUPA) are reffered to as 3.5G, and most carriers that have gone with it have implemented HSDPA without implementing HSUPA. So the constant talk of HSUPA for the iPhone is misinformed nonsense.
I must admit I liked the iPhone at first. I thought it had real potential, but here's why I for one won't be buying one;
1) 3G is a BIG DEAL. Anyone who's used it can tell you that. Especially for a device like this that's so data-centric I can't believe they are using EDGE. EDGE is a piss-poor replacement for 3G which only got implemented in this country because it was cheaper than a real rollout of 3G. Wake me when iPhone supports it... or when it actually manages to download an entire web page, whichever comes first.
2) Closed platform. Hello? What? Come on, even Microsoft's Windows Mobile is an open platform in the sense that third-party apps can be installed. Hell, my MPX-220 has about a dozen third-party apps installed, at least 4 or 5 of which I use *every single day*. My phone also contains a couple of hacked together apps of my own that use the (admittedly piss-poor) data connection to grab Internet data while I'm on the road that's useful to me. Hell, I even have an IM client that's open enough to have multiple providers. Also, I develop on mobile platforms for the disabled. Currently the darling of the disabled (especially deaf) is the Blackberry but they're all coming up for replacment soon because they're expensive to maintain the Exchange servers. They're looking for alternatives... without the ability to run third-party apps I'm afraid that the iPhone is a toy for the rich geek. I guess I'll be selling them on the OpenMoko.
3) Dumb Phone at a Smartphone Price. What does the iPhone do that my wife's Motorola SLVR doesn't? Do I hear crickets? OK, so it can store more than 100 iTunes songs. BFD. My wife doesn't NEED more than 100 songs... she hooks it up to charge it on the USB every night, what's stopping her switching out her active playlist dependent on her mood? She does that today... she doesn't need 500 songs on her phone... just enough to get through a day. Calendaring? Nope... SLVR does that. Photos? Oooh, try again. Contacts? Hell, all of the functionality I saw is available today in phones 1/6 of the price. OK... the Google Maps stuff is kinda cool, but if you have an open platform (like the OpenMoko.... look it up if you don't believe me) and the open API that Google Maps provides, how long until everyone else replicates the functionality?
The only thing the iPhone has going for it is eye candy... and that will get old really quick. Come on, hands up... how many people reading this comment who run Windows XP actually still have all the eye candy turned on? Same for Gnome... hell, same for OSX. Eye candy is cool for all of a day, then it starts to get wearing. The transitions get turned off and the eye candy goes away except for those people who just HAVE to show off their expensive device.
I've mentioned it twice; the OpenMoko platform is going to give this phone a run for its money. It's going to be available before the iPhone and will be an extensible and open platform. I for one will be buying one of the first-gen devices because I want to develop for it. It doesn't have the camera, or the tilt sensors... neither of which are things I need anyway. It'll be the first of many devices based on the platform... and since it's open anything I develop should work on the next gen devices... or at most require a recompile. Oh, and the screen resolution is higher.
I thought at first I'd buy an iPhone, but the more I've heard about the limitations of the device the sadder I've become. And as regards TFA; I read them. I usually like Daniel Ehran's rants, even if I don't agree with them... but his site is one I check out. But his defense of the iPhone is fanboyism at its worst. He thinks just because it comes from Apple it can do no wrong. Sorry, I am a Mac user and I like Apple, but even I admit they make mistakes. The iPhone isn't on my list of "has to have" geek toys, and won't be. I'll probably replace my phone with the first OpenMoko device out there, I'll develop my apps and I'll sell my customers on the benefits of an open, extensible, flexible platform based
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
USE="-kde" emerge amarok saves you from having to have kdebase. If you have Gentoo, of course.
Uhuh. Nextstep isn't a standard.. OpenStep is the standard, which emerged from NextStep, FootStep and the other competing APIs of Objective-C based workstation GUIs.. not to mention that these APIs were also, and continue to, compete with non-Objective-C based APIs. The fact that we are where we are on the desktop is because of all this healthy competition, not in spite of it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"The author supposes that Apple will include Cingular's 3G network, when it is available."
Probably because Steve Jobs said that there would be a 3G iPhone, during the keynote.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Firefox and OpenOffice are cross-platform, you can't count them as only Linux desktop problems. Run Word, Wordpad, VLC, GIMP, Cisco VPN, Firefox, Lotus Notes, and any .NET 2.0 application on Windows. Ignore .NET 3.0 ones, which will likely use ANOTHER competing API. Oh, and forget about the GDI/GDI+ mess. I don't think Notes uses That's 8 different UI libraries running at once. (yes, the Office applications internally are highly un-standardized, and they don't present much of any of the common Windows UI elements. They create something, usually Windows will pick it up sometime later. Office usually leads the way, so while it's probably a layer on top of Win32, it's similar to the layers on top of X11 that you're referring to).
Word: office UI
Wordpad: MFC
VLC: wxWidgets
GIMP: GTK
Firefox: Specialized cross-platform "standard".
Cisco VPN: Qt
Notes: Specialized UI, with some Java-bits (if I can interpret the process listing correctly.. it mentions Java, but doesn't seem to run all of notes INSIDE java..)
Hell, I have one suite of applications that uses GDI, GDI+, MFC, ATL, Windows.Forms, and soon to use XAML I suspect. I would kill to be able to switch to Qt or something that handled most of this crap for me, AND was cross-platform. But developers pick what they want to work with, even in large companies, and that's what happens.
IHBT.
The network I'm on allows me access to voice, text, MMS, and 3G data services. The handset that was provided with my contract (Nokia N80) fully supports all of these features. Now, I've also got a Nokia N70 which was previously locked to another mobile network, and it's now unlocked to work with any network. If I put my current SIM card in and turn it on, perhaps I should be shocked to find that I can access the same services before (after putting in the right settings).
I've used a variety of mobile phones, both SIM-locked and "vanilla" unlocked handsets, on most of the mobile networks for the last ten years and I've never had any problems such as those mentioned by Mr Hall.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic