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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."
"Open development has both benefits and disadvantages. The reason Linux has made so little impact in the desktop market is largely because a fully open system tends to devolve into anarchy.
"Who supports what? What version is the standard? Where is the commercial incentive to develop for it? Who makes it all work together in a nicely integrated package, and once that happens, it is still open?"
It's all so confusing?!!? Windows, take me away... !!!!
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
...but now I have to say it: how many iPhone stories a day are we gonna get on the Slashdot front page, and for how long? This is a hell of a lot of coverage for a mere _phone_ that a) offers no new features not already available on other smartphones, b) is priced mostly out of the market, c) isn't on the market yet, and d) is tied to one carrier.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
This is just more speculation against other speculation.
Can we stop posting these untill we have some real information please.
+----------------- | What is the question!
Took a quick look at the article. Many of these 'myths' are really serious issues for a touch screen smart phone getting pitched at this price point. I get to replace my smart phone on the company's nickel soon, and for what $600 gets me, I'll not buy one of these. Point 3, fsk them. An unlocked phone might have been worth that. A locked phone, no way. A smart phone without 3rd party applications? Nope. For anyone thinking of looking at the blog entry...
Myth One: the iPhone is missing EVDO (or some other high end feature) which will stifle adoption.
Myth Two: The iPhone is priced too high. It needs a 2 GB version for $299 lacking phone features.
Myth Three: The iPhone should be sold unlocked, not tied to Cingular service.
Myth Four: The iPhone software is a closed model, therefore the sky is falling.
Myth Five: The iPhone is just a phone with features lots of other phones already have.
Myth Six: Cisco owns the iPhone name, which presents an impossible conundrum of epic proportions.
Myth Seven: Apple will need to port iLife 07 to Windows in order to have a photo viewer for PC users.
Myth Eight: An integrated battery is a significant problem for users
Myth Nine: OMG Scratches
Myth Ten: Apple can't figure out how do do a phone.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Whaaa.... I love the iPhone! How dare you people point out flaws in it. Whaaa!!! Well you are all wrong, see I've created a list of illogical arguements that proves the iPhone is superior in every single way to everything else in the world. Whaaa!!!!
My favorite statement from the article was that the iPhone is not priced too high because other phones that have not been released yet are going to be priced higher. Does this guy work for segway marketing?
It may be leading edge to you, however as someone who's owned an XDA in Europe (and chatted on MSN Messenger when out in the countryside in 2002), it leaves me unimpressed. The Multi-touch screen is impressive, sure, but I didn't have too much trouble with the XDA's stylus and it allowed me to take handwritten notes with decent handwriting recognition.
Apple's stuff may be pretty, but you've got to remember that any cellphone sold in the US is behind the state-of-the-art by 18-24 months at least compared to markets like Europe and Asia. So I'd be careful about bandying about terms like 'leading edge'.
Go somewhere random
I don't see how some of this criticism isn't true.
Myth 1: the iPhone is missing EVDO (or some other high end feature) which will stifle adoption.
Decent 3G service is not for a niche market or only for the rich. People have shown that high-bandwidth services like streaming video can drive a broadband market. Could we honestly say that broadband Internet access on the desktop hasn't brought with it a range of practical and compelling uses for the general public? Now you'd have that kind of speed wherever you are and in your pocket! Stating outright that people won't need it for their handset is arrogant and short-sighted, the market will decide in the end. TFA also writes that decent 3G service is "overpriced, and not quite ready yet" but my PocketPC handset is over a year old, works great, and is cheaper than the announced price for the iPhone!
Myth Two: The iPhone is priced too high. It needs a 2 GB version for $299 lacking phone features.
How is the iPhone not expensive when compared to other phones? The $499 and $599 prices are with the two-year contract! That's significantly more expensive than every other PDA/Smartphone offered by Cingular, some of which are very comparable to the iPhone. "but it's also not expensive when compared to similar phones, which... aren't yet available" Need you be reminded that the iPhone itself is not coming out for almost 6 months? And how are the phones out today not similar? The Cingular 8525 looks comparable to me.
Myth Four: The iPhone software is a closed model, therefore the sky is falling.
How can you say that third-party software would make the handset insecure and unstable? Do you believe this about computers in general? Third party development can (and frequently does) turn the ideas of the general public into brilliant applications that would likely not have existed otherwise. They drive the entire computer industry, and how can you so quickly dismiss the handset market as being different where third-party development would only mean negative things?
I'm out of time but these "myths" just speak of desperate fanboism. Please realize that criticism is a healthy thing and that if this handset isn't perfect Apple has the time, money, and resources to make something that is better. After all, they're only just entering this market and will have lessons to learn just like everyone else.
"... better understand the threat that it poses..."
What threat? Is open source so fragile that the mere possibility that someone will do a closed application or platform that much of a "threat"?
It's odd to me that the FOSS community gives so much lip service to concepts like freedom and choice... as long as that choice is the one THEY wanted. From my perspective, Apple is in a position to judge what they think is best for their products and their customers. If they're wrong, the market will tell them so, and they'll adjust, or not. If they're right, well, then that success simply shows that more than one model can be successful in the marketplace.
Or to put it another way, is my being a success preventing you from also being a success? Does a closed-source phone stop Linux from being successful elsewhere?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It shows just how much an impact the announcement of this device has made, and how it will probably revolutionize the market the way the iPod revolutionized its market. Guess what, when there's an iPhone story, you don't have to click "Read More," read the story, click "Reply," and type a post. Yep, you can actually skip all that and just scroll to the next story on the front page. It's amazing; try it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
"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."
And for exactly that reason I refuse to use it. Voice is data, like internet stuff. I don't see any reason to pay tens of times more for one byte than for the other. (and it seems to me that the transfer requirements for voice are higher than for internet data). If you're bosses really want me to use it, give me a $40 per month deal like I have for voice. You'll make up in volume (more users) than what you're earning now.
BFN
Bert
This may be due to 3GPP requiring phone manufacturers to insure that the phone can't load non-approved firmware (FTA). They don't want someone to load firmware that causes problems on the wireless network.
Of course, this is entirely different from loading 3rd party applications on a phone.
And that, right there, is why your data capacity is (collectively, as an industry) about 98% not utilized. That's the number I heard at the last Symbian Smartphone Show last October, coming from industry insiders. Things will probably not change much until your bosses bite the bullet and decide to sell their data capacity for prices that make sense.
I personally have given up on waiting for the legacy telcos to learn this lesson. I'd rather look for applications that are designed to work on cheap (WiFi) connectivity most of the time, with an auxiliary "Keep it short and absolutely necessary" mode when only racket connectivity is available. Therefore, 3G is of no value to me. Having said that, the iPhone is also a dead proposition as far as I'm concerned. I'm not paying serious money when all it gets me is a 100% Apple/Cingular-controlled applications sales delivery vehicle.
Most of the criticisms of the iPhone sound petty and idiosyncratic to me. No user-replacable battery! I don't know the last time I removed the battery to my cellphone. Locked to Cingular! Well, I already use Cingular, so a 2-year contract is not an obstacle at all to me, and I realize that every cell phone company sucks in one way or another so it makes no difference to me to whom I send my check every month. These are all highly specific needs that only really matter to a few people that value a certain aspect of their phone that to other people is completely insignificant.
But the third-party development issue transcends the idiosyncratic. Development for the iPhone will create an ecosystem of possible uses and fill a variety of mobile phone needs. Apple can choose to have a robust ecosystem that provides the most diverse user experience possible, or an anemic ecosystem. Opening development, in the end, is the easiest way for Apple to allow the iPhone to meet the most needs for the most people. As a result... they would sell more phones. Without a permissive development ecosystem, the iPhone is not so much a smartphone as a cleverphone.
The article makes a mistake comparing open iPhone development to the chaos of Linux development. Linux development is chaotic because fundamental Linux structures and APIs themselves exist in an open development ecosystem. This would plainly not be the case for the iPhone, which has one maufacturer and one set of APIs. The author suggests the iPhone would suffer from unclear commercial incentives and support issues? It's just an inapt analogy, when the analogy to smartphone (Palm, Symbian) market is obviously better: developers make money and user support just isn't a big deal. This is not good argument against wide open development.
As others have pointed out, though, it remains to be seen what development ecosystem Apple will permit.
The more it costs to develop for the iPhone, the more expensive that $500/$600 price tag is going to become, at least for people replacing a smartphone.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most places I go actually have wifi already, so 3G is then irrelevant.
Bullshit. This is a *phone*, not a laptop. You're not going to be sitting at Starbucks 24 hours a day accessing data services on your phone. If you need data in a phone, then you need to use data wherever you happen to be, and that includes the office (where unsecured wifi networks are generally taboo), out on the street, in your car, or wherever. You've got wi-fi in a moving car on the interstate? Explain to me how that works. (btw I'm not suggesting you'd be browsing the net while driving, but while a passenger, sure.)
Wi-fi is no substitute for 3G in a phone.
And, in the absence of any sort of i-Mode like network of WAP sites in the United States, I'd go so far as to say that data support in general is basically useless here without 3G support. There's just nothing you can actually do with it. You need to be able to browse real web sites, and for that you need 3G. A phone without 3G is just a phone; any data features it might have will never get used because it will just be too slow and frustrating of an experience.
btw, the linked article goes to great lengths to confuse the 3G issue by throwing out all sorts of unrelated acronyms to make it seem as if Apple's smart by staying away from it. It also tries to somehow argue that EDGE and HSPDA are mutually exclusive; you can either have one or the other in a phone. The fact is Cingular has both 3G and 3.5G networks up and running and several phones that use them just fine (I should know, I own one), along with EDGE and even GPRS as a last-ditch fallback. I see no reason why Apple couldn't have done the same. (Don't give me cost; I paid zilch for my phone.)
iPhone articles do belong on Slashdot. They are an important new technology, one which will eventually be pretty much in everyone's (well, everyone but the would-be Luddites who stick with last year's stuff because they hate Apple) pocket in a year or two as soon as their existing cellular operator contracts expire. No tech gadget since the iPod deserves as much coverage as the iPhone. Give this phone a year or two, and people will be doing like they did with MP3 players -- calling any MP3 player an iPod because iPods are so universal.
I couldn't care less about 3rd party development. What I care about is whether I can develop for it.
I use a PDA as a prosthetic memory. As such, I need to be able to write my own programs for it to fill my own needs. I don't care whether I can distribute them or not.
I was browsing web pages with Flash support on my Nokia 7650 Symbian (S60) phone and using it as remote control for my TV, set my profile based on cell information (Psiloc stuff) back in 2002 or something too.
USA was that backwards to get impressed with this thing or is it Apple fanatics all over?
They are even defending 3rd party software lock which even Nokia, the emperor on (real) Smart phones never dared to do.
Freedom is not always a good thing. Would you like freedom of choice as to which side of the road you drive on?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't see any reason to pay tens of times more for one byte than for the other.
I do, but this actually supports your argument. Voice data has much tighter latency and jitter requirements than most normal data. By all rights, transmitting voice data should cost more, but in most cases the providers charge less for it.
that Apple gets slammed far more than they deserve, the article that got posted here is purely and simply Mac fanboy crapola from someone so detached from reality that he posted a list of reasons to avoid iPhone and tried to spin them all into positives.
Can Apple Marketing keep the iPhone from going the way of the MS Zune?
Tech Public Policy stuff
If you expect to have faster than EDGE access to corporate data on the street, then you are either out of your mind or clueless about the security implications and the feasibility of such access. You are probably thinking of a completely made up and artificial scenario that would never happen in real life. Are you going to be downloading porn in the back seat of a cab? What would need that much bandwidth on a "phone"? Phones are primarily used for making calls.
WiFi is a perfectly valid option for occasionally accessing large amounts of data on the road. You do not have to have constant high speed access everywhere and I would challenge you to come up with a realistic business case to justify the expense of that access. You are trying to use a phone for something any sane person would use a laptop for.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.