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."

Comments

FUD much?

[Mateo_LeFou]

"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... !!!!

Re:FUD much?

[TheRaven64]

The reason Windows is so unsuccessful as a platform is the fact that there are cheap, well-supported developer tools available. Right. Apple lost the desktop war, in a large part, due to having a much smaller developer ecosystem than Microsoft. It seems they haven't learned.

As to the price, my current phone was free with a cheap contract and has 1GB of flash, an ARM CPU and both Java and C++ SDKs. The UI is a little rough around the edges, but I don't think I'd pay $500 for a better UI. 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. Oh, and it does 3G data transfer and lets my MacBook Pro connect to the Internet at a reasonable speed when I'm mobile, which the iPhone doesn't (who buys a device with only EDGE these days? Even a year ago when I got my latest phone it was hard to find one. Buying music from iTMS over EDGE is going to be very painful).

Re:FUD much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a loose interpretation of the word "chosen".. ;-)

Re:FUD much?

[Overly Critical Guy]

I thought it was a perfectly valid point. If you want to make a desktop app for Linux, right out of the gate you have to deal with competing desktop environments, competing APIs, and competing package managers. There's no standard, seamless experience across the board.

Re:FUD much?

[bheer]

> 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.

Re:FUD much?

[scooviduvoctagon]

The reason Linux has made so little impact in the desktop market is largely because a fully open system tends to devolve into anarchy.

From the words of Proudhon [1809-1865], original self-described anarchist:

Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order.

The word anarchy is too often misused in place of the word anomie, or chaos.

Re:FUD much?

[QuantumG]

I laugh at people who think you can create a standard before any experimentation has occurred.. as if a committee can create anything remotely good. Competing APIs are competing for a reason.. people have different ideas about what is the best way of doing something. Only after a clear winner has been decided for a particular subset of the API can you standardize that subset. The alternative is the "standard" of monopoly.. you get what you are given and to hell with what is better. This is why the win32 api is so horrid.

Besides which, you're the one that changed this from being a discussion about open platforms like Linux, to being a discussion about APIs. The whole discussion is about having an open market for services. This is confusing to IT consumers because they've never had it before, so they moan about not knowing where to go to get support or who to find responsible if something is broken - the kind of things you don't need to think about when you're used to dealing with monopoly providers. To these people I say: get used to it.. because the advantages of having an open market over a monopoly is worth it.

Re:FUD much?

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:FUD much?

[Lane.exe]

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.

But that's just the point -- if the iPod is successful as it is now (and it is), what's the point of having it do half again as much as it already does? Don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of guy that would like a device that can play music, show video, take pictures, make julienne fries, and call my mom on her birthday, but I'm a geek.

Most consumers want something simple and easy to use -- IE, the iPod. It's not the "ideal" product, and there are some flaws with it, but it is good enough to entice LOTS of people to buy it, and lots of people to use it. I wouldn't mind having an easily-replaceable battery in my iPods, for instance, but by the time I'm to the point with my iPods that I find the battery life unacceptable, there's a newer one out with a higher capacity, more features that I want, etc. and I just upgrade. These are consumer electronics -- they're meant to be used until they've reached the end of their normal, useful life, and then disposed of. Lament this sort of consumer culture all you wish, but them's the breaks.

Sure, the iPhone doesn't look like it's shaping up to be a little mini-computer, that plays games, browses the web, does x, does y, etc. and so on. But that's OK. It's really just a video iPod that also browses the web and makes phone calls. Think of it as a beefed up Sidekick, rather than a tiny MacBook.

Re:FUD much?

[Overly Critical Guy]

I laugh at people who think you can create a standard before any experimentation has occurred.

We've had over ten years of Linux desktop "experimentation."

If you're wanting Linux to get popular on the desktop, you need a universal API with a universal installation/uninstallation system so that developers can contribute to a seamless experience. Right now, poor users still have to install two entire desktop environments just to run apps from both. On your average desktop Linux system, you have:

• OpenOffice
• Firefox
• KDE
• Gnome

That right there is four different widget APIs, four different ways of handling a string, etc. It's bloat and redundancy of the worst kind, and it's stubborn people like you who don't want the problem fixed, possibly because you fear change or you have some strange commitment to the idea of keeping redundant APIs in memory. It's no wonder people have written off Linux on the desktop as a punchline.

Besides which, you're the one that changed this from being a discussion about open platforms like Linux, to being a discussion about APIs.

No, someone else responded to the article's comment on desktop Linux becoming an anarchy of contradictory APIs, and I agreed. It sounds like you're one of these guys who just likes to argue.

Re:FUD much?

[bheer]

> But that's just the point -- if the iPod is successful as it is now (and it is), what's the point of having it do half again as much as it already does?

That's the point - you don't know. That'd be like a 70s guy asking what's the point of having a general purpose computer when you can have perfectly good word processing machines and tabulating machines? The point is that people do interesting things with your stuff when you open it up.

IBM knew this when it designed the PC. Microsoft knew this when they made MS DOS (and later OSes, including Windows Mobile) available to every OEM. Linus knows this extremely well. The point here isn't that IBM ultimately went out of the PC business or that Microsoft doesn't have a huge share of the smartphone OS market, it is that their ability to spawn platforms has added to their stature in the industry and has materially helped their bottom line.

Apple fans might get excited about the free publicity Apple gets with every launch, but companies like IBM and Microsoft -- and the Open Source community -- get free publicity from a LOT of people every day by creating opportunities for other people to do cool new stuff. And in the long run, the latter kind of publicity is what matters.

Re:FUD much?

[mrshermanoaks]

I have a Treo 650 and can install all kinds of 3rd party apps. Of course, the more running on my Treo the more unstable it is and the more I hate my Treo when it locks up.

Apple's products have been successful because they have controlled a lot of the "freedom" (hardware choices on the Mac OS X, software choices on the iPod) that open products offer. More consistency has kept their users from having to stare at driver errors and the BSOD.

I will replace my Treo - with all it's 3rd party software offerings - with an iPhone the second one is available.

Re:FUD much?

[iluvcapra]

Indulge me in a little play extempore:

Mr. Hindsight:

That'd be like a 70s guy asking what's the point of having a general purpose computer when you can have perfectly good word processing machines and tabulating machines?

1970s Guy: "Why none, sir, I have my secretary do all of my typing and accounting does the invoicing! I value my free time and enjoy being able to delegate certain responsibilities, such as drafting memoranda, managing my schedule, and keeping my correspondence organized, to a human being who knows her job."

Mr. Hindsight: "But you could save a lot of money!"

1970s Guy: "I see what you're saying, but I think you're making a false comparison. I (like you, probably) make most of my purchasing decisions based not just on dollars-and-cents efficiency, but on certain values I hold. You seem to value 'open standards' and are opposed to 'walled gardens,' while I value 'getting my memos typed.' I will generally pay a premium for a solution if it's easier to use than the others. It might cost me more money in the future to migrate from my easy-to-use solution to another, but frankly I can't tell, because I can't see the future, and I don't want to bet on a miserable-but-open solution and wait for it to improve."

Mr. Hindsight: "One day they'll take away all your secretaries."

1970s Guy: "Who the hell answers the phones!?"

Mr. Hindsight: "Computers that give you a list of options, and try to guess what number you say!"

1970s Guy: "I think I'm going to pour myself a stiff one. Executives still have wet bars in their offices in the future, right?"

Re:FUD much?

[Lane.exe]

Even this phone comes about at a time Apple realizes that they are losing on sales to combo devices from the mobile providers.

I'd argue that this is what makes it an intelligent move. They're aiming to capture ground from the mobile phone makers who are encroaching on their territory. I have a Motorola SLVR, and am quite happy with it (I just don't like flip phones, for aesthetic reasons). But I wouldn't mind having a slightly larger SLVR that also lets me browse the web with a stripped-down version of Safari, and check my e-mail. In fact, that's all I really want. I'm just not sure what people want out of third-party apps. I mean, it's nice to have the open platform so that you can find all sorts of neato little apps that meet individual needs, but that's very hard to do on a big consumer product. But, and I think this has been said elsewhere, this is going to spur other mobile device manufacturers to compete and come up with their own modifications, some of which will undoubtedly be more open than the iPhone. If that's your cup of joe, go for it. Myself, I'll probably be getting Rev. B of the iPhone. It suits my needs, and I think that my needs accurately reflect those of the average consumer.

What does the iphone bring? Widescreen. Great interface. Is that enough? *I* don't think so. It's tied to a provider. It's limited it's data (EDGE only). It's limited in its app selection (may be a good thing). Can't be upgraded (for a widescreen device, sort of small capacity).

I think that the wide screen and the interface are the hooks -- it's basically a phone/SMS/music/video device. I don't think characterizing as a smart phone/PDA was the way to go. I think it's more like a regular phone with a big screen and an interesting interface. As long as the EDGE network (which I have no experience with) allows people to check e-mail and browse most websites with ease, I think it'll be OK. Hopefully the one-provider thing will go away; I can't see Apple wanting to tie themselves so completely to Cingular. As far as the limited app selection, I think that's a good thing. It provides more stability and I think it'll address all the needs it needs to. I'm still at a loss to define exactly what specialized apps people want. Choice in web browsers? Firefox mobile? What? As far as the capacity, yeah, that sucks. I'd have thought they'd at least add on an SD card slot, and maybe they will in a later model.

Worse, it's $500 at least

*shrug* A price is a price. If you think it's too much, don't buy it, or get one second-hand. Eventually, the market will deal with that.

Why exactly do you think this will sell? The only good thing I see coming out of this is the iphone form factor might make it into a widescreen non-phone ipod device.

I think it'll sell because (1) Apple's a part of the Zeitgeist, and when they get people excited, people buy. It's marketing genius that brings most of the people. Full disclosure: I used to be a Mac genius at an Apple retail store. The Apple faithful turn out in droves to buy new products, and often made ridiculous offers to store personnel to see if we'd "hold" a product for them. The first wave of rabid Apple fanboys will be enough to buy up the original production line. Then, others who are drawn in by marketing and shrewd salesmanship of Apple employees will bring in more, and finally, I think there's enough of a market for people who want a phone with widescreen, SMS and web capabilities. They don't even know what "3G" means or why it's faster. The next two or three iterations of the phone will add more "geek stuff" for those of us who want it. I think you'll see memory expansion slots and things like that in later generations of phones.

Re:FUD much?

[daviddennis]

How much of a feature set do you really need?

1 It's an exceptionally well designed phone. Many phones, even simple ones, are complex messes with cryptic or unlabelled buttons. Having a phone that's fairly simple to use but powerful is surprisingly rare.

2 It can browse the web more beautifully than any other device smaller than a laptop computer.

3 It has the best text messaging system

4 It supports Google Maps, so you can pull down driving directions

5 It has full-featured email

6 It has a camera that's fairly strong by smartphone standards (most of them have 1.3 megapixel phones, but the iPhone is 2 megapixels).

7 It supports widgets, which give us news aggregation, weather, etc. Even if installing widgets directly on the device is impossible, they are just HTML and JavaScript files, so you could link to them from a bookmark. Cookes would take care of persistent data storage problems.

7 In terms of third-party software, it should support any web-based games and diversions. I don't really like games, so I will admit having games that run on the device isn't a great priority. But I would not be surprised if there's a way to run the current iPod games on the device, or at least modify them to run on it.

If you think of the needs of most Slashdotters, the only thing missing from this list is SSH. I'm hoping Apple will support ssh; I'd be surprised if they don't, since all their competitors (T-Mobile Sidekick, RIM Blackberry, etc) have SSH applications.

If I can browse my own web site on it and make urgent corrections to it in a pinch, isn't that an invaluable feature that the competition makes a great deal more awkward? Put sideways, the iPhone display should work for at least a 80x24 screen, so assuming we have ssh, emacs on a remote computer should work just fine.

Other than a low price and open source for ideological reasons, I don't see anything this phone doesn't have that a Slashdot user would need.

Where am I wrong?

D

Re:FUD much?

[W2k]

It's an exceptionally well designed phone. Many phones, even simple ones, are complex messes with cryptic or unlabelled buttons. Having a phone that's fairly simple to use but powerful is surprisingly rare.

You're assuming it will be easy to use. I am expecting to get many laughs out of watching people trying to get the gestures right. There is likely to be a considerable learning curve during which users will find that it takes more time and effort to carry out the simplest tasks. I'll say the iPhone looks good - but that's comparing to the rather old Windows Mobile 5 UI. A pretty UI won't make me switch from my current PDA, which has real buttons to speed up common tasks.

It can browse the web more beautifully than any other device smaller than a laptop computer.

Who cares about "beautiful"? Marketing people? I prefer my web browsers to have slim UI:s and reproduce pages faithful to what the designer intended. A web page is a web page, it's not going to look any better because you surf it on an iPhone. My current PDA (running Opera) faithfully reproduces web pages so they look the same as on the PC. The iPhone offers no advantage here.

It has the best text messaging system

I'm not going to take your word for it, and I suspect this is highly subjective.

It supports Google Maps, so you can pull down driving directions

So do current Windows Mobile PDA:s. I saw GM running on Java on my colleague's phone yesterday, and for directions, there's the whole Internet. Which is nice and snappy because my phone has 3G, which the iPhone lacks. Newer Windows Mobile PDA:s also come with GPS.

It has full-featured email

So du current Windows Mobile PDA:s, unless your definition of "full-featured" differs significantly from mine. Please tell me, what e-mailing features does the iPhone support that a recent Windows Mobile PDA lacks? Because I know the iPhone lacks ability to sync with Exchange/Outlook, a critical must-have for many business users.

It has a camera that's fairly strong by smartphone standards (most of them have 1.3 megapixel phones, but the iPhone is 2 megapixels).

My 6 months old Windows Mobile PDA also has a 2 megapixel camera, and newer models have 4 megapixel cameras. 2 mp is far from state of the art.

It supports widgets, which give us news aggregation, weather, etc.

On a PDA running Windows Mobile, you can install any third-party application (unless it's vendor-locked, but unlock hacks exist). And you can store stuff on disk. Or in SQL Server Mobile. And you can code in real programming languages. I think that beats javascript "widgets".

Other than a low price and open source for ideological reasons, I don't see anything this phone doesn't have that a Slashdot user would need.

The killer missing features for me is 3G, no third-party apps, and no Outlook/Exchange sync (which is what we have at work, not my choice). If I'm going to buy a new PDA, it better have a fast connection to the Internet and support for C#/.NET 2.0 (or equivalent) for writing (actually, porting from my current PDA) my own apps. I'm sure many people would like GPS. Oh, and real buttons and a stylus.

Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story...

[aussersterne]

...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.

Enough

[Carrot007]

This is just more speculation against other speculation.

Can we stop posting these untill we have some real information please.

Re:Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story.

[imroy]

Oh but this isn't an iPhone article... in any meaningful sense.

iPhone will have secure boot

[smably]

As for artificial limitations on development: According to a developer I talked to who apparently worked on the iPhone, it will have secure boot; i.e., the bootloader checks to make sure it's booting Apple's OS, and the hardware won't run any bootloader other than Apple's. Obviously Apple is taking a different approach this time compared to, say, the iPod and their Intel Macs. So, I doubt we'll be seeing iPhone Linux or anything like that unless Apple has done something really stupid.

Re:Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story.

[MrWGW]

I'm of the opinion that Slashdot's extensive coverage of the iPhone is warranted by virtue of the enormous public interest in the iPhone as a product. While there is really nothing new in the iPhone (although it is a clever combination of existing technologies), the public interest in it is intense, and if it does indeed live up to its promise and deliver a dramatically improved user interface experience for smartphones and handheld devices, it could become an extremely signficant product. What is terrifying about this prospect, is of course, the fact that the iPhone represents a blatant rejection of everything the FOSS community has been advocating: open platforms, open standards, open source, and user choice. If the iPhone promotes the idea that closed source, closed platform monopolies are cool, then that obviously does not bode well for us. Consequently, there is an obvious need for Slashdot to cover the iPhone as extensively as possible, so that we as a community can (a) better understand the threat that it poses, and (b) get a sense of how best to respond.

Don't downplay 3G!

[fons]

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?

Re:Don't downplay 3G!

[weave]

Unless this phone will allow tethering to another device, like a laptop, 3G probably doesn't matter. The internal processor will have a hard enough time drawing the pages at EDGE speeds as it is. Watch the keynote when Jobs is loading the New York Times website OVER WIFI and see how long it took to get it all rendered.

I have ev-do through Verizon now. I won't switch unless the phone does 3G and allows tethering, so looks like I'm not getting one. :(

Re:Don't downplay 3G!

[kanweg]

"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

Re:Don't downplay 3G!

[beeblebrox]

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 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.

Re:Don't downplay 3G!

[badasscat]

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.)

Re:Don't downplay 3G!

[aristotle-dude]

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. Bullshit. What do you want? Do you want a phone that excels at phone calls, a phone that does a million things but does a shitty job at it or a laptop and a phone? How much data can you realistically manipulate on a cell phone. Let's be realistic here and put away the ridiculous nerd scenarios. No business user is going to use a smart phone for much more than email and phone calls and the odd SMS. If they want to VPN into their corporate network, they will find a reliable network connection and run VPN over top of that with their laptop.

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.

Just wow...

[(H)elix1]

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.

Re:Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story.

[aussersterne]

You make an interesting point (re: openness). Are there any companies out there making reference hardware platforms for GSM phones with PDA-like form factors? Perhaps it's time for an "OpenPhone Project" that implements wacky OSS coolness and innovation on top of a reference smartphone design and that can ultimately make its way into the hands of interested manufacturers? I'd be interested in reading about that on the front page of Slashdot...

Steve Jobs commands:

[subl33t]

Stop complaining and drink the Kool-Aid, dammit.

Quick summary of the article

[twfry]

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?

Not this FUDmeister again

[0xdeadbeef]

That same article explained why: Apple wants the iPhone to work reliably, not to be known as a toy that can load various shareware apps, but which freezes erratically and is plagued with spyware and security hazards.

The Orwellian double-speak is mind-boggling. This is the world according to an Apple fanboy:

A device that can be adapted to do anything within the limits of technology and security: a toy.
A device that does only what Apple product managers and Cingular marketers think you should be allowed to do with it: apparantly, not a toy.

Here's a little trivia: the Apple store uses either Symbol or Intermec-based handheld devices to scan products. These devices run either Palm OS or Windows CE. Apple uses toys to manage its invetory.

Re:Not this FUDmeister again

[MojoStan]

Subject: Not this FUDmeister again

That same article explained why: Apple wants the iPhone to work reliably, not to be known as a toy that can load various shareware apps, but which freezes erratically and is plagued with spyware and security hazards.

The Orwellian double-speak is mind-boggling. This is the world according to an Apple fanboy...

Also note that this story's submitter, DECS, is the same Apple fanboy who writes these articles on roughlydrafted, Daniel Eran. As Slashdot user DECS, he refers to himself, Daniel Eran, in the 3rd person. In addition to submitting his own articles, he also pimps his own articles in his Slashdot comments, in the 3rd person of course.

Re:Interesting stuff is GONNA HAPPEN

[bheer]

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'.

Open cell phone platform

[MCRocker]

Perhaps it's time for an "OpenPhone Project" that implements wacky OSS coolness and innovation on top of a reference smartphone design and that can ultimately make its way into the hands of interested manufacturers? I'd be interested in reading about that on the front page of Slashdot...

Well, there's the Qtopia Greenphone. From what I've read so far, it doesn't sound like it's quite ready for prime time, but sounds like it's on the right path.

It's in the Apple category

[QuantumG]

That's what Apple is doing right now. If you don't want to read about Apple, turn off that category.

Fanboism at its finest

[eraser.cpp]

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.

Re:Fanboism at its finest

[gravesb]

Myth 1 response: The author supposes that Apple will include Cingular's 3G network, when it is available. He was saying that Apple can't include every feature people want, and made some decisions. EVDO specifically can't be offered for legal reasons, and the benefits the deal with Cingular outweigh, at least in Apple's mind, outweigh one particular brand on 3G. Hopefully, Apple will include some sort of 3G capability in the future, or the iPhone will have issues. Myth 2 response: I think the iPhone will segment later. Making supposions based on the Macworld announcement is shortsighted. Apple knows they need a low end model, I think they are just trying to squeeze the top end later. Myth 3: Both your response and the author's are correct. For an example, look at Firefox. It is wonderful software, I personally use it, and it has energized a dead segment of software. However, it does have memory leaks, especially when third party extensions are added. There are benefits and expenses to both methods, and Apple chose their poison. I don't think its a horrible idea, as the average user will blame all problems on Apple, regardless of what causes them, and in a phone, stability is much more important. However, they will have to deal with the expense, which you all lay out in your response. I don't know that all of the myths speak of fanboism. The iPhone certainly isn't a developers' paradise, and it does have its issues. No one can really predict how well it will do, as I am sure it will have revisions before it comes out. But it is unique, and Apple deserves some credit. Maybe it won't be a run away success, but hopefully it will at least prompt other companies to improve their offerings. I certainly won't be buying one initially, as I didn't buy the first iPods. But I think I will get one a few generations down the road, as it gradually approaches the feature set and price I want, just like the iPod.

Re:Fanboism at its finest

[voidptr]

 
  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. $599 isn't significantly more expensive than any other high demand phone at launch day. Cingular sold the RAZR at $500 with a 2 year contract in 2004, and the only thing it had going for it was a well styled enclosure. Mine needs a reboot once a week due to bugs, it's GPRS data only (which makes EDGE scream by comparison) and the web browser is unuseable.

I've got problems with the iPhone seemingly being crippled in more than one area at Cingular's request, but the price isn't really out of line for any new phone launch.

Re:Fanboism at its finest

[Andy_R]

"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.

Re:Fanboism at its finest

[dlim]

Apple launched the iPhone in 2004? Seriously, you're comparing prices of 2 year old technology to something getting launched in 6 months.

It should be cheaper today.

For a more appropriate comparison, consider the Samsung Blackjack (launched Nov 13, 2006) at $199 or the Motorola Q (announced in June 06) at $199. At least the iPhone will have been launched within a year of those.

Re:Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story.

[shmlco]

"... 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?

Completely and utterly incorrect on unlocked phone

[fdobbie]

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.

Re:Interesting stuff is GONNA HAPPEN

[anagama]

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING of a new modern, physically simple hardware device to use for computing-communication and Apple is just the one on the leading edge at the moment.

Well, the iphone could have been "a simple hardware device to use for computing-communication" and Apple could have been on the leading edge of that. Instead, they chose to make the device an eye-candy dripping but half-assed nonetheless gadget. Like those $19 "PDAs" in blister packs in Kmart. Sure, they have a calendar, a note pad, and phone directory, but what makes them so worthless is the fact that they can't be extended in a simple and natural manner through additional software installs.

The reason there is so much flame against the iphone right now is because lots people, myself included, saw the presentation and though "wow -- that's gonna be awesome -- finally a real computing device that fits in your pocket and has a great UI". Then we heard it was going to be nothing but pretty gadget and got royally ticked off.
 
And lest you think I have a knee jerk hatred of apple -- you're wrong. I'm typing this in ubuntu running in parallels on a macbook. Apple makes nice hardware, but they can't please everyone. The 3d party app market is there exactly to serve people who might have unique desires or requirements and Apple doesn't think of everything (e.g., why can't I use finder to ssh into another account like konqueror or nautilus will do? -- thank goodness there's a 3d party solution for this -- it makes the hardware all that much more valuable to me).

misinformed author?

[NimbleSquirrel]

The author of Inside the "iPhone: EDGE, EVDO, HSUPA, 3G, and WiFi" seems to have confused himself with the acronyms associated with 3G, and then goes on to attempt to explain it to the rest of us.

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.

secure boot != 3rd party apps

[kybred]

As for artificial limitations on development: According to a developer I talked to who apparently worked on the iPhone, it will have secure boot; i.e., the bootloader checks to make sure it's booting Apple's OS, and the hardware won't run any bootloader other than Apple's.

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.

Re:amaroK and GNOME

[zecg]

USE="-kde" emerge amarok saves you from having to have kdebase. If you have Gentoo, of course.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story.

[Damek]

Further meaningless iPhone articles do not belong on Slashdot, and neither does Al Gore.

Re:Okay, I was tempted with the last iPhone story.

[narf501]

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.

Who cares about 3rd party?

[lisaparratt]

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.

Re:Interesting stuff is GONNA HAPPEN

[Ilgaz]

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.

Why are you all posting here...

[Triple]

...you should be running your own companies. You are all smarter than everyone else. All of you here will be quite vindicated when the iPhone fails. Man, I wish Apple had consulted you before they did this, you all could have saved them a lot of trouble. By the way, does anyone have the comments section from Slashdot for the introduction of the iPod? I'm sure the same "much smarter than" people were out. In the end, having an elegant device that works well and easily wins. Luckily, we all will be able to wait and see how it works out.

Sometimes vanilla is better than 30 flavours

[EmbeddedJanitor]

As much as one might bitch and moan about Windows, the freedom in *nix does make for anarchy and does not make for ease of use. In my experience this is a real issue with system configuration (firewalls, hotplug, etc). Howto's don't just say "do this"; they are shopping lists of "on RH8 do this, on Ubuntu do that,..." which does not make for ease of use.

Freedom is not always a good thing. Would you like freedom of choice as to which side of the road you drive on?

EDGE or 3G?

[porttikivi]

Note that 3GPP rel. 7 standard will define "EDGE Evolution" which makes the EDGE speed 2-3 times faster. That's a good, cheap, and POWER SAVING alternative for a future iPhone model. Apple will of course still consider further upgraded models with GSM/UMTS path (W-CDMA and HSDPA/HSUPA) technologies, but they consume more battery and the results may vary.

I typically get about the same speed with EDGE and 3G, country wide here in Finland. The real speed depends on the network congestion. Anyway the capped limit in current UMTS phones (my Nokia N70) and networks (all the non-HSDPA UMTS networks I know, which is 90% of the UMTS world) is 384 kbit/s, so it is not much better than the max ~256 kbits/s of standard EDGE.

And the real life results with the HSDPA supporting new handsets and networks will vary. With bad coverage or congestion you will not benefit much of it. So even in the near future (~5 years), the difference between EDGE and UMTS versions will not be so big.

And before EDGE gets really old and undesirable, many things may happen and change the picture: Wimax, xMax, whatever radio; SIP, Skype, XMPP, whatever VoIP. VoIP changes the picture radically: you don't have to necessarily implement legacy technology (GSM/UMTS, CDMA/EVDO) anymore, because now any acccess point with any (radio) technology works with your VoIP.

Unlocked Phones and Network Access

[timmyf2371]

Shortly before the iPhone's release, Dean Hall, a seven year software engineer for Motorola, explained in an email the limited usability of an unlocked phone:

"When a phone is unlocked it loses its privileges on a provider's data network. An unlocked phone can make GSM calls and send basic SMS. No MMS, no Internet, no iTS. Apple would either have to reverse engineer a method to gain access to the data network (unlikely as most data networks require SSL-level security to access) or it would have to offer something different."

If Mr Hall is a typical representation of a Motorola software engineer, it may explain why any Motorola phone I've ever had the misfortune to use has experienced software issues. I'm not sure that he has much of an idea about what he's talking about here.

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.

Competition on APIs

[angel'o'sphere]

QuantumG, I disagree with both of your posts:

[post one] as if a committee can create anything remotely good. Competing APIs are competing for a reason..

APIs don't compete. It's the organizations behind the APIs that do and its the OS or software based on the API that do. Regarding the committee, I don't know. But APIs are one thing that certainly should not be defined by the guys using the APIs but buy the guys having the most expertise in the problem domain and in API (framework) design.

[post two] 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.

I do all GUI programming in either: GWT-AJAX, Swing, Qt (and in very rare cases C#/WinForms), also on the Mac, all my Mac applications I wrote are Java/Swing applications. Objective-C/XYZStep frameworks are absolutely no competition, I would never even consider one.

The same is true for every developer who has the choice, the general programmer will not pick a different language or API for doing his stuff. I would guess the migration of developers from KDE to GTK/Gnome and also into the other direction is more or less zero. The programmers tend to think the API (way of doing stuff, way to think) of their old familiar platform is better than the other platform.

For adopting new APIs (and that relates to designing them, even by committee) the very same is happening. Programmer like SWT (Java/Eclipse GUI library) because it is similar to the Win32 GUI API. OTOH Swing is a design by committee GUI framework) that is far superior to SWT and designed by GUI API specialists, but if you follow the crowed here on /. most developers don't like it. I think: because they don't understand it, they lack experiance/education in this topic.

Market and competition is far more than supply and demand and survival of the fittest. Its about: knowledge and education of teh customers, market penetration, market awareness, marketing etc. and finally even matter of taste. Beer does not compete with wine, I drink both, according to my current situation and mood.

I know about Objective-C and about OpenStep etc., but they are not my taste and I never will be in the mood to try them. Windows API and based on it WindowsForm meanwhile surely is the most commonly used GUI API on the world, but not because it is simple, or good, but because Microsoft is behind it. 95% of the developres on the world never saw that GUI programming can be done far more simple, like with Swing/Qt/OpenStep. Heck, even the PERL binding libs to GTK are 100 times more "consistent/intuitive/simple" than the Win32 API.

After all for a problem domain you always can make a sort of metrics like: ease of programming, platform neutrality, experienced speediness of the UI or ... or ... or, and you could objective decide which API is the better one. If you would do that, a lot of our days APIs would immediately drop out of competition. In fact they would don't really do that as programmers would simply start to compete (erm ... to argue) which set of metrics makes more sense and claim that one API only looks bad in one metric but better in the other ;D

After all, if APIs would compete and the best would survive we all would program in a language that is OO/has multiple inheritance and mix-ins/supports functional and logic programming (by extending the object concept)/has an extendable syntax and compiler/has a wide and well defined class library (that also covers networking, DB access, and other J2EE alike stuff)/runs on a virtual machine ... and is both hotspot optimized byte code and/or hard linked/compiled for fast startup, where it is useful.

However, there is no such language / runtime environment.

angel'o'sphere

the big feature...

[SethJohnson]

Your excellent list missed this one feature:

8. Random Access Voicemail.

This alone sold me on the phone. I don't even use voicemail because I don't want to wade through 25 messages to get to the one from the caller I just missed. I just call the person up who I see on my caller ID and ask them "what's up?" Being able to mass-delete voicemails instead of having to navigate voice menus is a killer-app as far as I'm concerned.

To support this feature, Cingular had to retool their own voicemail system. I am betting you're going to see this functionality added to the other providers, too. Hate the company for one-button mice and DRM as much as you like, you've got to give Apple credit as being a minority player in an industry forcing innovation on the rest of the players. They did this with USB, too. When the first iMac came out, Steve Jobs refused to include serial ports. It was the first computer to be USB-only. There were no USB printers or scanners at the time, but the strong sales of the iMac inspired peripheral developers to implement USB connectivity to make their products work with the #1 selling computer model.

Seth