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iPhone Roundup
Some of you are tired of the blizzard of coverage the iPhone is getting, so this roundup of iPhone stories is running off the main page. First off, EMIce points out what seems to be plenty of prior art (as well as a booming research scene) on the multi-touch interface that Steve Jobs demo'ed, boasting of having "filed for over 200 patents." FastCompany has a profile of NYU researcher Jefferson Han and his killer demo of a multi-touch interface at TED. Next, Toreo asesino writes in with Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's take on the iPhone; the Microsoft CEO doesn't sound very impressed. And finally, an anonymous reader notes CNet's article on why the iPhone, once it's in the hands of consumers, may be the most muggable item of consumer electronics ever.
I like the CNET.co.uk story on 4 ways to hide the iPOD from muggers.... (You have to dig in a bit on the links.) One of which involves the sun not shining. They suggested the same for the iPhone.
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Omg I didn't realize it has no real keyboard. That's gonna kill it pretty fast considering all what it's supposed to be able to do.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The Apple iPhone will trigger a revolution in street-crime convenience. It's a three-for-one deal: not only is it a mobile phone, it's also a cutting-edge video iPod and a Wi-Fi enabled Internet browser. The Met says that people are stealing mobile phones even if they are locked, so that they can access the other features, such as the camera and games. The highly functional iPhone couldn't fit more perfectly into a mugger's dream.
So it's a 3-for-1 deal, an iPod, mobile browser, and phone. If I'm not mistaken, without a usable service (which would no doubt be disabled within minutes of it being reported stolen to Cingular), what are you left with? An expensive video iPod with "camera and games." This is all well and fine in itself, and the article went on to explain how obvious it will be that someone has an iPhone when they're talking into their white headphones, but still, I'm not seeing what's so lucrative when a wallet, purse, Rolex, laptop, or small dog may also be available. At least those don't immediately lose two-thirds of their value when stolen.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
that's a plus for Apple, right?
Most anyone that is interested in the iPhone will already have a cellphone and be locked in to a 2 year contract already. Personally, I have a pretty good deal for my Family plan with Sprint. Moving everything over to Cingular will likely end up costing an additional $100 per month on top of the $599 I'll need to pay for the phone. So, over 2 years, the iPhone will cost about $3000. As much as I like the phone, that's a little too expensive for a gadget. Now if Cingular introduces a plan as revolutionary as the iPhone at launch then they will sell these phones as fast as they can make them.
Jobs said that they've filed for over 200 patents on the iPhone overall, not multi-touch specifically. You can see it in his slide here:
d ia/2007/01/dsc_0232.jpg
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/me
If the biggest negative about your product is that people will bury you in the desert to take yours, you must be doing something right.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Do you think that if Microsoft had had this product they would have been ho-hum about it? Do you think he'd be saying, well, "Our phone is okay, but there are better"? No, he'd be extolling the greatness, the features, the "innovation", etc.. He'd say that it would burry the rest of the industry, etc. He's probably wondering why can't he (MS) and its partners not make something as appealing as what Apple does?
Tecnology becomes frugal very quickly. Watch the streets today, and see how many peoply walk without problems talking to their cell phone or listening to their iPods/any other audio player. The iPhone may be all shiny and glamorous when it is launched, but a couple of years from now, it will be as common as any other gadget.
Lots of people. I bet a large percentage of iPod owners will be buying this thing. I won't be buying it at that price though (not an iPod owner).
It also has a couple of major flaws that really irk me. One, why didn't they not include a user replaceable battery? I thought that was stupid enough on the iPod, but it's vastly more stupid for a mobile phone. I know people that are so attached to their mobile phones that they carry around multiple batteries. Batteries die somewhat quickly in mobile phones and I'd wager that quite a few will be dead before the 2-year contract is up. So that means you'll likely have pay some ludicrous fee to have your phone sent off to Apple for a new battery and be stuck without your phone for a couple of weeks. That is going to piss quite a few people off.
Second, even though they advertise it as "widescreen", it's not even truly widescreen (16:9.. or 1.78:1). I think it actually has an aspect ratio of 1.5:1. So it actually falls between the standard 4:3 and 16:9 widescreen.
Old news.
It might be amusing to add a GPS system. Then, write an app that, on receiving a certain type of SMS from Apple, proceeds to start phoning the police asking for help, and posting its position and a picture of its surroundings to a website. Screaming for help might be another nice touch... or perhaps just making the sound of police sirens as an unsubtle hint.
Yeah, it's a problem; however, there are enough easy solutions that I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't stuff one (or more) in by deployment time.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
That Jefferson Han article points out that Apple "may" be coming out with a "touchscreen iPod" in the future, so I doubt it was written knowing that Han has already posted on his site that "Yes, we saw the keynote too" and that they "have some very, very exciting updates coming soon- stay tuned!" The site may say "February 2007," but it's straight from last year. Yay for magazine-caliber latency.
So, way to not point it out by using an outdated article, but I would be so bold as to venture that Han and Apple are working together.
OMG! Wau!
Your comment makes no sense. What brains are missing? We've already seen what the phone can do in the Keynote and the Apple website: play music, play videos, surf the web (rendering pages correctly), check e-mail, send text messages, visual voicemail - the list goes on and on, and it looks likely that Apple will allow the release of third-party widgets, if not full-fledged applications.
And it will do all of this with Apple's usual ease-of-use and pleasant aesthetics. Not to mention, they have six months to refine it further.
What brains are missing, exactly? I can't really think of much else that I want a smartphone to do. 3G would be nice, but I can live with that omission for now.
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My biggest issue with taking this as anymore than a cell with games and keeping it out of the smartphone category is it's lack of any enterprise mail support. From what i have seen/read it does not support Good, Blackberry Connect or even Exchange ActiveSync. The latter would be one of the easiest to implement, even Palm has Exchange ActiveSync support on it's palm based Treo's.
Hopefully they'll include this at some point, but for now I (personally) just can't justify getting it for a smartphone, maybe a nice ipod/phone combination, but that's it.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I don't know, people who are sick of how much the interfaces and functionality of most consumer electronics suck these days?
I have a cell phone that ostensibly does everything the iPhone will, but it is such a PITA to navigate through the convoluted menu system and shitty desktop software that I don't bother.
And as for the price, people seem to be forgetting that this is an iPod too. I'm willing to pay $250 for an iPod Nano, and $250 for a smartphone. $500 to have both of them in a single device without any compromised functionality is worth it, I think.
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I was sort of surprised when Steve Jobs acted like Apple had "innovated" the idea of multi-touch and even the finger pinch image resizing, because I had recalled Jeff Han's video from last year demonstrating a working multi-touch product with the same type of gestures Steve Jobs was using. I wonder if its possible that Apple licensed the tech from Jeff Han's company?
If not I wonder who filed patents first on a lot of these technologies as the article linked above mentions that many different companies are working on basically the same product ideas using infrared light detection to detect multiple touches on a screen surface. I can definitely foresee a huge patent lawsuit war brewing in the multi-touch screen arena as everyone claims to be the first innovator. One thing I know for sure is if Apple has only been working in the iPhone for 2 years, they did NOT "innovate" the multi-touch technology as the idea and prototypes for such existed before then.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Apple bought FingerWorks several years ago.
You may remember them for their Multi-Touch keyboard nearly 4 years ago. Apple first began incorporating the technology into their scrolling trackpads about 2 years ago. Now it has found its way into the iPhone.
We're easily blinded... by futility? How does that work? "Hey, check this thing out. It's sooo futile, there's no point to it whatsoever! Wow! I'm blind now, and I'll pay any price! That's how pointless I think this thing is."
What you probably meant to say was that people are easily blinded by something else, perhaps a good sales pitch, and that makes them overlook futility. That makes more sense. There, I fixed your flame. You're welcome.
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Basically all they are doing is blaming Apple for putting in too many nice features in the device. It is just stupid.
Many of us wear watches on our wrist that make the iPhone's price tag look meaningless. If I were a mugger I'd much rather steal them. The black market for expensive watches has to be better then the black market for a device in which you can't use one of its main features (the phone part) and of which is easily to track if you turn it on and let it connect to the cell network (which phones do even without a sim card installed so they can dial 911). It isn't like you could just swap out the sim card and use it as your phone... Cingular would be able to tell the handsets IMEI number and thus catch you in the act of using a stolen phone.
I can't really think of much else that I want a smartphone to do.
I want it to cook me breakfast in the morning.
No, wait, I'm thinking of something else. Never mind.
Here are some thoughts I've had in the last couple weeks.
;-)
:-)
Success:
- Will it be a success? Yes. Is it pricey? Yes. Is it gorgeous? Yes. And the price will eventually drop, just like the iPod did. It's Apple's famous method: release a really nice, almost perfect product for a bunch of money, sell a bunch to the first batch of buyers; then, when that supply is exhausted, improve it, drop the price, sell again to the next round who weren't willing to buy the first time. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Note: don't look for a widescreen, touchscreen, iPod until MAYBE September for the 2007 Xmas season; more likely, you'll have to wait until Spring 2008. Apple won't let a nice iPod cannibalize sales they'll get to people who buy the iPhone MOSTLY because they want a widescreen iPod. Oh, and by the way--current iPods have 4:3 screens. (1.33:1.) All Apple's computers are 16:10. (1.6:1.) The iPhone, like the original PBG4, is 3:2. (1.5:1.) So: what shape should iTMS movies be?)
- BUT--the iPod wasn't a success just because it was pretty. It really is a better, easier-to-use MP3 player than anything else out there for most people. The iPhone will ONLY succeed if the touchscreen system works as well as Steve says it does. I can tell it'll be mostly great just by looking--a regular touchscreen could easily handle 90% of the single-finger action he demo'ed--but I'll have to see the keyboard in person to become a believer on that.
- will Apple work out a deal with Cingular to offer a reasonable data plan? No one will be happy with the Internet Communicator of the Future if it costs $100/month to do anything with. For this to really, really work, there has to be reasonably-fast, reasonably-priced data. If it becomes a situation of "Oh, I can't use Safari until I get to Starbucks or Panera" that will be a big buzzkill.
- will they meet their goals? They said they want to sell 10 million phones--have 1% of the market--in 18 months. (God, that sounds like so many WWW business plans I heard in 1995-97--"If we could just get 1% of all web users to visit our site...") That sounds good on the one hand, given that they want 1% of a billion phones, BUT--Cingular only has 60M customers. Is the iPhone so great that ONE SIXTH of Cingular's customer base will spend $500? If not, are that many people going to get out of contracts and switch carriers in the next 18 months? I'm not so sure. Like I said, I really think the iPhone will be a success, but their expectations are pretty high.
Other thoughts:
- no iChat! no iChat A/V! How LAME! Either a) it's part of the deal not to step on Cingular's toes by offering anything like VOIP, or b) it's waiting for Rev B. Unfortunately, my money's on A. Well, at least you can use the browser to access Meebo.
- Proximity sensor--nice. But I hope that's not one of their patents. My Canon XTi turns off the screen when you put it up to your face--and it already exists.
- Apple will need to add 'Cingular' and 'iPhone' to Leopard's spellcheck dictionary.
- I'll pick one up in a couple rev's just to have a decent browser. Despite having twice as many pixels as the iPhone, browsing on my Axim mostly sucks.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Holy geezus crisco, do you apply fanboys rove in packs? The grandparent gets modified 0 Troll and this is 3 Informative?
The iPhone does nothing a two-year-old Treo can't do, except do it all with an obnoxious gesture-based user interface. And I use Treo as an example because I consider it one of the worst platforms on which to implement that functionality.
And the lack of third-party applications disqualifies it from the moniker smartphone.
WTF do you expect him to do, fake an orgasm at the mention of a competitor's product?
Apple could develop a cure for cancer, and Steve Ballmer would say "Meh, we've got an offering in the works that will do everything Apple's cure will do, but at a lower price point. And our solution leverages our synergy with our business parterns to enable innovation by developers, developers, developers! in this new market. It'll be brown and you can squirt it to all of your friends!"
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Can a game be built as a widget?
In light of the tone of the recent iPhone stories posted here, can we please have a new story category icon depicting a person taking a massive shit on an iPhone? Thank you for your consideration.
Until then it can't hope compete with Windows Mobile, Palm, or Blackberry.
Worst BBC News Stories
That's what women are for...
"Wait, no honey, I'm not talking about you, now get back in the kitchen and make me a goddamn sammich!"
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
and it looks likely that Apple will allow the release of third-party widgets, if not full-fledged applications
Widgets can't replicate the functionality of the software that would have made an OSX-based phone really useful, like VNC, VLC, mplayer, Skype/VoIP, IM software, etc.
Steve shows no signs of relenting on this. Apple wants top-down control of everything they produce. Their justification for this is pretty weak -- if someone is worried about the stability of their phone, let them not install any non-Apple-approved applications. It's really quite simple -- especially when the mechanism exists to completely restore the phone to factory defaults and wipe it out just by plugging it into the dock and clicking a button.
+++ATH0
The fact that the cell company will give this information to the cops (at least for E911) but not to you is utterly repugnant.
I agree. But why wouldn't they? Is it possibly because it's not terribly reliable and they don't want to be subject to lawsuits if it doesn't work the way it should?
+++ATH0
I'm glad that you put in the comment on the Mighty Mouse, because it gives me a good index on how much to trust your opinion. I really love my MIghty Mouse. I gave up a wireless 3-button scroll Mouse for the initial Mighty Mouse, just because it was so comfortable and so much easier to use, seeming to magically know what I wanted to do, that it was worth the inconvenience of going back to the wire. Now of course, I have the wireless version. These days, it drives me nuts when I have to use an old-style scroll mouse.
@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org) { * { font-family: sans-serif ! important; font-size: large ! important;}}
or
@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org) { * { font: large sans-serif ! important;}}
The lock on the phone has nothing to do with Steve Jobs being a control freak. Apple is introducing a very sophisticated handheld computer into the marketplace and selling it as a lifestyle device. If the system were open to third-party developers, in the traditional way, how long would it be before phone-spyware, phone-adware, phone-rootkits and other nastiness appeared? There is also the consideration of having a wave of voip software alienating the carriers that Apple NEEDS to ensure the success of this expensive venture, a wave of peer-to-peer filesharing apps on the handset that would alienate and anger the media companies that Apple is in bed with for iPod content and many other potential catastrophes.
Can you image phone spyware? Where you are, who you are calling and texting and potentially even sly use of your camera and microphone? This is no joke. If Apple gets this wrong it will be a complete disaster.
My prediction is that Apple will allow third-party development, but it will be through some certification system. Applications will have to be submitted to Apple for digital signatures or somesuch. This is an expensive proposition for Apple, so I wouldn't expect it to happen right away. But there will be a very serious call for Apple to open the platform and eventually, this will happen (or something similar).
We should be applauding Apple. They have done something very significant here. This device is unique and shatters the envelope. Follow-on models are guaranteed to be amazing with features such as iChatAV, even larger screens, perhaps even docking stations with keyboards, graphic cards, etc... We are witnessing a true paradigm shift. Apple is attempting to ensure the success of this venture. Their behavior will change radically once these devices are ubiquitous.
I saw an interesting discussion regarding Flash and Java. If Flash and Java are supported through Safari on the iPhone, then it is reasonable to assume that application deployment could be completely tied to those technologies. It isn't ideal, but it is a far cry from having no way to run custom apps. Also, everyone here should know, without question, that it will be a month before a root-kit is released (in our community) that allows us to take control of this device and install software.
Clearly, iChat would be seen as a threat to Cingular's revenue stream. It's pretty obvious why this wasn't included. That is an artifact of the Network monopoly marketplace we live in. It sucks, but it is what it is.
However, I know what Steve is doing. He knows that he cannot deploy a cellphone without a network. But once there are enough users of iPhones, his negotiating position will change. People will become loyal to the iPhone product, willing to switch networks rather than switch phones. The two year window with Cingular is the gestation time for this to happen. After that, you can bet your *ss that iChat and all manner of liberation will emerge. If it doesn't, then people will abandon iPhone for similar products guaranteed to ship from the likes of Nokia, Samsung and Motorola.
Elimintating the possibility of third-party software installation is not the only way to protect the phone, clearly. But it is the only sane way to enter the intensely competitive and huge cellphone market. A privacy disaster or virus disaster (etc..) would quickly eliminate Apple from carving out any significant piece of that market. Steve is entering with all the control in his pocket in order to ensure a successful birth. Wait for the child to grow a bit, it will open up.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Yes. See Apple's Dashboard widget collection.
E pluribus unum
All I ever see is arguments about how it's crippled, and it could do more.
IT'S NOT THAT DEVICE!
It's a slick liitle gadget that lets you talk on the phone and listen to blink182. Steve-o isn't trying to sell the ultimate geek toy, he's trying to sell another piece of crap to people that think their iPod should be replaced because it's more than 3 months old.
It's hella easy to armchair quarterback and say "but it could blah to my blah blah if only blah and blah was opened up". But IT'S NOT, AND WILL NEVER BE THAT DREAM DEVICE FOR GEEKS, it's that other device for wanna-geeks.
And realy, wait around for rev B, cause I'm sure they'll hear that huge market segment that's screaming "I want to SSH into my Debian box from the comic book store so I can retreive the ODF list of Sandman (Vertigo) titles, then hack a custom app that retrieves current market value." Really huge market there waiting to be tapped.
Second, even though they advertise it as "widescreen", it's not even truly widescreen
On a 480x320 display, the difference between 1.5:1 and 1.78:1 is 25 pixels of letterboxing on top and bottom. At 160ppi, that's about a quarter of an inch. Complaining about that is like complaining that it doesn't have surround sound.
Also, all of Apple's widescreen computer displays are 1.6:1, do they not qualify as "truly widescreen"? There are widescreen DVDs with 1.85:1 and 2.35:1, are they not "truly widescreen?
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
I'm not buying this appeal to "authority"
Just to add more anecdotal evidence -- I used a Mighty Mouse at work for awhile, and while it wasn't terrible, it was not really that great. The right/left click detection worked well, but the scroll ball kept gumming up and would no longer scroll (the ball would move but no movement was detected by the mouse.) Apple has directions for cleaning it, but those directions eventually stopped working. At least I'm not the only person to have this issue.
What brains are missing? Well, pretty much anything innovative, beyond aesthetics. As you mention,
"We've already seen what the phone can do in the Keynote and the Apple website: play music, play videos, surf the web (rendering pages correctly), check e-mail, send text messages, visual voicemail - the list goes on and on, and it looks likely that Apple will allow the release of third-party widgets, if not full-fledged applications."
Well, most phones out there already can do that, and with third party applications too - there isn't really anything astounding here when you look at it in detail. Furthermore, my phone (with a 640x480 screen too) can render websites perfectly, but you know what - with a small screen that often isnt' really feasible anyway. Even worse with the 320x480 screen of the iPhone. It'd be like running a computer in 640x480 resolution with a window not even filling the screen. The visual effects of zooming in and scrolling with your finger may appear flashy at first, but how annoying is it going to get in the long wrong to have to zoom in before hitting a link (due to links being small and fingers being big, let alone being able to read them - yay for my accurate stylus), as well as having to scroll left and right and such. In fact, I normally use google's mobile phone page adaption, which looks better. When I'm mobile, I want the content, I don't want the adverts, I'm not overly concerned with the flashy images that use up my limited data allowance, and to be honest, I'm not really missing much.
Still, the features that you mention are already available and are nothing special. The fact that people are able to skin phones that are already out to look like the iphone (let alone lots of other things too, there are some really lovely skins out there), it doesn't overly win on aesthetics either, particularly as different peoples aesthetical tastes vary and on other phones, especially Windows Mobile, it's easy to customise and theme.
Therefore, in answer to your question, 'What brains are missing', I think the answer is anything really innovative or special. It's a standard average phone with some new aesthetics, although I'm not sure that alone can justify the price. I'm not one to agree with Microsoft, especially not Ballmer, but I think he is saying something when he says "I don't think this would be a very interesting announcement if anybody else had announced exactly the same product," Ballmer says. "If you didn't put the Apple name in that equation, I'm not sure how people would assess it." in the linked article.
As for one of the replies, (which I just saw and also wished to reply to)
"If the system were open to third-party developers, in the traditional way, how long would it be before phone-spyware, phone-adware, phone-rootkits and other nastiness appeared?"
Windows Mobile and Smartphone has been open to developers for a long time and not had any real problems. Plus, you have the FREEDOM to choose to install things, no one forces them on you. Better than being forced not to have them. Plus, Java (used on many phones), allows for secure and controlled applications, yet Apple dismisses it completely. I don't accept this sort of "open up to developers, and you'll see viruses and rootkits". What I could imagine is useful applications like VNC, Remote Desktop, SSH clients, Games and useful programs, like there is with Windows Mobile. I personally believe the argument that open platform = viruses and rootkits is flawed.
And a lot of other people like me who went low-tech and ditched our cell phones are interested.
No matter how you slice it, it's like Nintendo doing the Wii game expansion into casual gamers and women and girls and old people.
It expands the market.
Now, I had a cell phone for a few years, but it was just a hassle - now this comes along and I'm interested.
To me, that means it's a market expanding concept - and the naysayers are mostly those who've been shoving stuff we don't want down our throats and turning off people like me in the process.
That spells success - for Apple.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Clearly, technology is to blame for that. To solve this problem, we must outlaw technology, and not deal with the crime problem.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And the lack of third-party applications disqualifies it from the moniker smartphone.
... now where was I going with all this... I don't know, but I need to hang up my web surfing app in treo, and take a picture. This response has taken only 30 minutes to type out by the way. Whooosh this phone is smart!
Because we all know, that only Smart Phones require a slew of installs to do anything useful.
It's a smart phone, because a person can just USE all the advanced features. I love the gestures, rather than backing up on a selected web page, choosing option, choosing zoom, and then scrolling here -- oops, over there.
90% of that Treo functionality goes to waste. I have a semi-advanced phone, and I've yet to play even an MP3 on it. I took perhaps 5 pictures -- how do I get them to my computer? Well I bought some app off eBay because Motorolla was selling it for a premium. One of these years I will install it, but it is Windows Only, and while my 5 year old Mac runs fine, I have to repair my XP machine again.
How many people out of 100 ever add another application to their phone? With this phone, you will add those functions with iTunes, and you will update your contacts, your photos, music and movies the same way. And like 200 million people already use this application. 2 Billion songs served.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
It can't give the parent poster a blow job while streaming images of Lucy Lu into his brain. All that pent up geek frustration and Apple couldn't get him off.
Meanwhile Joe public won't give 2 shits, and this will drive him FURTHER into a nerdy frothy frenzy follwed by rants about how the public should know better and DRM lockouts will give us cancer and blow up the fucking world for the next 10 years on Boing Boing, Slashdot and Digg. Of course the general public - again - won't give a flying fuck.
Get used to it fuckers, because you know it's true.
I concur.
... basically it must have a 3D accelerator chip because it is actually running Mac OS X -- just a compressed version of it stored in under 500 megs of Flash. It must have Core Graphics and Core Video -- so the latest OS.
Anything that Javascript can do.
But there is also Quartz running on that machine
So basically, anything that Apple wants to allow, that runs on OS X, and doesn't exceed the performance.
Look at the animation of the CDs again; that is a 3D transform of multiple objects composited over video in real time. Quartz composer can take a video feed, react to sound, and build it all on the graphics card. At 160 DPI, I'm guessing there is almost a 720pixel wide screen there -- maybe 640. So, I'm guessing that this machine is equivalent to a 5 year old desktop in power.
The main stumbling-block would be software interpreting it. The Widgets are easy enough to build and willl get easier. They use PNG graphics files and Javascript. They can actually use C++ programs and JAVA -- but I'm not sure what Apple is allowing for the iPhone.
OpenGL is also in their -- inside of Core Graphics. Again -- it all depends on if they have developer tools that make it easy enough for programmers to build decent games, and how much apple allows.
Definitely mindsweeper, or a ported version of DOOM if Apple allows it.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Just add RFID support to the things. Each iPhone owner gets an RFID patch they put somewhere on their body that's encoded with a key specific to their iPhone. If the iPhone detects that it's been both moved out of range of it's owner and that it's moving around beyond a certain threshold, it sends an unpleasent 10,000 volt jolt through the metal backing into the thief's hand. If that doesn't work, and movement is still detected, it then destroy's it's own SIM, wipes the memory and locks up the phone until it's taken/sent to an Apple certified dealer for repair. All the dealer has to do is run a check on the iPhone's serial number and verify the owner is actually the person who brought in the locked unit.
8==8 Bones 8==8
He is in marketing.
What do you expect?
The Apple one seems to alias better (of course, at least twice the pixels to play with), and have a better interface -- but yeah, it seems like Nokia did it first. I wouldn't say exactly the same however. Apple doesn't have that zoomed square effect and they also jump to the column width with a double click.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I have to call BS on this one. We've got plenty of corporates using Windows mobiles (I'm not one of them, thankfully) and the serious e-mailers do prefer a keyboard - a Bluetooth keyboard, not the built-in ones. You can even get them in pocketable folding formats. iPhone has Bluetooth? Check!
The iPhone is just the beginning of a much larger revolution in computing, in fact probably the biggest revolution since the birth of the graphical user interface. Not sure what I mean? Look at the submitter's link to the TED demonstration, and also take a look at the Synaptics Onyx Concept.
Put it this way... if you still haven't guessed where Jobs' head is right now, the iPhone with its arguably limited feature sets is a way of not showing your best work up front. In fact, Apple I think has something much bigger in mind... for which the iPhone is really just a loss leader.
When you see what multipoint capacitance sensors can do, it should become evident that Apple's probably already researching how to redefine the user interface of the home computer... and eliminate the mouse and physical keyboard entirely, but simultaneously give us a user interface far more advanced than a mere 2D touchscreen. A touchscreen tablet strips away some of the advantages of a keyboard and mouse, but a tablet PC with a multipoint capacitance sensor opens up new dimensions of desktop navigation and application control.
Put it another way... Have you seen the Pre-Crime computer in Minority Report? Now you've got some idea where Apple's research is very probably currently focused.
iPhone not meeting expectations, not living up to the hype? Pfeh... I guarantee you Steve Jobs and company are already thinking another five years ahead to the day when the desktop GUI framework will undergo the first systemic metamorphosis in 20 years.
Everyone talks about it getting "hacked" so that third-party apps are usable on it, but the fact remains that you will still need to get a COMPILER from somewhere that works with the thing. How exactly is that going to happen?
Even if it DOES happen, no serious software companies will produce iPhone software unless they have Apple's blessing, which they aren't going to get.
Creating a software ecosystem around this device is the best way to sell it, but apparently that reality has completely escaped Apple.
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The iPhone is best thought of as an iPod with a wap phone attached with a few bridging functions to make it all work well together... and not as a hand held computer with telephony/internet connectivity.
The only thing that prevents the iPhone from being a "hand held computer with telephony/internet conenctivity" is Apple's software lockout.
What about those of us (like myself) who WANT a "hand held computer with telephony/internet conenctivity"? Are you telling us that we SHOULDN'T want this?
Seriously, who the hell are you (or Steve Jobs, for that matter) to dictate to the market? If there is a malware problem (which there isn't, for Macintosh in general and for phones in general as well), you plug the phone into the dock, wipe it out and start over. This isn't rocket science.
Furthermore, you can make it so that out of the box, the phone is locked against outside software and make the user jump through a few hoops in order to enable third-party applications. This prevents casual idiots from breaking their phone and still allows knowledgeable users to do what they want with it.
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Clearly, iChat would be seen as a threat to Cingular's revenue stream. It's pretty obvious why this wasn't included. That is an artifact of the Network monopoly marketplace we live in. It sucks, but it is what it is.
A THREAT? I don't think you know Cingular very well. Data plans for Cingular are fucking EXPENSIVE and cost per-kilobyte (unless you buy an 80 dollar unlimited plan). iChat could potentially be a huge revenue source for them. And if you're in range of a wifi point, you're going to pull out your laptop anyway -- the phone's wifi is simply a convenience.
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Here in South Africa, they gave up on blacklisting phones (they now 'greylist' them instead, which means they do nothing) because it just meant all the stolen phones got exported to the rest of Africa ... which I presume reduced the market for second-hand phones for those whose phones had been stolen ...
Nokia's browser is based on Webcore. I use it on my E61 (a proper smartphone, by the way, with wifi and voip) and it is quite impressive.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Like it or not IPhone is a threat to the Mobile Industry leaders. The time it got launched, Nokia's share prices dropped. http://www.treo700.org/
The iPhone is a tease.
if you want a hand held computer with telephony and wap.. what is stopping you?
The question is, "what is stopping me from buying an OSX handheld with telephony." Steve Jobs is. Apple has produced the hardware and the software and then dangled it out in front of the community and said "you can't touch it."
Cracking the iPhone is likely to be a worthless endeavor without support from Apple. Even assuming you find a way to put new apps on the device, how are you going to compile them in the first place? Test them? There is no dev kit. There is no emulator. No serious developers (serious developers who aren't willing to shell out hundreds, possibly thousands for the "right" to develop for the iPhone) are going to try making applications for a device whose manufacturer will give you no support at all. Which leaves you with the OSS community, and ONLY the OSS community. Which, if you look at how the Zaurus community has developed over the years (AGONIZINGLY slowly), you can see how that's an unacceptable outcome too.
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Innovation is an economic term, it's about taking a good idea and applying it to something new to the market. It can be accomplished by exploiting new knowledge , or changing demographics, or changing attitudes, or unexpected successes/failures.
The difference between Apple and others is that they're usually the first "innovator" but rarely the inventor. With integrated Ethernet & USB on the iMac, for example, they were the innovator. With Firewire, they were both. With the iPod, they were the major innovator of the jog wheel applied as the central navigation feature, but certainly not the first consumer product to use one (I've seen VCR remotes with them).
Multi-touch may have been invented by others, but there's a lot to be said for the bundling of software around such a feature.
-Stu