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Origin of the iPhone
rambilly brings us a story from Wired about the origin and development of the iPhone. From the article:
"Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, 'We don't have a product yet.' The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. 'It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill,' says someone who was in the meeting."
-In what way is it bulky? Nice try. And it's not "really" expensive. It's more expensive than the Razr and all of the other shitty user interface laden, give away phones out there, yes. But it's far from the most expensive phone so let's not be too disingenuous.
Please point at any other non-smartphone which is as pricey and bulky as the iPhone.
-I'd say it's in a class by itself. It doesn't have every feature yet, but I would say it qualifies as a smartphone.
What makes it qualify as a smartphone? It won't let you run 3rd party applications - as far as I'm concerned that pretty much defines the main feature of a smartphone. Ok, so it does calendaring, web browsing and video playing, but so do most other non-smartphones too.
A smartphone is a device that provides computer-like capabilities, basically allowing the user to do whatever they want with the device (to the extent that the hardware is capable) rather than a normal phone which has extremely rigid software capabilities defined by the manufacturer.
Yet, it's not designed for the geek crowd who want to SSH into their computer (who the F does something like that anyway?)
Pretty much anyone who needs to administer systems when not at home but doesn't want to carry a notebook computer with them all the time (i.e. sysadmins who are on call). For the record, I have done it on numerous occasions and it has been a life saver - it's meant I could take 10 minutes to fix a problem and then get back to what I was doing rather than spend several hours in order to get to a computer.
I'd say you already lost this argument. Apple has already updated the phone several times and added new functionality, and another update is coming in Jan. They're already delivering on their promise of updating the functionality via software updates. Face it champ, you got this one wrong.
You'll note I never said Apple _won't_ do this - I said anyone relying on a vendor to provide new features on a device once they have bought it is nuts because you have absolutely no guarantees they are going to add the feature you need.
which I might add is only an issue to a VERY SMALL sliver of the buying public.
*everyone* I know who has invested in a smartphone or a PDA runs third party software on it. If you claim that only a very small proportion of the iPhone's target market care about this functionality then you are simply reinforcing my belief that the iPhone is not a smartphone.
If you want an $800 video camera that can also make phone calls and has a crappy user interface then go buy an N95
The N95 is free with an 18 month contract from O2 which costs £30/month. You can buy it SIM-free for about £300.
By comparison, an iPhone will set you back £269 on an 18 month O2 contract costing you £35/month and you can't buy it SIM-free.
And where do you get the idea that Apple locks devices down to control the whole market? That's definitely a jaded slant. I think it would be more accurate to say that Apple follows a different product strategy. Rather than just selling their software to run poorly on every crappy piece of hardware (ala Microsoft) they try to create a well integrated experience that works great and is easy to use. They have succeeded in the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone
Who mentioned anything about Microsoft or trying to run software on other devices? Apple initially designed the iPhone to prevent third party software from being run on it - i.e. they only wanted their (and their partners') software to work with it. They wanted control of the hardware, the OS *and* the application software - the whole software stack. Similarly, they have done everything they can to prevent you having a free choice of service provider, even to the extent of breaking the law (in the UK customers have a legal right to have their phones unlocked, but Apple have ignored this law since the regulator has no teeth).
Face it, you j
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The links aren't exactly the same, this one has a query string containing "currentPage=all" - the other one doesn't. A script wouldn't really be able to tell if there were multiple articles on the same page and the query string was there to automatically scroll down to the relevant article or something like that.