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iPhone's Development Limitations Could Hurt It In the Long Run
ZDOne writes "Apple might have finally come around to allowing third party developers to create applications for the iPhone, but only up to a point. ZDNet UK claims Apple is leaving itself vulnerable to the competition and to a loss of lustre
by blocking background tasks on the device. The author notes, 'Perhaps it doesn't trust application designers or users very much. Perhaps it wants the best software for itself, where it can limit what it can do in order not to upset its telco friends. Whatever the reason, it reflects badly on Apple. The iPhone is not an iPod; it's a smartphone connecting to a universe of fast-changing data on behalf of innovation-hungry users. The sooner it stops pretending to be a 1981 IBM PC, the better it will be for everyone.'"
A) Apple
B) iPhones
Because of this, if Apple abuses customers by crippling it's device, it is acting against the public interest for it's own gain. I don't blame them for this, their shareholders would be pissed otherwise, but the point of government is to make sure that the selfish interest of individuals does not clash with the collective good of society.
Our regulators should do something about this.
Among the mobile phone makers, who hands out SDKs for creating applications on the phones?
...), Palm OS (Palm), etc. Symbian is a multitasking OS with Linux-like APIs. And almost all modern phones other than the iPhone can be programmed in MIDP.
Almost every manufacturer, actually: there are SDKs for Symbian (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung), Windows Mobile (Motorola, Samsung, HTC,
I wouldn't even know where to start if I wanted to develop an application for my Sony Ericsson W910,
The W910 runs J2ME and MIPD, just like most phones these days. There are thousands of applications for that and it's easy to develop for.
call me clueless but I don't see anything comparable to the iPhone SDK for any other phone.
Yup, you're clueless. In terms of SDK, the iPhone is about the worst there is among modern phone platforms.
I'm tired of hearing "let the market decide" in general. Nowadays it's almost always used in defense of companies that prey on consumer ignorance, the very definition of something that the market will never solve. At the very least, if the market is to select a solution, someone has to start campaigning for one instead of just sitting on our asses. It's really a justification for inaction, nothing more.
I'm tired of replying to people defending lock in for various reasons, so I'll just suggest that those posters reread the book about one of the greatest people of our time:
"Although previous events had raised Stallman's ire, he says it wasn't until his Carnegie Mellon encounter that he realized the events were beginning to intrude on a culture he had long considered sacrosanct. As an elite programmer at one of the world's elite institutions, Stallman had been perfectly willing to ignore the compromises and bargains of his fellow programmers just so long as they didn't interfere with his own work. Until the arrival of the Xerox laser printer, Stallman had been content to look down on the machines and programs other computer users grimly tolerated. On the rare occasion that such a program breached the AI Lab's walls-when the lab replaced its venerable Incompatible Time Sharing operating system with a commercial variant, the TOPS 20, for example-Stallman and his hacker colleagues had been free to rewrite, reshape, and rename the software according to personal taste.
Now that the laser printer had insinuated itself within the AI Lab's network, however, something had changed. The machine worked fine, barring the occasional paper jam, but the ability to modify according to personal taste had disappeared. From the viewpoint of the entire software industry, the printer was a wake-up call. Software had become such a valuable asset that companies no longer felt the need to publicize source code, especially when publication meant giving potential competitors a chance to duplicate something cheaply. From Stallman's viewpoint, the printer was a Trojan Horse. After a decade of failure, privately owned software-future hackers would use the term " proprietary" software-had gained a foothold inside the AI Lab through the sneakiest of methods. It had come disguised as a gift."
My Sig: SEGV
Background tasks, especially networking ones (which frankly, are the most useful type), would flatten the battery really quickly. Even more so with several of them waking up at different times and connecting the network.
On the other hand, making the rule hard and fast is a bit tough. And Apple could provide some means of minimizing drain (waking every task up every few hours for example), but don't damn Apple totally on this one.
1)- the iphone sdk DOES NOT ban background processes. it disables them by default, but people have been compiling iphone apps that run in the background for months. it's actually ridiculously easy; this is how im apps let you stay signed on while your iphone is off (or you're talking on it).
2)- the official iphone os may ban uncertified code, but people have been running uncertified code on iphones for months. since the number of "hacked" iphones is almost as great as the number of "boring" iphones, this is rather significant.
i'm not a fanboy- personally, i don't like iphones, or people who like iphones. i just don't like misinformation.
In terms of "background tasks," I think at least part of Apple's goal is to maintain a quality user experience. People have different expectations from a device like a phone than they do from a computer. Most people expect their computers to occasionally freeze (whether Windows, OSX, Linux or otherwise) due to some background process kicking off and monopolizing resources for a few seconds. When it happens, hit Control-Alt-Delete, run "top", or whatever, and figure out what's taking the CPU. People expect their phones to respond instantly all the time, and I don't think many want to bring up a process manager and click "kill process" while they're walking down the street trying to make a call.
Given the amount of sketchy, useless junk that one sees "freely downloadable" on most PCs and Macs, I don't think that Apple should necessarily want to export that same environment to the iPhone right away. The first application that everyone installs and which secretly launches a DoS attack on the mobile phone network at some predetermined time in the future is going to be a PR disaster for Apple. And that's a scenario way beyond some junk application that just locks up or slows down people's iPhones.
In the end, Apple should probably have a "power user" mode on their phones, the activation of which forces you to sign a disclaimer or non-indemnifation agreement that protects them if you screw your iPhone up installing unverified apps, run up your bill because some background process was doing data access thoughout the day while you were in Europe, etc. Many of those things could be "protected" against of course, if Apple put safeguards in their software (e.g., block any automatic data access when on a roaming network where data access might be charged), but I don't expect Apple to have thought of every possible bad outcome yet, but I do expect people to complain/sue like crazy if one of those bad outcomes occurs.
Either way, though, regulators are not the solution here. Any government (Democratic or Republican) is just going to screw things up even more, because they'll have their own set of interests--namely self-perpetuation--at heart.