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iPhone 3.0 Software Announced
Apple unveiled the iPhone 3.0 software just now in Cupertino. Here's MacWorld's live-action blow-by-blow coverage. The announcement included new features for developers and users. For developers, the big items were in-app purchasing (for example for game upgrades, map content, and subscriptions) for paid apps only; peer-to-peer connectivity via Bluetooth; giving apps access to hardware via the dock connector or Bluetooth; maps embeddable in apps; and push notifications. For users, there's finally cut-copy-paste available in all apps; search across everything in the iPhone; landscape keyboard; MMS messaging; and voice memos. Developer beta starts today and 3.0 will be available in the summer — free for all 3G phones, $10 for iPod Touch.
The short answer is that our financial regulatory environment forces them to do so, kinda.
If Apple books profits for iPod Touches at the time of purchase, but then books expenses for iPod Touch development later, they are vulnerable to the accusation that they were hiding expenses on their balance sheet, which is illegal.
After getting burnt by this once in the past (Airport basestations, I think), they started charging for feature updates. When they book expenses for the development of iPod Touch 3.0, they can account for it like a new product for sale, and either make a profit or loss on those sales.
The other solution to this issue is that they book profits for iPhones on a "two year subscription basis". That means they only record 1/8th of the sale profit of an iPhone as profit in the quarter it was purchased. They can then charge further development costs against this same income, and they don't have to account for it like a separate product for sale.
Whether they should account for *everything* on a subscription basis is totally open for debate. It has been suggested that this subscription accounting is one of many factors that could be depressing Apple's share price. When they have a killer quarter for iPhone sales, that profit gets smeared across 8 quarters of earnings statements.
IMHO, it could be argued that this is a good thing, and forces shareholders to consider longer term value. So maybe they really should account for everything this way. The question is how profitable are these $9.95 iPhone OS updates & $100 Mac OS updates. Iduno.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
So, what you mean is, you've never owned a smartphone. My corded landline doesn't have cut and paste either, but every smartphone I've had has had cut and paste.
Lucky you. I have a fairly recent Nokia "business phone" with Symbian S60 as the operating system (Nokia E61i). It does support cut and paste, BUT you can only cut and paste (or copy for that matter) in edit mode. What this means is that you can't copy from a webpage, and to copy from an email you have to select "forward" or "reply". I guess you could call that smart if you stretch things?