I hope this to be the case. It's entirely possible that Apple wants to avoid an early OS X situation, where updates to the OS regularly broke third-party applications because the APIs were in flux, and many public APIs were simply not documented. So maybe Apple will release an API and a way for users to install apps at a later date.
Another possibility is that Apple wants to sell iPhone apps itself, similarly to how they sell iPod games.
A third possibility is that Apple simply doesn't want third-party apps on the iPhone, at all, possibly because they don't have a real sandbox to run them in. Which would explain why they tell devs to target Safari: Safari is in a way a really draconian sandbox, which allows for almost no access to the iPhone (other than calling people or pointing to map locations).
My bet is on option 2. This gives users third-party apps, gives Apple money, gives devs a way to target iPhones, and gives AT&T some security, because Apple would not sell VOIP or SIM unlocking apps.
Unlike the iPod competitors, Motorola, Nokia &ct. have the same commitment to usability, style etc. that Apple does.
WHA???
I've owned a ton of phones. Of all the phones I've owned, only Nokia and Palm even seem to care about usability. Motorola, SonyEricsson, LG? Give me a break. The UI on their phones is crap.
And even Palm and Nokia are on the "Okay, I can figure out how this works without making too many mistakes" side, not on the "this is a pleasure to use" side.
Of course, you could downgrade the phone and unlock it, but then you void your warranty. On the other hand, you'd have an actual iPhone with the neat multitouch UI instead of a "normal" Microsoft mobile cell phone with an iPhone skin.
Apple said that the iPhone UI was protected by tons of patents. Fortunately, the chinese won't care, and will once again show that a free market is superior to artificial monopolies created by patents.
Unfortunately, given the current state of cell phone UI, I have serious doubts any of the other manufacturers will even come close to Apple's polish and usability.
Pretty much all currently sold MP3 players play AAC.
Completely wrong. Apart from the iPod, a very small number of MP3 players play AAC. WMA seems to be the most popular secondary format there.
Yeah, it is, along with AAC. I know the Zune plays AAC songs. I quickly googled Creative, and their players support AAC, too. Sony is another important manufacturer of MP3 players, and it supports AAC, too (even on non-MP3-player products such as the PSP). All the manufacturers I could think of support AAC.
Yet you claim that only "a very small number of MP3 players play AAC." I can't tell whether you're uninformed or simply lying to make a point?
Oh, and if you have QuickTime installed on Windows (as many people do), it supports AAC, too.
Case in point: The Jericho demo. The game looks awesome on my PS3. Unfortunately, the framerate is constantly below 30 fps, which makes the game absolutely unplayable. It's actually motion-sickness-inducing.
If you believe Apple honestly wants to sell music without DRM but are forced not to by the big bad record companies, I have a bridge to sell you.
Look, you can argue belief all day, but the evidence is on my side. Apple publicly said that they wanted to sell DRM-free music. EMI offered DRM-free music, and Apple is selling it. Universal publicly said they would not give Apple DRM-free music, and thus Apple can't sell it. Case closed.
I think you've got a rather unrealistic view of the way the world works.
Uh... What part is unrealistic? Pretty much all currently sold MP3 players play AAC. My 20-bucks chinese DVD player plays AAC. Windows does. Macs do. It's getting hard to find devices that don't play AAC. And you're telling me the format will not stick around?
Well, troubled a bunch of retailers who wanted a business method they saw would work nicely but they didn't think of first, and a bunch of Slashdotters who realistically have about as much influence on consumers as the anti-globalization protests have on multinational corporations.
True. Now, why are you saying this as if you were defending Amazon?
How does either of these two facts make Amazon's stupid patent any better?
I'm not GP, but I behave similarly. It's rather easy to find devices that play AAC (in fact, it's becoming hard to find devices that don't, as AAC is part of MPEG-4), but FLAC is quite another story. I have no idea where I would even find devices supporting FLAC.
Why don't they just offer mp3's then? A lot more people would want mp3's because they work with everything.
Better quality at lower download size. I imagine it makes a difference for Apple's finances, as they're selling millions of songs, so the bandwidth adds up...
Yeah, MP3 works with everything, but converting AAC to MP3 is a one-click process in iTunes, and AAC works with pretty much every at least vaguely modern device, too.
Actually they PROBABLY did take these changes into account and wrote code SPECIFICALLY to disable the functionality.
Apple specifically said they did do no such thing (quoting Schiller: "This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked"). I believe they did try to close the holes that allowed the exploits to exist (as they should, the SIM hack relied on a buffer overflow, so it's clearly Apple's job to fix that bug). I believe they did not do anything to intentionally disable the SIM cards in SIM-unlocked phones. They probably tested the software with a hacked phone, found out that it disabled the SIM card, and then put out a press release telling people with hacked phones to not install the update.
Frankly, I never even expected them to go as far as alerting owners of hacked phones to ignore the update. I thought they would just not test the update with hacked phones at all.
I suppose that would depend on lawyers and experts being able to convince a jury. From my perspective, I can't see how it couldn't be unintentional, or at the least, negligent.
Well, Apple said they did not intentionally remove any functionality from the hacked phones, but it seems quite obvious that they tested the update and figured out that the iPhones' cell phone functionality was broken with the update. The question then is: Is it negligent of Apple to not fix this? Do they need to write software in such a way that it works with third-party apps that change fundamental parts of how the phone works? Where do we draw the line? What does Apple need to support?
I actually really "DO NOT" assume things I "dont" (sic) know. However, you wrote that you know five people who "have got the shiny brick to show off," so presumably their iPhones broke.
Now, the next device that Apple launches, fanboys will only remember the iPhone, and might steer clear.
Uh. Customer satisfaction on the iPhone is the highest Apple has ever measured. The iPhone isn't a steaming pile of turd; in fact, people love it. Even the most staunch Apple haters mellow when they play with my iPhone and get excited zooming in and out of pictures or scrolling through music in cover flow.
I think your prejudices are clouding your judgement.
You're talking about the Newton 100 series, GP is talking about the Newton 2000 series. The handwriting recognition on the 2000 and 2100 was (and still is) absolutely awesome, and there's absolutely no issue with the speed on this thing.
I had a Psion 3 something something, which actually had a BASIC interpreter built right in. I wrote a small graphing calculator using that, and used it during my maths lessons back when I still went to school.
While it's not a replacement for native apps, it should be pointed out that stuff like Google Calendar or GMail works perfectly fine on an iPod touch. Google Calendar in particular means you don't really need the built-in calendar - as long as you have web access.
I want an affordable (>$500 2007 dollars), multi-purpose (music / web / email / ebook / addresses), computing device, that isn't tied to being a cell phone.
I own a 100 (the first version) and a 2100 (the last version). While both are fascinating products, it's the difference between night and day. One is something you can impress your friends with. The other is a truly useful device which actually works the way it should. I used to take notes on my 2100 back when I was studying computer science. It's a great device that is even today far ahead of everything else in the same space of products, and one can only guess at where it would be had Apple continued its development to this day.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope this to be the case. It's entirely possible that Apple wants to avoid an early OS X situation, where updates to the OS regularly broke third-party applications because the APIs were in flux, and many public APIs were simply not documented. So maybe Apple will release an API and a way for users to install apps at a later date.
Another possibility is that Apple wants to sell iPhone apps itself, similarly to how they sell iPod games.
A third possibility is that Apple simply doesn't want third-party apps on the iPhone, at all, possibly because they don't have a real sandbox to run them in. Which would explain why they tell devs to target Safari: Safari is in a way a really draconian sandbox, which allows for almost no access to the iPhone (other than calling people or pointing to map locations).
My bet is on option 2. This gives users third-party apps, gives Apple money, gives devs a way to target iPhones, and gives AT&T some security, because Apple would not sell VOIP or SIM unlocking apps.
WHA???
I've owned a ton of phones. Of all the phones I've owned, only Nokia and Palm even seem to care about usability. Motorola, SonyEricsson, LG? Give me a break. The UI on their phones is crap.
And even Palm and Nokia are on the "Okay, I can figure out how this works without making too many mistakes" side, not on the "this is a pleasure to use" side.
Of course, you could downgrade the phone and unlock it, but then you void your warranty. On the other hand, you'd have an actual iPhone with the neat multitouch UI instead of a "normal" Microsoft mobile cell phone with an iPhone skin.
Apple said that the iPhone UI was protected by tons of patents. Fortunately, the chinese won't care, and will once again show that a free market is superior to artificial monopolies created by patents.
Also, Nokia is working on an iPhone clone.
Unfortunately, given the current state of cell phone UI, I have serious doubts any of the other manufacturers will even come close to Apple's polish and usability.
Yeah, it is, along with AAC. I know the Zune plays AAC songs. I quickly googled Creative, and their players support AAC, too. Sony is another important manufacturer of MP3 players, and it supports AAC, too (even on non-MP3-player products such as the PSP). All the manufacturers I could think of support AAC.
Yet you claim that only "a very small number of MP3 players play AAC." I can't tell whether you're uninformed or simply lying to make a point?
Oh, and if you have QuickTime installed on Windows (as many people do), it supports AAC, too.
Okay, what part of "They already are selling DRM-free music" do you not get?
Case in point: The Jericho demo. The game looks awesome on my PS3. Unfortunately, the framerate is constantly below 30 fps, which makes the game absolutely unplayable. It's actually motion-sickness-inducing.
Look, you can argue belief all day, but the evidence is on my side. Apple publicly said that they wanted to sell DRM-free music. EMI offered DRM-free music, and Apple is selling it. Universal publicly said they would not give Apple DRM-free music, and thus Apple can't sell it. Case closed.
Right, that's probably it :-)
I guess I confused it with BASIC because, as I recall, the syntax was somewhat similar.
I have no idea where I would even find devices supporting FLAC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac#Hardware_support
That's not exactly what I'd call an obscenely short or particularly difficult list to find.
There are less than 20 hardware devices/manufacturers on this list. That is all.
Well, at least it's an ISO standard.
Uh... What part is unrealistic? Pretty much all currently sold MP3 players play AAC. My 20-bucks chinese DVD player plays AAC. Windows does. Macs do. It's getting hard to find devices that don't play AAC. And you're telling me the format will not stick around?
True. Now, why are you saying this as if you were defending Amazon?
How does either of these two facts make Amazon's stupid patent any better?
I'm not GP, but I behave similarly. It's rather easy to find devices that play AAC (in fact, it's becoming hard to find devices that don't, as AAC is part of MPEG-4), but FLAC is quite another story. I have no idea where I would even find devices supporting FLAC.
I think the DRM's files make up about 80%, not 99.99%, and it's not Apple's fault it's not less.
As for AAC, it's part of MPEG-4, so yeah. Unlike all the wannabe successors to MP3, this is the official one, and it will stick around.
Better quality at lower download size. I imagine it makes a difference for Apple's finances, as they're selling millions of songs, so the bandwidth adds up...
Yeah, MP3 works with everything, but converting AAC to MP3 is a one-click process in iTunes, and AAC works with pretty much every at least vaguely modern device, too.
It's really sad that the only way we can fight the RIAA is by "enacting" another monopoly that is somewhat less evil...
Apple specifically said they did do no such thing (quoting Schiller: "This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked"). I believe they did try to close the holes that allowed the exploits to exist (as they should, the SIM hack relied on a buffer overflow, so it's clearly Apple's job to fix that bug). I believe they did not do anything to intentionally disable the SIM cards in SIM-unlocked phones. They probably tested the software with a hacked phone, found out that it disabled the SIM card, and then put out a press release telling people with hacked phones to not install the update.
Frankly, I never even expected them to go as far as alerting owners of hacked phones to ignore the update. I thought they would just not test the update with hacked phones at all.
Well, Apple said they did not intentionally remove any functionality from the hacked phones, but it seems quite obvious that they tested the update and figured out that the iPhones' cell phone functionality was broken with the update. The question then is: Is it negligent of Apple to not fix this? Do they need to write software in such a way that it works with third-party apps that change fundamental parts of how the phone works? Where do we draw the line? What does Apple need to support?
I actually really "DO NOT" assume things I "dont" (sic) know. However, you wrote that you know five people who "have got the shiny brick to show off," so presumably their iPhones broke.
Admittedly, I still think you're lying.
Uh. Customer satisfaction on the iPhone is the highest Apple has ever measured. The iPhone isn't a steaming pile of turd; in fact, people love it. Even the most staunch Apple haters mellow when they play with my iPhone and get excited zooming in and out of pictures or scrolling through music in cover flow.
I think your prejudices are clouding your judgement.
You're talking about the Newton 100 series, GP is talking about the Newton 2000 series. The handwriting recognition on the 2000 and 2100 was (and still is) absolutely awesome, and there's absolutely no issue with the speed on this thing.
I had a Psion 3 something something, which actually had a BASIC interpreter built right in. I wrote a small graphing calculator using that, and used it during my maths lessons back when I still went to school.
While it's not a replacement for native apps, it should be pointed out that stuff like Google Calendar or GMail works perfectly fine on an iPod touch. Google Calendar in particular means you don't really need the built-in calendar - as long as you have web access.
The iPod touch?
I own a 100 (the first version) and a 2100 (the last version). While both are fascinating products, it's the difference between night and day. One is something you can impress your friends with. The other is a truly useful device which actually works the way it should. I used to take notes on my 2100 back when I was studying computer science. It's a great device that is even today far ahead of everything else in the same space of products, and one can only guess at where it would be had Apple continued its development to this day.