10 posts tagged “iphone”
I’m an Apple fanboy as much as the next guy (maybe more, I was in an Apple ad as a kid), but Jobs’s first second company has devolved so much of late from a customer-service standpoint that I felt some inexorable urge to write a “predict the downfall of Apple” post. None of their mistakes alone are enough to kill them, but put together it starts looking like Apple vs Microsoft circa 1990-something.
First, the poorly managed approach to locking down the iPhone. Issuing differing statements from different department heads, having Apple Store employees do an end-run around official policy with unlocked phones, and all but effectively pulling a Sony (ala PSP) with the iPhone firmware. Ultimately few companies survive owning the entire supply chain. Eventually, someone comes along with an alternative that breaks through and eventually widens that crack. The alternative doesn’t even have to be better—just different. Apple’s devotion to UI and asthetics cannot and will not sustain the company in the long term.
Web 2.0 as the iPhone SDK? Give me a break. Release a real SDK and grow the iPhone like a true platform, not a sealed revenue brick.
The iPhone’s UI will be replicated and commoditized. Again, it doesn’t have to be better, it just has to be slightly more accessible. The barrier to entry for joining the UIKit club is ~$400. What happens when Verizon ships a free Windows Mobile 7 phone with gesture/haptics based UI?
Second, the iTunes Store. This week’s launch of Amazon’s MP3 store is the first and biggest nail in the iTunes Store’s coffin. Not only is every track higher bitrate and DRM-free, albums cost less. The lower selection is irrelevant—that is a problem that time can and will solve. Amazon made the browse/buy process as trivial as Apple’s store with their download helper and 1-Click patent. It even adds the purchased tracks automatically to iTunes.
By this time next year, Amazon’s store will have at the very least the selection of iTunes, and every other music retailer will be scrambling to clone the experience.
Third: Apple completely fucking the 3rd party “Made for iPod” ecosystem with the latest round of iPod hardware. Not only does my $600 iPhone not work with my “Made for iPod” car adapter, there seems to be zero plan to ever do so. My options are to either A) buy another iPod, B) install (at my expense) a new adapter that conforms to whatever new standard Apple has issued or C) use CDs.
I’m done using CDs. I’m almost done using iPods too.
I heard an interesting story this weekend that I hadn’t heard before: Why the the iPhone has a glass screen, who makes it, and how it came into being. The kernel of the tale is this:
Steve scratches his iPhone at a game. Steve demands glass, and Apple’s engineers can’t make it happen. They’ve tried, called everyone in Japan, Germany, China and elsewhere. Nobody’s making glass with the right combination of thin, hard, transmissive, and able to be shaped and cut to precise shapes/specifications. Finally Steve personally phones the CEO of Corning, and after convincing him that it’s actually Steve Jobs, he says he’ll call back in 15.
15 minutes later, he returns Steve’s call and says they’ve got some prototype glass that’s not quite ready for the market yet, but maybe things can be worked out.
Things do get worked out, and Steve doesn’t have to make good on his threat to stop the launch of the iPhone.
Not sure if this story has any truth to it, but it’s certainly interesting. I wonder if/when/ever this will be noted in Corning’s quarterly reports.
At this point, hacking the iPhone is pretty easy, provided you have a reasonable grasp of UNIX, Google-fu, and patience. I finally got MobileTerminal running this evening, after mucking around with various source and binary installs of the iPhone toolchain, binkit, iPHUC and other bits. The real kicker was the 1970s-era shell that you’re forced to use until you take care of the necessary bits to install Bash. Things of note:
- All the usual bin utils run fine.
- SCP, once you get it working, works fine.
- You can start graphical apps remotely, and they come up on the screen.
- You can kill them like any other process.
For the most part it’s just like any other UNIX box. I can’t wait to start mucking with UIKit.
Wonder what, exactly that means…11:15 - 12:00 Managing Content and Synched Data on iPhone
Besides occasional lockups doing weird things with Mail + Exchange, the only real problem I encountered was when I plugged it into my car adapter. Music played not through the stereo, but through the iPhone’s tiny speakers. Apparently it will not be a replacement for my lost iPod quite yet.
To go back to Anne’s question, my answer was the browser. In the first 24 hours of having the device, just having a full, real browser saved me considerable time. Sure, the EDGE data is slow (it’s like going back in time to the 56k days), but it’s a real, full-blown, no-foolin browser in my pocket.
My hat is off to the iPhone team, and in particular, my one favorite feature: natural zooming into areas of the page. Double-tap a column in the New York Times site or any blog, and the iPhone browser zooms in and sizes to that column.
Scrollbars—and fixed resolution—are made irrelevant in a single guesture.
Now if only it worked with my car adapter. Steve?
Best overheard comment on Apple’s new iPhone:
It’s the same price as a PlayStation 3.
