iPhone, the Morning After
Link: The Five Biggest Issues with iPhone.
Is Apple serious that it won’t let third-party developers build software for the thing? If so, and put simply, the device will fail. A closed-box consumer electronics mentality will work in music players, but the future of mobile devices is as a platform, and that requires developers.
Paul Kedrosky nails some of the concerns I had while taking in the live blogging of the MacWorld keynote yesterday. Making the phone into a platform is the big one for me (it’s why I paid the big bucks for a Treo 700w). Based on my experience as a Cingular customer in years past, I suspect that Apple may regret making those guys the exclusive carrier partner for this product. Here’s what would get me to pay $600 for a new phone:
- Make the phone hackable (by the masses, not just blessed partners) in a productive, well-supported programming language. For me that probably means C#, but I could resort to Python if necessary).
- Encourage the use of the phone as a wireless modem. An Apple phone should be supported as a Macintosh (or PC) peripheral. I was stunned that this use case hasn’t been mentioned anywhere yet — to me, it’s such an obvious synergy for Apple. If they’re really looking to get 1% of the mobile market by getting people to spend $600 with a two-year commitment to the vile Cingular, this is how they would do it.
- Bag the single-carrier partnership and open the device to any carrier. Support EVDO so you don’t have to wait hours for pages to load on the shiny new web browser.
Related posts:
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- iPod Touch: Development Environment for the iPhone ...
- Does “Open” Really Help Developers? ...
More storage. 8 gig is a tease especially if you want to watch movies. Maybe 30 gig for the lower price point, add the EVDO and other carriers.
Yeah, Kedrosky pointed that out but to be honest it’s not a deal-killer for me. I have been using a Nano over the past 4-5 months and I’ve found that for my uses (mostly listening in the car on cross-town trips of 20 minutes or less), having a very slim device with 4GB is actually better for me than the bulkier 20GB device I own.
As a heavy Mac user I am tempted to get an iPhone to replace my Treo 650 maybe next year. However also see many issues,
(i) The closed platform is a killer. I want to access OSX, download Skype.
(ii) Only 8GB (more like 6GB probably available) is not a lot for people who have 50GB music collections, videos etc.
(iii) Restricting yourself to one carrier is bad news. However Cingular apparently had to re-work thinks like voicemail to get the device to work.
(iv) No 3G just EDGE? Come on this is 2007.
Saying all this I went to Macworld today and people were drooling over it just waiting to part with $600. I wonder if you will have to pay for a special data package as well to use it $$.
I also looked Apple TV which only works iTunes therefore no DivX codec. Looking at it though it looks very hackable….