Apple heads! give me a break…
Since Apple and Cingular announced the date of the apple iphone (29th June) and the rumour there will only be 4 million made this year. All I hear about now is the iphone. At the girl geekdinner the women from google who presented made a joke about the iphone which clarified in my mind that the hype is getting stupid.
Slashdot lead today with some good news that the iphone will allow 3rd party developers to build on it.
In an exciting shift from previous statements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed at the D Conference that 3rd-party development will be supported on the iPhone. Questions remain as to whether the opening of the platform, slated for later this year, will be through Dashboard-like widgets or a separate SDK.”
But what gets me is the silly comments afterwards. People were suggesting Skype on a phone would be good, another person a wifi detector and then finally wrote this.
Cellular networks are fragile. Much more fragile than the larger internet. They tend toward monoculture and proprietary systems, and haven’t had the shakedown that standard internet network hardware and protocols have had. So Jobs’ quote about him ‘not wanting third-party apps bringing Cingular’s network down’ actually makes some sense (some mobile phone applications have more-or-less done this in the past). AndBullshit. Utter crap. Why is there this paranoia about the iPhone, when Symbian, Windows CE/Mobile have allowed this for years? There is no way an application on a device should or could bring down a base station, let alone a cell network.
Oh, and as for this gem:
bringing Cingular’s network down’ actually makes some sense (some mobile phone applications have more-or-less done this in the past)Cite. Go on. I would so so love to see a citation of any evidence of this. Any, whatsoever.
Thankfully someone with some sense.
What kills me is there are some great phones on the market including the Nokia N95 and of course my phone the SPV M700. Both have GPS, 3G, Wireless b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and mass storage via flash memory. They both play music and video very well and this is the best part don't cost a bomb to get on contract. We know for a fact this isn't true of the iphone, which looks like the price of a ipod plus a expensive 24month contract.
I could rant on about the iphone all day but I just want to point out that if you avoid the plain old phones and look into the smartphone market you will find phones which can do everything the iphone does. Symbian and now Windows Mobile developers are very good at creating and hacking around with these phones now. Theres huge catalogues of software which have been developed which also makes these phones rich too. I think Apples SDK will be messy and full of holes. I'm not saying the others are any better but there SDKs have been out for a long time and there quite public.