iPhone to support third-party Web 2.0 applications - Page 3

I'm surprised Mel. I thought you of all people would be able to appreciate taking caution with new hardware and software. Apple is new to all of this. Once there are a million iPhones out there they have to be sure they work as planned. Their will be the inevitable kinks that will need to be ironed out.

Using OS X sets a strong foundation from the beginning. That doesn't mean the iPhone has to meet its full potential from day 1. This is just a starting point. If it goes well Apple's development of more complex functions for the phone may accelerate quickly. If there are problems Apple may spend most of its time fixing things and further development may be slow.

I imagine in some ways Apple isn't 100% sure how its all going to work out.

I could agree with that if Jobs didn't make it seem so permanent.

If he had said that this was only the beginning, or some such statement, it would be different. Then the idea of AJAX and XML plus
real apps would seem to be a coup. No other phone would have all that!

But, he didn't.

Right now, despite my hope, all we are left with is the thought that he is giving us all that he will give, and that the OS is there for some other reason, which may not even be technical, but financial.

Huh?!?!

1 - As an Application developer knowing that iPhone has a 'fully featured browser' is certainly advantageous and it does indeed open the door to developing SOME applications that would have never been possible on 99% of the other cell phone 'web browsers'.

2 - A host of web 2.0 applications are (and have been) developed - are you saying they are useless?

3 - There is evidence that the iPhone will or does utilize Google Gears as a way to offer offline functionality and provide for the use of local data-stores. This is not confirmed but would open many many more options to potential app developers.

Having the ability to utilize a real web browser & Web 2.0 applications do indeed add functionality to the iPhone, saying they don't is just wrong.

Dave

Of course Apple rarely says what they are going to do. But I wouldn't be too quick to infer what it all means just because there is an information vaccum.

The problem is that I would have to move three people from Sprint to ATT.

I would lose high speed internet services for all three. While the phone is fine for my wife as it is (she has a Blackberry from work), my daughter doesn't want one, because it's too big, and I have the problems that you know about.

So, I would move all of us over, on what, an unspoken possibility, however small, that what I need MIGHT come true?

Doesn't sound like a plan, to me.

Here's a good article from MacWorld, which expresses how I, and others, feel about this situation.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06...apps/index.php

Look at this way, this is what you you get with just web apps:

No icon on the phone (instead you launch Safari, go to bookmarks, select bookmark, login to application, curse the slowness of EDGEespecially when plenty of current web apps feel slow on wired broadband, pray the server doesn't hiccup, exit)

No accessing multitouch beyond what Safari can do.

No working without Internet access.

Trusting random servers to work as well as local storage (hah!), or trusting Apple to bring out Google Gears in the next couple of weeks.

It really is nothing developers didn't know, and it's kinda insulting to tell them web apps=client side apps which they don't. Heck the best web apps have a client side interface, just because that works better (like Apple's own iPhone version of Google Map. I know I prefer Twitterific to going to the Twitter website. That I prefer typing something in Textedit or Mars Edit instead of online blogger tools that go bloop and bye bye words).

Do I think a real SDK is coming? Yeah, but this is nothing without access to the iPhone itself. He could have at least said the SDK is coming out in Fall or the Winter and until then web apps are what you get.

The other question is; How do we pay for this stuff?

Do we buy the app, and own it forever (or until the small company that made it craps out, and their servers are turned off).

Do we pay a small bit every time we go to the site and use it? Then how much? Do we have to have a live account with our credit card on file, which would be convenient, but..., or do we have to go through the rigmarole of paying every time we use it?

How would upgrades work? How would we pay for that?

Does Safari allow for plug-ins, just as the computer version does? If so, could these "programs" be delivered that way?

Well, the very definition of the free market system, don't buy one until they offer you what you want.

Top 10 reasons the AJAX/web 2.0 application model will fail on the Iphone

1) Web apps require server access via the internet to operate. AJAX is not AJAX without a server doing most of the processing. You could write an application *entirely* in javascript, but that would not only be a horrendously painful experience for the developer, but it would severly limit an apps potential by a) requiring all processing to be done on the client in
javascript and b) being unable to access/store data (assuming the javascript API has no access to local storage aka Google Gears which I would imagine will NOT be implemented on the iphone), and you still wouldnt be able to start the application without an internet connection (that is unless the Iphone safari allows you to open local html files).

2) NO 3G UTMS/HSDPA. The reason 'web 2.0' applications exist on the desktop it because most people are using them on fast broadband. You'd need to be under quite good conditions even with 3G/HSDPA to have a quality, responsive application. Not only is EDGE much slower in throughput, but more importantly is that it has *much* greater latency than 3G/HSDPA.
Coupled with the uncertainies of cellular data connections (spotty coverage, network load, interference) I'd say it would be might frustrating outside a wifi cafe.
Note: I have attempted this already myself with a Treo 650. I didn't want to learn the PalmOS APIs, so I instead proceeded to craft a few small applications in ASP.NET. I even attempted some simple javascipt/ajax functionality, but found the responsiveness to be absolutely horrendous with the latency, especially outside of 3G/EV-DO coverage when the phone resorts back to 2G/1xRTT (basically dialup speeds). It just isn't the same as a native application or even a !@#%$& Java application.

3) Reduced developer Incentive. Many of you have alluded to this problem already and I just wanted to rehash. Many small/independent developers will find it hard to provide the server capacity and bandwidth to handle a popular Iphone application. I imagine it would be difficult to apply the usual advertising-supported model with the small interface of the Iphone, nor do I believe you could convince users to put up with that. The only alternative is paying directly/donations... And what happens when your 'perfect web app' suddenly disappears off the face of the earth. or the developer abandons the project. You will have no recourse whatsoever. I enjoy the thought that the applications I OWN on my treo are MINE and will always be there. Just like SJ says, "nobody wants to RENT their music and have it all disappear when they quit paying the bill".

4) PalmOS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry's OS, Symbian, and nearly every cellphone OS via JAVA can run 3rd-party applications. They have thriving communities and are the LIFE BLOOD of smart phones. Now granted, there is alot of JUNK that is created and allowing unrestricted 3rd party access is like opening up pandora's box, but I think there is a good balance to be found between Iphone security/stability and developer freedom. Whether they need to allow restricted access to OSX's cocoa APIs, or create some type of managed/sandboxed layer between the OS and a 3rd-party developer software that provides restricted access to iphone features and local storage, I dont know. I am not a systems engineer, but I know there has got to be a way to do this, much as can be done with a on PalmOS Garnet or Windows Mobile with the mobile .NET framework or even using a JVM.

5) IT RUNS OSX . For god sakes, what better reason can there be to allow the talented and creative OSX dev community access to this platform? Indeed, the Ipod functionality and photo/video/email capabilities are better than anything on the market, but what a tradedy it would be to see all of that advanced potential locked away.

6) Multi-touch. Speaking of advanced potential locked away. Again, I can only imagine what talented devs people would come up with --I know I have some ideas. To have such a truly revolutionary interface with near limitless potential be locked down as well is just sad. (acknowledging of course that Apple is the master of UI innovation)

7) No FLASH support. The only consolation I was holding in my mind was the fact that I saw the NYtimes displayed on the iphone commercial and I thought of Flash. I thought with the good processor/graphics of the Iphone, you could actually make some killer applications AND run them offline. (well at least you could start them online then continue after you lose wifi/cell coverage). And with the open-sourcing' of adobe FLEX, that would offer a decent object model for devs like myself who aren't exactly fond of Flash's timeline model. BUT NO - NO FLASH PLUGIN even though its the 'REAL' Internet on REAL Safari and REAL OSX.

8) No self-contained Widgets? At least with a widget implementation, the little javascript apps would be accessible without the internet and could be self-contained, accessed from the Iphone menu like a real app, and be easily updatable. I haven't written one before, but i believe the normal OSX widgets even have javascript wrappers for some lower level cocoa system functions/libraries. Even without that type of access, I'm sure they could at least have access to a small local data store.

9) Cellular data network overwhelmed. As 'tribulation' was referring to, I would imagine Cingular/AT&T would not exactly favor the idea of ALL 3rd-party applications having to constantly run through their network just to function. Assuming most users have an unlimited data plan (or maybe are forced to buy one with the phone) a very popular AJAX application would appear to put quite a strain on their network. With native apps or even local widget-type apps, instread of sending ALL the operatin data back and forth, they would only need to sync small amounts of data via the cell connection whenever it became available.

10) Hackers/Crackers Finally, whether Apple swims with or against the tide, this platform WILL be opened up and there WILL be 3rd-party applications on this phone. Its literally is only a matter of time after it is released. Has anyone seen what they have done with the Apple TV??? I think its imperative Apple create legitimate access to the platform to insure the very security and stability they are attempting to maintain by NOT opening it up. note: I'm not necessarily against this at all, Im love the DIY crowd and participate in it when i can, Im just looking at this from Apple's perspective.

No but seriously, did anyone else actually feel insulted when they were proclaiming their great new 'strategy' for 3rd party app development? I mean did they actually think a majority of us hadn't already figured out Iphone + Safari = web apps?

And saying "Apple never said this was a computer/smartphone/etc" is NOT a rebuttal. SJ has called this a smartphone in the past, in the keynote he even showed only smartphones as the 'other cellphones'. He also emphasized the power of the device and the fact that it runs OSX and is a groundbreaking, 'revolutionary' device compared to all the other cell phones.

And to finish my point, heres the conversation from All things Digital with Steve Jobs/Bill Gates. Read how he emphasizes how important it was they were able to write their own native google maps client because "you can do things a browser just can't do" and how "it [native client] blows away the webpage version". EXACTLY.
-------

Steve: Ill give you a concrete example. I love Google Maps, use it on my computer, you know, in a browser. But when we were doing the iPhone, we thought, wouldnt it be great to have maps on the iPhone? And so we called up Google and theyd done a few client apps in Java on some phones and they had an API that we worked with them a little on. And we ended up writing a client app for those APIs. They would provide the back-end service. And the app we were able to write ... blows away any Google Maps client. Just blows it away. Same set of data coming off the server, but the experience you have using it is unbelievable. Its way better than the computer. And just in a completely different league than what theyd put on phones before. And, you know, that client is the result of a lot of technology on the client. So when we show it to them, theyre just blown away by how good it is. And you cant do that stuff in a browser.

So people are figuring out how to do more in a browser, how to get a persistent state of things when youre disconnected from a browser, how do you actually run apps locally using, you know, apps written in those technologies so they can be pretty transparent, whether youre connected or not.
But its happening fairly slowly and theres still a lot you can do with a rich client environment. At the same time, the hardware is progressing to where you can run a rich client environment on lower and lower cost devices, on lower and lower power devices. And so theres some pretty cool things you can do with clients.

Walt: OK. So youre saying rich clients still matter, butmaybe I misunderstood you, but your example was about a rich client that is not a personal computer as we have thought of a personal computer.

Steve: What Im saying is, I think the marriage of some really great [native] client apps with some really great cloud services is incredibly powerful and right now, can be way more powerful than just having a browser on the client.

EXACTLY STEVE!! The Ideal (and only IMO) 3rd-party application support is allowing sandboxed native rich-client applications utilizing Cocoa/Core Animation/Multi-touch SDKs that can also retrieve data/sync to the internet *when its available*!!!


link here http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/d5...bs-transcript/

</rant>

Hey, your link is broken.

Great rant. I don't know where the transcript is but the actual video where Jobs says that rich clients in combo with cloud computing are better then web apps by themselves (heh) is here:

http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/vi...r-part-3-of-7/

I think that rant is preaching to the choir. Apple of course knows all of those things.

Jobs said at the D conference that Apple is working on a way to allow developers on to the iPhone. They hope to have a solution later this year.

Just because Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, and RIM allow wide development does not necessarily mean this is the only or best way to do it. Or that the best products are produced. The far majority of phone apps are complete crap. I would imagine Apple wants to raise the bar on app development.

Flash not being on the phone is confusing because you cannot see the real internet without Flash. I read it surmised that Apple may be using this as a tactic to reduce fees it has to pay to Adobe for Flash support.

First iPhone web apps



http://onetrip.org/


http://davidcann.com/iphone/

They are nice but they arnt DARK FORCES!!!!







I need it in all of its crude 3d glory and i have no doubt that i could run on the iPhone. ( i may have to take this back when i get one or find out the specs.)

Just a little side note here. IF anyone is interested, I saw a nice little Web 2.0 app that appears with an iPhone "shell" so you can see what one of these little apps will look like as well as see how it runs. Pretty cool little app. Check it out.

it is hard to image that ,it can support third-party Web 2.0 applications,good as 3Gphone?
for me i just wish the 3rd part tool for iphone will not be upcoming

Absolutely correct.


It's a really pity. iPHone is now a $600USD 8GB ipod with cell phone. could have been so much more.

I think it's a bad idea too. Apple seem to think that all people will want are silly little apps like widgets. People will want to run SNES emulators and software that does all sorts of trickery over bluetooth like act as a multi-function remote control. Limiting everything inside Safari is stupid.

My dad got a cheap Palm and he can do loads of things with it from 3D games to watching a variety of movie formats to getting info about his actual mobile phone via bluetooth to voice recording to ebook reading to music playing. It also has a card reader so it supports as much memory as he wants and it was about 5 times cheaper than the iphone. It doesn't have multi-touch but it's still a touch screen. It doesn't have phone capability but he has a phone with a better contract than Apple offer.

At the end of the day, people who want to get the iphone to do more will try to hack it just like people are forced to do to get themes in OS X. This makes the situation worse because then you end up with even less stable software. I installed Clear Dock recently because I want to have a transparent dock but it started making the system weird and hanging up programs.

The idea behind limiting features to ensure stability is exactly what turned people off to OS 9. Yes, it probably was the most secure hacker-proof OS but not because it was built any better than other systems, it was just limited in what it could do. And we all know how stable it was compared to the much more functional OS X.

The only time people are really going to admire Apple is when they make a completely functional piece of software to run on generic hardware and it runs properly. Windows is ahead of OS X on this front because their OS runs on nearly anything with a huge amount of drivers and it's not that unstable. When Apple bring out new hardware like the new 8600M GT GPU and it doesn't work properly, you have to ask when does their limited model pay off?

If Palm was kicking butt with the Treo they wouldn't have started making Windows Mobile phones or have let the Palm OS petrify like it has.


http://forum.nowsoftware.com/content...8&t=229&hilit=

John is at WWDC and apparently the iPhone is impressive. If it wasn't there wouldn't be so many "iPhone killers" suddenly coming out of the woodwork. I find it rather amusing that when faced with a decent product...suddenly the old guard is back to making promises. Fool me once...

I'm really struggling with whether to get an iphone. For 80% of what I do with my phone, it'll be ideal. But the difference between this case and the iPod is: 3rd party apps exist on other phones, are useful, and many work well. That's not a missing feature but a whole other philosophy. Of course Apple won't add SSH client... but with this closed system I can't add one myself. And SSH on my phone is useful to me. So do I get an iphone and lose such features? Or do I get an E90 and lose most the ease of use? It's a really tricky choice. If iphone was an open platform the choice would be a lot easier.

You know... I'm only going to say this once, until after the iPhone ships. Most of the people complaining about the lack of Flash, don't truly realize what is possible in Safari 3, without Flash at ALL. Safari was the first of the browsers out there to release support for the CANVAS. Because Internet Exploder didn't pick this up (though Firefox and Opera did), not alot was done with the canvas until compatibility work-arounds were worked out. But, if you're an iPhone developer, why should you care that Internet Explorer isn't standards compliant? Dark Forces? Raise you're hand if you're NOT working on the first 3D shoot-em up for the iPhone. I'll give you a link. Here:
RUN THIS URL IN SAFARI
http://www.abrahamjoffe.com.au/ben/c...e/textures.htm

Note a few things if you will.

#1.) It's NOT FLASH. Got it? Great.
#2.) Smooth animation, huh? Don't try this on IE. It's sloooooow.
#3.) Like the real-time map view in the upper left?

What am I working on? Oh... nothing. Nothing at all. That's it. Anyway... All the complaining just bugs the crap out of me. I'm going to go through these points, but start by saying I have NO sympathy for people making these arguments. I completely see their points, and yet I strongly disagree.

1. Web apps require server access via the internet to operate. This is true. It's not the end of the story. I can assure you that a lot of people have Internet access and accomplish things on it everyday. Even these "to go" Internet Service Apps from companies like "Salesforce" need to EVENTUALLY connect to the Internet. Psst. Cookies. That's right, I said it. Personally, I have methods of storing a lot a freaking data in a cookie. You can push it all back up whenever you like if you do it right. Also, you contend that you won't be able to start up an iPhone app without an Internet connection. --Will you EAT YOUR HAT if I can prove to you (post launch, of course) that this will not be the case? I'm not sure if you've experienced this, but Safari can be one of the most ornery browsers when it comes to releasing its cache (just search on "Safari" and "cache". I'll just put that out there and say "headers", for no particular reason.
   
   
2. NO 3G UTMS/HSDPA. There is no way on Earth we won't hear the primal scream if things are as bad as you say. There are different classes of EDGE devices. Most people don't know this. Most people talking about EDGE speeds have no practical experience or wide-spread sampling data to speak of. It's really a shame. There are EDGE phones out there hauling ass at 200k for people. Worth noting.
   
   
3. Reduced developer Incentive. I think the question of people who put out things with no business plan is valid, but somewhat silly. Someone somewhere should offer free app hosting. Hm. Sounds like a very good possibility. There is NO reduced developer incentive. NONE. Why? Because nothing has been taken away. No one EVER promised anything! "Reduced". Meh. Trust me, developers can do more selling a SERVICE than a SUPPLY. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. If Apple said that the iPhone wouldn't support secure socket connections or maybe that they'd NOT supported the XML_Reponse object, that would be a REDUCED incentive. This is just finding out the lay of the land... and its mighty fine compared to other phones. Mighty fine. Someone noted that the Nokia ran Webkit too, and that people should also let their apps run without browser sniffing. Personally, I don't care about creating an "experience" that "also" runs on a Nokia, as you'd never really be able to be sure of a screen size on the delivery platform. The iPhone is a clear given, a highly promising community, and a vibrant interface. That's incentive in my book.
   
   
4. PalmOS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry's OS, Symbian, and nearly every cellphone OS via JAVA can run 3rd-party applications. They can run stuff REALLY BADLY as far as I'm concerned. Crashy, crash, McCrash. This is the first iteration of the iPhone. It's the first cell phone with a full modern feature-complete desktop-class operating system on it. Let Apple work out all the security problems hiding in the corners. They are doing a HELL of a lot for a first release. Palm called them out on it too. Apple needs to make sure this thing works before they make it "open" for everyone in the world to throw stuff on top of it. Crashy McCrash I can do without. Look how fast people were to exploit Safari for Windows. With everything these other "smart" phones can do, its amusing that they're having so many people ignore them in favoring the iPhone. It's possible that user-experience is the true kill app, isn't it?
   
   
5. IT RUNS OSX Sure does. Free upgrades for the next 2 years at least. Something tells me we'll be a seeing a more coherent strategy with this. Apple is already using Safari and iTunes to seed Bon Jour onto Macs and PCs. It's "discovery" ability will clearly play a huge roll in their wireless plans (notice the patent on iPhone controlling iTunes?) I'd hate to think those plans get "mucked with" by trigger happy developers muscling each other out of the way. Because its REALLY the MacOS, there's a LOT of places Apple likely hasn't properly locked away yet. Impatience is infectuous, and often disasterous in this grand world of the public BETA.
   
   
6. Multi-touch. I'll say this much. I will be digital "fingerpainting" on my iPhone on launch day. After that, who knows? I might even be finger painting with the separate net-connected iPhone user next to me drawing a moustache on my stick figure man. What will YOU be doing?
   
   
7. No FLASH support. Awesome. Without Flash support, we get the REAL Internet, not the Flash Internet. This is a plus, not a minus. As I've hinted, you can sure do a lot without Flash holding you back. More over, the "a lot" you can do, is readable by search engines without a lot of backflips and hand-holding. Are we developing apps for iPhone or Adobe? Even the Nokia N95 isn't running "real" Flash, so why be concerned about it? I think the iPhone will play embedded Quicktime. Just my guess, but this will likely be the source of much interest. In the iPod, you could load notes that accessed your media library to playback to you. Crossing my fingers, but I hope iPhone does too. The "NOTES" app is a whole other topic of discussion, as it will support a lot of HTML. Hmmm...
   
   
8. No self-contained Widgets? - That's a little dissappointing, but who knows. We'll see if aliasing to the startpage is eventually possible... but while somewhat dissappointing, its not the apocalypse people think.
   
   
9. Cellular data network overwhelmed. - Hm. Hundreds of thousands of zombie phones on a cellular network with lots of multithreaded multitasking processing power and e-mail capabilities. I think its naive to think that's not a potential problem. How do the others do it? By forcing people to write "baby" apps and by taking things really slowly.
   
   
10. Hackers/Crackers Finally - Yeah. There will be an interesting minority community of people interested in HACKING their phones. Very possible Apple will keep breaking these solutions on a regular basis. I think the war will take interest away from much more interesting things being created by people that have seen the light.
    

Did anyone see the Lemmings DHTML game? Heh, heh.
http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

Simply brilliant. Now, if only he could start
shaving those pixel dimensions just a bit...

Oh, and everyone... keep this under your hat... here's the super-secret iPhone SDK...
http://script.aculo.us/
Hush, hush on the QT.

Yeah, he actually uses all of those features. Those were only the things that I've seen him use it for, he does more things with it.


Yeah that's true but to me it means the iphone is going to be less revolutionary than some people including me think it could be. The revolutionary part for me was having a desktop on a phone and that's mostly gone now. It's now just a really sophisticated phone. Of course they could change this in future or 3rd party developers might find a way round it.


That uses one whole CPU of my Core Duo desktop. How fast is the iphone?

Of course 3D java stuff is possible and I presume people can still make applets to run on the iphone. You can do loads of stuff with them. I had to write a raytracer in an applet once so 3d is definitely possible. But these apps still run with the overhead of a full browser on a portable device and there are still a lot of limitations.


Not in my experience. My brother and my dad use palmtops - my brother has a pocketpc with GPS and they are pretty stable, despite the multitude of things they do with them.


Laughing at my 3 (at least) work colleagues who are going to buy one. I might take a Palm with me.


That's just a bunch of javascripts to animate websites (including the drawers on Apple's new site). It hardly improves the shortcomings of a web-based SDK.

Nice work, now i know more of what these web applications are possible of.


I already have dark forces running on a version of classic not supported because its requirments are so low that it would run on the iPhone. That was my whole idea. I was somehow going to run an apple os on the iPhone, probzbly not the os its self but rather the compnets required for games.

Im pretty sure i wount be able to stream a version of an apple os with dark forces to the iPhone but you never know. Its sort of hard to send 20 floppy disks of information instantly. People have gotten NES games to run on the internet with web 2 and other tools so you never know but i believe its just too much data. The whole idea of using dark forces was that it would be the actual full game running, i never thought that the game wouldnt be stored on the phone.


Its all very upsetting.




Did jobs ever say the iPhone was closed or that they just wouldnt be making a SDK for it?

Look as much as I think Jobs was high insulting developers at, uh, the developer conference I do believe there is an SDK coming (all his garbage about web apps being this great to way to develop for the iPhone aside).

Frankly there's no way Apple even has their internal development software up to snuff at the moment, and when they do (Christmas, or Spring I imagine as the iPhone goes to Europe, gains 3G, and goes to Asia) then they'll release an SDKalthough it might be widget only for the beginning, and expand later.

So I, for one, am certain there is an SDK coming. It just has to wait for a) Apple to actually, you know, have an SDK in complete form, and b) probably software update the iPhone to include sandbox/additional protection for non-Apple apps or b2) require apps to go through Apple and iTunes Store.

I do not think its reasonable to expect that the phone, no matter WHAT would a.) Run classic Mac apps b.) run existing Mac apps without a recompile (unless Rosetta was ported to ARM) c.) Run a PC emulator like Parallels. d.) Run anything that takes a substantial amount of system resources. It's JUST a phone. It's been clear since the beignning that Apple has set out to "reinvent the phone", not to "repackage the Macintosh" into a small deck of playing cards. People hear different things I guess.

No, he didn't. While he sold Web 2.0, he never said never. I don't think ANYONE should hold their breath though. --Especially if you're holding it for running "Mac Classic" apps on your phone. I really think that's unreasonable given the situation. iPhone is a unique platform full of promise, but its not a panacea.


Holding your breath will turn you blue. That's a pun. Just sayin'.

~ CB

Hmm, that's another thing the PocketPC and Palms have. \


In the smartphone market I guess but when I compare it to a palmtop, I don't see many distinctions besides stylus vs fingers and they go way back to the Newton.

Also touch screens are used quite a lot these days, I see them all the time at checkouts.

Can people write on the iphone btw or is it just a gesture interface?

As long as I can save and use the Web2 "application" I would agree it's a tradeoff I'm going to accept. But now I'm dependant on a web connection every time I use these "web-pages".. that's a shame. I think Apple should go Widget all the way. Let us use Widgets on iPhone..

Apple has already announced there will be more apps for the iPhone. None of us know what those apps will be so Apple has not shown all of its card yet. I imagine there will be a lot of back tracking on these Palm and Pocket PC comparisons once we have a better picture of Apple's direction.


Apple never promised a desktop on a phone. That is your own misguided expectation. Plus Microsoft already made this concept called the UMPC. And it hasn't worked out too well.


Comparing the multi-touch UI to a grocery store touchscreen? Are you serious?

In-spite of all of those great, well written, and useful 3rd party apps Palm isn't doing so well.

Struggling handheld device maker Palm has been hit with layoffs.

The layoffs, which occurred Thursday, affected "a small percentage" of Palm's approximately 1,200 employees and were concentrated in the company's development group, according to a company spokesman. They primarily affect Palm employees in the US, he added.

Palm has seen steady decline in the handheld device market where it leads the market and is in the midst of financial restructuring. Last week, private equity investors Elevation Partners took a 25 per cent stake in Palm, investing $325 million into the struggling smartphone maker.

back to my mac I feel, will figure heavily with the iphone.

Also, the integration with Apple TV and the itunes store.

What a joke. To characterize a functional web browser as support for third party developers is misleading at best.

It's almost as "clever" as their commercials comparing an operating system to a computer. "Windows doensn't come with a cool camera." Well, duh!!!

I'm picking up an iphone, but their continued efforts to play off the less intelligent people in this country is a turn off for the rest of us.

Hmmmm. . . . Have you ever seen one of these commercials? They all start with: "Hello, I'm a Mac," "and I'm a PC." They don't say: Hello, I'm a Mac OSX," "and I'm a Windows." PC doesn't come with the camera, I don't remember a mention of Windows.

Comparing features is a very valid way to compare products.

Apple is asking us to give up useful features for its own.
.
Some of what Apple has is very good, but what they are asking us to give up is also very good.

Palm isn't doing well because they are up against two juggernauts, MS and Nokia, with Symbian.

Palm was never big enough to put the money needed into the business when those two gients decided to compete.

Apple now has the money that Palm always lacked.

But, I don't ever remember a review that said that Windows Mobile or CE was ever as good as Palm's products, even when on the same hardware.

As Symbian is mostly in Europe, where Palm never spent as much time, it has easily taken over there.

But, as we all know, the best product doesn't always win.