Besides market penetration, Apple's other challenge is drawing the line between integrating mobile phone functionality into the iPod form factor and OS and creating a new device that acts as a "mobile productivity unit" similar to the Treo or Blackberry. Perhaps they can do both -- two kinds of iPhone. A hypothetical Mac OS X Mobile that is more integrated with .Mac or ".Google" could sit on the bigger model.
The easy thing for Apple to do is to release a simple iPhone that is more or less an iPod plus phone. They could sneak other things into it, but that's the essential selling point. They can wait and see where they are in the market before moving forward on a more robust unit.
Apple should not ignore Windows (or Linux) users when developing this hypothetical "iPhone macro." Mail Mobile could integrate with Outlook, Thunderbird, or Google Mail. iCal Mobile could integrate with Google Calendar or Outlook. They could keep it very broad yet present the user with a glimpse of Mac OS X.
And so what if Windows users can't use Home on iPod? That's an advantage for Mac OS X users only.
And what's wrong with a "ringtone creator" feature in iTunes? It would force more integration with iTunes, which is what Apple wants. You could create the clips you want to use, copy them to the iPhone, and select from that list on the iPhone itself. They would just another category to the iTunes sidebar for both iTunes itself and the iPhone -- Clips. (Or maybe Ringtones)
When I say OS X, I'm talking about a sparse OS with enough API's to allow some compatability, not the entire OS, that would be absurd.
But it must be understood that processing power and memory is continually increasing in phones just as it is in laptops and desktops.
It won't be that much longer before cpu's and menory are enough to run some of todays computer programs. An 8 Gb SD card has just been released. A couple of years from now, it will cost less than $100, and we will have 16, and possibly 32 GB versions.
Screen rez has been going up as well. I'm sure Apple can think of something.
You can't say that the concepts are weak, etc. You don't know what those concepts are. You just see the products that they can produce now. You don't know what they have in mind for the future. My Treo is a pretty fair music player, though I don't use it much for that.
Mel, you're a legend, the last part of the quote is the answer to the first part. Whether it's a weak concept or a strong concept without the ability to deliver your observation is correct (my money's on the former).
I'm with you on your first point, today's back-markers have the best motivation to perform tomorrow but do they have the ability? Given the amount of time, resources and examples to follow you'd have thought the mobile guys would have got it right by now. I tried to use my SonyEricsson to watch TV shows on the way to work recently, painful! Like you with the music I won't be using my phone much for that.
When I say OS X, I'm talking about a sparse OS with enough API's to allow some compatability, not the entire OS, that would be absurd.
But it must be understood that processing power and memory is continually increasing in phones just as it is in laptops and desktops.
It won't be that much longer before cpu's and menory are enough to run some of todays computer programs. An 8 Gb SD card has just been released. A couple of years from now, it will cost less than $100, and we will have 16, and possibly 32 GB versions.
Screen rez has been going up as well. I'm sure Apple can think of something.
True but that's counter to what is actually happening in the phone industry where they're driving down the size of the OS and creating cheaper and cheaper smartphones and using the tech on average phones.
I tried to use my SonyEricsson to watch TV shows on the way to work recently, painful! Like you with the music I won't be using my phone much for that.
McD
Most of today's smartphones have 320x240 screens, exactly like the iPod or Zune. What makes it more painful for you?
I wasn't. It was exactly the point. You just missed it in two posts.
Walkman phones are far from crappy.
Which was exactly the point I made. Some of the phone companies also get that too.
Where did I say mp3 ringtones cost money?
They're totally free on every carrier in the UK. We don't have carriers blocking mp3 support or disabling OBEX via bluetooth.
Of course you can buy them too via SMS and many, many people without computers do, at ridiculous cost.
Apple didn't have a total system for some years after the iPod launch and it wasn't until they delivered iTunes on Windows that the popularity grew.
No, I didn't because that's what we've got already in the UK from every carrier going. That's what I currently do with my phones. I've an iTunes smartlist set at 400MB of random tracks which I export to my phone's 512MB card and then stick in the phone. It plays AAC, MP3, even podcasts and MP4 movies.
I can bluetooth them over too but it's incredibly slow.
I'm not sure it's a killer app either since we've had it here for half a decade already, since before the iPod even. I wasn't going off on some arcane tangent. I was stating what is already available outside the USA and what has been available for some time. If Apple came out with something we've already had for years they'd be laughed off.
Just stating reality here. Your home folder on your phone isn't going to be a big seller. My Home folder is currently 190GB so a little impractical anyway. To me it seems as useful a feature as Microsoft's 'My Briefcase'.
I was building hypervisors in assembly language whilst you were in school probably. The entire ROM space for Symbian is less than 8MB including the kernel, radio stack and phone software. OSX isn't going to get that small and tight. I'm not saying it has to be but obviously with larger system requirements the phones aren't going to be as cheap either.
And make it free like Google. I really can't see why anyone pays for .Mac.
The point being, I'm sure Apple could make a fantastic vertically integrated phone/iTunes/Addressbook/iCal/iPhoto/iWeb/iChat but when it boils down to cold hard cash, those features mean nothing to Windows users who don't have the software on their PC. Remember when iPods shipped with MusicMatch and you needed to add a firewire card? Slow going.
Now I don't really care if they add the PC software side - I last bought Windows in 1999 - and MacOSX integration is all I want but that's obviously not going to be what the phone is about if they plan to sell 12 million in 6 months.
My head hurts from the weak opinion stated as fact. Was that bolded part supposed to intimidate me off and make us all in awe of you Shaun? Because any OS designer or coder knows a hypervisor has nothing to do with the inside of an OS, and you should have known that too. Or maybe you already did and decided to do a little jargon slinging to slap down some youngster.
Problem is Shaun, I'm not a youngster. Problem is Shaun that I have spent considerable time elbow deep in OS code and have more than a passing clue about OSes and hypervisors. Problem is Shaun that stating your opinions isn't worth shooting your wad over. You haven't stated any real solid factual basis for those opinions, just your own warm fuzzy feelings about what you have seen. Fine. Get over your little ego puffery.
I KNOW what the starting point is, I KNOW what is possible. I speculate from there based on how Apple has proceeded in the recent several years, not how the rest of the industry has screwed up. If you noticed lately, Apple generally leaves successful markets alone, they aren't profitable enough, they worm into under-served markets. Not under-served in availability of products, but under-served in products that actually work and do what customers are willing to pay for.
Yeah, I said I speculated. My speculations have no bearing on the validity of any of your opinions. But your posts aren't responding very well, just say nope to a disconnected and fabricated question, not the one you should be answering to. And I will take glee in shredding fallacious logic and strawman arguments. Really it's best to not argue at all since this is all speculation.
I'll be fair and give you a partial pass on ringtones, but only partial because they are not free with all plans. Many plans get you stealthily by not making you pay for them directly, but you do pay a price for data access and an exorbitant data call per minute charge while downloading them. Some phone companies give them for free, count yourself lucky that yours does, or do you pay a monthly data access charge?
My head hurts from the weak opinion stated as fact.
Don't blow a vessel over it. This is a rumours site after all and we're all just wildly speculating on a rumour.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
Was that bolded part supposed to intimidate me off and make us all in awe of you Shaun? Because any OS designer or coder knows a hypervisor has nothing to do with the inside of an OS, and you should have known that too. Or maybe you already did and decided to do a little jargon slinging to slap down some youngster.
No, but try writing a hypervisor without knowing your OS internals. The point I was making was that market leading smartphone kernels are measured in KB not MB. I personally wouldn't start with a *nix OS kernel. That's my opinion. It's not an uniformed one. It's from decades of messing with OS internals. I'll admit I'm rusty since I don't really have the time to dig into Darwin or Linux sources or the desire too but I do know how they work fundamentally.
I wasn't aware we had to publish CVs before expressing an opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
Problem is Shaun, I'm not a youngster. Problem is Shaun that I have spent considerable time elbow deep in OS code and have more than a passing clue about OSes and hypervisors. Problem is Shaun that stating your opinions isn't worth shooting your wad over. You haven't stated any real solid factual basis for those opinions, just your own warm fuzzy feelings about what you have seen. Fine. Get over your little ego puffery.
Ditto. Neither have you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
I KNOW what the starting point is, I KNOW what is possible. I speculate from there based on how Apple has proceeded in the recent several years, not how the rest of the industry has screwed up.
IMHO, not all of the industry has screwed up totally. Some have the OS right but the software on top wrong, some have the software right but the OS underneath wrong. And then there's some really quite badly executed hardware. And putting inappropriate OS tech on hardware just not capable of running it.
It'll take someone like Apple to mine the nuggets, cut out the crap and distil what's good. And then they'll add their stuff. How they get there is open to debate. I was speculating that starting from OSX wasn't optimal and may lead to exactly the same problems other phones have cutting down a general purpose OS to a phone specific OS.
More than that though, Apple needs software to run on their phone OS for it to succeed. They need TomTom or Route66 on it. They need QuickOffice. They need the wonderful Handy apps available on S60/UIQ phones. Disregarding the technical aspects, Apple needs software developers for their phone rather than going it alone. That's also why I don't think they should create a new OS. That's not to say they won't go all purist on us and do exactly that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
If you noticed lately, Apple generally leaves successful markets alone, they aren't profitable enough, they worm into under-served markets. Not under-served in availability of products, but under-served in products that actually work and do what customers are willing to pay for.
Yes, but the phone market is different for Apple. Increasingly their iPod will come under pressure from Music Phones like SE's Walkman phones. Their entry into that market has nothing to do with creating a better widget than other widget manufacturers although I'm pretty sure they will. It's about also protecting their iTunes market and iPod revenue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
Yeah, I said I speculated. My speculations have no bearing on the validity of any of your opinions. But your posts aren't responding very well, just say nope to a disconnected and fabricated question, not the one you should be answering to. And I will take glee in shredding fallacious logic and strawman arguments. Really it's best to not argue at all since this is all speculation.
I don't know how you're reading the first question but I answered it directly and it seemed a perfectly valid observation from SquirrelMonkey, not 'disconnected and fabricated'.
SquirrelMoney said...
The advantage Apple offers is a more tightly integrated product. Those who carry a mobile phone and an iPod now need only carry one device, if we are to believe the rumors.
I answered...
Nope. Been able to do that for some time with Walkman phones which are really quite good.
You perhaps should also understand that I'm based in the UK so none of the restrictions common in the USA are at all common here and I'd imagine most phones sold here in the last year all play music and have unrestricted bluetooth, even the pay-as-you-go disposable phones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
I'll be fair and give you a partial pass on ringtones, but only partial because they are not free with all plans. Many plans get you stealthily by not making you pay for them directly, but you do pay a price for data access and an exorbitant data call per minute charge while downloading them. Some phone companies give them for free, count yourself lucky that yours does, or do you pay a monthly data access charge?
That wasn't the point being made by SquirrelMonkey.
"One "killer app" to sell these would be a small utility within iTunes that lets users create their own ringtones as clips of songs in their Libraries."
As I said, I've been able to do that for years. It's got nothing to do with data plans or free ringtones with my plan since it doesn't go over the air. I made that perfectly clear and I do it with iTunes already.
There are other ways too. Before that nifty app I just used a smart playlist, exported the playlist to a folder and copied it over directly. It's even easier now that most phones mount as USB drives.
Mel, you're a legend, the last part of the quote is the answer to the first part. Whether it's a weak concept or a strong concept without the ability to deliver your observation is correct (my money's on the former).
I'm with you on your first point, today's back-markers have the best motivation to perform tomorrow but do they have the ability? Given the amount of time, resources and examples to follow you'd have thought the mobile guys would have got it right by now. I tried to use my SonyEricsson to watch TV shows on the way to work recently, painful! Like you with the music I won't be using my phone much for that.
McD
Well, maybe because sometimes people misinterpret what I'm saying.
It's not the answer to the first part. It's not that I don't use it much for that because it's not good. It's just that I'm not into mp3 players. But, other than it not interacting with itunes, it's about as good a music player as most dedicated music players. That's all I was saying with that statement.
We don't know if they have the ability. but, over the years, I've seen new product categories arise several times. When they do, most devices within the category are fairly simple, and don't have much polish, or features.
But, over time, they get better. Each company learns from the other. Eventually, most all devices work well. They get sophisticated. Then something else supersedes them, and we go through the whole mess again.
What I'm saying here is that is happening again. These mp3 players are becoming a mature category. Most work well enough, some are pretty good.
The mp3 phones aren't as good overall, but are getting better.
In a few years, they will be just as good.
The way phone/PDA's are replacing plain PDA's is the way they will replace mp3 players as well.
There will always be people who want simple phones (at least in the near future), and there will always be people who want separate mp3 players, but don't bet that most won't want a combo.
Look at CD players, SACD players, DVD-A players, DVD players, and now Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players.
Most can be gotten on one machine, at some point, the same will be true of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Then there will be one machine for everything.
The same thing will happen to cells. Don't doubt that. I'm pretty sure all companies are eying that concept.
Who will get there first? We hope that it will be Apple, but, even if they do, others will follow, and eventually, others will have pretty much equal products. Apple knows this.
HOW it works (as always) - it's not easy to get back to a particular spot in a show when interrupted and video conversion/transfer are also manual so not good. The specifications are fine but they tend to distract from how things work which is what makes me use them regularly.
True but that's counter to what is actually happening in the phone industry where they're driving down the size of the OS and creating cheaper and cheaper smartphones and using the tech on average phones.
Palm no longer has the resources, but MS is not making their OS simpler, it's getting more complex.
I don't think that Symbian is getting simpler either. Neither is the Blackberry.
But, no matter what they may be doing, Apple doesn't have to listen. If Apple can do it better, that's all they will need. Maybe they can't, but I'd like to see them try.
HOW it works (as always) - it's not easy to get back to a particular spot in a show when interrupted and video conversion/transfer are also manual so not good. The specifications are fine but they tend to distract from how things work which is what makes me use them regularly.
As I said, these are new products?they WILL get better.
Do you always expect first generation products to work that well? You shouldn't. I don't.
Palm no longer has the resources, but MS is not making their OS simpler, it's getting more complex.
I don't think that Symbian is getting simpler either. Neither is the Blackberry.
But, no matter what they may be doing, Apple doesn't have to listen. If Apple can do it better, that's all they will need. Maybe they can't, but I'd like to see them try.
I didn't really mean simpler on the front end.
I meant simpler behind that. eg. some of the Nokias and SE phones now run off a single SOC where before you had a traditional CPU and another chip running the radio stack. Windows and Palm are about a year behind there but they're going that way. Symbian OS 9 was simpler in some regards than OS7 and they're concentrating more on reducing the RAM footprint in the next few releases. The point being that they can run a smartphone OS on much lesser phones.
Palm simplified by just not upgrading their OS. :-)
HOW it works (as always) - it's not easy to get back to a particular spot in a show when interrupted and video conversion/transfer are also manual so not good. The specifications are fine but they tend to distract from how things work which is what makes me use them regularly.
I quite liked the video player in the P990 I had it was much better than the P910 and it played most video files fine although chopping them down to the right resolution was useful. No worse than an iPod Video. Handbrake on the iPod settings is fine or if you've Quicktime Pro, just saving it out as 3GPP worked great for transcoding too.
You're right though, it needs Apple's special integration sauce. Even when the phone manufacturers supply a 'PC Suite' for windows the results are less than great and everyone expects 'Great' from Apple.
I meant simpler behind that. eg. some of the Nokias and SE phones now run off a single SOC where before you had a traditional CPU and another chip running the radio stack. Windows and Palm are about a year behind there but they're going that way. Symbian OS 9 was simpler in some regards than OS7 and they're concentrating more on reducing the RAM footprint in the next few releases. The point being that they can run a smartphone OS on much lesser phones.
Palm simplified by just not upgrading their OS. :-)
Ok, I thought you were talking about the software.
Yeah, Palm has made minor updates the past few years. Ever since Cobalt failed to take off.
Therein lies a problem for all companies. Continuity is paramount. If the new system, no matter how good, or sophisticated, isn't compatible with older software, it just isn't going to make it.
If Palm was able to come up with some layer, as Apple has done several times, to allow older programs to run under it, it might have been different. But, it's considered to be one of the most difficult things to do. And with a cells' still weak cpu, there isn't much power left over for the translation, even with a compatible cpu. I still prefer Palm, but how much longer they will be able to continue is hard to say.
I quite liked the video player in the P990 I had it was much better than the P910 and it played most video files fine although chopping them down to the right resolution was useful. No worse than an iPod Video. Handbrake on the iPod settings is fine or if you've Quicktime Pro, just saving it out as 3GPP worked great for transcoding too.
You're right though, it needs Apple's special integration sauce. Even when the phone manufacturers supply a 'PC Suite' for windows the results are less than great and everyone expects 'Great' from Apple.
It seems as though most other companies are not yet comfortable with software.
Even PC companies are not really software companies.
Most of these companies seem to want to get the features going, and out the door, relying on feedback from customers to get a second generation product out that has improvements.
Apple is more concerned with getting it right the first time. At least the basic concept. They don't get it perfect the first time either. But they do get it working right the first time, the features can come later.
Therein lies a problem for all companies. Continuity is paramount. If the new system, no matter how good, or sophisticated, isn't compatible with older software, it just isn't going to make it.
Symbian just dumped binary compatibility. I don't think that's so important. It literally took a couple of weeks for most of the developers to recompile. The bigger problem was they added application signing which made it more difficult and more expensive for freeware software writers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
If Palm was able to come up with some layer, as Apple has done several times, to allow older programs to run under it, it might have been different. But, it's considered to be one of the most difficult things to do. And with a cells' still weak cpu, there isn't much power left over for the translation, even with a compatible cpu. I still prefer Palm, but how much longer they will be able to continue is hard to say.
They have done it a number of times, switching from Dragonball to ARM for instance and IIRC OS6 ran at least some old OS5 apps in a similar way that Carbon allowed some older MacOS apps to work provided they kept to the clean API.
Symbian just dumped binary compatibility. I don't think that's so important. It literally took a couple of weeks for most of the developers to recompile. The bigger problem was they added application signing which made it more difficult and more expensive for freeware software writers.
I haven't seen programs for Symbian that look to be as complex as those for Palm, and Windows, but I could be wrong.
Quote:
They have done it a number of times, switching from Dragonball to ARM for instance and IIRC OS6 ran at least some old OS5 apps in a similar way that Carbon allowed some older MacOS apps to work provided they kept to the clean API.
True, but that was a long time ago, when their market wasn't nearly as developed, and they were really the only game in town.
I haven't seen programs for Symbian that look to be as complex as those for Palm, and Windows, but I could be wrong.
You should probably check out Handango.com or AllAboutSymbian.com. There's plenty of software and some quite complex like TomTom GPS or even a SlingBox media player now. A full MS compatible office suite has been out for years too. I can't say I've missed anything moving from a Palm Vx to an SE P910i a few years ago.
TomTom were originally Psion PDA developers as were many of the Symbian companies. Since I had a Psion for much of the 80s and 90s, it's kind of like getting back home too although I do wish someone would stick a Psion 5MX keyboard on a phone. Best PDA keyboard EVAH!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
They are here. Symbian is hardly seen at all. The high PDA/phones I see are mostly Treo's, with some Windows phones scattered around.
Yeah, the US is at odds with the rest of the world. Here's worldwide stats...
The graph explains the disparity fairly obviously.
It's to be expected. Windows and Palm have been American firms, starting their products here, and Symbian has been a Nokia product, starting there.
I think the reason partly is Symbian didn't support CDMA until the middle of last year. Symbian, being British hasn't stopped it dominating outside of Britain with the exception of North America so it's not just that it was developed here. Symbian isn't just Nokia either - it's 100 handsets from 10 manufacturers.
And the Palm Treos have always been pretty lack lustre here with aerials, no bluetooth (unforgivable here) and really bad cameras.
You should probably check out Handango.com or AllAboutSymbian.com. There's plenty of software and some quite complex like TomTom GPS or even a SlingBox media player now. A full MS compatible office suite has been out for years too. I can't say I've missed anything moving from a Palm Vx to an SE P910i a few years ago.
I've been there, but haven't looked at Symbian phone software.
Quote:
TomTom were originally Psion PDA developers as were many of the Symbian companies. Since I had a Psion for much of the 80s and 90s, it's kind of like getting back home too although I do wish someone would stick a Psion 5MX keyboard on a phone. Best PDA keyboard EVAH!!
Yeah, the US is at odds with the rest of the world. Here's worldwide stats...
The graph explains the disparity fairly obviously.
I think the reason partly is Symbian didn't support CDMA until the middle of last year. Symbian, being British hasn't stopped it dominating outside of Britain with the exception of North America so it's not just that it was developed here. Symbian isn't just Nokia either - it's 100 handsets from 10 manufacturers.
The two go hand in hand though. We haven't had much GSM here until a few years ago, and, as you've said you haven't had much CDMA. So, most American developed handsets were CDMA, and most, over there, have been GSM.
But, that is slowly changing.
Quote:
And the Palm Treos have always been pretty lack lustre here with aerials, no bluetooth (unforgivable here) and really bad cameras.
I don't know what you mean about aerials. They haven't had pull-out aerials, because they have never been popular here, so companies have gotten rid of them as fast as they could. Mostly cheap phones have them. Treo's have always had stubs. I've never had a problem with signal strength.
The 650 and 700 have Bluetooth. I'd have to look up the older ones. But, until the 650 came out, Bluetooth wasn't in use much anyway. It was one of the first cells to have it, at least over here.
The camera on the 650 wasn't anything to write home about. But the one on my 700p is fine, though it doesn't have an LED flash. Instead it has a small convex mirror so you can take a self-portrait. I would rather have the flash.
Comments
Besides market penetration, Apple's other challenge is drawing the line between integrating mobile phone functionality into the iPod form factor and OS and creating a new device that acts as a "mobile productivity unit" similar to the Treo or Blackberry. Perhaps they can do both -- two kinds of iPhone. A hypothetical Mac OS X Mobile that is more integrated with .Mac or ".Google" could sit on the bigger model.
The easy thing for Apple to do is to release a simple iPhone that is more or less an iPod plus phone. They could sneak other things into it, but that's the essential selling point. They can wait and see where they are in the market before moving forward on a more robust unit.
Apple should not ignore Windows (or Linux) users when developing this hypothetical "iPhone macro." Mail Mobile could integrate with Outlook, Thunderbird, or Google Mail. iCal Mobile could integrate with Google Calendar or Outlook. They could keep it very broad yet present the user with a glimpse of Mac OS X.
And so what if Windows users can't use Home on iPod? That's an advantage for Mac OS X users only.
And what's wrong with a "ringtone creator" feature in iTunes? It would force more integration with iTunes, which is what Apple wants. You could create the clips you want to use, copy them to the iPhone, and select from that list on the iPhone itself. They would just another category to the iTunes sidebar for both iTunes itself and the iPhone -- Clips. (Or maybe Ringtones)
But it must be understood that processing power and memory is continually increasing in phones just as it is in laptops and desktops.
It won't be that much longer before cpu's and menory are enough to run some of todays computer programs. An 8 Gb SD card has just been released. A couple of years from now, it will cost less than $100, and we will have 16, and possibly 32 GB versions.
Screen rez has been going up as well. I'm sure Apple can think of something.
You can't say that the concepts are weak, etc. You don't know what those concepts are. You just see the products that they can produce now. You don't know what they have in mind for the future. My Treo is a pretty fair music player, though I don't use it much for that.
Mel, you're a legend, the last part of the quote is the answer to the first part. Whether it's a weak concept or a strong concept without the ability to deliver your observation is correct (my money's on the former).
I'm with you on your first point, today's back-markers have the best motivation to perform tomorrow but do they have the ability? Given the amount of time, resources and examples to follow you'd have thought the mobile guys would have got it right by now. I tried to use my SonyEricsson to watch TV shows on the way to work recently, painful! Like you with the music I won't be using my phone much for that.
McD
When I say OS X, I'm talking about a sparse OS with enough API's to allow some compatability, not the entire OS, that would be absurd.
But it must be understood that processing power and memory is continually increasing in phones just as it is in laptops and desktops.
It won't be that much longer before cpu's and menory are enough to run some of todays computer programs. An 8 Gb SD card has just been released. A couple of years from now, it will cost less than $100, and we will have 16, and possibly 32 GB versions.
Screen rez has been going up as well. I'm sure Apple can think of something.
True but that's counter to what is actually happening in the phone industry where they're driving down the size of the OS and creating cheaper and cheaper smartphones and using the tech on average phones.
I tried to use my SonyEricsson to watch TV shows on the way to work recently, painful! Like you with the music I won't be using my phone much for that.
McD
Most of today's smartphones have 320x240 screens, exactly like the iPod or Zune. What makes it more painful for you?
There's a couple of smartphones now with 640x480 screens now too. eg http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/21/o...t-pc-high-end/
Ditto.
I wasn't. It was exactly the point. You just missed it in two posts.
Walkman phones are far from crappy.
Which was exactly the point I made. Some of the phone companies also get that too.
Where did I say mp3 ringtones cost money?
They're totally free on every carrier in the UK. We don't have carriers blocking mp3 support or disabling OBEX via bluetooth.
Of course you can buy them too via SMS and many, many people without computers do, at ridiculous cost.
Apple didn't have a total system for some years after the iPod launch and it wasn't until they delivered iTunes on Windows that the popularity grew.
No, I didn't because that's what we've got already in the UK from every carrier going. That's what I currently do with my phones. I've an iTunes smartlist set at 400MB of random tracks which I export to my phone's 512MB card and then stick in the phone. It plays AAC, MP3, even podcasts and MP4 movies.
I can bluetooth them over too but it's incredibly slow.
I'm not sure it's a killer app either since we've had it here for half a decade already, since before the iPod even. I wasn't going off on some arcane tangent. I was stating what is already available outside the USA and what has been available for some time. If Apple came out with something we've already had for years they'd be laughed off.
Just stating reality here. Your home folder on your phone isn't going to be a big seller. My Home folder is currently 190GB so a little impractical anyway. To me it seems as useful a feature as Microsoft's 'My Briefcase'.
I was building hypervisors in assembly language whilst you were in school probably. The entire ROM space for Symbian is less than 8MB including the kernel, radio stack and phone software. OSX isn't going to get that small and tight. I'm not saying it has to be but obviously with larger system requirements the phones aren't going to be as cheap either.
And make it free like Google. I really can't see why anyone pays for .Mac.
The point being, I'm sure Apple could make a fantastic vertically integrated phone/iTunes/Addressbook/iCal/iPhoto/iWeb/iChat but when it boils down to cold hard cash, those features mean nothing to Windows users who don't have the software on their PC. Remember when iPods shipped with MusicMatch and you needed to add a firewire card? Slow going.
Now I don't really care if they add the PC software side - I last bought Windows in 1999 - and MacOSX integration is all I want but that's obviously not going to be what the phone is about if they plan to sell 12 million in 6 months.
My head hurts from the weak opinion stated as fact. Was that bolded part supposed to intimidate me off and make us all in awe of you Shaun? Because any OS designer or coder knows a hypervisor has nothing to do with the inside of an OS, and you should have known that too. Or maybe you already did and decided to do a little jargon slinging to slap down some youngster.
Problem is Shaun, I'm not a youngster. Problem is Shaun that I have spent considerable time elbow deep in OS code and have more than a passing clue about OSes and hypervisors. Problem is Shaun that stating your opinions isn't worth shooting your wad over. You haven't stated any real solid factual basis for those opinions, just your own warm fuzzy feelings about what you have seen. Fine. Get over your little ego puffery.
I KNOW what the starting point is, I KNOW what is possible. I speculate from there based on how Apple has proceeded in the recent several years, not how the rest of the industry has screwed up. If you noticed lately, Apple generally leaves successful markets alone, they aren't profitable enough, they worm into under-served markets. Not under-served in availability of products, but under-served in products that actually work and do what customers are willing to pay for.
Yeah, I said I speculated. My speculations have no bearing on the validity of any of your opinions. But your posts aren't responding very well, just say nope to a disconnected and fabricated question, not the one you should be answering to. And I will take glee in shredding fallacious logic and strawman arguments. Really it's best to not argue at all since this is all speculation.
I'll be fair and give you a partial pass on ringtones, but only partial because they are not free with all plans. Many plans get you stealthily by not making you pay for them directly, but you do pay a price for data access and an exorbitant data call per minute charge while downloading them. Some phone companies give them for free, count yourself lucky that yours does, or do you pay a monthly data access charge?
I agree with the general point, but actually, in the last 5 years, Palm doubled from about $8 to $16.
The more interesting comparison is from early 2000: Palm was selling for about $800 (now $16), while Apple was in the mid-30s (now 90).
Perhaps you missed the fact that these stocks split?
My head hurts from the weak opinion stated as fact.
Don't blow a vessel over it. This is a rumours site after all and we're all just wildly speculating on a rumour.
Was that bolded part supposed to intimidate me off and make us all in awe of you Shaun? Because any OS designer or coder knows a hypervisor has nothing to do with the inside of an OS, and you should have known that too. Or maybe you already did and decided to do a little jargon slinging to slap down some youngster.
No, but try writing a hypervisor without knowing your OS internals. The point I was making was that market leading smartphone kernels are measured in KB not MB. I personally wouldn't start with a *nix OS kernel. That's my opinion. It's not an uniformed one. It's from decades of messing with OS internals. I'll admit I'm rusty since I don't really have the time to dig into Darwin or Linux sources or the desire too but I do know how they work fundamentally.
I wasn't aware we had to publish CVs before expressing an opinion.
Problem is Shaun, I'm not a youngster. Problem is Shaun that I have spent considerable time elbow deep in OS code and have more than a passing clue about OSes and hypervisors. Problem is Shaun that stating your opinions isn't worth shooting your wad over. You haven't stated any real solid factual basis for those opinions, just your own warm fuzzy feelings about what you have seen. Fine. Get over your little ego puffery.
Ditto. Neither have you.
I KNOW what the starting point is, I KNOW what is possible. I speculate from there based on how Apple has proceeded in the recent several years, not how the rest of the industry has screwed up.
IMHO, not all of the industry has screwed up totally. Some have the OS right but the software on top wrong, some have the software right but the OS underneath wrong. And then there's some really quite badly executed hardware. And putting inappropriate OS tech on hardware just not capable of running it.
It'll take someone like Apple to mine the nuggets, cut out the crap and distil what's good. And then they'll add their stuff. How they get there is open to debate. I was speculating that starting from OSX wasn't optimal and may lead to exactly the same problems other phones have cutting down a general purpose OS to a phone specific OS.
More than that though, Apple needs software to run on their phone OS for it to succeed. They need TomTom or Route66 on it. They need QuickOffice. They need the wonderful Handy apps available on S60/UIQ phones. Disregarding the technical aspects, Apple needs software developers for their phone rather than going it alone. That's also why I don't think they should create a new OS. That's not to say they won't go all purist on us and do exactly that.
If you noticed lately, Apple generally leaves successful markets alone, they aren't profitable enough, they worm into under-served markets. Not under-served in availability of products, but under-served in products that actually work and do what customers are willing to pay for.
Yes, but the phone market is different for Apple. Increasingly their iPod will come under pressure from Music Phones like SE's Walkman phones. Their entry into that market has nothing to do with creating a better widget than other widget manufacturers although I'm pretty sure they will. It's about also protecting their iTunes market and iPod revenue.
Yeah, I said I speculated. My speculations have no bearing on the validity of any of your opinions. But your posts aren't responding very well, just say nope to a disconnected and fabricated question, not the one you should be answering to. And I will take glee in shredding fallacious logic and strawman arguments. Really it's best to not argue at all since this is all speculation.
I don't know how you're reading the first question but I answered it directly and it seemed a perfectly valid observation from SquirrelMonkey, not 'disconnected and fabricated'.
SquirrelMoney said...
The advantage Apple offers is a more tightly integrated product. Those who carry a mobile phone and an iPod now need only carry one device, if we are to believe the rumors.
I answered...
Nope. Been able to do that for some time with Walkman phones which are really quite good.
You perhaps should also understand that I'm based in the UK so none of the restrictions common in the USA are at all common here and I'd imagine most phones sold here in the last year all play music and have unrestricted bluetooth, even the pay-as-you-go disposable phones.
I'll be fair and give you a partial pass on ringtones, but only partial because they are not free with all plans. Many plans get you stealthily by not making you pay for them directly, but you do pay a price for data access and an exorbitant data call per minute charge while downloading them. Some phone companies give them for free, count yourself lucky that yours does, or do you pay a monthly data access charge?
That wasn't the point being made by SquirrelMonkey.
"One "killer app" to sell these would be a small utility within iTunes that lets users create their own ringtones as clips of songs in their Libraries."
As I said, I've been able to do that for years. It's got nothing to do with data plans or free ringtones with my plan since it doesn't go over the air. I made that perfectly clear and I do it with iTunes already.
Here's how...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19173
There are other ways too. Before that nifty app I just used a smart playlist, exported the playlist to a folder and copied it over directly. It's even easier now that most phones mount as USB drives.
Mel, you're a legend, the last part of the quote is the answer to the first part. Whether it's a weak concept or a strong concept without the ability to deliver your observation is correct (my money's on the former).
I'm with you on your first point, today's back-markers have the best motivation to perform tomorrow but do they have the ability? Given the amount of time, resources and examples to follow you'd have thought the mobile guys would have got it right by now. I tried to use my SonyEricsson to watch TV shows on the way to work recently, painful! Like you with the music I won't be using my phone much for that.
McD
Well, maybe because sometimes people misinterpret what I'm saying.
It's not the answer to the first part. It's not that I don't use it much for that because it's not good. It's just that I'm not into mp3 players. But, other than it not interacting with itunes, it's about as good a music player as most dedicated music players. That's all I was saying with that statement.
We don't know if they have the ability. but, over the years, I've seen new product categories arise several times. When they do, most devices within the category are fairly simple, and don't have much polish, or features.
But, over time, they get better. Each company learns from the other. Eventually, most all devices work well. They get sophisticated. Then something else supersedes them, and we go through the whole mess again.
What I'm saying here is that is happening again. These mp3 players are becoming a mature category. Most work well enough, some are pretty good.
The mp3 phones aren't as good overall, but are getting better.
In a few years, they will be just as good.
The way phone/PDA's are replacing plain PDA's is the way they will replace mp3 players as well.
There will always be people who want simple phones (at least in the near future), and there will always be people who want separate mp3 players, but don't bet that most won't want a combo.
Look at CD players, SACD players, DVD-A players, DVD players, and now Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players.
Most can be gotten on one machine, at some point, the same will be true of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Then there will be one machine for everything.
The same thing will happen to cells. Don't doubt that. I'm pretty sure all companies are eying that concept.
Who will get there first? We hope that it will be Apple, but, even if they do, others will follow, and eventually, others will have pretty much equal products. Apple knows this.
Most of today's smartphones have 320x240 screens, exactly like the iPod or Zune. What makes it more painful for you?
There's a couple of smartphones now with 640x480 screens now too. eg http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/21/o...t-pc-high-end/
HOW it works (as always) - it's not easy to get back to a particular spot in a show when interrupted and video conversion/transfer are also manual so not good. The specifications are fine but they tend to distract from how things work which is what makes me use them regularly.
True but that's counter to what is actually happening in the phone industry where they're driving down the size of the OS and creating cheaper and cheaper smartphones and using the tech on average phones.
Palm no longer has the resources, but MS is not making their OS simpler, it's getting more complex.
I don't think that Symbian is getting simpler either. Neither is the Blackberry.
But, no matter what they may be doing, Apple doesn't have to listen. If Apple can do it better, that's all they will need. Maybe they can't, but I'd like to see them try.
HOW it works (as always) - it's not easy to get back to a particular spot in a show when interrupted and video conversion/transfer are also manual so not good. The specifications are fine but they tend to distract from how things work which is what makes me use them regularly.
As I said, these are new products?they WILL get better.
Do you always expect first generation products to work that well? You shouldn't. I don't.
Palm no longer has the resources, but MS is not making their OS simpler, it's getting more complex.
I don't think that Symbian is getting simpler either. Neither is the Blackberry.
But, no matter what they may be doing, Apple doesn't have to listen. If Apple can do it better, that's all they will need. Maybe they can't, but I'd like to see them try.
I didn't really mean simpler on the front end.
I meant simpler behind that. eg. some of the Nokias and SE phones now run off a single SOC where before you had a traditional CPU and another chip running the radio stack. Windows and Palm are about a year behind there but they're going that way. Symbian OS 9 was simpler in some regards than OS7 and they're concentrating more on reducing the RAM footprint in the next few releases. The point being that they can run a smartphone OS on much lesser phones.
Palm simplified by just not upgrading their OS. :-)
HOW it works (as always) - it's not easy to get back to a particular spot in a show when interrupted and video conversion/transfer are also manual so not good. The specifications are fine but they tend to distract from how things work which is what makes me use them regularly.
I quite liked the video player in the P990 I had it was much better than the P910 and it played most video files fine although chopping them down to the right resolution was useful. No worse than an iPod Video. Handbrake on the iPod settings is fine or if you've Quicktime Pro, just saving it out as 3GPP worked great for transcoding too.
You're right though, it needs Apple's special integration sauce. Even when the phone manufacturers supply a 'PC Suite' for windows the results are less than great and everyone expects 'Great' from Apple.
I didn't really mean simpler on the front end.
I meant simpler behind that. eg. some of the Nokias and SE phones now run off a single SOC where before you had a traditional CPU and another chip running the radio stack. Windows and Palm are about a year behind there but they're going that way. Symbian OS 9 was simpler in some regards than OS7 and they're concentrating more on reducing the RAM footprint in the next few releases. The point being that they can run a smartphone OS on much lesser phones.
Palm simplified by just not upgrading their OS. :-)
Ok, I thought you were talking about the software.
Yeah, Palm has made minor updates the past few years. Ever since Cobalt failed to take off.
Therein lies a problem for all companies. Continuity is paramount. If the new system, no matter how good, or sophisticated, isn't compatible with older software, it just isn't going to make it.
If Palm was able to come up with some layer, as Apple has done several times, to allow older programs to run under it, it might have been different. But, it's considered to be one of the most difficult things to do. And with a cells' still weak cpu, there isn't much power left over for the translation, even with a compatible cpu. I still prefer Palm, but how much longer they will be able to continue is hard to say.
The Treo's are pretty popular though.
I quite liked the video player in the P990 I had it was much better than the P910 and it played most video files fine although chopping them down to the right resolution was useful. No worse than an iPod Video. Handbrake on the iPod settings is fine or if you've Quicktime Pro, just saving it out as 3GPP worked great for transcoding too.
You're right though, it needs Apple's special integration sauce. Even when the phone manufacturers supply a 'PC Suite' for windows the results are less than great and everyone expects 'Great' from Apple.
It seems as though most other companies are not yet comfortable with software.
Even PC companies are not really software companies.
Most of these companies seem to want to get the features going, and out the door, relying on feedback from customers to get a second generation product out that has improvements.
Apple is more concerned with getting it right the first time. At least the basic concept. They don't get it perfect the first time either. But they do get it working right the first time, the features can come later.
Therein lies a problem for all companies. Continuity is paramount. If the new system, no matter how good, or sophisticated, isn't compatible with older software, it just isn't going to make it.
Symbian just dumped binary compatibility. I don't think that's so important. It literally took a couple of weeks for most of the developers to recompile. The bigger problem was they added application signing which made it more difficult and more expensive for freeware software writers.
If Palm was able to come up with some layer, as Apple has done several times, to allow older programs to run under it, it might have been different. But, it's considered to be one of the most difficult things to do. And with a cells' still weak cpu, there isn't much power left over for the translation, even with a compatible cpu. I still prefer Palm, but how much longer they will be able to continue is hard to say.
They have done it a number of times, switching from Dragonball to ARM for instance and IIRC OS6 ran at least some old OS5 apps in a similar way that Carbon allowed some older MacOS apps to work provided they kept to the clean API.
The Treo's are pretty popular though.
Not here they aren't.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9...3-2006-report/
Symbian just dumped binary compatibility. I don't think that's so important. It literally took a couple of weeks for most of the developers to recompile. The bigger problem was they added application signing which made it more difficult and more expensive for freeware software writers.
I haven't seen programs for Symbian that look to be as complex as those for Palm, and Windows, but I could be wrong.
They have done it a number of times, switching from Dragonball to ARM for instance and IIRC OS6 ran at least some old OS5 apps in a similar way that Carbon allowed some older MacOS apps to work provided they kept to the clean API.
True, but that was a long time ago, when their market wasn't nearly as developed, and they were really the only game in town.
Not here they aren't.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9...3-2006-report/
They are here. Symbian is hardly seen at all. The high PDA/phones I see are mostly Treo's, with some Windows phones scattered around.
It's to be expected. Windows and Palm have been American firms, starting their products here, and Symbian has been a Nokia product, starting there.
I haven't seen programs for Symbian that look to be as complex as those for Palm, and Windows, but I could be wrong.
You should probably check out Handango.com or AllAboutSymbian.com. There's plenty of software and some quite complex like TomTom GPS or even a SlingBox media player now. A full MS compatible office suite has been out for years too. I can't say I've missed anything moving from a Palm Vx to an SE P910i a few years ago.
TomTom were originally Psion PDA developers as were many of the Symbian companies. Since I had a Psion for much of the 80s and 90s, it's kind of like getting back home too although I do wish someone would stick a Psion 5MX keyboard on a phone. Best PDA keyboard EVAH!!
They are here. Symbian is hardly seen at all. The high PDA/phones I see are mostly Treo's, with some Windows phones scattered around.
Yeah, the US is at odds with the rest of the world. Here's worldwide stats...
The graph explains the disparity fairly obviously.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35179
It's to be expected. Windows and Palm have been American firms, starting their products here, and Symbian has been a Nokia product, starting there.
I think the reason partly is Symbian didn't support CDMA until the middle of last year. Symbian, being British hasn't stopped it dominating outside of Britain with the exception of North America so it's not just that it was developed here. Symbian isn't just Nokia either - it's 100 handsets from 10 manufacturers.
And the Palm Treos have always been pretty lack lustre here with aerials, no bluetooth (unforgivable here) and really bad cameras.
You should probably check out Handango.com or AllAboutSymbian.com. There's plenty of software and some quite complex like TomTom GPS or even a SlingBox media player now. A full MS compatible office suite has been out for years too. I can't say I've missed anything moving from a Palm Vx to an SE P910i a few years ago.
I've been there, but haven't looked at Symbian phone software.
TomTom were originally Psion PDA developers as were many of the Symbian companies. Since I had a Psion for much of the 80s and 90s, it's kind of like getting back home too although I do wish someone would stick a Psion 5MX keyboard on a phone. Best PDA keyboard EVAH!!
Yeah, the US is at odds with the rest of the world. Here's worldwide stats...
The graph explains the disparity fairly obviously.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35179
I think the reason partly is Symbian didn't support CDMA until the middle of last year. Symbian, being British hasn't stopped it dominating outside of Britain with the exception of North America so it's not just that it was developed here. Symbian isn't just Nokia either - it's 100 handsets from 10 manufacturers.
The two go hand in hand though. We haven't had much GSM here until a few years ago, and, as you've said you haven't had much CDMA. So, most American developed handsets were CDMA, and most, over there, have been GSM.
But, that is slowly changing.
And the Palm Treos have always been pretty lack lustre here with aerials, no bluetooth (unforgivable here) and really bad cameras.
I don't know what you mean about aerials. They haven't had pull-out aerials, because they have never been popular here, so companies have gotten rid of them as fast as they could. Mostly cheap phones have them. Treo's have always had stubs. I've never had a problem with signal strength.
The 650 and 700 have Bluetooth. I'd have to look up the older ones. But, until the 650 came out, Bluetooth wasn't in use much anyway. It was one of the first cells to have it, at least over here.
The camera on the 650 wasn't anything to write home about. But the one on my 700p is fine, though it doesn't have an LED flash. Instead it has a small convex mirror so you can take a self-portrait. I would rather have the flash.