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.
You're severely misinterpreting web browsing as "a method of adding functionality to the iPhone."
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.
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!
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.
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?
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 EDGE?especially 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.
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 EDGE?especially 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?
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.
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Steve: I?ll 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, wouldn?t it be great to have maps on the iPhone? And so we called up Google and they?d 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. It?s way better than the computer. And just in a completely different league than what they?d 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, they?re just blown away by how good it is. And you can?t 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 you?re 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 you?re connected or not.
But it?s happening fairly slowly and there?s 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 there?s some pretty cool things you can do with clients.
Walt: OK. So you?re saying rich clients still matter, but?maybe 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 I?m 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*!!!
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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
?
What continues to amaze me in all of these comments is how much they parallel the initial comments about the iPod when introduced. They all focus on feature-itis and then what sold the iPod and keeps it there is usability and ease of use.
The question I have for the above comment is does he actually use these features??? I would say 9 out of 10 people I know with advanced phones, who paid $200+ for them, only use the phone feature because they can't figure out the rest, or its just too clumsy to use. Yes, the 'geeks' here (and I'm one as well) can use these features. But they are a comparatively small market. I say this just based on the 9 of 10 above.
First, I can say honestly that IF the iPhone works as advertised regarding the iPod capabilities, Safari browser, mail and chat clients, I've got something more valuable than any other advanced phone I've played with that's out there now. If it just work. The Web 2.0 is a bonus, which I think is great. When and if the rest follows, great.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wallace President of Now Software
Well, it's official: the iPhone is the coolest new device I've seen in years!
OK, I've not got my hands on one yet, so I could change my mind, but from what I'm seeing the iPhone will revolutionize mobile web browsing. I've seen it in many, many demos today. It's unbelievably good. Makes my RAZR look like it's straight out of the '80s.
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...
Comments
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.
You're severely misinterpreting web browsing as "a method of adding functionality to the iPhone."
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
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!
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.
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.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06...apps/index.php
No icon on the phone (instead you launch Safari, go to bookmarks, select bookmark, login to application, curse the slowness of EDGE?especially 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.
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 EDGE?especially 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?
So, I would move all of us over, on what, an unspoken possibility, however small, that what I need MIGHT come true?
Well, the very definition of the free market system, don't buy one until they offer you what you want.
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.
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Steve: I?ll 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, wouldn?t it be great to have maps on the iPhone? And so we called up Google and they?d 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. It?s way better than the computer. And just in a completely different league than what they?d 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, they?re just blown away by how good it is. And you can?t 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 you?re 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 you?re connected or not.
But it?s happening fairly slowly and there?s 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 there?s some pretty cool things you can do with clients.
Walt: OK. So you?re saying rich clients still matter, but?maybe 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 I?m 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/
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http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/vi...r-part-3-of-7/
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.
http://onetrip.org/
http://davidcann.com/iphone/
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.)
for me i just wish the 3rd part tool for iphone will not be upcoming
Top 10 reasons the AJAX/web 2.0 application model will fail on the Iphone
1-10
D5; Steve quotes
</rant>
Absolutely correct.
It's a really pity. iPHone is now a $600USD 8GB ipod with cell phone. could have been so much more.
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?
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.
?
What continues to amaze me in all of these comments is how much they parallel the initial comments about the iPod when introduced. They all focus on feature-itis and then what sold the iPod and keeps it there is usability and ease of use.
The question I have for the above comment is does he actually use these features??? I would say 9 out of 10 people I know with advanced phones, who paid $200+ for them, only use the phone feature because they can't figure out the rest, or its just too clumsy to use. Yes, the 'geeks' here (and I'm one as well) can use these features. But they are a comparatively small market. I say this just based on the 9 of 10 above.
First, I can say honestly that IF the iPhone works as advertised regarding the iPod capabilities, Safari browser, mail and chat clients, I've got something more valuable than any other advanced phone I've played with that's out there now. If it just work. The Web 2.0 is a bonus, which I think is great. When and if the rest follows, great.
Well, it's official: the iPhone is the coolest new device I've seen in years!
OK, I've not got my hands on one yet, so I could change my mind, but from what I'm seeing the iPhone will revolutionize mobile web browsing. I've seen it in many, many demos today. It's unbelievably good. Makes my RAZR look like it's straight out of the '80s.
- John
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...