Is there an actual satellite-based GPS in there, or is it actually tower triangulation?
I am largely ambivalent towards Apple, but itās impossible to be ambivalent about the iPhone
Well I guess Iāve done the impossible again, because thatās a good way to describe my feelings towards it. Itās a smartphone, no more, no less. I know several people who have them (just as I know several people with Blackberries), and I played with it a little, but Iāve never had any urge to get one.
Or any smartphone, for that matter. I still donāt see the point of paying a large sum of money, repeatedly, for the privilege of wearing an EM-producing device near my genitals (or holding it near my brain), which has the stated purpose of letting anybody annoy me with a loud noise at any time I have it turned on. Technofetishism at its best.
On top of that, it is (as you note) a proprietary platform. Sure, so are many others, but there are more open phone platforms today than there were open computing platforms in 1984, so I have no idea how you can claim itās a foregone conclusion with phones but not PCs.
Has anyone who has developed on the iphone give me some background into their experience of using apples ide and libraries? I am very interested in poking around with it. Iāve heard some grumblings from coworkers (biased, course you are too) that its difficult and unintutive.
Are you just disappointed they are not selling the iPhone in your country? Because they clearly presented a list of countries and release dates in the keynote, it did not say āthe whole planetā.
I am not dissapointed because I could easily buy grey iPhone. If I wanted to. For about $600-800 (1st/2nd) which it roughly equal to what it costs officially unsubsidized I think. Which is bad price to pay for a phone (unless it is required by status or wanted for showing off - I need neither).
100% of my techie friends who bought one hadnāt lasted month with it. It is too expensive and gets boring with vast and regularly renewing choice of handsets from Nokia, Samsung, HTC, etcā¦ and there are no contracts to uphold.
I am dissapointed that people blindly exxagerate Appleās success at home market and misleading sales figures (they hype how many units they had delivered to operators, etc - not actual amount sold) into promoting is as major worldwide phone manufacturer. It is neither major or wordlwide.
I have an iPod Touch and a HTC Dream (aka the Google phone). Iāve done some development for both. To me, the iPhone feels like a grown up feature phone. Sure, it has a high-spec processor, and a lot of RAM, and a GPS module, and a whole host of other cool things. That doesnāt make it any more than a tightly controlled playpen (albeit a very flashy, ergonomic playpen). There are some thing that I could do with my cheap S40 Nokia feature phone that I canāt do on the iPhone. If youāre willing to play by the rules, then the iPhone might well be the device for you.
Android, on the other hand, is like a hackerās dream. I think Google themselves have said that the intent behind Android is that the end user can replace almost any software component. Donāt like the Android home screen? You can download aHome, which as I understand it is closer to the iPhone home screen. Would you rather be using Opera? You can set that as your default browser. You are not limited to apps in the app store - in fact, you can develop apps and deploy them to devices for free.
The distinction is that, with the iPhone, Apple is in charge of your phone. If thatās OK with you, then youāre set. With Android, Google have said that they want to put the user in charge of their handset. I hope that the future of cell phones is more openness. To that end, I hope that Apple learns a few lessons from Google.
Iāve owned an iPhone before Christmas, but I hardly think itās anything to really write home about.
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Most of the apps are pointless crap. Who needs to pay 99p for yet another āfart pianoā application?
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Typing in comments on blogs / forums is cumbersome, and the keyboard frequently hangs when Iām typing things in, making it seem as if my connectionās on a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler.
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If the screen rotates when Iām browsing through mp3s or the web when I didnāt ask it to, I might just open up the phone, find out where the springs are, and smash them to bits with a lump hammer.
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One thing Iād really like to do with my iPhone is use is as a small portable MIDI synthesizer that sits on top of a dumb controller keyboard. Some people were making a big song and dance over Ellatron, a mellotron (old tape based sampler instrument) emulator, and completely glossing over the fact that trying to play music on an iPhone is borderline impossible. It ought to be technically possible to make a MIDI - iPhone cable, except for the small fact that Apple, as usual, play secret squirrel with the hardware specs so if you want a niche application - bad luck. Might as well go to Windows.
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If Iām developing for fun in my spare time, you can frankly go jump if you think Iām going to pay any money before I have fully evaluated that the system is going to work. Iām not wasting Ā£600 or so getting a mac and the iPhone developers kit before I find the API I want to use isnāt supported. At least on Windows I can download cygwin and gcc.
Despite that, Iām happy with what I use it for (mp3 and browsing āon the goā) ā¦ Iām just not convinced of its long term potential.
Has anyone who has developed on the iphone give me some background into their
experience of using apples ide and libraries? I am very interested in poking around with
it. Iāve heard some grumblings from coworkers (biased, course you are too) that its
difficult and unintutive.
If youāre new to Objective-C, you have some learning to do. OC doesnāt bother me, but I personally know other people who hate it and do as much in C++ as they can. It feels like a weird smalltalk-y lisp-y overlay on top of C.
The API that you touch is a weird mix of object-oriented Objective-C, object-oriented C, and procedural C. I think Apple is slowly wrapping the C apis in Objective-C classes, but things arenāt completely wrapped yet, so youāll find yourself bouncing back and forth.
The documentation isā¦ eh, itās a wash. Some parts are great, others leave a lot to be desired. Usually, the easy cases (such as using AVAudioPlayer) are well documents, while the less mainstream cases (such as using OpenAL) are poorly documented and the corner cases (such as using both) arenāt documented at all.
XCode is better than no IDE. Iāve been spoiled on Visual Studio / Resharper and Eclipse. I realize that many IDE features that I routinely use would be hard to implement in XCode (it being a C/C++/Objective-C IDE). As far as I know, though, XCode doesnāt really have any sort of plugin model. We use git for source control, which means we use git from the command line. Maybe Apple will add support sometime in the next 5 years.
Interface Builder is neat, but thereās no way you will figure it out from playing with it. You need to go through a tutorial to get a feel for how it works.
The best way to see what itās like is to work through a tutorial. In about an hour you can probably get a feel for what the whole process is like. Then you can decide if you like it or not.
Consider all the myriad devices that the iPhone 3GS can sub for, and in some cases, outright replace:
Watch
DVD player
eBook reader
Erm, call me a philistine, but I canāt see an iPhone being worn on my wrist, nor do I want to sit down and watch my DVDs or read ebooks (or anything for that matter) in teeny-weeny-eyestrain-o-vision 
Oddly though, I imagined such things would make good diaries, yet Iāve heard nothing but complaints from people who replace their pen-and-paper diaries and use an iPhone/blackberry/whatever as such. I do wonder sometimes where it will end; where the gizmo-substitute will start to fail against itās more traditional (re: non-electronic) counterparts and the public lose interest. For me this happened when I got a phone that did something other than send texts/callsā¦ yet I suspect I donāt represent the majority 
Their communications platform, AT&T, is just not very good however.
Letās see what you think in two years when Android dominates the market.
If thereās one million people out there virtually fishing on their iPhone the apocalypse can not be far away.
I do have to agree that yes this market is somewhat tailored to Appleās strong points, but on the same token the iPhone would be just that much better if it was open.
Yes the market, as is, is a strong suit for Apple, but the name of the game is changing with more carrier-unlocked phones being released, and with the iPhone Dev Team working hard to jailbreak and unlock the wonderful myriad of iDevices.
Also, the App Store is great for developers who want to get paid for their work, but for developers who want to release open sourced work, the AppStore is not conducive to the GPLv3 (at least thatās what Iāve read)ā¦
Appleās greedy AppStore and decision to lock their phone to a single carrier has only come to bite them, and most app store developers, in the rear end.
(Because of their choice to so stringently lock the device, there are now applications to replace the AppStore with a free pirated library of almost all the popular appsā¦ jailbreak required of course)
I do think that Apple fits well in this market, and if I did buy the phone, I would use it on AT&T no doubt, but I would not buy that phone until it has been jailbroken. There is no excuse for limiting a device, and limiting the choice of software for a device.
(Alright, Iāll admit, as much as I hate AT&T, maybe they donāt deserve to have apps that steal all their bandwidth approved :p)
No compromises? Try replacing the battery, or increasing the storage capacity. $99 and a Mac to develop apps? Android provides a free SDK and Eclipse plugin, and developers can opt to distribute their apps outside of the Android market. Android is also getting Flash support this year, with some newer models already shipping with it included.
Seriously, did you even look at an Android phone before you wrote this junk piece?
One other comment, I got on my laptop the other day and opened Outlook, I realized then that I hadnāt checked my personal email account on my laptop for over three months. I have been receiving and replying to all my personal email on my iPhone. That realization hit me fairly hard. I now have a handheld device that is always with me that does about half the uses of what my laptop did. Granted, one app at a time can be a pain, but not on a 4 inch screen, its really pretty decent. There are other limitations, sure. But they arenāt really bad limitations when you consider the benefits. I donāt have a laptop bag with me when I go out of town for the weekend, everything I need is in my pocket.
The iPod was useful as first introduced, but it didnāt have any feature advantage over the MP3 players of the time.
Well I disagree. I was at MusicMatch at the time of the iPodās launch, and had a whole wall of MP3 players to choose from. The one feature that stood out for me was the original iPod had a FireWire connector which meant you could fill it in 5 minutes where the a comparably sized competitor (if you could find a 5GB MP3 player back then) would take several hours at USB 1.1 speeds. It had other things like a well thought out scroll wheel interface, but the inclusion of FireWire for both charging and transfer was a huge feature advantage.
Great product, but just another monopoly. After the EU finishes MSFT, theyāll start with Apple (oh, they already have!).
Imagine if MSFT decided to build computer hardware AND software without community. When you dont share the wealth, you fall down.
Sorry but no thanks. Not for me. I just bought a HTC Touch Diamond2:
- 800x480 screen resolution in a gorgeous display
- Windows Mobile on which I can install ANY app I want (not just what Apple allows me to) for example:
- Skype over 3G
- iGo (do you even HAVE that for iPhone)
- works on ANY carrier not just the Apple-chosen ones
Other nice perks:
- FM radio
- 5MP camera
And now I can develop software for this device without having to give Apple 30%, just the regular 5% fee to my payment processor.
Yes a friend of mine has one of those. He proudly showed it to me but got a little dejected after the third crash/restart. Windows Mobile is that awesome, really. So we got drunk instead.
Iām loving my iPhone. No problems so far.
Skype over 3G - have that
iGo - navigation software? Google Maps & Location services/compass worked well to direct me door to door last weekend. Tom Tom et al are releasing āproperā SatNav apps soon. The first was announced a few days ago and it looks very good.
You say the HTC works on any carrier, technically so will the iPhone but not with all its features.
Sure there are some ādrawbacksā to owning an iPhone but the whole package more than makes up for it. Iād rather have stuck with my old carrier, but one mobile phone co is much like another at the end of the day. If the thing works well you should have little reason to ever contact them anyway.
Yeah the camera doesnāt have as many pixels but do you need 5Mp? You know, that would mean being able to blow the image up pretty big. If you need images that size then a phone is never going to be a substitute for a dedicated camera. For the type of photos one would take with a mobile phone the 3GS camera is more than good enough. Itās quite good at video too.
Radio is something that would be nice but then again there are quite a few radio apps available for free so not really an issue.
Developing apps. Yeah. You can develop your app yourself and market it yourself and keep all the money (bar the 5% processorās fee).
How many people do you think will get to the site where youāre selling it?
The thing with the iPhone, the genius of the App store is that you have millions of people passing through it most of whom wonāt mind coughing up 99c for an app. So go ahead and sell 100 $10 apps from your own site or sell a million for $1 each.
Small payments, but lots of them, are where the app store wins. Granted you still need a really good app to make any money but that applies whatever platform you are developing for and selling through.
Iāll confess the approval process is really broken and needs work but the one plus is that there is a decent degree of quality control (on the whole). Even the crud apps are pretty good quality crud.
This sounds like the same old thing. Those that have no experience of the platform just donāt āgetā why those that do love it so much. Very, very few people decry the Mac/iPhone/OSX experience once theyāve started using it.
Nok, I think youāre missing the point somewhat. Yes, there are great alternatives to the iPhone out there that appeal to a number of different types of users.
However, as a developer of software, my goal is to reach the broadest audience in the most direct manner possible. Iām not sure how many iPhones have been sold to date, but theyāre reporting over 1 million sold in less than a week.
Distribution of this scale just wasnāt available to the individual developer. Combine a good app on the iPhone with some savvy web marketing, and youāve got a good chance at making some money.
Just my two cents.
Funny that the App Store is the one thing that developers really whine about. To develop an iPhone app and get it distributed, you have to apply for a certificate, get accepted, and then submit your app to Apple for approval, balh blah blahā¦
Some developers call this digital fascism. I call it quality control.
I mean come on, have you seen the sucking sea of mire that is the world of Windows Mobile shareware? Ninety-five percent of it is pure awful. The App Store, on the other hand, is a tightly-controlled, well-oiled machine. As a user, I totally love the way Apple runs this show. Thatās not to say that every iPhone app is killer or even useful, but at least I know itās been developed by someone who is reasonably technically proficient, that someone will probably support it, and that it probably wonāt kill my cat.
Original iPhone users were not suckers, you could get them for a low price and jailbreak/unlock them without signing up to a horrendously overpriced contract.
Paying Ā£30+ a month over 18+ months is for suckers.
Also, youāll soon get sick of Apple deciding what apps you can/cannot run on your hardware.
There are still many niggles, but I can live with them as the UI is so nice.