Benefit: Continued discounts on ever-new iPods
 

I couldn’t agree more -- and I think this is where the true strength of the iPhone and iPod Touch lie. In the months and years to come, the owners are going to see the functionality of their devices transformed by software updates and third-party apps that will be very cheap, indeed. :)

How many other music player and cell phone producers -- if any -- can boast the same?


The other strength, at least of the iPhone, is this: recurring income. To my knowledge Apple is the only cell phone producer in the world that has managed to pull that one off!

Anyways, that’s my NOK 0.02.


-- ArcticStones

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Apple's strict terms of service for its iPhone SDK are receiving grumbles. Voice over IP apps that want to use the data connection will be blocked. Only Safari can be used as a browser, all others are forbidden. The SDK prevents Sun from following through on its Java port. Aren't Apple's methods a bit like Comcast's content filtering, and Microsoft's IE antics?

@chabig and ArcticStones -- Just to forestall any other comments, I thought we had decided to leave this debate alone so we can discuss the software possibilities of the new SDK?

Along those lines. A lot of people are mentioning games that interact with the new touch screen, which makes sense since it is a pretty novel UI. But I want to know who we are going to take advantage of the touch screen to simplify day to day apps. As unexciting as a it sounds, do you think this will have an effect on things like flow chart creation?

Also, I'm wondering about on site design programs. I.e., can we make a small port of a 3D modeling program so we can make small changes to blueprints on sight? Or perhaps a small port of the CS3 suite so we can make small changes to ad's on the go. Granted, it seems like a laptop would be the better option for both. But I can't help but think that the touchscreen offers some unique advantages.

Granted...that is really more a theory than anything else. Can anyone offer some practical insight?

Edit: @NovaScotian -- In some ways, yes. But I tend to agree with Apple on this one. I think they are just opening up the platform one bit at a time to make sure they can keep it secure every step of the way. Apple prides itself on security, and the iPhones popularity has made it a very high profile target. It only makes sense that they would take every precaution... I think that, given time, they will start to open up further parts of the phone. But for now, I think this is enough, and I think we should see some amazing applications.

I agree, Z, but the PR would be better if they said so.

Everyone thinks they're smart and like to bitch, basically. You'll notice most of the people screaming aren't developers, just pundits and self-important bloggers.

Who in their RIGHT MIND thought AT&T was going to allow VoIP over their data network? iPhones have unlimited data plans, and this would completely circumvent any non-unlimited calling plan. I think it's a miracle Apple was able to say that they won't block VoIP via wi-fi, honestly. I thought AT&T was going to force Apple to nix that.

To provide a well-integrated third-party browser, Apple would need to make more APIs public. It takes time and work to design a public API. More importantly, they have to continue supporting APIs they make public. You can't have everything instantly or all the time because you don't have an infinite amount of resources available to manage it all.

This is the same reason there are other limitations of the APIs available in the beta. (And the fact that it's beta, which means "unfinished; not final".)

You make it seem like Apple wanted to stop Sun specifically, when that's pretty off-base. The infeasibility of Java on the iPhone is incidental to the design of the iPhone's sandboxing. The reality of the matter is that there are security and stability concerns that come with allowing a piece of code like Java to exist within multiple applications. Suddenly you are susceptible to problems that exist both within the shared plug-in and any code that interacts with the plug-in. A recent QuickTime vulnerability demonstrates this point perfectly. (Honestly, no one I know cares at all that Safari Touch can't use Java. No one. Not a single person. I'd wager that very few iPhone owners really care about this, and that the only people who do are the ones being REALLY VOCAL ABOUT IT on the Internet for ego and page hits.)

I actually think it's a good thing that we won't see Java on the iPhone anytime soon. Aside from stability and security concerns, memory is limited and there's no such thing as VM paging in devices like this. Java is not known for being well-tuned for power consumption or performance in web browsers. Maybe in the future, though, it'll happen.

In the happy land of rainbows and unicorns, we all have every platform and there aren't technical or design limitations. I don't live in that world. Bloggers THINK they live in that world. Therein lies the difference.

No. Someone is bound to argue with me, but:

Comcast is actively denying users specific services, and is the only ISP available for many people. Apple has designed a telephone that no one needs to buy.

Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopoly, so the government monitors what they do. No one bitches about what the cell phone manufacturers do with their devices because none of them is an illegal monopoly. I don't see anyone whining that Nokia phones have such-and-such limitation. Anyone who seriously thinks the government is going to step in and regulate the iPhone is absolutely delusional and listens to Cory Doctorow way too much.

If you don't like the iPhone SDK, don't buy an iPhone. It's as simple as that. The cell phone market is alive and well, and there are tons of alternatives.

If I were to buy, the SDK would not be an issue to me CA; I'm not a developer, though I am an engineer who likes gadgets. Having said that, I'm not terribly keen on Apple's philosophy vis-a-vis the iPhone -- the locking to one provider being the most irksome.

I'm forced to abstain because the iPhone is not available in Canada and when it is at some point, locking to a provider is moot because there's only one GSM provider in the area I live in anyway. Further, their data charges are so outrageous that I refused their data package when the trial period was over, subscribe to voice only. I already own a relatively new iPod nano (3rd gen) too, so a Touch would just be another toy I don't need; won't go there either.

A friend of mine lives in Australia and we were discussing data plans for cell providers there. He quoted me some non-unlimited plans that were pretty insane. :(

Basically, the iPhone just isn't a solid buy if you can't get an unlimited plan you can afford.

Here's Rogue Amoeba on the SDK

Overall, I thought RA's post was decent when I read it earlier. (Some of it is kinda silly, like the VoIP thing, for the reasons I stated above.) I'm going to post a reply to it later tonight, I think.

Yeah, that's the funny thing about Apple's PR isn't it? Highlight the positive, deny the negative. Apple is really big into secrets as well. But I think I agree with you on this point. They need to be far more clear on why they are doing what they are doing. Most people tend to stop whining if they are given a good reason, and those who don't stop whining can be safetly ignored ;).

Please direct me to any company's PR that doesn't preach the positive and downplay the negative. ;)

Truly. I'd even take it a step further and say "direct me to any entity that doesn't preach the positive and downplay the negative."

Who said Sun was making a browser? Couldn't they develop a plug-in to enable Java applets in Safari, or as separate apps? And about the resource hog thing, Sun already has a version of mobile Java, so that shouldn't be an issue. I think.

But I wonder what will happen with Flash. A lot of people were complaining about Flash not being available on the iPhone. However, I think people are relying on Flash too much. Mostly all interactive content on the web is in Flash.

The two sentences are talking about separate items. Reread it, then reread my post, where I discuss them separately.

I don't want to see flash on the iPhone/iTouch. I actually like not being badgered by those stupid flash ads.

The problem with this rather universal approach, however, is that customers (and voters, for that matter, because politicos are the biggest sinners), gradually become inured to the perpetual false positive message which they quite rightly regard as spin. When was the last time you believed an ad or something a politician said?

I was discussing this exact subject with a CEO yesterday (who happens to be my father in law, so I was cheating.) He started a company called InsureQuote, which was doing just grand for about 20 years until the tech bubble burst. Not that any of that matters now.

The point is that he has a lot of experience in PR, and is pretty much of the same opinion. When companies are completely honest these days we usually assume that something has gone horribly wrong. But, he did comment that honesty can be achieved if you have been bluntly honest from the beginning. I.e., you have to create your own "honesty paradigm" in order to be honest in todays world.

Not too long ago, I sent a crash report to an indie developer and received a response that I really respected: "It's a bug, and I'm damned if I can find it". Refreshing.