eventually consistent

The Good

First, I must say that the iPhone is the coolest device, not just mobile, to come out in many years. It is also probably the best piece of engineering ever from Apple.

I got myself an iPhone 3G when it was finally available from Rogers in Canada. It is the first Apple computer I purchased since my last Apple computer: a Mac 128K (some 24 years ago – yikes!).

I won’t enumerate all the reasons why the iPhone is such a cool device, like an actual working GPS (not like the Nokia N810), wifi, 3G, bluetooth, iPod, safari, camera, accelerometer, touch screen and a quite usable on-screen keyboard. Add on top of that the slick Apple design and their genius in the touch screen user interface and you’ve got yourself incredible device.

The Bad

These core functionalities are really missing IMOHO:

• cut & paste: They really have to find a way to integrate cut & paste in the UI. This is something that bothers me on a day-to-day basis.
• backgrounding : on two levels: why can’t the last.fm app, for example, play music while I use another app? It should be possible for 3rd party apps to run in background just like Apple’s own iPod player. Also it should be possible to run two applications concurrently and flip between them without relying on the application to save it’s own state between transitions. This is boggus and really gets me frustrated when using/switching between multiple applications.
• bluetooth A2DP (hi quality audio) : Heck, my SE K790 had it. I own a Plantronic 590 A2DP headset and I can’t use it to listen to music on my iPhone. This seems like such a low hanging fruit feature for Apple.
• bluetooth keyboard : given the possibility to use a bluetooth keyboard on the iPhone I’d have no problem considering bringing only my iPhone in travel trips to do all my online stuff. Onscreen keyboard is ok for short text but I won’t do a late-night email inbox-zero session on it, way too slow for reasonable text size.

Other stuff I’d like to see:

• offline mapping : It happened to me a few times: without connectivity, GPS is worthless, it relies on Google Maps. It will probably surface through 3rd parties sometime I guess.
• Skype/VOIP : Skype would be really cool. As for VOIP, I just found this list of top softphones for the iPhone. I’ll have to check that out.
• movie recording : There is Qik and Cycorder but they both require you to jailbreak your iPhone.
• mp3 ringtones : Ok, yeah, right, Apple? Hello? Do you really expect me to pay $.99 to create a ringtone out of a song I ALREADY PAID FOR???? You-gotta-be-kidding-me!

The Ugly

Is Apple the new Microsoft?

Below, some interesting articles on the iPhone/app store lock-in policies by Apple.

We want an open platform. Period. The idea of the app store is actually very good but the ugly part is that Apple keeps a Microsoft style lock-in control over it. It is basically the same concept as with Microsoft Xbox Live. Note that both the Xbox and iPhone security has been broken. The main difference is with the community motivation, on the Xbox its mainly for copying games while on the iPhone, users & developers don’t want to have to deal with Apple’s monopolistic behavior and just want to use or publish applications freely without Apple overlooking everything – just like with any other platform/operating system (Windows, OSX, Linux). The fact is that there is a lot of talented, motivated, creative people making applications outside of Apple’s sanctioned channels. Why can’t all iPhones users have access to this talent without going the “underground” route? Fail.

Why don’t they keep their “Apple’s sanctioned” app store but also allow 3rd party app stores for developers who want to distribute applications outside of Apple’s control?

Until then, I’ll just continue to play cat & mouse and jailbreak my iPhone (like Steve Wozniak) while dreaming about Android. Will it be the holy grail?

I simply can’t stand being locked-out of my devices: iPhone, Buffalo Linkstation, Linksys wifi, Xbox, …

Tags: apple, iphone, jailbreak, lockin, microsoft

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 17:00 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.