Letters to the Editor
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does it cure cancer?
...end world hunger?
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tonguePhone
does your tongue work on the touchscreen?
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BWAH-hah-haaaa!
Bloom off the rose already? Didn't have any misgivings when they mentioned that only AT&T, one of the most pathetic phone providers, was the only place you could talk to?
And service fees of $60, $80 or $100 per month? Do they pay columnists at Salon enough to afford that and not live in a cardboard box? (In that case, hmm...my campaign to get Heather Havrilesky replaced might be tarnished if someone thought I was trying to get her job. And I'm only doing it for altruistic reasons.)
I await more bad news, as some smart hacker sends viruses out to iPhones. (Since they're really gullible people and have loads of money, they're a choice target.)
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More bads and a few goods.
I've managed to crash safari and ipod numerous times--in fact, if I'm listening to beats and try to flip from one safari page to another, ipod will definitely stop. I'm sure a swupdate will take care of that, though.
What creases me is the recessed headphone jack--which means you can't use the iphone as JUST an iPod with your own potentially way pricey headphones unless the connector is skinny enough to fit in the Apple hole. Furthermore, I had trouble with the cord length with the phone in my shorts this morning. There's a market of at least me for a device that fits into the iphone jack and has a female 1/8" headphone jack and a wire with a mic at the tip that you clip to your pricey headphone's cord.
I also wish I could delete useless apps (hi, Stocks!) and that the wallpaper would be visible through the back of the homescreen (if not in the back, at low saturation, of every screen).
To close on a good side: It has a bit of weight, so I feel like it won't fly out of my hands (unlike my SLVR, which has done so many times). I like that it offers to go into airplane mode (no incoming calls, etc.) if you plug it into an ipod speaker system, so that the radio interference doesn't come through on the speakers. And I like that I was able to keep my way old rate plan grandfathered through over 7 years of being a customer of ATT/Cingular/New ATT, only having to add the $20 data package and the $10 SMS package.
Finally, in addition to the rocker button, the physical switch that automatically sets the phone to vibrate only is pretty great.
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iT's Not....i
iT's not insanely great?? Could this be a small ebb in the adulation of all things Jobsian?? Merely amazing will have to do, I guess.
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Working Assets Letter Rings Hollow To Me
Working Assets' plea rings hollow. I use them for my long distance service, and tried using them for my cell phone service as well. When I asked to have my number ported, I told them I still had to use my Palm based smart phone, which was an unlocked tri-mod phone that worked on the sprint network that Working Assets leases. They said this would be no problem. I commiting to Working Assets on the basis of this promise. Sadly, many tech support calls and pleas for service later, they finally told me that no, in fact, they would not be able to activate my phone, and that I would have to use one of the phones they provided... and no... they had no palm based smart phones to offer me.
As a consumer, I want the ability to use whatever phone I want, no matter WHO sells it to me. Yes, this calls for unlocked hardware, but it also calls for the networks to be willing to support the phones that they didn't sell. I'm not asking for the full service that they give the phones they sell. Just give me a dial tone! I'll take care of the rest.
Until then, I will be stuck with whatever network that happens to support the hardware my professional life has become dependent upon.
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Mobile phone development
If you're going to keep harping on it, you should educate yourself about third-party development on mobile phones.
1. There is certainly third-party development on the iPhone. I've been reading about how well Google maps works on it.
2. Apple has opened the iPhone to Web apps. This is certainly third-party development. I think what's you're talking about is native development, i.e., apps that run on the mobile phone's OS. See #3 below.
3. Check on how many mobile phone makers allow native develpment on their products. The vast majority of mobile apps are Java-based and Java is not a native environment. Makers who license Symbian and BREW are about the only ones who allow native development. Motorola doesn't. I don't know if Samsung does.
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to Anonymous: re harping on third-party development
1) Google maps isn't an example of true third-party development -- it's on the phone because Apple approved it. That's why YouTube is there too.
2) Yes, developers are allowed to create apps that can run on the iPhone's Safari. But none of the things I ask for in the post -- not Firefox, certainly -- can be done in a Web app; that forum is inherently limited. You need a client app running on the iPhone to store data locally, or to access the network. Even Steve Jobs' recognizes that the best apps need to run natively. A few weeks ago Walt Mossberg asked him if, by making programs for things like iPhones and Macs, he was something of a dinosaur, since everyone's now so crazy about writing apps for the Web. Here's what Jobs said, my emphasis added:
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, since we’re pretty reasonable at writing apps, 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, that client application. 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.
See that? You can't do that stuff in a browser. But only Google and Apple are allowed to create such truly great apps. Not the folks who gave us Firefox, or Skype, or Napster, or any of the other programs you might want to use.
3) Right, so everyone else does it too. Apple's just as good as the others. That's my point exactly. It could have been different, it could have been revolutionary. But it's got the same lockdown as the others.