Opinions

Edge? Cellphone and Wi-Fi positioning? Blah. We want 3G. Faster download times and more accurate positioning are only two of many features consumers hope will be in the next generation iPhone. If my favorite rumor comes true, the new phone should retail for $199 (unlikely).

With a brand new crisp design and the reality distortion field in full effect, will users line up around the corner for the new phone? Is the hype equal to what it was the same time last year? I think not; the 3G iPhone is no revolution as the original iPhone was. I am no analyst, and Apple does have that “Wow” factor. We shall see.

Can you resist the reality distorter that is Apple? Will you be lining up for the new phone?

It’s out. Great. The iPhone SDK from Apple is finally available for developers big and small to take a crack at creating something revolutionary for the iPhone. A recent report says over 100,000 people have downloaded the SDK. But as this post in PC Mag explains, smaller developers may not be as anxious to start coding.

smaller developers seem to be a lot queasier because of the mysterious restrictions on iPhone development, that Apple is refusing to comment about. (When even Sun can’t get a straight answer, you know there’s a communication problem.)

Do you think that Apple’s secretive nature to the approval and distribution process will discourage developers from cranking out brilliant apps? It would be really disappointing for a small shop to spend time and resources on a product only to get shot down by Apple and prevented from distributing their application. At least in other markets they can succeed and fail on their idea and execution alone, not the subjective policing by Apple.

What do you think?

[PC Mag]

I was reading an article on iPodHacks.com about how the iPhone is changing the industry and I thought about it myself and I realized the author, Blake, is absolutely right. The industry is changing.

Blake analyized how the industry is changing for the casual user, enterprise, and the gamers. With iPhone software 2.0 and the recently released SDK, Blake notes that casual and enterprise users will have a lot to look forward to.

Me, being the casual user, absolutely look forward to the release. I think this will be one of the most significant updates for the iPhone. I am a bit taken back however in Apple’s decission to make the iPhone a gaming device as well. It is an excellent move seeing as how gaming is such a huge industry, but I would have never expected gaming to be one of their main focuses.

In the article, Blake points out something you may not have known. I did not realize the power of the iPhone until I found this chart illustrating the differences in the iPhone, PSP, and a DS:

Sony PSP
Processor: MIPS CPU @ 222… more...

What could possibly be going through AT&T’s head with the recent announcement that Apple will allow VoIP on the iPhone?

Here’s what I think (In a handy personal email format from Randall Stephenson to Steve Jobs)

Dear Steve,

What’s going on? I thought I would drop you a note and express to you my feelings over your announcement last week about allowing VoIP for the iPhone. You know what I’m talking about? When someone asked you the question, “What will happen if someone does a VOIP app?” and you replied with, “We will only stop VOIP over cell networks, but not WiFi.”

I just want to say, thanks for adhering to our agreement and protecting us from basically going out of business but couldn’t you have elaborated a little more about why calls over the cell network are better? Like how, without giving customers VoIP we can charge an arm and a leg for international calls?

Steve, just hold the wolves back for a few more years so that we have time to develop our own VoIP service for the iPhone. Ok? Because if you don’t, I might… more...

In case you haven’t heard, the BBC just released their popular iPlayer web portal for the iPhone platform. I decided to point my iPhone browser to the iPlayer to check things out. Here are my first impression:

1. It works
Life just keeps getting better and better, guys. We’re happy to report that the iPlayer provides a great portal to access some of the network’s most popular content with an intuitive interface. There really is no comparison for this release.

2. Content is limited
Aye, here’s the rub. Much like what happened with YouTube when the iPhone was first shipped, not all programs are available through iPlayer yet, as they are probably being re-encoded to the Apple codec. BBC says 100% of the content will be available soon. Plus, most programs can only be played in the U.K.

3. The radio (podcast directory) is the best part
Sure, watching videos is great, but we already have that with YouTube! The iPlayer radio opens up a whole new content area to iPhone users. Unfortunately, the iPlayer doesn’t work over EDGE, so you won’t exactly be able… more...

So Steve Jobs says that Flash is not fast enough for the iPhone. Well that’s just great Steve. Way to make the decision for everyone. Here’s a novel idea: why not let the users decide whether it is “sluggish” or not.

The great thing about Jobs’ statement about Flash in the recent shareholder meeting is it confirms what people have frequently discuss: Steve Jobs is a control freak and he makes products for himself. Most people (present company included) just happen to love those products.

But Jobs has been making these types of decisions for us Apple users for years now. Steve doesn’t think we need an optical drive anymore so he puts out the Mac Book Air sans drive. Steve thinks we should be able to watch movies on a tiny iPod Nano screen. I (like others) have eaten up everything he has told us. Like sheep, we have flocked to MacWorld and have hung on every word. In a way, Apple users have become the lemmings that Apple once made fun of.

The iPhone that we all love has a problem when it comes to true infiltration in the business sector. And it is not what you may think. Sure, it needs built-in Outlook capabilities as well as an easier tethering setup. But there is one change to the UI that would change the way businesspeople think about the iPhone: the home screen.

Currently, the home screen is set up for a vertical orientation of the phone. Yet this seems to be somewhat of a disconnect. You see, despite the fact that it is a phone, most everything that makes the iPhone so revolutionary is un-phonelike. How does Apple pitch the iPhone in commercials? First they talk about surfing the web with Safari. Then they talk about using Google Maps. Then they talk about watching a movie. Oh and by the way...it is all in a phone.

The phone is an after thought to this multimedia, internet-connected, beautiful device. The issue I have is that all of these non-phone features are optimized to be used in a widescreen format. You would want to surf the web in the horizontal. Or would… more...

I sit in eager wait for whatever Apple plans to throw at us (or toss accommodated by a small wimper) but knowing that their track record for releasing stuff on time hasn’t been so great. Instead they taunt us with a road map (you know an announcement sucks when they are announcing what they’re going to announce at their next announcement....) so I turned to what’s been tried and true: Jailbreaking. Unfortunately for me, most don’t have their s**t together.

I’ll get out the way by saying that some have made some significant improvements to the hacking community such as George Hotz and all the others that managed to Jailbreak each new Firmware update. But after that, it all goes stale no matter how well (or in this case) bad it works. Sure you can Jailbreak 1.1.3/4 easily, it’s a one click solution but the headaches that stem aren’t worth it.

The biggest gripe I and others are having is that YouTube won’t play most videos. The problem lies in how the iPhone and YouTube authenticate with each other. The Jailbreak process breaks this which should be no problem, it’s easy to fix right? Wrong, I’ve… more...

About 6 months ago I wrote a post predicting Apple would pump up iPod storage in direct response to movie rentals on iTunes. Apple was close to confirming my speculative article but the end result is almost the same.

Movie rentals through iTunes despite the aggressive DRM makes it appealing to consumers and is the first of its kind. The 30 day limit is enough time to store a couple of movies at a time coupled with the fact that rentals can only exist in one place at a time, storing them on an iPod is more convnient to free up space on your computer.

But the massive boost in storage puts the iPhone and iPod Touch in the running to take out the iPod.

I’m not one to notice the most minute of details that come packaged in each Firmware upgrade. Rather I’m quick to point out any slow downs or loss in Internet speeds whether they’re self created or actual problems but after reading recent reports of users receiving a signal boost when applying the latest Firmware upgrade I was skeptical.

I relented and finally upgraded to find that everyone wasn’t lying, I was getting more bars in more places. No, I am not being paid by AT&T in any way either, I really am getting more bars. Don’t give me that look.