OSX Mobile

You can’t mention “Flash” and “iPhone” in the same breath without people getting a little huffy. It is honestly surprising how passionate people can be about not having Flash on the iPhone. Passion aside people have a lot of reasons not to have Flash on the iPhone.

While Flash would be nice on my iPhone, I’ll be damned if I want Safari crashing every time it comes to a Flash-based web site because of the poorly developed plugin software.
D9

That is a moderate approach to the issue. D9 is willing to trade stability for the lack of Flash. Other points revolve around how slow Flash is on OS X. Some people maintain that it will max out a Quad core Mac Pro (when I experimented with various Flash intesive sites my machines experienced only a moderate bump in CPU usage. I tried it on a MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac 3.0, and PowerMac G5 with similar results for each machine. I know, I know I own too many Macs). Then there is the issue of how it would run on the iPhone. The iPhone’s processor… more...

If you look through the specs of the HTC Fuze you’ll see a lot of overlap with the iPhone. Touch screen, tri band communications, decent looks. The Fuze has some features the iPhone lacks: slide out keyboard, ability to edit Microsoft documents 3.2 megapixel camera and a few others. The iPhone one spec sheet advantage: $100 cheaper (and with the Fuze you have to use a coupon). Fro the spec sheets it seems like it would be a fair battle between the two cell phones with a 50/50 split between AT&T users (like the iPhone the Fuze is AT&T only). But it won’t be a fair fight and you cna already tell that the Fuze is going nowhere.

How can you tell?
First: The hype.
You haven’t heard anyone clamoring for the Fuze and the only people that seem mildly excited by the thing are those that generate press releases.

Second: it runs Windows Mobile
Ah, the achilles heal of the Fuze. Windows Mobile is being rejected for both OS X Mobile and the RIMM OS. and both of those are dominated by Symbian… more...

Admob has a surprisingly detailed metrics report out (available here, pdf format). You’ve got stats of graphs for everything from the percentage of AT7T subscribers who use the iPhone to the breakdown of Smartphone requests by OS in Indonesia (Symbian 98%). If you’re into numbers it worth taking a long look at. If not, let iPhone Matters hit the highlights:

Apple clocks in with a 2.5% share of smartphone traffic (Nokia wins with 35.2%)

In the US Apple generates 3.9% of US smartphone traffic (Motorola wins with 28.9%)

The iPhone is 7th in among smart phone handsets. In fact the iPhone loses out even to the KRZR (3.2% to 5.4%). The KRZR?

Just as interesting as the Apple numbers are the near dominance of Symbian everywhere outside of the US. In the US people worry about Windows mobile versus iPhone OS versus RIM but if you look at the big picture it is all about Symbian.To put a finer point on it 9 points separate Windows Mobile (13%) from iPhone OS (4%). 51 points separate Symbian (64%) from Windows Mobile.

Check… more...

If you’re paying attention you know that some lucky developers have their hands on the 2.2 Beta. And there is nothing that developers like doing than more than voiding the NDA and telling everyone what they are seeing. But some do mare than talk, some grab screenshots. Guess what. Someone got a hold of screenshots of the version of Safari in the 2.2 Beta. Want to see them? Of course you do it’s like some kind of iPhone p0rn or something. Check out this post at Wired. Bonus points: Cut and paste speculation.

Chris Howard over at our sister site Apple Matters has published an interesting piece. From the article:

The iPhone is a remarkably good computer. Don’t buy it because it’s a phone, or even a smartphone; buy it because it’s a computer.

Read the whole thing here

I didn’t see this coming, the website http://reader.mac.com appears to be iPhone only, as it refuses to load in Safari and Firefox (I’ve not tried any other browsers).

As it’s hanging off mac.com, can we assume this is an Apple website or one created by an iPhone developer? Also, the site states “This Application is viewable only on iPhone” - perhaps with ‘reader.mac.com’ as a name, can we assume this is an RSS reader? Only one more day to find out!

Apple’s OS X platform has long been recognised as one of the most stable and security concious operating system available, mainly due to it being built around the UNIX platform. However, with OS X installed on the iPhone, IBM’s security division, Internet Security Systems, believes that the amount of attention Apple has drawn toward the iPhone will prove to be some-what of a bad thing.

Neel Mehta, team leader of ISS, told Information Week that because Apple is so good at creating interest about a product that is yet to be released, the iPhone will become a “definite target”.

“We’ve been following it since it was announced. It’s going to be challenging for the bad guys to exploit them like they do other [smart phones], but there will be a lot of individuals willing to try because of the amount of buzz around it. We’ve seen some very determined attacks on other mobile phone platforms, like the Symbian platform. A lot of these attacks are going to be very hard to launch against the iPhone.”

“They’re [Apple] not telling anyone how to write applications that run… more...

It’s something that has puzzled all of us. Just why won’t Apple let us run our own applications on the iPhone? Jobs has said they’re trying to find a way to ensure stability and security but of what he doesn’t mention. The iPhone supposedly runs a full version of OS X minus all the unnecessary add ons like printer drivers and iLife. What could be preventing us from running our apps then? Windows Mobile 5 and 6 allows you to run applications just as you would on a PC, something fishy could be going on here…

OS X Mobile Isn’t As Full-Featured As Once Thought
Stability and security are two words always associated with a Mac and it’s operating system. We’ve gone from 10.0 (Cheetah) to 10.4 (Tiger) with little to no problems but 10.5 (Leopard) has yet to arrive to the mass public. But as any other OS X release we can count on it to be stable, right? We might be wrong this time around. Apple chose a mobile version of 10.5 to run the iPhone, something they haven’t done and want to optimize it as… more...

Shaw Wu, of American Technology Research, has posted a note about the iPhone and it’s OS X Leopard operating system and spreads his opinion on why Apple really delayed OS X Leopard until October.

Apple has already publically stated in a note published on its website that Leopard will be delayed until October in order for their development team to concentrate on the iPhone in order to get it out on time in late June (unfortunately I can’t locate this news item on the Apple website anymore). However, Wu believes the real reason OS X Leopard is being delayed is not because of the iPhone, but because the development team are working hard to allow Windows applications to run within OS X without the need of Windows to be installed on the system.

I don’t care so much if this is true or not because I’m more than happy to wait for Leopard, but with a great range of much higher quality software already available on the Mac, why would Mac users want some crippled Windows software functioning on there?

Read full story

I think it goes without saying that all the other news we’re still yet to find out about the iPhone will be announced at this months WWDC event, but it’s been noted on Slashgear that Steve Jobs will inform the buzzing crowd what, if any, 3rd party applications will feature on the iPhone.

Slashgear has a little transcript from the NY Times which claims that an inside source has mentioned that Apple will be allowing developers of small programs for the Macintosh platform to convert them to run on the iPhone - put this along side Google’s supposed tools also making an appearance at some point and you’ve got yourself some 3rd party applications.

Now that we’ve got a launch date, June 29th, we know full well we’re going to see some information on the iPhone at WWDC, so now it’s just a matter of waiting a couple more weeks to find out.