Comments on: Mark Pesce on the iPhone

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:32:02 +0000

Cringley had some excellent commentary today on his website about why it's only GPRS/EDGE. Basically, Cingular is locked into RealMeda for their 3G system, while Apple would insist on H.264. Compromise? It's a non-3G device. Additionally, 3G networks are a lot less common in the US than in mobile-crazy Australia. Some are suggesting that 3G is simply a firmware upgrade. While I doubt that, I also doubt it's a major change to the hardware. We'll see a 3G iPhone in 2008, which is still six months before any Australian release.As for Widget development, yes, I do think Apple will allow that - and we'll be using iTunes to send Widgets to the phone, just as we send MP3s and AACs to the iPod today. But that's not nearly enough. Widgets, while they are a nice mixture of HTML and Javascript, don't give you any meaningful access to the device. I want to *know* what my SMS messages are, who I've called recently, etc. I *need* that information to do any successful social network modeling. I doubt that information would be exposed to a Widget. (Caveat: It is conceivable, if read file access is granted to a Widget, that you could get the data from the iPhone. But Apple would need to make all of those data structures public.I have some hopes that at WWDC this year they'll release a full iPhone development kit. But it's just a hope, and utterly unsupported by any evidence.

By: John

John — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 02:01:59 +0000

I agree Mark — especially as there are 50K developers raring to go. PSP lost the opportunity to be this device by locking the sucka down so hard that playing a new game forces firmware upgrades which break homebrew stuff. Insane.

I can see why they kept the iPod closed to an extent — the cost and effort of putting together a developer program, tools etc for the platform, the fast moving field, where new features, chipsets, etc come all the time. But iPhone is different. Surely they could get xCode to compile for it almost trivially. n+1 platforms for n>1 is easy, its the second one which is hard, and they have PPC plus i86 now.

Surely at least they’ll allow widgets?

I actually think they should dump the (GSM) phone bit and go straight to voip over wifi and REALLY redefine telephony. What was that quote from Gretsky Jobs used about being where the puck will be? Wifi is where telephony will be (and not too far off). So why the GSM?

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:46:23 +0000

Pshaw, John, such flattery. Seriously, while I am excited by iPhone, it seems to become increasingly apparent that this is a “closed” platform. Apple — as far as anyone can tell, 24 hours into the iPhone era — simply doesn’t want third-party developers. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they think they can own the whole thing. Maybe they want to charge for every Widget you download. And maybe they think they can dream up every possible application for iPhone.

Then again, maybe they’re just smoking crack.