all together now …
I am disappointed that there’s no iChat video conferencing, as I have been expecting for almost two years. But what it does have is very very sleek.
I am impressed that it’s running OS X. It doesn’t even appear to be particularly stripped-down: Safari probably depends on most of the frameworks that make OS X be OS X, so presumably they’re all there.
Assuming there’s XCode support and some way to get your apps onto the phone (and I will be surprised if there aren’t those things), iPhone is a development platform that anyone can write for. That is really cool.
Also widgets now make sense to me. I’ve never gotten them before: why would I use a widget when I can just use a browser/calculator/whatever “real” application? But as a focused little internet application that fits on your iPhone screen, they make more sense. And I’m assuming that any widget running on OS X will work on iPhone.
Still, even 8GB is pretty small for a full-fledged OS X install, so there must be some missing pieces. I’m sure the details will be forthcoming soon enough.
January 9th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Some report said it was a “closed platform” — I’ll be surprised if people other than Apple can write for it. And I’m sure that the plan you’d have to get to make its mail and web access work will just add to its priciness (10 cents for each of those SMS balloons?)
But it looks like fun.
January 9th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Some report said it was a “closed platform†— I’ll be surprised if people other than Apple can write for it.
What a waste of an opportunity if that’s so.
And I’m sure that the plan you’d have to get to make its mail and web access work will just add to its priciness (10 cents for each of those SMS balloons?)
Grr. Again, why aren’t we using a real IM client instead of SMS? (Or iChat AV.) At least when on WiFi. Makes you wonder how much control of the platform Apple had to cede to Cingular for this to work. Well, someone’s probably made an IM-to-SMS gateway on the web. Or will soon enough. I’ll use that.
January 9th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I was all set to buy one and then they had to go and say Cingular. I hate Cingular. Grr.
January 10th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Talk of the Nation did about 20 minutes on the iPhone today…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6783324
Apparently it’s closed. No 3rd party app support. And the exclusive Cingular deal made me scratch it off my want list just like that. Up to that point I was drooling too. I spent way too long on Apple’s site going through all the animation demos.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Thanks for the link, Jim. “Radical and revolutionary,” Mossberg said. He was pretty glowing.
I’m hoping in a year or so some of the initial problems will be worked out, including the openness of the platform.
On a similar note, I hope they open whatever extra technologies they’ve developed with Cingular so that they’re not permanently married to Cingular — visual voicemail, for example. On the other hand, I imagine more general internet-based technologies will overtake cellular technologies as time goes on anyway …
January 11th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I’m sorta mixed on the iPhone. I dunno how I would feel about using a touchscreen for a phone, but I can see the advantages, especially when married with a landscape mode that would switch to a qwerty keyboard for texting. But I like me some tactile feedback!
Here’s another blurb about it not really being OSX or an open platform. I agree with you completely Eric – how friggin could would that be to develop homebrew apps for your cell??
I’m indifferent w/cingular being the carrier, but that’s possibly because i’ve never used them
Anyway, I still think the iPhone is incredible from a conceptual point of view, just not sure it’ll live up to the concept quite yet.
PS – DRM, DIE DIE DIE!!
January 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
i’m just gonna get one and keep it, unopened, in a climate-controlled storage space for 30 years.