iPhone

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-17 09:13pm

Praxis wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:
Durandal wrote: Yeah, just like the 80%+ of iPhone users who rate themselves as "very satisfied" with it. They're getting fucked all right. They paid for a product and actually like it.
The iPhone strikes me as the telephony equivalent of a Gucci handbag. I'm sure the owners are all very proud of them.
Faulty comparison. Unlike the Gucci handbag, the iPhone actually provides more functionality or usability. A Gucci handbag does nothing better than a normal handbag except cost more money.

So? You're making assumptions about the basis of comparison. Gucci handbags were a completely arbitrary example, but there are a shitload of luxury items out there which really are very nice, but their primary value is as status symbols. I've seen surveys indicating that the majority of owners of high-end telephony devices never actually use most of their advanced features. Is that value for money? Not if you look at it in terms of strict utility; it is more of a status symbol, like having a Ferrari that can do 200 mph even if you never intend to use that power.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2008-03-18 01:04am

Darth Wong wrote:You REALLY think that's what I was saying, don't you?

Well yeah, at first. Which is why I apologized in the post after that one.

Pint0 Xtreme · Post by **Pint0 Xtreme** » 2008-03-18 02:24am

I've seen surveys indicating that the majority of owners of high-end telephony devices never actually use most of their advanced features. Is that value for money? Not if you look at it in terms of strict utility; it is more of a status symbol, like having a Ferrari that can do 200 mph even if you never intend to use that power.

Though I don't doubt there are people who bought the iPhone for the status symbol, I personally didn't buy one for that reason and actually decided to hold off on it for quite some time for the sole reason that I wanted to make sure that I would have the most use of it. To be quite honest, after a month of using it, I'm quite happy with it and I am using every feature on the phone with exception to the little stocks monitor. Did my old phone have many of these features? Yes it did. Did I use them? Hardly; it was such a fucking chore to do some of the simplest things. I certainly think it's a little more than a status symbol purchase.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2008-03-18 03:09pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Praxis wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: The iPhone strikes me as the telephony equivalent of a Gucci handbag. I'm sure the owners are all very proud of them.
Faulty comparison. Unlike the Gucci handbag, the iPhone actually provides more functionality or usability. A Gucci handbag does nothing better than a normal handbag except cost more money.
So? You're making assumptions about the basis of comparison. Gucci handbags were a completely arbitrary example, but there are a shitload of luxury items out there which really are very nice, but their primary value is as status symbols. I've seen surveys indicating that the majority of owners of high-end telephony devices never actually use most of their advanced features. Is that value for money? Not if you look at it in terms of strict utility; it is more of a status symbol, like having a Ferrari that can do 200 mph even if you never intend to use that power.

I completely agree with you that the majority of owners of high-end phones buy them as showy, flashy items. In fact, I know plenty of these people. I haven't bought a new phone in over 6 years. I was constantly amazed at how every 6 months my sister would buy a new phone costing several hundred dollars, with no new features that she would actually use. Some had MP3 playback, but she didn't even know how to get the MP3s on there. Some had email, but the provider charged extra to deliver it so it wasn't used. Some had music stores, but they charged twice as much as iTunes or Amazon. Ringtones, ringbacks, and picture messaging were the most advanced features in use by her, yet she still had to buy a new phone every time something pretty came out to show off to friends.

In fact, other phone users are trying to capitalize on this by making phones that look aesthetically just like the iPhone but have a cruddy interface.

Incredibly, my sister even switched to another phone provider to get a phone that she replaced two months later. The amount of money she invested into it is ridiculous.

The flaw in your post is that you attribute the same motives to iPhone users. While I'm sure some people bought the iPhone to buy in to the status symbol, a very large number of them bought in to it for the functionality and user interface. While some of my sister's phones may have even had some features the iPhone did not, they were such a chore to use (phone web browsers are absolutely HORRIBLE, as are messengers like AIM) that they were never used.

You cite a survey saying that many mobile phone users buy the expensive ones as status symbols. Fair enough (I'll take your word on the survey existing), but why not get one specific to the iPhone? Recent surveys state that iPhone users often use more of their phone's features than other mobile users.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/ ... firms.html

After charting the habits of more than 10,000 adults for six months after the iPhone's U.S. launch, M:Metrics concludes that nearly 85 percent of iPhone purchasers regularly use their handheld device to access news and other content on the web.

Compare that to the 58 percent of total smartphone owners who browse web content and just 13 percent of overall mobile phone users who do, and you get an idea of how much a simple interface can do to inspire usage.
...

The study also found that 59 percent of iPhone users visited a search engine on their phone, compared to 37 percent of smartphone users and a miniscule 6 percent of mobile phone users. This corroborates information Google released last month, which said the search company saw on average 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset.

Looks like more iPhone users actually use the features. This indicates either a more tech-savvy audience or a better interface encouraging users to use the features (or a combination of the two). The latter being more likely, as smartphones also featured a tech-savvy audience.

Mobiboros · Post by **Mobiboros** » 2008-03-18 03:17pm

Pint0 Xtreme wrote:[Though I don't doubt there are people who bought the iPhone for the status symbol, I personally didn't buy one for that reason and actually decided to hold off on it for quite some time for the sole reason that I wanted to make sure that I would have the most use of it. To be quite honest, after a month of using it, I'm quite happy with it and I am using every feature on the phone with exception to the little stocks monitor. Did my old phone have many of these features? Yes it did. Did I use them? Hardly; it was such a fucking chore to do some of the simplest things. I certainly think it's a little more than a status symbol purchase.

I'm pretty much the same. My wife got an iPhone shortly after they came out. I held off until last christmas. I'm using most of the functions (Honestly, I never texted before and I didn't start now) regularly and I really like the touchscreen interface. I didn't get it as a status symbol at all. In fact most people I know are rather surprised I own one since I don't flash it around. It's just very functional and small enough that I can use all the functions and still slip it into my pocket.

I like the phone and have had no problems with it yet. And yes, the interface is gimmicky, but it really is a very easy interface to use. Not just the touch keyboard but that you can scroll around onscreen as well as shrink/enlarge pages as well.

Incidentally, my old phone was a Razr and I came to loathe it. It was the phone slightly upgraded in our cingular plan (The basic phone was a POS nokie brick at the time). Every day I hated it more. Every feature pissed me off somehow.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-03-18 03:48pm

Tech savvy or not, the iPhone never impressed me apart form having a nice look. I do notice that the people I know with one (very few) have them either because a) they are Apple fanboys/girls or b) they thought it was a great looking device and didn't give a shit about what else was on the market. I confess, I really like the looks, but I can't say I care for a haptic interface when I do so well with traditional controls and the price is extortion, simply put.

I've not bought a phone for years. Last one was in '03, I think, and it didn't cost me more than £50 and was quite crappy, but it worked. I usually got my brother's hand-me-downs, until this February when he got a new phone (the N95 8GB) and I saw all the features that I had been dying to have years ago. It's so much nicer browsing the web on my current phone than using the K750i I had, which was the first one to get me into mobile Internet which, it would seem, has finally come of age. No more WAP bullshit with slow speeds, barely legible websites and zero media content, all for £1 a meg.

And since someone mentioned the RAZR, that is the textbook definition of a shit phone that got popular because it looks sexeh.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2008-03-18 04:29pm

I am curious about one thing. Is there anything the iPhone can do that a N95 or another high end symbian / windows mobile smartphone with right apps installed can't do ?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-03-18 04:37pm

I couldn't say. There are far more applications for Symbian and Windows Mobile, despite Apple, hilariously, announcing their SDK package as if it was the only development product for a mobile device a few weeks ago. I'd question what you'd want other than telephony/web access, a camera, multi-media services and GPS.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2008-03-18 05:31pm

Sarevok wrote:I am curious about one thing. Is there anything the iPhone can do that a N95 or another high end symbian / windows mobile smartphone with right apps installed can't do ?

The tilt-sensor is a feature unique to the iPhone (as far as I can tell). How useful it is for application developers is debatable, but there you go. Other than that, no, I can't think of anything another phone couldn't do given the right software.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-03-18 05:39pm

Is it a 3D accelerometer? Because I'm pretty sure the N95 has one, but there's been no official apps. for it (they're in the process of developing things), just the usual tilt to change screen orientation or flip the phone over to end a call. Pretty pointless gimmick, really. The proximity sensor is unique, IIRC. You could probably use the light sensor for the N95 in the same way, I'd question why though.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2008-03-20 01:32am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I couldn't say. There are far more applications for Symbian and Windows Mobile, despite Apple, hilariously, announcing their SDK package as if it was the only development product for a mobile device a few weeks ago.

That's because other SDKs weren't really worth mentioning. The iPhone SDK just blows them out of the water, frankly.

I'd question what you'd want other than telephony/web access, a camera, multi-media services and GPS.

5 years ago, I'll bet you were saying "I'd question what you'd want other than telephony". Hell, I was saying that 5 years ago. But smart phones and PDA phones have become what are essentially mobile computing platforms. There's a lot of processing power in embedded CPUs these days, display DPI is getting higher and touch screens are getting more and more advanced. Why just leave all this stuff totally unused? I'm not just talking about the iPhone. I'm talking about the Blackberry and the Sidekick too.

phongn wrote:The tilt-sensor is a feature unique to the iPhone (as far as I can tell). How useful it is for application developers is debatable, but there you go. Other than that, no, I can't think of anything another phone couldn't do given the right software.

It'll be useful to developers in that it'll make them shitloads of money. Gaming is going to be huge on the iPhone. It's really pretty incredible what the GL hardware in there is actually capable of.

Saverok wrote:I am curious about one thing. Is there anything the iPhone can do that a N95 or another high end symbian / windows mobile smartphone with right apps installed can't do ?

Probably not. But "I can do this" and "I can do this without it sucking" are two different things.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2008-03-20 03:20am

I couldn't say. There are far more applications for Symbian and Windows Mobile, despite Apple, hilariously, announcing their SDK package as if it was the only development product for a mobile device a few weeks ago.

Apple's the first one really implementing it well, though. The SDK is much better than most of the competitors (from what I hear; I admittedly haven't researched it much), and more importantly, Apple's providing an affordable, standardized app distribution system. Phone apps have been so haphazard. There are never killer apps, just novelties, generally, and available software often differs from phone to phone. Smartphones such as PocketPCs have more available, perhaps, but no real distribution system in place- not ideal for devs.

Gaming is going to be huge on the iPhone.

There's one massive downside though. Battery life. I drain my iPhone really quick if I watch an hour of video during my lunch break, make a lot of phone calls and play music during my commute and downtime- maybe two hours of music playback, an hour of video (some of it on YouTube), plus regular usage of phone calls and text messaging will run the battery out before the day ends.

Note that this is NOT my normal usage pattern, but I kind of abused the phone for the first week due to the sheer novelty of being able to surf the web and go on YouTube during my lunch break

and used the iPhone on speakerphone in the car instead of the radio (I haven't put my MP3 CD player into my new car yet).

The DS has always had spectacular battery life. The PSP was ridiculed for its mere four hours. I suspect the iPhone's will be closer to the PSP's...the problem being that if your phone's battery goes out, you could have serious problems if you need to coordinate with someone for something or there is an emergency.

Gaming will probably drain the battery faster than anything (actually, I'd be curious to see gaming verses YouTube video playback over EDGE, since EDGE seems to drain battery fairly fast), which might deter people from anything more than casual gaming on their phone.

I'll wait to see how it plays out before making predictions, though. There probably will be a pretty decent market.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2008-03-20 10:14am

Probably not. But "I can do this" and "I can do this without it sucking" are two different things.

What such necessary applications are there where iPhone blows away the competition ? Browsing, IMing, opening PDF files, editing word documents etc are trivial to do on many cheap phones. Not saying the iPhone is featureless. But all the main selling points are found on cheaper devices running symbian or windows mobile.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2008-03-20 10:18am

Btw is there truth to the following rumours.

- iPhone can't copy songs to other phones via bluetooth.

- mp3 songs cant be used as ringtones.

- no video recording.

- no mms.

- copy pasting text in an app or between apps.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2008-03-20 11:08am

Sarevok wrote:Btw is there truth to the following rumours.

- iPhone can't copy songs to other phones via bluetooth.

True, but not a surprise.

- mp3 songs cant be used as ringtones.

True, but you can use AAC songs as ringtones, IIRC.

- no video recording.

Yet. SDK allows access to camera, IIRC.

- no mms.

True.

- copy pasting text in an app or between apps.

True.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-03-20 01:22pm

Durandal wrote:
That's because other SDKs weren't really worth mentioning. The iPhone SDK just blows them out of the water, frankly.

Albeit, with an extremely limited release. I don't see anything wrong with the many apps. for other systems out there and you'll always get less stellar programs than the mediocre ones. Besides, the way some fans stated they were the first to do this smacks of pomposity, regardless of whether they did it right or not.

I'm sure it's a great kit, all the same. I just dislike this Jesus Phone bullshit that goes with Mac products, as if they're superior by virtue of coming with an Apple logo. I sure hope someone with the SDK enables MMS in the iPhone. It was obviously a pointless and/or difficult feature for Jobs' team (Durandal excluded

).

5 years ago, I'll bet you were saying "I'd question what you'd want other than telephony". Hell, I was saying that 5 years ago. But smart phones and PDA phones have become what are essentially mobile computing platforms. There's a lot of processing power in embedded CPUs these days, display DPI is getting higher and touch screens are getting more and more advanced. Why just leave all this stuff totally unused? I'm not just talking about the iPhone. I'm talking about the Blackberry and the Sidekick too.

There are still limits, though. Firstly, the size of the device means it's not ideal to try and do all your office work on it (trust me, I tried. Gets tedious. And gaming on a mobile just seems lacking when you have a dedicated system like the DS) and even if you do get around that by having an extendible flexi-screen and full QWERTY keyboard, battery life is the major limiting factor. The CPU is the last thing I worry about given the advances seen since my Cassiopeia E105 PDA of '99 with its 120 MHz MIPS. However, as we all know it's powering these applications which really cuts down on their capability. Efficiency boosts are good, but in the end, we're going to need something better than lithium cells if this is the trend.

Fuel-cells have been suggested, but I dislike having to use a flammable substance in my device more than having a block of extremely unstable metal. And it's less convenient since you can't use a power socket. I currently have a PowerMonkey which can power my mobile, iPod and DS with adaptors for more such portables and a solar cell. It definitely helps when I browse the web, send texts, video call and listen to music on my phone and still need it for the end of the day for stand-by.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2008-03-21 01:23am

Sarevok wrote:Btw is there truth to the following rumours.

- iPhone can't copy songs to other phones via bluetooth.

Never tried, but I would expect so. Copyright protection. The studios wouldn't let the Zune do it, why would they let the iPhone?

- mp3 songs cant be used as ringtones.

True, but m4a files can be. GarageBand can convert any mp3 into a iPhone ringtone on the spot, and there's plenty of PC apps that'll take an MP3 and convert it to aac (with the .m4a extension, same thing) and toss it in the appropriate directory all in one swoop- I use one myself.

- no video recording.

Currently true, but we'll see when the SDK hits.

- no mms.

Biggest downfall on the iPhone IMHO. Hopefully will be corrected. Since I'm using T-Mobile, when someone sends me a picture message T-Mobile stores it on their server and sends me a link to the file- I touch the link and see the picture in Safari. So I CAN look at the picture messages, but can't send them back.

- copy pasting text in an app or between apps.

Currently true. Not missed too often though (you're not writing large amounts of text) but I'd like to see it. Apple's been patenting different methods of accomplishing this, I'd imagine we'll eventually see it in a firmware update.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2008-03-21 03:09am

So it appears that the iPhone's great hardware is shackled by poorly designed software it comes with. It order to do tasks taken for granted even on 80 USD javaphones a lot of workarounds are needed. So that begs the question why not spend that time on pimping out a N95 to do whatever one wants ? It is already one of the most feature rich phones out of the box and with the time spent making giving iPhones capabilities ancient java phones have the N95 starts looking a mini laptop computer.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2008-03-21 04:54am

Sarevok wrote:What such necessary applications are there where iPhone blows away the competition ?

Browsing, for one, voicemail for another. The iPhone was the first phone my mom ever owned where she could actually figure out how to check her voicemail. I'd say Google Maps too, but without true GPS, it's just not up to snuff. Even so, enumerations for CoreLocation in the iPhone SDK hint toward a higher-accuracy positioning system, i.e. GPS.

But I wasn't talking about the stock software. I was talking about the SDK, which, in terms of ease of development, robustness and foundation is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else out there.

As an aside, one of the apps demoed was a pharmaceutical categorization and cataloguing application that would be absolutely perfect for my mom. She's a pediatrics nurse and spends lots of time doing "tech support" (for lack of a better term) with patients over the phone. It lets you identify a pill by describing its shape, color and markings. And because the iPhone has such a nice screen, it's easy to display lots of information at once, including high-resolution pictures.

Browsing, IMing, opening PDF files, editing word documents etc are trivial to do on many cheap phones. Not saying the iPhone is featureless. But all the main selling points are found on cheaper devices running symbian or windows mobile.

You're not making the distinction between "can do" and "can do poorly".

So it appears that the iPhone's great hardware is shackled by poorly designed software it comes with.

If Nokia was the most successful online music retailer and sold the number one MP3 player, they'd probably have the same restrictions on their devices, probably more. The recording industry would pretty much demand it. As it stands, Nokia has no contracts with the RIAA. (Note: This is based on Steve Jobs' public posting regarding DRM on iTunes songs. I don't have any knowledge as to the specifics of Apple's agreements with the labels. But it wouldn't surprise me or really anyone else if the iPhone was covered under a lock down clause.)

And the software is anything but "poorly designed". I know some of the people that worked on it (both as the iPhone OS and as Mac OS X before it), and they're not idiots.

It order to do tasks taken for granted even on 80 USD javaphones a lot of workarounds are needed. So that begs the question why not spend that time on pimping out a N95 to do whatever one wants ?

Because your priorities aren't the same as the average joe's?

It is already one of the most feature rich phones out of the box and with the time spent making giving iPhones capabilities ancient java phones have the N95 starts looking a mini laptop computer.

You're not getting it. "Feature-rich" is not equivalent to "good" or "appealing". You can add GPS and a DVD player to an '85 Fiat, but at the end of the day, it's still a piece of crap.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Albeit, with an extremely limited release. I don't see anything wrong with the many apps. for other systems out there and you'll always get less stellar programs than the mediocre ones. Besides, the way some fans stated they were the first to do this smacks of pomposity, regardless of whether they did it right or not.

An SDK is not the same thing as the applications developed using it. Apple provides the SDK, developers make use of it. This was a press event, not a technical briefing. Reporters would have been falling asleep in their seats if Scott Forstall went droning on about the advantages of Objective-C and Cocoa over Java or Brew or J2ME or whatever other fun acronyms are out there. There was a very high-level overview of the SDK, its capabilities and what it inherited from Mac OS X, and that was pretty much it.

And besides, weren't you one of the people complaining that Apple's "Get a Mac" ads were crappy because you thought they focused more on Windows' flaws than the Mac's strengths?

Seriously, I can understand a lot of criticisms of Apple's style in presentations (the infamous Photoshop bake-offs, for example), but I just don't get this one.

I'm sure it's a great kit, all the same. I just dislike this Jesus Phone bullshit that goes with Mac products, as if they're superior by virtue of coming with an Apple logo. I sure hope someone with the SDK enables MMS in the iPhone. It was obviously a pointless and/or difficult feature for Jobs' team (Durandal excluded).

It's not that hard to implement MMS. Implementing it well appears to be what's escaping everyone. The last time I tried using MMS, my phone got a link to some web site that I had to type a fucking code into to view a picture the size of a postage stamp. That's just dumb, so I'll use it to illustrate a larger point. Apple's design philosophy with respect to features is pretty simple: if you can't do it well, just don't do it at all.

That's why all these other phones beat the iPhone out in terms of raw number of features. Because Apple designers (and no, it's not just Steve, believe it or not) omit features that they feel can't be implemented in a workable way given the time constraints and priorities of a project. A lot of other companies seem content to poorly implement a feature just so they can have it on a bulleted list.

Back to MMS, the issue is whether it's worth putting time into it. Phones are regularly exchanging e-mails with attachments these days. MMS is probably just going to die out as e-mailing photos gets easier. Really, MMS is basically a kludge, and an expensive one at that. It's the same reason SMS will probably die out as IM'ing on phones gets easier. Both are incredibly expensive and obvious ways for carriers to gouge customers.

There are still limits, though. Firstly, the size of the device means it's not ideal to try and do all your office work on it (trust me, I tried. Gets tedious. And gaming on a mobile just seems lacking when you have a dedicated system like the DS) and even if you do get around that by having an extendible flexi-screen and full QWERTY keyboard, battery life is the major limiting factor.

Who wants to do any real, non-phone work on his phone outside of quickly viewing a presentation, responding to an e-mail and maybe scheduling a meeting? Why on Earth would you want to edit a Word document or god forbid a PowerPoint presentation on your phone? Those are the kinds of capabilities Microsoft puts into Windows Mobile just so they can say that they have them.

As for gaming, watch the SDK presentation. They had freaking Super Monkey Ball being controlled with the accelerometer. And Spore.

The CPU is the last thing I worry about given the advances seen since my Cassiopeia E105 PDA of '99 with its 120 MHz MIPS. However, as we all know it's powering these applications which really cuts down on their capability. Efficiency boosts are good, but in the end, we're going to need something better than lithium cells if this is the trend.

We're pretty far off from that point. It's just a matter of managing power intelligently.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-03-21 01:52pm

Durandal wrote:
An SDK is not the same thing as the applications developed using it. Apple provides the SDK, developers make use of it. This was a press event, not a technical briefing. Reporters would have been falling asleep in their seats if Scott Forstall went droning on about the advantages of Objective-C and Cocoa over Java or Brew or J2ME or whatever other fun acronyms are out there. There was a very high-level overview of the SDK, its capabilities and what it inherited from Mac OS X, and that was pretty much it.

Oh, I'm more than aware that the SDK is just the suite one uses to develop the software they want (I did do programming for a few years). I'm just saying that the way Apple has restricted how it's distributed seems an odd move for now. I'd rather have everyone willing to make stuff for the device out there doing it.

And besides, weren't you one of the people complaining that Apple's "Get a Mac" ads were crappy because you thought they focused more on Windows' flaws than the Mac's strengths?

Not I. I liked the UK Mac ads because I happen to dislike Windows too. I just don't fellate Jobs because his stuff works (for a price).

Seriously, I can understand a lot of criticisms of Apple's style in presentations (the infamous Photoshop bake-offs, for example), but I just don't get this one.

Twasn't Apple this time, just some of those in the industry who saw this as the Second Coming, so idiot commentators on blogs. I only critique the way Apple is going about allowing third parties to develop.

It's not that hard to implement MMS. Implementing it well appears to be what's escaping everyone. The last time I tried using MMS, my phone got a link to some web site that I had to type a fucking code into to view a picture the size of a postage stamp. That's just dumb, so I'll use it to illustrate a larger point. Apple's design philosophy with respect to features is pretty simple: if you can't do it well, just don't do it at all.

That's why all these other phones beat the iPhone out in terms of raw number of features. Because Apple designers (and no, it's not just Steve, believe it or not) omit features that they feel can't be implemented in a workable way given the time constraints and priorities of a project. A lot of other companies seem content to poorly implement a feature just so they can have it on a bulleted list.

Back to MMS, the issue is whether it's worth putting time into it. Phones are regularly exchanging e-mails with attachments these days. MMS is probably just going to die out as e-mailing photos gets easier. Really, MMS is basically a kludge, and an expensive one at that. It's the same reason SMS will probably die out as IM'ing on phones gets easier. Both are incredibly expensive and obvious ways for carriers to gouge customers.

The fuck?! MMS in the States must suck donkey cock then. I want to send an image or video? I take the picture or record something and click send via MMS. It sends in the background. And I could do that flawlessly and cheaply with my ancient K700i. There's no difference between that system and what I use in my N95, only now I can e-mail if I want too (which may be cheaper and more convenient given the rise of web capable devices now).

I'm no knocking the whole using the Internet directly method, I just find it a bit early to go only that route when MMS is, at least here and the rest of Europe, a piece of piss and far more common.

Who wants to do any real, non-phone work on his phone outside of quickly viewing a presentation, responding to an e-mail and maybe scheduling a meeting? Why on Earth would you want to edit a Word document or god forbid a PowerPoint presentation on your phone? Those are the kinds of capabilities Microsoft puts into Windows Mobile just so they can say that they have them.

I agree. And it's stupid until phones do become miniature laptop powerhouses that won't lead to Carpal tunnel or eye strain. The devices are meant to be small, convenient and versatile. Can't have the best of both worlds unless you get flexible screens to pull out like that Swatch Scroll and an adequate keyboard and input method. Even then, seems silly when you'd just use a laptop.

As for gaming, watch the SDK presentation. They had freaking Super Monkey Ball being controlled with the accelerometer. And Spore.

Pfft, I prefer my DS. Plus, mobile games tend to be pricey for what they are now. And Spore is dead to me when Wright started appeasing the ignorant masses.

The accelerometer control is good. Someone made an app. in Symbian so you can use your phone (N-series only I think) as a mouse. I was going to try it, but it seemed a tad silly.

We're pretty far off from that point. It's just a matter of managing power intelligently.

Indeed. The N96, for instance, uses the smaller output cell used in the N95, but not the N95 8GB. Despite having digital TV and DAB radio built-in along with the usual flash, camera and other power hungry systems, the smaller battery is used because efficiency has been improved with the software and hardware. I know firmware upgrades to my phone and iPod have brought on better battery charge life improvements, which is always the one thing that I find lacking in any mobile device today.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2008-03-21 05:17pm

The last time I tried using MMS, my phone got a link to some web site that I had to type a fucking code into to view a picture the size of a postage stamp. That's just dumb, so I'll use it to illustrate a larger point

Er, Durandel, this is what happens when your phone doesn't support MMS.

On T-Mobile, when I receive an MMS on my iPhone T-Mobile just sends me a link to view the MMS on my web browser.

On most people's phones, they recieve a regular text message with a photo or video or sound file in it. It works pretty seamlessly. Which annoys me as friends DO try to send me picture messages all the time. It's not a downgrade for me as my previous phone was too old to support MMS, but I can imagine it'd be a very annoying downgrade for someone with a phone that supported MMS.

MMS might die in the future, but it is hardly on its way out yet. It's still extremely popular. Saying MMS is going to die out is like saying DVD is going to die out- it'll happen eventually, but not in the very near future. Way too early to remove support for it.

Apple needs to add MMS support in the 2.0 firmware update. Ugh.

I'm just saying that the way Apple has restricted how it's distributed seems an odd move for now. I'd rather have everyone willing to make stuff for the device out there doing it.

I don't see how Apple's distribution method prevents people from making stuff? $99 for a developer certificate, then you can release all of the apps you want- free or for profit.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2008-03-21 05:38pm

Since when are "open source" and "GPL" the same thing?

They're not, but many hugely popular open source projects are GPLed.

Anyone who's interested in working on open source iPhone software will have a certificate. Then they can just compile your source, sign the binary with their certificate and put it on their phone. It's $99, one-time, for Christ's sake. It's not the end of the world. And it's nothing that other mobile platforms don't already do.

What gives Steve Jobs the right to demand additional money for me to be able to modify or install my own software on a phone that I already legitimately paid for and own? Screw him, I'll keep on jailbreaking it. It is my own fucking phone, after all.

Your intimation that someone Apple is hoodwinking them because they chose the wrong license is not only baseless but also flagrantly unsupported by any statements out of the FreeBSD people.

Well, there are reasons why FreeBSD lags behind Linux in marketshare, afterall, and IMO the demented "give it all away" attitude of the BSD community is a major factor.

Now, moving onto Praxis's reply:

Are you seriously using embedded versions of Linux on storage units, routers, and TiVo's as a measurement of Linux installed base?

I prefer to measure installed base by what it actually is, installed operating systems on hardware, as opposed to measuring it with BS distortions in order to make Apple look better.

I assume that installed base is only a useful measurement if you assume the users are actually using the platform. A user who has a router running Linux may have no idea they have Linux and will never, ever use Linux software or browse the internet using a browser- they're a useless statistic and don't affect developers.

That's utterly retarded. Are you suggesting that because users of devices that run Linux do not use them in the same way that they use desktops, and may not be aware of the specific make of OS running on them, that those users aren't actually *using* those devices?

Linux is installed on vastly more systems than OS X, period. This suggests to me that its more popular (not with consumers, but with sysadmins, hardware developers, et cetera). Thus, my argument against Durandal's utterly absurd claim that OS X is the most popular UNIX stands.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2008-03-21 05:43pm

The last time I tried using MMS, my phone got a link to some web site that I had to type a fucking code into to view a picture the size of a postage stamp. That's just dumb, so I'll use it to illustrate a larger point

Er, Durandel, this is what happens when your phone doesn't support MMS.

On T-Mobile, when I receive an MMS on my iPhone T-Mobile just sends me a link to view the MMS on my web browser.

On most people's phones, they recieve a regular text message with a photo or video or sound file in it. It works pretty seamlessly. Which annoys me as friends DO try to send me picture messages all the time. It's not a downgrade for me as my previous phone was too old to support MMS, but I can imagine it'd be a very annoying downgrade for someone with a phone that supported MMS.

MMS might die in the future, but it is hardly on its way out yet. It's still extremely popular. Saying MMS is going to die out is like saying DVD is going to die out- it'll happen eventually, but not in the very near future. Way too early to remove support for it.

Apple needs to add MMS support in the 2.0 firmware update. Ugh.

I'm just saying that the way Apple has restricted how it's distributed seems an odd move for now. I'd rather have everyone willing to make stuff for the device out there doing it.

I don't see how Apple's distribution method prevents people from making stuff? $99 for a developer certificate, then you can release all of the apps you want- free or for profit.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-03-21 05:45pm

Praxis wrote: I don't see how Apple's distribution method prevents people from making stuff? $99 for a developer certificate, then you can release all of the apps you want- free or for profit.

As I understand it, Apple has denied licences to some people as they want to restrict how many go about making applications for the time being. Correct me if wrong, it does seen a tad silly when so many have such talent and ideas.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2008-03-21 06:18pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
Praxis wrote: I don't see how Apple's distribution method prevents people from making stuff? $99 for a developer certificate, then you can release all of the apps you want- free or for profit.
As I understand it, Apple has denied licences to some people as they want to restrict how many go about making applications for the time being. Correct me if wrong, it does seen a tad silly when so many have such talent and ideas.

Everyone who applied got that letter. Later, some people have been accepted. Possibly it's some sort of bottleneck in processing applications.