David Adams from OSNews.com wrote a lengthy and very interesting seven page review of the iPhone and shares his experiences with the device after one month of use. He seems to have grown quite fond of it (haven’t we all?) and sees Apple capturing a sizable chunk of the cellular market.
The iPhone is a great device, that, despite the shortcomings I’ve cataloged here is a more elegant, usable, and arguably more useful tool than anything else on the market. Over the next year, Apple is likely to make many improvements via software updates, and the subsequent versions are sure to contain new features that make the early adopters quickly eBay their G1 iPhones. Apple has a huge opportunity here to totally dominate the largest and most important segment of the high tech industry, but they will fail to reach their full potential if they don’t pay close attention to their customers’ needs and put their users first.
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AppleInsider reports that Apple may be readying its first major software update for iPhone, set for release very soon now. According to the article, Apple VP Greg Joswiak told analysts that it expects to release an update soon. Exactly what may be contained within the update remains uncertain. It could simply be a package of bug fixes, or a mashup of new applications and features.
We’ll be watching.
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Officials within NASA’s Outsourcing Desktop Initiative For NASA (ODIN) program have rejected iPhone for use as a corporate communications device, opting instead for RIM’s Blackberry 8800 series. NASA deemed iPhone “not to be enterprise ready”, which is a reference to corporate deployment, not the starship Enterprise.
The space agency is in the process of selecting a Smartphone to employ with its fleet of workers, and is giving serious nods to the Blackberry 8800 and the Palm Treo 750. The news means, unfortunately, iPhone won’t be seen in launch control any time soon.
Ground control to Major Tom…..
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Organizers behind Office 2.0 Conference have come up with an ingenious, if costly, incentive to drive attendance to their upcoming developer/partner conference. Registered attendees and speakers will receive free 4GB iPhones. Where do I sign up? Well not so fast. A single attendee registration costs $995 through July 31 (that’s tomorrow), after which the registration price jumps to $1,495. If you’re a developer living in the Bay area, and had already planned to attend O2O, this is a no brainer. However, this conference price (even with iPhone) seems unusually high to me.
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Today iPhone is one step closer to gaining third party software support, unofficially of course. Hackers from the #iPhone IRC channel managed dissect embedded OSX’s source libraries and create a basic proof of concept application that does nothing more than display the words “Hello World”. The devs have now released these source binary files on public servers, available for anyone to download.
This is by no means the final solution in opening iPhone to software developers (that will come only through Apple), but I’ll take third party software any way I can get it. Even it is the result of a raped and violated hack ‘n slash effort.
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Not everyone loves their iPhone, it seems. Jose Trujillo, whoever the hell that is, has begun a class action suit against both Apple and AT&T, claiming damages as a result of the iPhone’s non-replaceable battery that, according to Jose, can only be charged 300 times. Apparently he didn’t check facts before filing. Had he done so he would have known that the battery is in fact good for 400 charges and beyond. Even at that point the battery DOES NOT need serviced - it simply won’t hold a full charge.
Still, I blame Apple for unnecessarily creating this issue in the first place by bolting down the hood, so to speak, and failing to clearly disclose the battery’s true lifespan and performance.
Jose, if you read this, I refer you to my attorneys from the law firm of Dewey, Screwem, and Howe. They’ll work hard to steal win your money.
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It was bound to happen eventually. Now the long lines of techno fetishists waiting in front of Apple Stores to buy a phone have been replaced by lines of creepy 40 year olds dressed as wizards, standing in front of bookstores to buy a children’s book.
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There was some brouhaha about the iPhone on Duke’s network, something about it bringing the network down, and some network or school administrator blamed it on the iPhone. Well, it turns out that maybe the iPhone wasn’t at fault. Duke officially said it was something else’s fault. I hadn’t reported on this earlier (part of that whole editorial process; why report on something that isn’t related to news?), as being a sysadmin in a former career, it sounded like there was a configuration mistake on their network. And you know, it still sounds like there was a configuration flaw in their Cisco kit to me. Let’s go to the source of it and translate. I speak a few languages poorly, and press release happens to be one of them:
“The reality is that a particular set of conditions made the Duke wireless network experience some minor and temporary disruptions in service. Those conditions involve our deployment of a very large Cisco-based wireless network that supports multiple network protocols.”
Translation: “It’s pretty much Cisco’s fault.” Duke’s Cisco-based wireless network sucks!
Santa is watching you. Well Steve Jobs is anyway. AppleInsider says that Apple will introduce new iPhone models in Q4, hoping to expand its Smartphone line.
Extremely reputable sources have told AppleInsider in recent weeks that the company’s iPhone roadmap for the 2007 calendar year includes not one but two distinct models, the second of which is set to turn up just months after the first.
According to one source, development of the second model has followed so closely on the heels of the inaugural iPhone that it was making its final pass through engineering around the same time that today’s model hit the manufacturing lines back in May or early June.
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Harry McCracken writes on PC World’s TechBlog that after spending one week with an iPhone he found the device to be incredibly cool, but also impractical for his needs. So traded it in for a Windows Mobile device, the AT&T 8525 (HTC Hermes).
He outlines 13 reasons why he doesn’t want the iPhone.
- The iPhone isn’t 3G
- The iPhone can’t serve as a modem
- The iPhone doesn’t talk to Lotus Notes
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The iPhone doesn’t have a chat client
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There’s no Slingbox client for the iPhone
- The iPhone doesn’t have enough storage to be my primary media player.
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The iPhone requires too many clicks to get stuff done.
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The iPhone is remarkably uncustomizable
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The iPhone doesn’t let you edit office documents
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And it doesn’t have a To-Do List
- And its note-taking app is too bare-bones to be very useful
- The iPhone’s contract requirement rankles me
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The iPhone’s virtual keyboard is surprisingly good; the 8525’s real one is better
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