21–30 of 91 posts
Anyone else think the FreeRunner looks like crap? Aside from the hardware, the UI looks like Windows Mobile on the top, and iphone on the bottom..
Is it true that the iPhone can't play .ogg? Couldn't you write an app for the iPhone that plays ogg, or would that be impossible because the audio files can't be accessed from applications? I've started using ogg again because I couldn't be bothered to make my Linux system encode MP3s...
Thank god for some sanity. I cannot for the life of me understand why otherwise intelligent geeks fawn over locked Apple products and the iPhone in particular.
For example the nokia n800 browser is terrible in comparison to Safari, using a stylus is a pain, and keyboard entry is slow. Also the battery lasts an hour or so.
Yes, it's open source, but that makes it hellishly hard to do anything with. Updating the firmware involves about 10 steps.
The iPhone does not completely block free software. Last time I checked, there was free software available in the App Store. Developers are welcome to release their code I presume.
A lesser argument to the response that Apple decides what is and is not on everyone's phones is that anyone can create a web application, which Apple does not control.
If the author wants to call the $99 developer's fee a tax, I don't care. But it does have a purpose. You also get access to Apple's development program, and if you're distributing your applications for free (as this person seems to like), you get a free distribution platform and free bandwidth for people to download your app.
The iPhone does not expose your whereabouts or allow other people to track you anymore than any other phone in the United States does. How he got this, I have no idea. You can turn off the location based services that will stop any application from tracking you. Law enforcement in the U.S. can track any phone's location, so the iPhone is not unique in that respect. Furthermore, some people will want their location tracked so that applications can tell them what's nearby.
Now, I'm not against free software, but please, if you're going to argue for something, make it logical and rational.
Can any iPhone developers chime in on the location tracking? Is it not so that ONLY one application can track your location at a time? Additionally, when using a downloaded iPhone application you should assume that it will access some form of your personal data, in most cases that is the utility of the application.
Why do I care that a few cents of the price of my iPhone went in licensing the mp3 format from "Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer IIS-A". As a user, it plays mp3 files. Which is all anyone cares about.
If it only played DRM files I'd have a problem with it and wouldn't buy it.
Looks like there could be a long wait for the new iPhone in the UK as it seems to be pretty scarce.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FSF can be like that, but they also have a good point. Only Apple could get away with creating a smartphone where they hold all the cards - deciding what and who can and can't develop for it. If Microsoft tried to pull something like that, we'd all cry foul. /yeah, I'm still getting an iPhone today. //hoping that in two years there will be other competitors who are more open and match the iPhone's quality
This is the main reason Apple can ensure quality. They limit the scope of their hardware so there are no unexpected use cases. Visual voicemail "just works", the app store "just works". The problem is that the iphone appeals to geeks, and many geeks are privacy/FSF/EFF purists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FSF can be like that, but they also have a good point. Only Apple could get away with creating a smartphone where they hold all the cards - deciding what and who can and can't develop for it. If Microsoft tried to pull something like that, we'd all cry foul. /yeah, I'm still getting an iPhone today. //hoping that in two years there will be other competitors who are more open and match the iPhone's quality
This is the main reason Apple can ensure quality. They limit the scope of their hardware so there are no unexpected use cases. Visual voicemail "just works", the app store "just works". The problem is that the iphone appeals to geeks, and many geeks are privacy/FSF/EFF purists.
For most people, the use case is to use it as a phone/browser/PDA etc. Not to use it to hack around with and develop apps for.
All cell phones expose "your whereabouts and [provide] ways for others to track you without your knowledge" via cell tower triangulation. At a minimum, this point is FUD.
Perhaps they do, but without a constant connection to wifi or EDGE/3G that the iPhone has, you'd have to authorize it, in order for it to be sent. Probably not so with the iPhone. It's designed to constantly talk to the Internet (it's even got a new notifications framework that relies on communicating with Apple's servers).
I can't comment on whether or not you need to authorize each application in order for it to use the GPS APIs or not, but if you don't (which I assume you won't), this could be scary.
This is really a ridiculous article if you can call it that. "iPhone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora." Why do I care that a few cents of the price of my iPhone went in licensing the mp3 format from "Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer IIS-A". As a user, it plays mp3 files. Which is all anyone cares about. If it only played DRM files I'd have a problem with it and wouldn't buy it. Look…
Plus, libogg is BSD licensed, so why not include it?