131–140 of 148 posts
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I guess that depends on the user. The user who wanted basic stuff like MMS, multi-tasking and tethering hasn't been getting the best experience.
Other "basic" stuff not in the iphone: pedometer, dual bootability and quantum teleportation. OK, I'll give you MMS.
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just assume that everything minus the keynote is under nda no matter what it is, including the lunchtime sessions. always has been, will likely not change.
Just a question, what does one risk by not honoring this NDA?
I have heard from Apple engineers that leaking information as an Apple engineer may as well equal getting fired though...
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Other "basic" stuff not in the iphone: pedometer, dual bootability and quantum teleportation. OK, I'll give you MMS.
MMS is useful for talking to old legacy phones :/ Nice to have, but hardly critical.
You get a text message that says to go to viewmymessage.com with some ridiculous username & password pairing. Since you can't copy & paste, or multi-task, you have to somehow remember what that combination is. Of course, once you've managed to pull up the page, you find out that the multi-media part of the message is a SWF... Which the iPhone doesn't support.
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Other "basic" stuff not in the iphone: pedometer, dual bootability and quantum teleportation. OK, I'll give you MMS.
Multi-tasking and tethering have been standard smartphone features for a long time. I can personally remember those as far back as 2001.
Who else sells a computer with only one mouse button? Who else sells a phone with only one button? No copy/paste? Awful APIs that prevent you from really reading camera data? First iPod had less disk space than any other player First iPod had no windows support Safari's extension support are crappy relative to FF or even IE OSX dock can display 1/100th the apps of menus on other OSes
Apple's strategy is to cut features. This is roughly equivalent to asceticism: finding enlightenment by doing less. Like asceticism, this seems a bad idea on the surface, but some people really seem happier doing it.
The iPhone is slick. Its got an amazing UI for a mobile device. The input is clever. Its very shiny. But having had one for about 2 years, 1 year of which it was only about 60% functional due to an "insensitive" touch screen, and having lived with the less than friendly support staff, I'm pretty confident in saying that's about as deep as it goes. Its very shiny. Its designed to look pretty in Walmart and in AT&T sto…
It would seem to me there's a huge opportunity here for someone else to come in and blow the doors off of them, in terms of developer friendliness, openness, support, price, etc... but in searching for a new phone I didn't see anyone clearly better. Have you not heard of Android? Developer friendliness? Check. Openness? Check. Support? Check. Price? Check. Google is spectacular in all of these regards. Android is ope…
Also, I merged a bunch of ideas together and probably rushed that reply. I'm horrible at posting to forums like this because I almost never get up the nerve to do it.
Anyway, if Android was more available (i.e. if the O/S was adopted by a major cellphone manufacturer like a Nokia or Motorola across many different models on multiple carriers), and I could have easily got my hands on one, I would have bought that instead. But as far as I know its only available at T-Mobile, and only in the form of the G1, and was only maybe available at this one T-Mobile store that was quite a drive from here. Many other phones are easily available within a very short drive, so that's what I ended up with.
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> Or heck, try any other phone platform besides the iPhone. Developing applications for the Android platform is an absolutely wonderful process; I can build apps in Eclipse on any platform, plug in my phone via USB, instantly upload the compiled code, and run the app with a full debugger suite in Eclipse allowing me to debug apps as they're running on the phone, with breakpoints, full listing of in-scope variables, a…
" And some of the apps I've downloaded have had multiple new versions available in a single week" Not sure if having to update the same app multiple times in one week is something I'd like to do as a consumer. I like the release early, release often strategy for development, but when the app is running on someone else's device I'd like to see people put a little more attention into the quality of the software they sh…
This is the age of web applications and permanently net-connected smart phones. Who are you to tell me I can't fix a typo or push a bugfix more than once a week?
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> The iPhone is sold as is, why should we expect to use it any differently? Wow. It's almost sickening to see the inversion of the principles of software freedom that Apple is able to get away with and not get criticized in the fanboi community. Geeks have been lambasting Microsoft for merely having proprietary formats for 20 years. They even got fined for billions of dollars just for not documenting their protocols…
Wow. It's almost sickening to see the inversion of the principles of software freedom that Apple is able to get away with and not get criticized in the fanboi community. Irrelevant. Regardless of whether I am a fanboi, my question stands. Geeks have been lambasting Microsoft for merely having proprietary formats for 20 years. Yes, but also irrelevant. I don't like Microsoft (or any company's) proprietary formats, but…
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That's a valid question. I tend to take it as a given, considering that the iPhone is essentially a miniature computer and the past decade or so has thrived on customizable, hackable personal computers. Apple has always wanted to assert extra control on the products they ship. With Mac's, they've controlled the hardware. Now they're trying to control the software. Imagine a version of OS X where every application had…
Imagine a version of OS X where every application had to be approved. Does that not strike you as horribly wrong? No. "I don't like it" and "wrong" are not interchangeable.
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> The iPhone is sold as is, why should we expect to use it any differently? Wow. It's almost sickening to see the inversion of the principles of software freedom that Apple is able to get away with and not get criticized in the fanboi community. Geeks have been lambasting Microsoft for merely having proprietary formats for 20 years. They even got fined for billions of dollars just for not documenting their protocols…
Wow. It's almost sickening to see the inversion of the principles of software freedom that Apple is able to get away with and not get criticized in the fanboi community. Irrelevant. Regardless of whether I am a fanboi, my question stands. Geeks have been lambasting Microsoft for merely having proprietary formats for 20 years. Yes, but also irrelevant. I don't like Microsoft (or any company's) proprietary formats, but…
This is the crux of where we disagree. I don't think you'll see many people claiming that Apple doesn't have a right to do what they've been doing, but the fact that something should be allowed does not imply that it should be considered acceptable.
Flash pop-up ads on web sites, for example, are completely unacceptable. If some web site pulls that crap with me, I stay the hell away from it. If I have to use that web site for some reason, I'll grouse about it. I wouldn't try to deprive those web sites of their right to use Flash in obnoxious ways, but I sure won't stand for it.
Similarly, Apple's behavior is unpleasant and disturbing and it should be treated as such. This is one of the big advantages of the Android platform, and why I will not get an iPhone: openness. Freedom, if that doesn't sound too hokey. It's important to me.
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iPhone owners should be able to install whatever they want on the device they purchased. Why? It's such an entrenched idea, but you don't get to rewrite paragraphs of books, or scenes in films, or suits in a pack of playing cards or the firmware in your alarm clock. The iPhone is sold as is, why should we expect to use it any differently?
> The iPhone is sold as is, why should we expect to use it any differently? Wow. It's almost sickening to see the inversion of the principles of software freedom that Apple is able to get away with and not get criticized in the fanboi community. Geeks have been lambasting Microsoft for merely having proprietary formats for 20 years. They even got fined for billions of dollars just for not documenting their protocols…