The NEXT next iPhone needs to really be your "personal computer". I imagine a time when the only computer you have will be your mobile device. How this device acts will depend on what you dock it with. Maybe when you're on the couch you'll slide it into a tablet-like device and you instantly run in tablet mode, with more apps and functionality becoming available to you in that mode.
Maybe when you're in your home office you'll dock it with a keyboard, mouse, and two monitors, and use it as your workstation.
The point is, I look forward to the day when physical device size no longer really correlates to usable power or storage space, and THAT means that, barring supercomputers and servers, most people will have just their "phone". What that device acts like will be based on which I/O peripherals you plug it in to.
> The NEXT next iPhone needs to really be your "personal computer".
Would you allow your main personal computer to have such a closed system that you aren't even allow to install unapproved software on it? I agree that this device will essentially be your interface to the digital and remote world. Can you really allow a company to censor what you can do with that? The current App store model just doesn't 'scale' to this scenario. To me the only choice is to look to other platforms until Apple changes their policy.
You're allowed to install unapproved software. You just can't jailbreak your computer and then expect to download Apple's new updates, most of which rely on their streamlined system's not being broken.
I find that I have everything I need on my iPod touch as-is. A friend of mine disagreed, jailbroke his iPhone, and he's pretty damn happy with what he's got.
I think you are mistaking 'allowed' for 'able to'. I can't see how it would be called 'jailbreaking' if it was somehow sanctioned. It is like saying 'you are free to leave - if you can escape'.
> You just can't jailbreak your computer and then expect to download Apple's new updates
Image saying this in terms of your desktop. It doesn't make sense. There is no technical reason why why you should need to jailbreak your phone to be able to chose which applications to run on it. Receiving updates and using free software is not technically incompatible.
typical mac users wouldnt know the difference between an open and closed system because they dont do anything on their device except what it comes with or is sold through official channels.
Most of my Mac-using friends use Adium and Firefox. Some of them even understand what plugins are. I've got a friend or two who've skinned their Mac, though why anybody would dislike Leopard's version of Aqua rather baffles me.
Typical Windows users don't know their device comes with official programs because every machine is loaded with crap. No Windows user within my acquaintance uses Notepad as their basic writing tool. They think Word is a default because it's so common. Meanwhile, I know a lot of Mac users who use TextEdit for everything. I only use Pages on rare occasions.
Typical Linux users are fringe to begin with, but of the casual computer users I know most couldn't tell the Ubuntu app directory from the App Store. Meanwhile, I can run quite a lot of Linux stuff on my Mac because it supports many of the same functions of Linux.
I know a number of Mac users and not a single one of them fit your stereotype. I also know a much larger number of Windows users, and strangely a large percentage of them do fit your stereotype.
A pretty safe set of assumptions. Considering that Apple shops around for chips like all other smartphone manufacturers, and that phones like the BB Bold have had 600+Mhz CPUs for quite a while, it'd be pretty silly to bet against that.
And lord knows the iPhone needs a speed bump. That slick UI and effects comes at a price and its almost embarrassing when you want to write down someone's phone number, but you have to tell them to wait 3 seconds while the contacts app loads.
The worst thing about it is that the interface lag problems seem to have gotten significantly worse since launch. I've even tried re-installing the firmware, backing up only my contacts, but it now seems common to wait sometimes as long as 7-10 seconds for an app to load, or up to experience up to around a five second lag in keyboard input, especially in search boxes in Safari and YouTube.
Personally, I think the speed is "good enough". If they can up that without compromizing battery life, then great. But if it's a choice between battery and cpu, I'd take battery every time.
The most irritating thing is that with 3g enabled+GPS, the battery drains ridiculously quickly, and you have to enable/disable 3g yourself manually. Why can't it just do that itself? :/
Android with the Locale app does this (lets you toggle features as a function of battery state), but I've heard that Google is actually removing the API calls for toggling GPS in Cupcake (Android v1.5). I'm not entirely sure why this is supposed to be a good thing
Supposedly, there was confusion about what exactly "turning off GPS" meant, because on the G1, you "enable" GPS, but it doesn't actually do anything unless an app queries for geolocation data -- it doesn't drain the battery just because GPS is enabled. So you'd disable it and wouldn't have to worry that there was some app running that would drain your battery because it is using GPS. But there is a UI problem, somewhat exposed with the Maps app, with when you have it disabled, the app detects that and tells you that you'll need to enable it. Except the wording isn't straightforward, and the app doesn't handle turning it on itself (which may be a good or bad thing, if you've got it disabled in the preferences). G1's GPS setting does need some work, but it's good that it's getting some attention now that location based apps are increasing in popularity.
I suspect that my G1 has a bad GPS module because I find that when I have it disabled, I can get a somewhat accurate measurement of my current location via cell towers or whatever, however if I have it enabled, it can't figure out where I am at all (at least not within the amount of time that I am willing to wait for it-- 1 minute or so). So I leave it disabled pretty much all the time in an attempt to keep the battery life long.
If it were up to me (and I must admit I have not looked at how the location API works), I would have location services return an imprecise value quickly (via cell towers or wifi or whatever) and refine it as the GPS came online. Sensor fusion is still an active research topic, but there are at least some simple heuristics that could be used if it was inefficient to make a full Bayesian inference.
I seemed to have a similar problem a few months ago. I think there is also confusion as to the "location" settings -- there doesn't seem to be one setting that turns off all location querying ability, so you can have "use wireless networks" on, and "enable GPS satellites" off, and it still works, but the application calls it GPS (and the icon looks like a satellite).
I think it cleared up for me when I turned on both location settings (use wireless networks and enable GPS satellites). I have not noticed a significant drain on the battery due to having both on, but I rarely use location based apps anyway.
It seems to still work correctly in 1.5 with Locale on my phone, but I honestly haven't paid too close attention to it. Perhaps they're planning this change for after 1.5?
The iPod touch already has a 600Mhz processor in it and the user experience is pretty much the same. I wouldn't expect anything mindblowing from a 50% speed boost.
The Next iphone will still be one generation behind the next crop of smartphones from HTC or other manufacturers. At about the same time they introduce video someone else will be introducing a screen close to the 1024 pixels wide. After the others catch up to their UI methods the only distinguishing feature they will have will be the app store.
Haven't we learned our lesson? The first iPhone came out with EDGE data only, while the market was just starting to see 3G handsets. Yet the iPhone absolutely trounced the sales of said handsets, and accounted for far more data usage from its users (read: people were actually using the data features).
This continued worship of pointless technical specifications is why the competition has failed to catch up to Apple. Your average consumer doesn't care how much RAM it has, or how fast the CPU is, or how many pixels across the screen has (beyond "ooh that's crisp"), they just want a phone that works.
And overwhelmingly in the smartphone market, the iPhone is still the only phone I would say "works". The BB comes close, and Nokia needs to hang its head in shame.
I'm surprised you don't mention Windows Mobile. I'm not is the US. Can you guys actually use WinMo phones in the US? Do you have access to something like the 'HTC Touch HD' over there? This isn't a rhetorical question I just don't know. I'm not saying it is better. The iPhone UI is better and will be for some time. But I'm surprised you don't even mention it because in terms of another platforms with numerous apps available, WinMo is the main one in my 'rest of the world' view.
Edit : ...and android
Before the iPhone pretty much all mobile devices were intended as 'business' devices. By being the first ones to really design a smartphone from the ground up as a 'person oriented' device Apple were able to get ahead. But in my view that advantage is unlikely to persist for very long. When the UI gap is closed features such as 'being able to load programs faster' or 'being able to play a more realistic game' or 'being able to view a web pages the same as on a desktop' will start to be the differentiating factor.
I didn't mention WinMo because I personally do not have much experience with them - the last time I played with a WinMo phone was very briefly, so I don't think it's wise to judge the user experience on it.
Ditto for Android, though my short few-minutes experience with it was somewhat negative, but that's mostly due to the obtuse hardware design of the G1 (recessed touchscreen?).
I do agree, though, that the UI gap is being closed at least somewhat - which is great news. It's about time that usability started being a buzzword in the tech industry and started being a real focus. Bear in mind, however, that "being able to load programs faster" and "being able to play more realistic games" are qualitative measures, which was one of the points I tried making with my original post: consumers care about qualitative things, not quantitative. The screen looks sharp? Great. Nobody cares about resolution. Likewise, the phone feels snappy? Awesome - still nobody cares about CPU speed.
I do get the point about qualitative vs quantitative. In the case of screen resolution and web browsing I think they come closer than in other cases. Most web pages are design to work on screens of 1024 so presumably this width on a phone would allow you to see the page exactly as intended. Admittedly it would be pretty small but I think of would still be a big advantage.
I'd still like for someone to let me know if you can get WinMo phones in the US? Everything in this whole crazy iPhone saga would start to fall into place for me if that was the case. I can still remember watching that first Jobs speech and wondering what all the fuss was about when the trusty imate sitting in my pocket could already run arbitrary software.
Yes, we've had WinMo phones for longer than anyone else; we had them at least as far back as 2003, but smartphones in general never really caught on anywhere except with business people, until the iPhone came around and Jobs made it sound like he had invented the smartphone...
No just the particular software they want. Whatever they want. Why should anyone else be able to stop them? You don't agree with the concept of freedom axod? Who needs to wake up?
I think the popularity of the app store shows that people do care about downloadable apps. It is a good thing that it takes the hassle out of the process. But this doesn't necessitate not allowing technologies such as flash to be installed. Or what if you wanted to use a different browser? With web apps latency will always be a limiting factor.
Certain designers have tried to catch up to Apple for a decade, now.
the only distinguishing feature they will have will be the app store.
...which has sold a billion applications in less than a year, and whose designers are among the most talented on the planet. The quality of my iPod apps are on par with or better than my OS X apps, and that's a high bar.
Wow you iPhone guys sure are sensitive. I see this a playing out much like the Mac from 84 onwards with regards to the UI.
> ...which has sold a billion applications in less than a year
Actually this is downloads not sales. Most estimates are that about 95% percent of downloads are free so that would make about 50M apps sold. Readers may want to consider why they are upvoting a story that contains false information and downvoting the story that corrects it. They may want to ask themselves 'just what has happened to my critical faculties with regards to the iphone'. Or not.
Of course other platforms that actually allow you to install software without the approval of their 'app store' can't trumpet numbers like these cause they don't know about every single app their users are installing. It's called freedom.
The Mac in 84 onwards was run by a man who thought Apple had to sacrifice its design integrity to succeed. Since then it has been placed back in Jobs' hands, and he's taken a decade to fill it with people who believe in his design philosophy. Note that the iPod has maintained its virtual monopoly thanks to design alone. So far, no competitor has arisen to match the iPhone. I'd love it if one appeared, but it hasn't happened so far.
You seem to think that design progress is a given. Look at Microsoft for the counterexample. They have progressed their design several major times since Windows 95, and each one has taken steps back. The fact that window borders are now twice as huge as they were a decade ago, or that gradients have been added where gradients are not needed, makes me think that the people designing Windows simply don't know what about Apple's design appeals to people.
Phone design seems similarly hedged. I play with every major phone that comes out, because I want somebody to get Apple scared enough to turn more competitive. So far, nothing done. I don't know why companies feel the need to place meaningless gradients for backgrounds, or shade things in pretty ways that reduce functionality, but they all do, and they seem to think it's helping. Apple's not perfect here - there's a lot about their designs that I dislike, especially regarding their iPod classic - but they at least understand what they're supposed to be doing.
Most estimates are that about 95% percent of downloads are free so that would make about 50M apps sold.
Apologies for saying "sold". You're right. I happen to think that 50M sales are very impressive nonetheless. I also don't think that free downloads are as easy to come by as you seem to think. Most people are averse to downloading software. I don't download free things to my cell phone, and I'm a geek. That Apple has made app downloading as simplified as they have is a testament to their systems.
Wow you iPhone guys sure are sensitive.
Of course other platforms that actually allow you to install software without the approval of their 'app store' can't trumpet numbers like these cause they don't know about every single app their users are installing. It's called freedom.
I'll assume you've heard all the counterarguments I want to provide right now, and simply choose to ignore them. If you want to be an ass online you're allowed.
So the fact that I hold a contrary opinion is being an ass?
No. The fact that you responded snottily makes you an ass. You're allowed to disagree, but it irks me when people get smug over a difference of opinion.
Well I find attitude of many Apple fans to be smug and snotty. That total assumption of unrivalled superiority is reflected in your comments
> Certain designers have tried to catch up to Apple for a decade, now.
> So far, no competitor has arisen to match the iPhone.
But of course you aren't just an unsophisticated Apple fanboy. No. You are uniquely positioned to see where Apple are going wrong as well. But they..
> at least understand what they're supposed to be doing.
To me this represents smugness.
Some people see the quality of 'smugness' as being magnified by correctness (i.e. the number of apps sold). I actually see it as being magnified by overconfidence in unsupported positions (most of your statements). If anyone is being ass it is you.
That total assumption of unrivalled superiority is reflected in your comments
There is no phone that has as much popular attention as the iPhone. Not the Palm Pre or the Blackberry Storm or Google's Android, and those are the closest competitors at the moment. That's not just because Apple has a good publicity machine. It's because they're the company that changed the game with their phone, and no company has yet to come out from under their shadow.
Certain designers have tried to catch up to Apple for a decade, now.
If you would like, I can spend a few hours fully documenting just what makes OS X better than Windows from a designer's perspective. I rather hoped that the arguments of operating system were at least settled from a viewpoint of designer quality. If you want to argue about Apple's being a closed and expensive system, go ahead, and there are good points to be made there, but if you have an aesthetics-focused bone in your body don't attempt to argue with just how superb OS X is until there's a decent competitor.
To me this represents smugness.
Apple designs systems that get out of your way, and that make tasks beautiful. The two other companies being mentioned on this thread are Microsoft and Google. Neither one has that same set of policies. Google is focused on "optimization," which is kind of a bullshit term when you take it as far as their company takes it. Microsoft... I don't know what Microsoft's design philosophy is, but it's a bad one. It baffles me every time they reveal a new system. Apple, meanwhile, has somehow managed to keep their minimalist aesthetic central for a decade now. That represents such a long length of time that I'm convinced Apple actually means to be minimalist and elegant, and that none of their designs are flukes. (Even their mediocre designs, such as Safari 4, have a few brilliant ideas apiece - in Safari 4, it's the grayed-out menu that shows which of your tabs are onscreen and not.) So my comment was saying this: Apple is not perfect, and right now they have parts of their company that to an outsider seem completely batshit insane, but those are isolated parts; the company as a whole is still healthier than any other tech company out there.
But of course you aren't just an unsophisticated Apple fanboy.
If anyone is being ass it is you.
Here's why I'm calling you an ass. It's not that you disagree with me, or that you dislike Apple. It's that in the middle of presenting your argument you feel the need to insert snide comments referring to me as an Apple fanboy.
So from your original comment:
Wow you iPhone guys sure are sensitive.
They may want to ask themselves 'just what has happened to my critical faculties with regards to the iphone'.
If I responded to you calling you a crude unsophisticate because you don't appreciate Apple's philosophy, then I'd be an ass as well. As it is, I think that Apple's products are the best in the market, and certainly the most critically popular. But when I make that argument, it's made without insulting people that don't use Apple products. You chose to take potshots at me while making your specious arguments, which you still have spent no time backing up, and so you're an asshole. But I won't kid myself into thinking you didn't know that. So this discussion is over.
> You chose to take potshots at me while making your specious arguments, which you still have spent no time backing up, and so you're an asshole. But I won't kid myself into thinking you didn't know that. So his discussion is over.
LOL. It's a little sad that this discussion has degenerated to this 'youtubesque' level. I don't totally blame you - it takes two to tango. I'll reserve the option to reply to your more serious points when I'm sober.
Something consumers have, IMHO, overwhelmingly proven that they do not demand from their cell phones.
The tech industry if full of people building products for themselves, as opposed to the people they are trying to sell to. This obsession with CPU and RAM specifications, open access, etc, is just a symptom of this.
> Something consumers have, IMHO, overwhelmingly proven that they do not demand from their cell phones.
I think you are generalising from one case. I'm sure when the Model T ford was the best seller people would have been arguing along similar lines.
> The tech industry if full of people building products for themselves, as opposed to the people they are trying to sell to. This obsession with CPU and RAM specifications, open access, etc, is just a symptom of this.
Time and time again people have predicted that ordinary people will have no use for certain technical features. Right from personal computers through to the internet and mobile phones they have been consistently been proven wrong. Remember Bill Gates 'Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!'?
Of course most users just want 'better stuff' but thinking that this is going to result from reversion to a unipolar 'Model T' type marketplace is, in my view, mistaken.
Maybe when you're in your home office you'll dock it with a keyboard, mouse, and two monitors, and use it as your workstation.
The point is, I look forward to the day when physical device size no longer really correlates to usable power or storage space, and THAT means that, barring supercomputers and servers, most people will have just their "phone". What that device acts like will be based on which I/O peripherals you plug it in to.
A guy can dream...