Yeah, but funny advertising from Nokia. I give it a nod from the Apple corner.

I have reservations about the keyboard. I haven't seen any video that shows typing an SMS. But I'd be happy with Nokia-style predictive text on the numeric keypad.

Also a concern is the fact it is not open to third party developers. Though I suppose this might change if it bombs and lack of a killer app is cited as a reason.

Er, "Clitoris phones"?
Punchline by PM

you have reservations about the keyboard. but you havent seen the keyboard .

great comment. perhaps you should inform yourself. the sms facility and keyboard use is shown in the keynote. on the apple site or also linked to earlier in this thread.

keyboard seems to work good to me.

i also dont understand why no 3rd party dev is a "concern"? apple might allow third party approved widgets and stuff like that, as they do with mac os x, but why should they go further than that anyway?

it runs OS X so I do believe 3rd party development isn't an issue.

And Jobs does rattle off a couple of messages during his keynote in SF. Interestingly, for a device awaiting FCC approval, it can make calls

Hi,

Look at the dev communities around the Windows Mobile and the Symbian platforms. With both of them you are able to install either 3rd parties applications or relatively easily write your own applications.

The iphone is not aimed at business market but in that market it is vita that you can install applications that have been created in house or ones that have been purchased. For example, sales force applications.

The iphone is aimed at the consumer market so it one of the apple phone annoyances but probably not the biggest one in that market segment.

Martin

Are you an Apple fanboy?
I didn't notice it during the keynote. I'll go and check. I'd thank you for the pointer but as your tone is a little rude I won't.

Have you tried one of the keyboards? I'd rather use one myself before making a judgement. Thus, I have reservations.

To me the iPhone is more a computer than a smart phone. After all, it's got OS X (MACH3 and a FreeBSD personality) and Core Animation, rather than, say, Symbian with Flash.

My understanding is Apple say they're not allowing for any 3rd party development. No 3rd party stuff makes it a closed platform. On my iMAC I have replaced some of the Apple-supplied things with things that suit my tastes more. So I would be stuck with whatever Apple decide to install.

I'm not used to closed utility platforms (except for games consoles). So for me that closedness is a concern.

Hi BeastOfBodmin,

I think you make a good set of points. However, where is the surprise about Apple it has always been one of the most closed, proprietary companies out there so it is not a great surprise that it is following the same traditional with the Apple phone. Where are the Apple Clones ? Where does the Apple operating system run except on Apple hardware ? The thing people love about Macs is the integrated experience and how you get so many bundled programmes with the operating system.

Also look at how iTunes is getting into trouble in France and Norway because of restrictive practices.

With Steve Jobs it is all about control. Just look at how they sue bloggers who print rumours about Apple.

It is all fun and certainly not that important

Martin

No surprise as such. I was expressing a preference, is all.

I agree. But it's not for everyone. With my iMAC I'm using maybe 80 - 85% of stuff supplied. I don't use quicktime because I can do better than QT Pro without paying. I don't use Safari. I use X11, perl with CPAN (a bugger to sort out on the MAC). I use iTunes, but I don't have an iPod. I have a different model of MP3 player and some public domain software that lets me integrate well enough with iTunes. I've upgraded the apache server, installed MySQL, etc. etc.

If Apple were a monopoly in the PC world instead of a niche player, they'd no doubt get into the same depth of hot water that, say, Microsoft do. Apple "get away with it" because they're not big enough to distort the market to the detriment of consumers as a whole.

Check out this IPhone link:

http://www.totallycrap.com/videos/vi...ion_on_mad_tv/

Interesting...

The first IPHONE clone is a fact (if its not a hoax)...

Sorry, the article is in Dutch but the pictures are universal

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/46139/Eer...opgedoken.html

More pictures here:

http://www.meizu.com/bbs/dispbbs.asp...eplyID=1590512

Conan had an IPhone commercial, now on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xXNoB3t8vM

funny!

krlock3

very funny!

Hi BeastofBodmin,

Thanks for your reply. I dont know that im an apple fanboy, as you so politely point out.

I consider myself a fan of what i think to be cool techology or gadgets. Your implication that I am favouring a particular company, whether the product is good or not, is neither accurate nor particularly complimentary either.

I didnt mean to be rude to you in my last post. I just was slightly irritated that someone would say that they are concerned about something that they havent seen, and yet, they could easily find out about it on the internet. Shall we put that behind us now? Did you yet find time to have a look on youtube or the keynote on apples site? What do you think now?

My second point is this. It also seems that you are quite a tech head from the list of mods you tend to make to your computing equipment. I can see why someone like you would feel that third party development is important for you. However, I think that for most people, it will be more important that the phone simply works well, and that the included feature set is both comprehensive enough and functional. I think that from what i have seen, that is likely to be the case with the iphone. I have the feeling though, that somewhere down the line, someone will crack the software and you will be able to do the things that you want.

Finally, I would point out again that for a 1st generation product, the iphone is looking pretty cool to me. Remember the 1st gen ipod?

Then I take it back the fanboy taunt. Counter-rudeness, if you will.

I fired up iTunes and got me the 1.45Gb MacWorld podcast. And I watched the whole thing from end to end. The keyboard demo seemed realistic, and therefore one handed and slow. I think predictive text would be faster. No tactile feedback, hmmm.

I'm also a bit of a luddite in that I don't like to pick a gadget for the sake of it. I consider value for money and utility to be important factors. Hence the attraction of free software.

Two points well made. The lack of an open platform means it won't have much appeal as a business platform. Not that iPods sell to businesses (as opposed to businesspersons). Maybe the iPhone will cause a stampede away from the very, very nasty user interfaces offered by the likes of Nokia and Motorola.

Of course my observations are from my point of view. I never got around to mentioning that as a phone, from a European (never mind a Japanese) point of view it sucks. To be successful in Europe I think Apple would have to make a 3G version, and revise the data plan. The US is still rather backward in their "cell phone" infrastructure. I, by the way, care nothing for using a mobile phone for anything other than making voice calls and tapping out texts. I have a Nokia 6030 which does not have a camera, but unfortunately does have a colour screen and a very sucky sort of nipple thing between the screen and the numeric pad. I also have a Razr I don't use and haven't got around to throwing away. Razr's text system absolutely sucks.

To be honest I can't remember that far back. Although I was probably still using MD, and at the time the cost of an iPod vs its specifications ruled it out for me. The same thing happened when I ditched MD and got me a 60Gb MP3 player for a trip round the world. I still have it, although the damn thing is an inch thick and the menu system sucks. But as I have it on random all the time I don't care.

The iPod wasn't worth the extra £100 for 30Gb less disk space and (at the time) being locked in to a proprietary data delivery system.

All that said, it does look very cool indeed. Even though it sucks as a (European) phone. Not that I care about all the rubbish that is crammed into phones at the expense of ergonomics and battery life.

It really should come in a version that is an 80Gb video iPod with the phone strapped on, rather than being a phone + iPod nano. The platform should be open. I'm reticent about the keyboard. Both because predictive text would be faster, and to me it's more a computer than a phone anyway.

I also think that the 1st gen memory size will be problematic for many who are used to much larger capacity music players.

To explain this a little bit to those who might not know, you can use the analogy of the ipod nano against the ipod video.

the nano uses flash memory... this is solid state memory... think of a memory stick in your digital camera. the ipod video uses a traditional hard drive, whirring spinning disc like thing the same as you have in your personal computer.

at the moment, its not so easy to produce flash memory with a lot of capacity... eg in mp3 players flash memory goes up to about 8gb at the moment. thats why, in order to get a large memory device, you are still stuck with the traditional hard drive. But the spinning machinery of a traditional hard drive takes space... thats why the ipod video is bigger, or rather why the nano can be so small.

so... apple chose flash memory for the iphone. thats great.. it makes sense to me. flash memory is going to develop over time. Its pretty conceivable that within a few years, your laptop or pc might be using flash instead of the traditional. so, as i have said before, apple will likely produce a number of iphones over time (over the years!). the logical consequence of this will be a larger amount of memory in each version of the iphone.


on the other hand, one thing im looking forward to from the first moment is proper, not messy integration with my mac computer at home.... with my contacts and ical data.

And in timely fashion, i just came across the following article on apple insider....


Apple to move all iPods to flash memory?
Apple may cancel future hard drive-based iPods in favour of flash memory, an analyst claims
Macworld staff


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apple may this year begin to field an all-flash memory range of iPods, dropping hard drives from the higher-capacity models.

A report on AppleInsider cites Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora, who believes Apple will start the transition to an all-flash iPod range toward the end of the year.


He also believe such a move will enable Apple to offer a wider range of models and to deliver vastly improved battery life in its range of media players.

"Our checks indicate that Apple is considering cancelling its next generation HDD-based iPod design, with the form factor refresh involving a move to NAND flash memory," he wrote.

I don't think I've ever seen a more hyped product. To read some of the magazines you'd think it was here and ready to buy, not something that's maybe going to be released in September (and probably later).

There's nothing particularly revolutionary about it - it's just Apple's take on a PDA/phone. However, because the iPod was such a hit everyone assumes that a phone will be as polished as the current generation of iPod too.

Given that they have no experience in making phones and the last PDA they made was well over a decade ago I'll wait and see what they do with it. They _could_ make something good but I'm just about to upgrade to a HTC Hermes type phone which I expect to last me at least 2 years before upgrading again.


Gav

32GB SANDisk flash memory drives were announce earlier this year. I have not seen a real price, but the consensus in the news sites seems to indicate $600 more than a laptop HDD. So that's something like $800.

I don't know how long it would take to bring the prices down.

If Apple are going to replace HDDs with flash RAM, and soon, I don't see how that can be done without both a reduction in capacity and a price hike.

I wonder what the capacity utilisation figures are for an iPod? Maybe the reduction isn't a problem.

Flash RAM suffers from "wear and tear" problems. The memory cells can only be overwritten so many times before they fail. But again, unless I misunderstand how this works, one would have to do a lot of adding and removing of files to worry about the MTBF.

But such a thing would substantially improve battery life.