iPhone vs BlackBerry 9000

Glad to see Blackberry taking style tips from Apple. Now if they could only make their OS as diverse and easy to use as the iPhone, they'll still have a fightin' chance.

Dvorak: The iPhone is Not a Computer

Cranky ol' John Dvorak has this one right, I think. I wish people would stop calling the iPhone a computer. The iPhone is a powerful portable device, but it lacks the functionality of a computer, mainly in the realms of input and creativity.

I went without Internet for a couple weeks and found myself severely limited in what I could do with my iPhone. Anyways, its wrong to compare a desktop to the iPhone, as they're both meant for two different purposes.

"What's worse is that people leave these little devices everywhere. And, generally speaking, they leave them all over the place unlocked and with limited encryption enabled. The ease with which someone can steal these things and rob the data is a little ridiculous. I cannot tell you how often I've shouted the words, "Hey, you left your phone!"

And, yes, the kids are all looking for alternative platforms, but what do kids know? Seriously, what do they know?"

Link to article.

Ars Technica Reviews Gelskins for the iPhone

Is it me or are girls obsessed with dressing up their iPods and iPhones? I think the iPhone looks best without any skins or cases whatsoever, but that's just me. I also like my women like that too.

Link to review.

Wired's Latest Article on Apple

Wired has just posted online their latest look at Apple, "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong." The author, editor Leander Kahne, has a new book coming out in a few weeks, Inside Steve's Brain. The article is worth a read, if not entirely accurate. And check out some commentary around the web.

Video: iPhone Compared Side by Side to Chinese HiPhone

12 Future iPhone Apps from Read Write Web

Is it just me, or are these the most boring dream apps imaginable? Read.

Dial By Photo

Cool video of an app I hope can be ported over to the SDK.

Possible Scenario for "No Background Processes" VoIP Problem With iPhone

In my previous post, I pointed out the problems of using VoIP on the iPhone as a secondary phone at home. The application would be severely limited for incoming calls because of the "no applications running in the background" rule. If someone calls my VoIP, my iPhone won't "ring" unless only the VoIP program running on my iPhone (will it run in sleep mode?). That is not a feasible solution. One possible scenario is that the VoIP software running on a computer in my home sends a text message to my iPhone saying so and so at this number is trying to call, please launch the VoIP app. Although, by the time the text message arrives, the person would probably have hung up. However, the phone number would still be there.

A better solution would involve Apple adding notifications between a home computer and an iPhone. So in this scenario, the VoIP program is running on my computer and notifies iTunes a call is coming in. iTunes, in turn, notifies my iPhone, and my iPhone asks if I want to launch the associated VoIP app. These types of notifications are not possible yet, but something that Apple could easily implement. Notifications could be expanded for email alerts, iChat messages, and even severe weather alerts.

iPhone SDK: Programs Won't Run in the Background

Silicon Alley Insider and others are throwing a little cold water on the iPhone SDK by pointing out a very important limitation of the SDK:

"Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. (p. 16)"

That is really bad news. That means my dream VoIP scenario of receiving calls at home won't work because I'd always have to launch the program and keep it open while at home--too much of a bother.

Read. Silicon Alley Insider.
Read. TechCrunch.

VoIP on the iPhone

One nugget from the SDK launch that may have flown under your radar is when Steve Jobs said that Apple will allow VoIP apps on the iPhone, but only using WiFi. I am very excited about this, as I get poor cell reception in my apartment. I can instead rely on my trusty WiFi signal for phone calls at home. Imagine being able to answer calls, both VoIP and cellular, using just one device, my iPhone. This SDK is a game changer because of how it ties into the combination of superior hardware and OS of the iPhone, something that even Google's Android can't hope to offer (they don't control the hardware) or compete with in terms of overall quality and user experience.

*Update* I guess it didn't slip "under the radar." It made it to the front page of Digg.

Robert Scoble: Steve Jobs "Lying" About Flash

Former Microsoft employee Robert Scoble says he has a source that says Steve Jobs is being a liar liar about flash:

"Today I got a note from someone I know who works closely with Adobe and Apple. He saw my “Apple stabs Adobe in the Back” post and wanted to give me some details about what’s going on between Adobe and Apple. He says that he’s seen Flash running on an iPhone in a lab and that it’s been running for quite a while and that it’s not a technical issue that caused Steve Jobs to go public about not putting Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone. He wrote “Geez - my Chumby with half the CPU horsepower can run Flash8/AS2.”"

So what if it can run flash? It also runs World of Warcraft. Jobs said it runs too slowly, so how does the above information make him a liar?

Apple: 10 Million Phone "During" 2008

There's been a lot of back and forth whether Apple claimed they would sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 (including those ~4 million sold last year), or 10 million during 2008 alone. Both Silicon Alley Insider and Piper Jaffray got the same official word from Apple:

"We spent a lot of time parsing his comments and those of other Apple (AAPL) officials, then figured out an easier way to solve the mystery: Ask Apple directly. Their answer: Apple plans to sell 10 million iPhones during calendar 2008 -- not including last year's sales. And if you don't trust us, check with Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who says in a note today that he asked Apple the same question, and got the same answer."

Fortune Magazine's Steve Job Interview

A few interesting iPhone tidbits from Fortune Magazine's interview of Steve Jobs:

"We had a different enclosure design for this iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one Monday morning, I said, 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.'

And we pushed the reset button. We went through all of the zillions of models we'd made and ideas we'd had. And we ended up creating what you see here as the iPhone, which is dramatically better. It was hell because we had to go to the team and say, 'All this work you've [done] for the last year, we're going to have to throw it away and start over, and we're going to have to work twice as hard now because we don't have enough time.' And you know what everybody said? 'Sign us up.'"

They might have said, "Sign us up," but they were probably thinking something else. Like, "You son of a ..."

Job's "do it over until it's right" approach is something only companies as rich in cash as Apple is can afford to do, especially on a project as big as the iPhone. Yet I am glad, as are Apple shareholders, that Jobs took the time to get it right before releasing it. They could have released a different phone and still made tons of cash in the meantime because it was an Apple product. That's one stone in the good karma pile for Apple, at least in my book.

"It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with. And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real question. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did."

What I find curious is that when they were thinking about putting OS X onto a phone, where did the touchscreen part of it come into play? Did the touchscreen phone idea come first, and touchscreen OS X would need to be created from scratch? Or was the software and hardware already sitting around in some form, and just needed to be molded into the iPhone?

The article is a good read, despite Fortune Magazine spreading it across 15 web pages. I copy & pasted it into a text document first.

Apple Shareholder Meeting

Comment on Apple's Shareholder meeting from MacUser:

"CEO Steve “the Hammer” Jobs said Apple had no plans to initiate stock buybacks or issue dividends, despite a bank balance of around $18.5 billion—that money will instead go to the construction of a giant statue of Steve Jobs that will stand astride San Francisco bay, holding an iPod aloft to the masses."

iPhone in the Kremlin

The successor to Vladimir Putin, Dmitri Medvedev, carries an iPhone, as well as many of Russia's political elite. Well, if Karl Rove carries one, you know the Ruskies got to clip up as well. Who said the cold war was over?

Link to article.

Karl Rove with his iPhone.

Blogger's Rant: From iPod Hater to Apple Agnostic to iPhone Owner

Check out this Dennis Leary-esque rant about everything from iPod hating to finally deciding to buy an iPhone. I have to admit, I went through a couple years as an iPod hater as well. I never thought they were an attractive device until the first black Nanos were released, and I thought iTunes was a piss poor way to manage a music library. I like iPods now, but iTunes still can be pretty frustrating.