IceSamurai.net

Last night, I watched a recorded interview that Steve Jobs had with Nightline on Tuesday night (9th).

Pretty boring interview, what was really odd was seeing so much of the top of Steve’s head.  Half the interview he had his head down as if in serious thought… Public Speaking 101 refresher course?

Anyway, in the interview he spouted on about not allowing 3rd party apps for the Apple iPhone (or maybe the new name that is circulating on the rumor-mill sites, “iTouch Mobile”).  He went off on a FUD rant with this:  “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider’s network, says Jobs. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

What a load of shit.  Given that programmers have been writing apps for Palm/Symbian/WinPC for the past few years, and I have yet to have heard about a cell network going down due to said applications.  What a load of pure FUD.

I like Apple, I like my PowerBook, I like my iPod.  I like my Nokia phone that runs Symbian and the fact that I can write applications for it (go Java).  Apple keeps this crap up, I won’t upgrade.  Besides, until they correct what I’ve mentioned before, I probably wouldn’t have upgraded anyway.

Steve, leave the FUD to Bill Gates.

Steve Jobes knows Best (Ars Technica)

Well, this plain sucks, and is really stupid.  Best part about smart phones and PDAs, is the ability to develop applications to run on them.

If Apple is worried about crappy performance due to a 3rd party application, they should just create an [optional] Apple certification process that applications can go thru.  Then if someone bitches about their iPhone’s performance, they simply can ask: Do you currently have non-certified programs installed?  If the answer is yes, they simply instruct them to remove it and try it again, then if the performance is still lacking, then they can take it up.

Though, I do think that after the exclusivity agreement between Apple and Cingular runs out, this will business model will vaporize.  Although I wouldn’t be surprized if the iPhone SDK isn’t included in the freebie development kit.  Sure, they’ll include basic app support (like widgets, as it’s one of the biggest 3rd party efforts for normal OS X) for the freebie and student ($99/yr.) ADC tier, but a full blown iPhone SDK will probably only be included in the select ($500/yr.) or premium ($3,500/yr.) ADC tiers.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) article: Apple VPs confirm no 3rd party iPhone apps

Yeah, like every other Apple fanboy I was sitting there salivating and waiting for Steve Jobs to announce this puppy.

Damn smooth interface design, including the wide screen and the accelerometer and other gizmos that make this thing so great.  Still, there are a few things I’d like to see.

• [user] replaceable battery
• the camera, not sure if it has a flash, doesn’t look like it.  If not, it should make the Apple emblem the flash element
• Very cool to run on the international GSM [and maybe GPRS] standards systems.  Given that they are going to market this in Asia come 2008, where in Japan G2 systems (e.g. GSM/GPRS) are on the way out, the iPhone will undoubtedly be a G3 phone (where as of 2006 G3 phone use was at about 40%).  Also see this gizmodo article, and this is HSDPA
• An unlocked version that can run on other carriers [using the same network type]