Technovia

And the award for hyperbole of the day goes to...

...TUAW, for "Five ways the App Store will change the world", and especially the opening line:

"There are historic days, people"

Yes, there are. This is not one of them. Someone launched a mobile phone, not a nuclear missile.

The return of Catamount

One thing that I've found particularly pleasing about the applications available for the iPhone: CheckPlease, from Catamount Software.

Catamount were one of the best independent software developers for the Newton, creating PocketMoney - an application that I swore by back then. The company is one man, Hardy Macia, and looking at his web site it seems PocketMoney for iPhone will be out soon. I look forward to it.

iPhone 2.0: Exchange, or MobileMe, but not both

This is actually a real pain in the arse non-feature:

"One drawback: While you can have both personal and Exchange email accounts on the new iPhone, if you synchronize with Exchange calendars and contacts, your personal calendar and contacts are erased."

At work, we use Exchange (although we're a mostly-Mac shop... corporate head-office standards, I think). I'm a MobileMe subscriber for my personal email etc. I'd very much like to keep my work and personal calendars seperate...

So Apple, please fix this one in iPhone 2.01.

An iPhone with a keyboard? And some musings on Steve Jobs

newswireless.net .:. News .:. "An iPhone with a keyboard? Never!" Well,…:

"It is an article of Faith, of course, that whatever Steve Jobs does, is Right. And so, since the iPhone currently has no keyboard on it, it must logically follow that it is wrong to have a keyboard, and therefore that Steve Jobs will never produce a version that does have a keyboard.

Fervent fans can therefore see no reason to change the iPhone from its current 'type on the touch screen, or not at all' design. As one of the more zealous remarked when the suggestion was even mentioned: 'The only people who think it needs a keyboard, are people who have never used it.'

Rumours from inside Cupertino suggest that Jobs himself doesn't have this sort of religious hangup about his own work. Reports from inside mobile operators show that whether or not he ever makes it work, he is already trying to make a 'slide-out' keyboard for a corporate version of the iPhone."

Jobs is, of course, well known for insisting that something isn't a viable product, and that no one could possibly want one - right up until the day he launches it. See, for example, his half-decade insistence that the future of the Mac was PowerPC, while he sensibly produced a version which ran on Intel.

(Which reminds me of an example from history, as told to me by one of the former Newton team. Jobs called him and some other Newtoneers into a meeting, in which he held up a Newton. Pointing at it, he said "Apple makes computers. Computer have keyboards. This thing doesn't have a keyboard." And, leaving them to draw the inference out himself, he ended the meeting. Fast forward to today, and Apple makes rather a large chunk of money from computers which have no keyboard. Only now, they're called "iPhone".)

One thing that anyone watching Apple always needs to bare in mind is this: while Jobs is idolised by a cloud of true believers, he is, in fact, capable of performing strategic back-flips faster than almost anyone in the industry. While the true believers laud whatever thing they think is "the one true way", Jobs will drop it like a ragged old hat as soon as he believes it's to Apple's advantage.

Jobs is ruled by only one true belief: Make the best, deepest, most elegant products you can, preferably with the biggest margin you can get away with.

It's one of the reasons why I like him.

Daring Fireball Linked List: The Big Leagues

Daring Fireball Linked List: The Big Leagues:

"If you’re thinking in terms of a couple hundred dollars, your app probably isn’t even going to get listed in the App Store. The App Store isn’t going to be like VersionTracker or MacUpdate, where every piece of junk gets listed as it’s submitted."

Which again raises the question: Is Apple going to be the gatekeeper not just in terms of whether applications are security risks - the original justification for the App Store strategy - but also whether they think the application has appeal?

If Apple is going to be the arbiter of what counts as "good" for applications, that effectively locks out many, many small developers - and also reduces the potential choice for consumers. It also means niches are ignored: an application might well only sell a couple of hundred copies, but be - to those couple of hundred users - of great benefit.

Let's note again: if Apple rejects your application, there is no alternative way of getting your programme on non-jailbroken iPhones. Apple controls the developer channel completely. Because of that, I think it has a duty to be as broad as possible in who it accepts. Consumers, not Apple, should be the arbiters of what is a good, viable application. Let free markets decide.

In ten years time, will Apple be the new Microsoft - an abusive monopoly?

Daring Fireball: Up Flash Creek Without a Paddle:

"Even if Adobe eventually gets Flash running well — by any standard for ‘running well’ — on actual iPhone hardware, rather than just in the iPhone simulator, they can’t ship it without Apple’s explicit permission."

John is right of course: and this is the thing that makes me slightly queasy about the iPhone.

While Apple has a relatively low market share and there's plenty of choice of platform, the control that Apple has over the third party application market really doesn't matter. If a really cool application appears that Apple refuses to sanction, its developers can just up-sticks and move to S60, or Java, or (if they're nuts) Windows Mobile and reach an equally large audience.

But what happens if Apple's market share grows to the point where it has a monopoly - 70-, 80- or even 90% market share? That might take ten years, but it's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility, and it's certainly something that Apple would like to have.

At that point, does Apple's control over third-party applications become an abuse of a monopoly - something that is, of course, illegal in both Europe and the US?

To answer that, ask yourself this: if in the PC market, Microsoft used a similar system and every application had to be sanctioned by them in order to run; and if they used that system to lock-out, say, iTunes; would you consider it abusive?

I think the answer for most people would be "yes". And that's why I'm concerned about the approach that Apple is taking. While it is extremely convenient for consumers in the short-term, the potential for abuse is there, and in the long term, as its market share grows, Apple will have to be very careful about which applications it decides not to allow on the iPhone.

And, I suspect, if Apple were to lock Adobe out of the iPhone simply because it's not in Apple's interests (as opposed to in the interests of consumers), it would be establishing an early pattern of using the App Store for its own interests, not that of consumers - something that would weigh against it as a "pattern of abuse" in the long term.

So why didn't the first iPhone have 3G, again?

When the first iPhone came out, a lot of noise was made about the lack of 3G. Specifically, battery life was cited by lots of people as the primary reason for this apparent oversight. Headlines like "Jobs: battery life issues delaying 3G iPhone" even suggested that battery life was the canonical reason for no 3G.

This kind of headline actually made Apple look a little stupid. Other phone makers have long managed to get 3G with decent (in fact, often excellent) battery life. If Nokia could do it, why not Apple? But, in fact, the release of the 3G iPhone makes it clear: battery life, while an issue, wasn't the only reason for the lack of 3g in the first iPhone.

UK iPhone upgrade pricing

The wonderful Chris Phin at MacFormat. has the details of the upgrade pricing for existing iPhone owners:

"Existing iPhone owners on O2's £45 or £75 per month tariffs get handed the new iPhone free. That's it; all you have to do is sign a new 18-month contract. If you're on the £35 contract, you can upgrade to the 8GB model for £99 and the 16GB model for £159. Americans only get a free upgrade if they bought the phone after May 27."

That, as Chris points out, means that we in the UK are actually getting better deals than people in the US - which, for a piece of Apple kit, has to be pretty much a first :)

One other thing about Chris' story: it features a shot of the iPhone 2.0 screen and App Store which has Twitterific in there. I didn't know Craig was doing an "official" version (he's done a jail broken one), but I'm glad to see it.

 

UK iPhone pricing and plans

TechCrunch UK gets the press release with the prices for the new iPhone in the UK and posts it instantly:

"The 8GB model will cost just £99 on a new £30 per month tariff and the existing £35 per month tariff. Consumers choosing either the £45 or £75 per month tariffs will get the 8GB iPhone 3G for free. The 16GB iPhone 3G will cost £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs, £59 on the £45 tariff and it will be free on the £75 tariff. All customers will continue to receive unlimited data browsing over O2’s HSDPA network and unlimited access to 9,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and now BT Openzone**. Both the 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3G will also be available for O2 Pay & Go customers with pricing to be confirmed in the coming weeks. Fit for Business iPhone 3G will also be available on current O2 business tariffs as a monthly bolt on, with the device available for free on the majority of business tariffs on a 24 or 36 month contract. iPhone 3G business customers can also receive many of the same benefits as existing O2 business customers including unlimited calls between O2 customers, unlimited calls to ten landlines, shareable minutes and texts between users plus multi-user billing and activation and free, 24×7 access to business customer care specialists."

There's lots of interesting points here. First, O2 is continuing the all-in-one pricing with unlimited data, whereas AT&T is splitting the data part of the package out. That's sensible: the trend in the UK is towards included (or very cheap) unlimited data packages.

Second, adding iPhone on as a bolt-on for business tariffs is a stroke of genius, although, of course a lot depends on how much that bolt-on costs. Given the number of small businesses, who often look for the same things in a phone as consumers, this one will sell well.

Next, adding BT Openzone to the free WiFi networks usable by iPhone customers is a great move. Because of its tie-in with FON, BT has vastly expanded its number of hot-spots, adding a whopping 100,000 in the last year. Not only will this be a huge convenience for iPhone users (I often find a BT Openzone network where there's nothing from The Cloud) but it will reduce the strain on O2's 3G network. With many of those new BT FON Openzones in residential areas, it will mean that even customers who don't have WiFi at home may find one within range, thanks to their neighbours.

I initially thought that John Gruber was being guilty of hyperbole when he said that:

"There’s no longer any question whether Apple is going to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. 20 million sounds more like it to me — with maybe 10 million in the holiday quarter alone."

Having seen the UK pricing, now I'm not so sure. If phone companies around the globe are as aggressive as O2 is being, then I think there's a chance he may be right.

And I think RIMarkable also summed it up very nicely:

"Apple to Research in Motion. 'We’ve sacrificed a bit of quarterly profit to get some of your market share.  Your move…'"

One question about that iPhone price

So - is that $199 price subsidised? Because unless Apple has invented some pretty amazing manufacturing processes, I can't see how it isn't.

Although having said that, other than the screen, the hardware is pretty much what the state of the art in phones was a few years ago, so it's probably pretty cheap to manufacture (the screen is a BIG caveat: that slab of quality glass isn't cheap).