And I also share your hope that some day in the future, many things
that are wrong or
confounding or annoying in the world today will be corrected.
However, if we are to build real things today, rather than make
believe things in an
ideal world, it would be more useful to learn here about viable
platforms and
realistic futures.
Hoping that hackers will shoehorn something into the phone to make it
usable by
0.001% of its user base isn't an encouraging way to go. Just look at
the iPod. It's
not hard to stuff Linux onto one now. As a platform it's easier to
hack than
this phone will be. But normal people don't have Linux on their
iPods. Hell, I don't
even have Linux on my iPod.
Hacking things onto closed hardware might be a satisfying
intellectual endeavour;
it might satisfy some urge to "rebel." Doing so, even successfully
as with the iPod,
neither changes the state of the world nor allows populist
applications to flood
out to the masses. The truth is that hardly anyone can run iPod Linux
apps.
Carriers don't exist to make experimental builders happy. And since
phone makers
have tied themselves to the masts of the carriers' ships, they're
just riding out the
market storm with apparently little control over their fates. It's
got to be bad if
Motorola can have record phone sales that force it to *apologize* to
the market for
not making any money, as happened in 2006.
This problem generalizes beyond the captive iPhone, though that
device appears to
be as locked down as some of the worst and will be an interesting
measure of
the public's love of shiny captive things over useful things.
Some people talk about populist "pressure" somehow "fixing" this.
That won't work.
There are only two ways the situation will change.
1.
An actual competitor may release location data. Could be a handset
maker or a
carrier (See above. A manufacturer would have to be bold, and not
afraid of losing all
its market share to do so). A carrier could release location data as
a competitive move
against the others. But only carrier-sized competitor can force that.
Perhaps Google or someone else will come out with a phone that leaks
GPS into
programmable user space. That sort of thing would count as
competition and
maybe could kick the door open. Keep in mind that A-GPS with the
carrier's assistance
is going to be needed to make apps that people perceive as "reliable".
There is no incentive for a vendor to give away what they can sell.
For example, a bunch of people hacked new apps onto Roomba sweepers.
iRobot, wisely, now sells a robotics development platform based on
Roomba.
Their incentive is clear: they can sell more equipment, built in the
same factory,
with the same or similar firmware. It's cost them money to build
support infrastructure
for the new product line, but the were at least following a clear
profit incentive.
If profitable incentives can be designed for cellular networks,
they'll release the info.
But they have to be given a way to make more money doing so than if
they maintain
the status quo, inclusive of new customer support costs that the
openness causes.
2.
The whole DRM/"license-vs-buy" thing that has swelled over the last 5
years could
come crashing down if "users" (once called "customers") get crazy
frustrated
with expensive, crippled devices that force them to buy metered
services to get
the simplest things done.
But carriers seem to have found a way to deal with this -- by
releasing new shiny
things every 12 months or so, and "allowing" customers to spend more
money to
get those shiny things, their customers seem to forget about the
other issues.
That could change, but there's no evidence that it will.
Maybe maybe the combined frustration with DRMed music players and DRMed
televisions and computers, and service-bound applications on phones
could
be enough to make the issue broadly understood and forceful, but
let's not
go on speculating about magical could-be's.
Talking here about hardware and software that can be used to build
interesting
things, would be interesting.
This other stuff isn't. IMO neither is speculation about the possible
futures of
not-even-shipping, non-programmable, non-location-providing hardware.
- jim
On Jan 15, 2007, at 6:08 AM, Marcus Kirsch wrote:
I think we can all be aware that the hacking community will find a
way to run homebrew software.
We can see it on the PSP, I would be very surprised if we wouldn't
see it happening on the iphone.
marCus
Jim Youll wrote:
I'm sure we all agree that "software" is the cause of many
problems in the world today. It's awesome that Apple is able to
make a phone that doesn't use it!
Also, cellular networks aren't awesomely rugged, but it's a shame
they weren't able to figure out any way to partition user space
from machine space to prevent bad things from happening. Someday,
maybe someone will invent an operating system that can do that.
Meanwhile, i guess the network is at great risk from all those
other non-iPhone phones that could take down the west coast.
I knew about the closed-ness of the phone, but hadn't seen this
quote. Has Steve Jobs finally jettisoned the last remaining shred
of his own credibility?
We're not going to be writing apps for the iPhone. Can the
discussion move on to devices that can be safely programmed
without taking out GSM service in Long Beach?
On Jan 12, 2007, at 4:10 AM, Tobias Spaltenberger wrote:
It seems that 3rd party applications are not wanted on the iPhone:
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/12/0430200
Quote:
"In an interview with the New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms
reports that the recently-announced iPhone will not allow third
party applications to be installed. According to Jobs, 'These are
devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any
software on them.' In a similar vein, Jobs said in a MSNBC
article that, 'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast
network go down because some application messed up."
tobias
Am 11.01.2007 um 21:52 schrieb Reno Marioni:
There has been no mention of implications for app developers to
create apps for
the iPhone. Surely, this is running a stripped down version of
OS X Leopard.
Will the advent of Dashcode for mobile widget development and
Mobile OS X
Leopard, enable Apple to open up for developers. It would be very
unwise to have a closed system.
It is also going to be very interesting on what and how Apple
will open this up (APIs) and I hope
they don't close this like the iPod was (but that was not
running OS X). I hope Apple
addresses developers soon and open up an ecosystem and coherent
plan for developers
soon.
Thoughts? Did anyone go to any of the MacWorld developer talks?
__________________________________________
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