Did you know that if you walk into an Apple store with a broken iPhone, in this case a roughly one inch horizontal band on the touch screen that doesn’t register anything, they actually tell you to make an appointment and come back another time? I don’t mean walk around the mall and grab something to eat another time, I mean a different day. When I asked the rep if he thought this was good customer service, he just shrugged and said that’s the way it is. As regular readers know, I already wasn’t that happy of an iPhone owner. This just puts me over the top. I’m now counting the days until I can order the OpenMoko Neo1973 GTA02. I was seriously considering getting a new MacBook Pro over the next couple weeks. No way that will happen now. Are my expectations too high?
–jeremy
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Apple has finally officially announced a real SDK for the iPhone. From the Apple announcement:
Third Party Applications on the iPhone
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.
It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.
Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.
There’s a lot of speculation about whether or not the dedicated iPhone hackers forced Apples’ hand on this. Looking at the Springboard breakdown, some amount of support for additional apps has been there since the beginning. The latest 1.1.1 release seems to have increased that. The question is: with the PR beating it was taking, why didn’t Apple announce this when the iPhone was initially released, and what took them so long? Only Jobs knows for sure, but announcing it from the very beginning would likely have caused some people to hold off on their purchase. As for what’s taking so long, it could be a variety of things. The latest firmware release clearly shows that the iPhone platform is still a rapidly moving target. Apple may just want things to stabilize a bit before letting others in. It will be interesting to see how Apple rolls this out. Will apps have to be digitally signed by Apple? Will the only installation mechanism be iTunes? We’ll have to wait and see. While I’m glad to see this announcement (although they really didn’t have much of a choice in the end if they wanted a truly successful product long term), it’s probably not enough for me not to switch to an OpenMoko device in December.
–jeremy
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A quick follow up to this post. Well, it didn’t take long. I didn’t expect that it would. While the instructions are still a bit convoluted, I’m sure that will change soon enough as well. I just wish companies would stop making it difficult for people to use the hardware they purchase with their OS of choice. Something tells me it’s still going to be a while.
–jeremy
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While the title of this Boing Boing article is a little sensationalistic (the move was almost certainly aimed at iTunes lockin, with Linux being collateral damage) it’s not too far off the mark:
The latest iPods have a cryptographic “checksum” in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn’t exist — like Linux, where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners to load their players.
Notice that this has nothing to do with piracy — this is about Apple limiting the choices available to people who buy their iPod hardware. I kept my iPod when I switched to Ubuntu Linux a year ago, and I’ve been using it happily with my machine ever since (though it took me a solid week to get all my DRMed Audible audiobooks out of iTunes — I had to run two machines 24/7, playing hundreds of hours of audio through a program called AudioHijack, to remove the DRM from my collection, which had cost me thousands of dollars to build). I’d considered buying another iPod when this one started to show its age — it’s a perfectly nice player to use, provided you stay away from the DRM.
The new hardware limits the number of potential customers for Apple’s products, adding engineering cost to a device in order to reduce its functionality. It’s hard to understand why Apple would do this, but the most likely explanations are that Apple wants to be sure that competitors can’t build their own players to load up iPods — now that half of the major labels have gone DRM free, it’s conceivable that we’d get a Rhapsody or Amazon player that automatically loaded the non-DRM tracks they sold you on your iPod (again, note that this has nothing to do with preventing piracy — this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store).
The truth is, however, that Apple seems to be getting more and more closed. The iPhone is a great example of this. It has so much potential it’s not funny. I’ve found the lockin limits that potential so much that I’ll almost certainly be getting rid of it when the OpenMoko ships. The web experience on the iPhone really is tremendous. Industry changing in fact. The lack of third party applications is just the beginning of why the device will never be what it could have been, however. Apple makes great products, there’s no doubt about it. You just have to use everything exactly the way they want you to. That’s not for me. As Apple products gain in popularity, I have to wonder how many others will get frustrated to the point that they’ll switch.
–jeremy
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While the iPhone has been getting all the press, something seriously interesting has been happening in the Open Source mobile space. OpenMoko devices are becoming available. From a Wired Blog:
After seemingly endless delays, the OpenMoko phone is here. The first version of the NEO 1973 mobile phone, which carries the Linux kernel inside and is not locked to a specific network, is available for purchase from OpenMoko.com. It’s not as jaw-droppingly pretty as the iPhone, but it shares a design philosophy — no buttons, just a screen — and it’s ready to be loaded with any number of open-source software applications. (Though, according to Gadget Lab, so is the iPhone).
The base version of the NEO sells for $300. It has a 2.8″ VGA touch screen, a micro SD card slot, a USB port and 2.5G GSM quad band capability.
Keep in mind that this unit (the GTA01) was pushed out early so developers could begin writing device drivers, custom GUIs and some cool apps for the phone. The next revision (GTA02), which will be available starting at $450 in October, will be ready for the mass market. It will have wi-fi, 3-D motion sensors and added graphics accelerators. So this phone isn’t exactly an iPhone killer — the next one will be a contender. AptUsTech has a nice comparison of the NEO 1973 and the iPhone.
I’m going to try to hold out for the GTA02, but we’ll see if I make it. Bottom line is, I am getting one of these. I’ll probably keep the iPhone also, even if it’s just as a wi-fi enabled iPod. Which phone I’ll use on a day to day basis remains to be seen, but the more I use the iPhone the more its closed architecture is a limiting factor. If rumors of a pending firmware upgrade prove true and it does in fact allow real 3rd party apps things could change quickly. In that case I may just carry around two phones 
If you’re interested in the GTA01 you can find more details here.
–jeremy
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