You can't install applications on iPhone?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

[mobileman]

The man-who-can-do-no-wrong has said in different interviews that badly written phone applications can take down the phone network, and that is bad. Hence no 3rd party apps for the iPhone.

A crazy comment. I would love to see a badly written app take down a carriers network. Thousands of apps (some bad) have been written for both the palm and windows OS that Cingular allows on their network. I have yet to turn on the news and find one of them caused a "downed network".

If you dont want to support 3rd party apps, then thats fine, but dont come up with crazy excuses to as why.

 

[stroths]

Its amazing that anyone would try to compare an iPhone to a Treo on TREOcentral

 

[smileyboy]

A few questions. I just read your blog post on the iPhone. A few questions for you.

1. Why do you think you can't listen to iTunes content?
2. Why would you need Agendus with the sychronization the iPhone offers with the Mac?
3. At the end you say, Apple has no iTunes support. What exactly do you mean? You do know it syncs all your content, not just media, through iTunes right?

Sorry, it just seems that you failed to read up on how this thing worked.

1. i said that the phone is built for MEDIA. So, logically that would include music. But it doesnt come with a iTunes app.
2.U don't NEED Adendus on a Treo either. But, it sure is nice
3.I know it syncs most of the content. But what good is a ipod with a GSM radio built in and no OTA support.....? Doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[cellmatrix]

?These are devices that need to work, and you can?t do that if you load any software on them,? he said. ?That doesn?t mean there?s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn?t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.??

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/t...52&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

This quote from Jobs seems to contradict the prevailing view here and suggests that we will be able to install third party software on the iphone, after it is control tested by apple. Jobs is a perfectionist and I believe has learned enough from the palm example and does not want to repeat it. Look at when the 650 was released, the OS was really buggy, and look at all of the buggy programs we run today, most of this forum in fact is devoted to trying to deal with these bugs.

There is a lot of good software on the palm that I am a big fan of, but you have to admit there are a lot of crappy buggy palm programs which are misrepresented as finished products which waste people's time and money. It would be nice to have a mechanism to sift through these two categories of programs IMO and I believe that is what Jobs is proposing, we will see.

Also another misconception brought forward by many here is that the iphone will be mainly a music phone. Its not, the internet and browsing capabilities of the iphone appear to be far beyond what anyone else has especially given the full screen mode.

 

[mobileman]

There is a lot of good software on the palm that I am a big fan of, but you have to admit there are a lot of crappy buggy palm programs which are misrepresented as finished products which waste people's time and money. It would be nice to have a mechanism to sift through these two categories of programs IMO and I believe that is what Jobs is proposing, we will see.

Heres an idea, dont load the bad software. Load the software that works.

 

[smileyboy]

LOL isn't that what we try on our treos.

 

[cellmatrix]

Heres an idea, dont load the bad software. Load the software that works.

OK, so how do I know what is bad software and how do I avoid it? Lets look at the current ways:

1)Look for the software that advertises itself as buggy and avoid it. ha ha, that's a joke of course.

2) Spend a lot of time browsing thru MTDN or here trying to figure out from the arguments what software is buggy and what is not, and never getting a final answer (I love this software, I hate it, this other software is way better - etc...) until you have to resort to method 3.

3) trial and error, spend time loading crappy software, having my palm or data screwed up and then deleting the program. Then buying another program to clean up the remnants of the deleted crappy program.

I do admit I like the idea of the freedom of the Palm system and the concept of open source software development but you have to have a bit of an inner geekness to put up with having to spend time testing programs out yourself. If you like tweaking a lot, then Palm is fine, but if the iphone translates into less time spent tweaking - this will be an appeal to many, including me.

 

[surur]

Isn't it rediculous that this is called OSX, when Jobs is so scared of third party apps. Is the OS so fragile then? I would be embarrased if my OS needs to be treated so carefully. The excuses people come up with is just rediculous.

Surur

 

[cellmatrix]

I am not a software developer, but I can sympathize with someone being uncertain how they might capitalize on a new market that is opening up. It must be frustrating. I can also understand that if someone feels excluded from this new market, or sees it as a competitive threat to their current business, that one would want to fight back and do everything they can to try to discredit this new threat. As an outside observer and not a developer myself, its interesting to look at these battles and the strategies that are used - like the way that Microsoft and Apple have competed for these many years.

 

[mobileman]

OK, so how do I know what is bad software and how do I avoid it? Lets look at the current ways:

1)Look for the software that advertises itself as buggy and avoid it. ha ha, that's a joke of course.

2) Spend a lot of time browsing thru MTDN or here trying to figure out from the arguments what software is buggy and what is not, and never getting a final answer (I love this software, I hate it, this other software is way better - etc...) until you have to resort to method 3.

3) trial and error, spend time loading crappy software, having my palm or data screwed up and then deleting the program. Then buying another program to clean up the remnants of the deleted crappy program.

I do admit I like the idea of the freedom of the Palm system and the concept of open source software development but you have to have a bit of an inner geekness to put up with having to spend time testing programs out yourself. If you like tweaking a lot, then Palm is fine, but if the iphone translates into less time spent tweaking - this will be an appeal to many, including me.

Bottom line though, not one "bad" app that you will load on your palm, will cause the cingular network to go down, as Jobs suggested.

 

[cellmatrix]

Bottom line though, not one "bad" app that you will load on your palm, will cause the cingular network to go down, as Jobs suggested.

you mean, will a bad app make my network connection go down and force me to reboot or will a bad app make the whole cingular system go down? The former happens all of the time on the treo, sometimes with supposedly "good" apps. The latter sounds physically impossible, where did Jobs say this?

 

[meyerweb#CB]

“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.””

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/t...52&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

This quote from Jobs seems to contradict the prevailing view here and suggests that we will be able to install third party software on the iphone, after it is control tested by apple. Jobs is a perfectionist and I believe has learned enough from the palm example and does not want to repeat it.

Funny, my Palm has a lot of 3rd party software on it, and it WORKS just fine. And Job's comment would also seem to suggest that it's going to be really difficult for hobby software writers to supply apps for the iPHone. And, frankly, it's that hobbyist software that adds most of the functionality to the Palm OS, at the most reasonable prices. Apple will certainly charge for the priviledge of testing and certifying software, and that cost will be borne by the software purchasers. Say goodbye to the kind of $10 apps that do so on the Palm platform. And Apple will certainly take a significant amount of time in certifying each app, and each significant update. Say goodbye to instant turn around of bug fixes, and rapid upgrades based on user suggestions.

There is a lot of good software on the palm that I am a big fan of, but you have to admit there are a lot of crappy buggy palm programs which are misrepresented as finished products which waste people's time and money. It would be nice to have a mechanism to sift through these two categories of programs IMO and I believe that is what Jobs is proposing, we will see.

Yep, we'll see. While eliminating buggy software is a good idea, I'm not sure it's worth the cost of eliminating so much good, inexpensive software.

There is one thing I wonder about, though. If Apple opens up the platform at all, how will it prevent other 3rd party ISVs from writing apps? I guess the only way to buy & load software will be through the iTunes store. Say goodbye to price competition.

There will not likely be the equivilent of a Butler, or a TakePhone, or a FileZ for the iPhone. Nor an equivilent to PalmInternals or iRing. Apple may allow applications, but I can't see them allowing alternatives to the built in functionality, nor utilities that extend or modify the built in functionality.

 

[surur]

Again, if its a full OS, should it not have the protections full OSX has, ie. levels of privilege and access, and file protection. Or has this been dropped, meaning its not full OSX after all? And Jobs certainly spoke of the whole west coast going down, so he's making a major outrageous claim.

Surur

 

[Pearl_Diva]

The man-who-can-do-no-wrong has said in different interviews that badly written phone applications can take down the phone network, and that is bad. Hence no 3rd party apps for the iPhone.

Any links?

 

[icewingdog]

I've been drooling over the iPhone, and I'm a Mac owner and Apple fan, but there are 2 things that will prevent me from buying one, the memory limits and not being able to load apps.

The MOST used app on my 650, besides the phone and calendar, is my Bible software (www.olivetree.com). Then there is the password safe, and the absolutely incredible conversion functions in the built-in Calc, not to mention games....

Well, I really want an iPhone, but it's just not going to have all the functions I need and use on a regular basis *sigh*

I'd REALLY like to have a decent music player and a fast web browser....maybe someday.

 

[marcol]

Update on 3rd party app situation:

Is the iPhone?s platform closed? And if it is, will it be open to developers in the future? Jobs says it?s a security issue, but Apple is working to find a way to allow developers to build applications for it. Jobs says he doesn?t want the iPhone to be ?one of those phones that crashes a few times a day.? He adds: ?We would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we?ll do it.?​

http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/steve-jobs-ceo-of-apple/

Sounds like they might end up with something like the Symbian Signed program.

https://www.symbiansigned.com/app/page

 

[surur]

Update on 3rd party app situation:

Is the iPhone?s platform closed? And if it is, will it be open to developers in the future? Jobs says it?s a security issue, but Apple is working to find a way to allow developers to build applications for it. Jobs says he doesn?t want the iPhone to be ?one of those phones that crashes a few times a day.? He adds: ?We would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we?ll do it.?​

http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/steve-jobs-ceo-of-apple/

Sounds like they might end up with something like the Symbian Signed program.

https://www.symbiansigned.com/app/page

Isn't that all rather pathetic and contradictory? He claims the device has FULL OSX under the hood, but is scared as hell that it will crash daily. Do OSX laptops crash daily, or is there really no 3rd party apps for macophiles?

His paranoia makes me really wonder how buggy and fragile REAL OSX is. Or maybe he's just lying and has other motivations. Its really one or the other, isn't it.

Surur

 

[marcol]

Isn't that all rather pathetic and contradictory? He claims the device has FULL OSX under the hood, but is scared as hell that it will crash daily. Do OSX laptops crash daily, or is there really no 3rd party apps for macophiles?

OS X is the most stable desktop/laptop OS I've ever used. Stability is one of the things I really like about it. And, yes, I use a whole bunch of third-party apps.

His paranoia makes me really wonder how buggy and fragile REAL OSX is.

I guess we'll find out at least a bit more soon enough.

 

[surur]

I guess we'll find out at least a bit more soon enough.

With him trying his best to shelter his OS behind a certification curtain we may never find out the emperor has no clothes.

Surur

 

[marcol]

With him trying his best to shelter his OS behind a certification curtain we may never find out the emperor has no clothes.

The only mobile device I've used (for any length of time) that's never crashed is the only device I've used that has an app certification program. That observation alone doesn't of course prove that certification is the cause of the fantastic stability of my E61, and it's true that not every app I've used has been Symbian Signed, but I'm pretty sure that it's at least not doing any harm

Anyway, the main thing here seems to be that it does look pretty certain that there will be third-party apps for the iPhone. Now if they'd just add 3G to the European version...