“Apple’s iPhone is still six months from store shelves, but the backlash has already begun,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News. “For the last week or so, bloggers and pundits have been furiously ranting and raving with a litany of the complaints: It’s too expensive, it requires a two-year Cingular contract, and it won’t open Office attachments.”
Kahney writes, “The biggest upset is that the iPhone will be a closed platform. It won’t run software from anyone but Apple.”
“‘You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,’ Jobs explained to Newsweek. ‘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,'” Kahney writes.
“While he’s exaggerating that one unruly app will take down the network, it can certainly take down a single phone. Just look what the open-platform approach has done to Windows (and, yes, Mac OS X too, to a lesser extent) — it’s a world of viruses, Trojans and spyware,” Kahney writes.
“How to avoid? Make the iPhone closed. Jobs’ motivation is not aesthetics, but user experience. Like most of Apple’s products, the software, hardware and services users access will be tightly integrated,” Kahney writes. “While some see this as lockdown, to Jobs it’s the difference between the pleasure of the iPod and the pain of an off-brand MP3 player. I’ll take the iPod — and the iPhone.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TTzz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple has proven that vertical integration works better – October 24, 2006
Apple was right all along: vertical market quality trumps horizontal market woes – April 30, 2006
It’s amazing to me how Apple seems to stir the pot as much as they do. When they enter a market, the conversation changes and things get emotional and heated. I love it.
When you stick your neck out and do something different, you draw criticism. Instead of looking inward, people tend to try to tear apart the messenger. Ahhh, human nature…
And after two long years of rumor mongering, and an official announcement, we still don’t have it… Yes, Steve knows how to make us beg, but its fun and the payoff is almost always worth it.
Its clear to me that Apple is getting into the driver’s seat with personal computing technology, and I don’t think its simple diversification, its also maneuvering, getting ready to take a real share of the pc market. I still think Steve would like to accomplish this before he retires.
I want to replace my crappy Treo 700P but I need to work with Office docs. I hope Apple considers this and builds something awesome into the iPhone to do that. Otherwise i am stuck with my Treo.
Yeah, first post!
He’s doing the right thing locking the phone – it’s saving us from ourselves i.e what was the first thing I did ten minutes after I first loaded OS X on my Mac? Why, change the System name and move the folder of course! Result? Two hours of pure frustration trying to get the machine to boot up and run with the original system again (This was before I’d figured how to clone the system and restart the machine from an external source).
right, because in the history of computing, 3rd party software has ALWAYS been bad.
So whats next, is Jobs going to close OS X to all developers but Apple? The iPhone sucks until it becomes an open platform for development. But I guess Cingular doesn’t want that because someone might put a Skype client on there or an IM client. So as long as the iPhone is tied to a cell carrier, it will suck.
No MS Exchange?? I could swear that Jobs said during his keynote that iPhone’s email would be available through Exchange servers! No?
Of course there WILL be 3rd party software for the iPhone–Jobs just said it would have to be obtained through Apple. Will they act as a gatekeeper and exclude some things? Yeah, but let’s see how limiting they really are before bashing them.
I think Apple and MS are probably talking about an affordable mini-Word application for the iPhone.
It’s in both their interests, as MS will then have a piece of the cake (however small) if the iPhone becomes a huge success.
Why would Apple need Microsoft’s application on their iPhone? Apple has iWork. I would think they’d want to stay as in-house as possible.
Yeah, first post!
Uh wait, as it turns out, what I thought would be the first post is far from the first post. How’d that happen? Could other people have possibly been clicking “Submit” while I was typing out “Yeah, first post!”? Golly, I feel like such an idiot now. In fact, I don’t know why having the first post was such a damn big deal to me at all. I mean, it’s not really an accomplishment is it? I guess maybe I’m just a damn loser and should probably refarin from submitting anymore “Yeah, first post!” posts in the future. That way, people might be less annoyed at seeing it in damn near every thread on this forum. Now THAT would be an accomplishment.
Won’t open Orifice attachments? Why…that’s praise!
I think it sucks majorly!
I would love to write apps for it without having to go through Apple. Sounds to me like they aren’t really sure about the OS of the phone. If they had a secure system set up with a stable API, programs wouldn’t be able to mess up and shut down the west coast.
Not getting one because it’s too exepensive and the first versions of anything Apple releases these days are filled with bugs (exception would be the new shuffle) 🙁
Jake,
Yes, it will support Exchange because you can connect to Exchange thru IMAP, and the iPhone does IMAP. At least, that’s what I heard him say in the keynote. I think there was even a visual aid that showed Exchange as a bullet point.
“I think it sucks majorly! I would love to write apps for it without having to go through Apple. Sounds to me like they aren’t really sure about the OS of the phone. If they had a secure system set up with a stable API, programs wouldn’t be able to mess up and shut down the west coast.”
———-
Uh, yes, I’m sure you could teach the programmers at Apple a thing or two.
(There sure are lots of “experts” here on the forums.)
Apple wants complete control for the maximum user experience.
Cingular wants complete control for the maximum monetary return.
Both will get their way.
“Why would Apple need Microsoft’s application on their iPhone? Apple has iWork.”
Ah, there’s a selling point. iWork has such remarkable market penetration and all…
Does that mean it will also support AmigaOS 4?
“Yes, it will support Exchange because you can connect to Exchange thru IMAP, and the iPhone does IMAP.”
Yes. However, Exchange also supports push e-mail, sending e-mail to your phone so your phone doesn’t have to poll a server to see if there’s mail or not. Does the iPhone support this? And, no, I’m not going to forward my company-confidential e-mail through Yahoo! to do this.
I’m with Jeff on this one. And as a third-party developer, I’d also point out that Apple seems to release quite a few “bug fixes” for their products. Remember the update from Apple that screwed up anybody with a space in their hard drive name? So I’m not sure I’d hold up Apple as a paragon of software development–at least no moreso than third-party developers.
Personally, I’m not buying an iPhone because it doesn’t support third-party development. That was part of my justification for spending $600–I can get the dev tools and play around. If I come up with something useful, I can make some of my money back.
That said, I’m willing to cut Apple a little bit of slack. One of the problems developing in Mac OS X is the lack of developer documentation. I’m currently battling with some obscure ColorSync stuff that is not well documented. I remember way back when I did NKEs and Apple’s response to requests for documentation was “look at the source code.” So coming up with adequate developer documentation, UI Guidelines, Sample code, etc. is going to take awhile. Also, as I’ve pointed out before, if OS X is so unstable that one rogue application can disable the whole phone, Apple has a lot of work to do before OS X is ready for third-party developers.
Actually, I laugh at Jobs’ comments about third-party developers. Steve Jobs is infamous for loving “Big Developers.” Back when the Mac first came out, Steve Jobs was the one who pushed
” rel=”nofollow”>Microsoft, Lotus, and SPC to develop Mac applications. But it was the small developers who came out with great applications–the ones he ignored.
Good luck with that folks, what a fucktarded thing to do. That along with having to pay again for your wireless N, and all the problems Apple has had over the last year with hardware I think you are al sitting pretty! LOL.
Screw Apple