Comments on Eat Electric Death: Iphone/itouch bleat

I'm about a month away from my mobile contract end...

2009-03-02T08:15:00.000Z

I'm about a month away from my mobile contract ending, and currently struggling to work out whether to get an iPhone or a G1.

It's tempting to side with ubiquity and go for the iPhone - it does have an undeniably better software library, higher userbase and probably the most likely future success.

But I'm not sure I can live with the technical limitations. You just need to look at the Android Developer channel on YouTube to understand the potential of having wifi/3G/GPS/camera/compass in one device. It's the kind of potential that virtually demands multitasking to realise - apps that change phone behaviour based on location; apps that notify you when something happens on the internet (football scores for example); Google latitude; even simple always-on instant messaging.

Apple seem to have sacrificed a massive chunk of functionality in favour of battery life. I think it's fair to say that their proposed "push" compromise is a very much the second best solution.

Lots of spot on criticism here. It does seem worth...

2009-03-01T22:48:00.000Z

Lots of spot on criticism here. It does seem worth pointing out that an iPod is one of the few things around that does this stuff which isn't a phone that costs a load of money. Now that PDAs are largely dead it doesn't really have a competitor.

The battery has definately been selected for the slim design and the fact you get reasonable time when playing an mp3, with the screen off. As an actual PDA-like device though, it's pretty bad. What's more it doesn't just have a standard USB connection, it's got some weird thing so you need Apple's cable to recharge it.

I found the Wi-Fi alright actually, back lack of feedback is a general Apple truism. iTunes is seriously genuinely fucking shit. I understand why you do apps through it because it's actually pretty competant at it. It installs them, notifies of updates etc. However finding stuff in the App store is an absolute joke. Their search is just plain broken. You search for something, get piles of hits for things you don't want and it doesn't show you the stuff you're actually looking for!

I think the touch screen keyboard is pretty decent actually. It's not super modern like TouchPal but then I think people aren't really ready for uber-but-unfamiliar input mechanisms. The capacitive screen makes the keyboard pretty responsive just with the tips of your fingers.

Ultimately all this stuff comes down to is the fact that you need a proper sandboxed consistent uploading/ecommerce mechanism. However people also want to be able to choose hardware features too. You want sexy slim and don't mind battery life? Fine. You want chunkier and a physical keyboard? Fine.

You also don't want to be gimped in things you want to do just because they don't perfectly align with the way the vendor would like you to do things (because it's tied to some revenue generation mechanism).

It's curious Apple take that view. I think I'd argue that the real shift that the iPhone introduced was this idea that your phone could be working for you rather than your mobile provider.

Not for the first time I wished the various folks were making PDA-like things such as the Touch that you could just network to a regular phone. Then we could chop and change more rapidly. Occasionally just take the dinky phone out rather than both devices. Bah, aint gonna happen though.

"some unfathomable apple reason my ipod video does...

2009-03-01T21:17:00.000Z

"some unfathomable apple reason my ipod video doesn't work with the nike+ gadget"

Steve wants you to buy a new iPod

"You don that on the apple, and you have to start again. It's fucked."

One mouse button, one app. coincidence?

"why should we put up with this shit from apple?"

Steve says one way of doing something is better than choice.

"daft that apple doesn't offer some kind of transcode feature"

Steve wants you to buy content from iTunes instead.