iPhone Passion

Over on Hack the Day I wrote about the most important apps on the iPhone for the manager on the go. For a long list of useful office and productivity tools for the iPhone for productive purposes, go ahead and read the article.

Engadget has the scoop: Cisco settled its Apple lawsuit, after some interesting business deals behind.

The iPhone has been kept a secret for over 2 year. No wonder so many rumors have been spread all around the net. The guys from Everything iPhone have gathered together some of the most impressive fake iPhone prototypes.

Some more pictures after the fold, or directly at the link above.

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Joy of Tech’s “the other iPhone lawsuit”

Because he didn’t have access to the real one, Jason Kottke has scaled, printed and cut a real-size paper version of the iPhone. A good opportunity to photograph it compared to other daily-life items. So, here you are, together with my previous post on iPhone sizes, enjoy some interesting pictures of Mr. Kottke’s hairy hands :

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Does The iPhone Need Patents? - the Techdirt guys seem to believe the 200 patents or so the Steve Jobs boasted during the keynote are a bit too much. Such an innovative concept would be successful even without the protection offered by the patents. While bad for the consumers, these kind of patents are ment to protect Apple’s conceptual and technical innovation.
Anyway, feel free to join the discussion over on Techmeme. Pro or contra the iPhone patents? You decide.

Looke like Amazon Germany has already decided to give German iPhone fans what they want. At a premium rate, off course.
Therefore, here it is: the iPhone for sale on Amazon.de.

Asking price?
999 euros!!!

PS. I have no idea on what is written over there? Does any of you? I also don’t understand the date mentioned “Im Angebot von Amazon.de seit: 17. August 2004″. If I understand correctly… that’s one ANCIENT iPhone…

The guys from biskero.org make a pretty strong point on the fact that “Apple launched not the iPhone but their MCNO” - where MCNO means “Mobile Content Network Operator”.
What does this mumbo-jumbo mean? Briefly:

* M: Apple provides the hardware, software and applications, iPhone, iTunes and Widgets. They brand the phone.
* C: music and video are provided by the media owners using iTunes.
* NO: Cingular in the US provides the wireless network.

So:
Apple provides the hardware - fully branded. Apple provides the software. Apple provides the content. Cingular provides the network. IMHO a closed solution, indeed, but after all this is what mobile companies did for ages.

Why should we care? That’s another thing to discuss on:
Because there are some interesting things that Steve Jobs wasn’t honest about. And David Pogue from NYTimes posted a list of questions from the iPhone curious, that make a lot of sense and get some very depressing answers. Among them:

Does it run programs from Palm, Symbian, Windows? –No.
Does it connect to iChat? –No.
Does it have games? –No.
Is it ambidextrous? –No.
Does it have GPS? –No.
Voice recognition? Voice dialing? Voice memos? –No, although this could change by June when the phone ships.
Does it get onto the HSDPA (3G) high-speed Internet network that Cingular has rolled out in a few cities? –No. But Steve Jobs said a later version of the iPhone will — once there’s enough HSDPA coverage in this country to justify it.
Does the Web browser support Flash or Java? –No.
Will it play music over Bluetooth? –Unknown.
Can you change the battery yourself? –No. You’ll have to send the phone in to Apple for battery replacement, just as with the iPods.
Can it open Word and Excel documents? –No. (Steve Jobs says it can open PDF files, though.)
Can you use it one-handed? –Yes, for some functions. But overall, it’s less convenient than on a phone with physical keys.
Can I make a call while driving a car? –Not as easily as on a regular cellphone with programmed speed-dial keys. (Besides–MUST you?)
Does the camera record video? –Not yet. Apple may add this feature by June.

The iPhone competitors - meaning the top-range smartphones - may not be as cool, but:
* there are smartphones out there that do pretty cool things as well.
* They allow you to listen to mp3s, browse the web, they even have Wifi&Bluetooth&GSM&Edge&touchscreen.
* Plus, they also have a MORE OPEN OS - Wndows Mobile, where independent vendors can sell their apps.

* they ALSO have interchangeable batteries - you can take a spare on you if you need.
* they sometimes have GPS
* they come CHEAPER

All in all, it’s not that bad to be a bit skeptic. After all, maybe Steve will be kind enough to listen to our complaints. And maybe make the iPhone a bit cheaper.

Why on Earth would I donate anything just to see the so-much-awaited gadget of the year smashed to pieces?

People, please, don’t donate any money (though it doesn’t seem you do, anyways - there’s been one dollar raised so far). If you prefer, donate me some money in order NOT to smash an iPhone. Well, donate some anyways and I promise I won’t smash it. Period.

In an interview given to the nytimes, Steve Jobs confirmed that people won’t be able to install third-party apps on the iPhone:

“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

The iPhone, he insisted, would not look like the rest of the wireless industry.

“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.”

This is bad news for independent developers, looks like only Apple and its partners will get to develop software for the iPhone. Really bad news, I was already looking forward to develop some cool drag&drop games for the multitouch screen. Well.. with a bit of luck, maybe we’ll at least get to use already-existing Dashboard widgets. After all, Jobs greatest concern (besides making shitloads of money) seems to be the well-being of the network provider(Cingular, in our case):

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider’s network, says Jobs. “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.”

(msnbc)

Also, Jobs doesn’t seem excited at the thought of letting people freely install their own ringtones onto the system(or make custom ringtones out of their iTunes songs). Plenty of money in sight? Definitely.

What can we say? The man is a hardware genius. If he is a bit evil on the side, we still may forgive him. As long as the iPhone will live up to its promise

Tuesday, 9th January 2007. The date that changed history. Well… at least mobile gadgets history.

The date Apple launched the iPhone. Probably the coolest gadget ever. Here starts the countdown.

6 long, sweaty, enormous, unbearable months of waiting for the iPhone to come.

Let’s wait together.