iPhone Passion

via Youtube. relatively funny animation.

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.

Via Engadget: comparing the two best-designed touch-screen phones of the moment: Apple’s iPhone versus LG’s LG KE850
LG has already won the International Forum Design Product Design Award for 2007. My guess is that the award for 2008 goes to iPhone

Computer World has a set of 20 questions now, after the Reality Distortion Effect has faded out. Read their article for a feet-on-the-earth view:
Among the questions:

• How much will it actually cost to own it? (data fees and SMS fees seem to get pretty important)
• How fast is it, actually?
• Can you use it as a mobile modem as well?
• Will the name remain the same once the CISCO suit takes off the ground?

Etc…

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

Mac Forums 2001 – see here the reactions and rants of hard-core Apple users to the new iPod. Quite a change of perspective from now, ain’t it?

The Gizmodo Guys have given us the scoop on the oh-so-interesting OSX operating system that the iPhone boasts to have..

The most depressing piece of news? iPhone’s OS isn’t the real OSX, but a closed version that probably won’t allow third-party apps. We can just hope they’ll change their minds. If not, there are always some ways to develop for the iPhone: Dashboard widgets, full-javascript web apps, etc.

The OS: It isn’t OS X proper, as you’d expect. And like an iPod, it won’t be an open system that people can develop for. Remember, this is both an iPod and a Phone.

Music Store Access: None planned, as of yet.

Screen is the same polycarb as the iPod, with a touch element over it.

Accessories: Remember, this has an iPod dock connector, so many accessories will be fwd compat.