While jailbreaking already provides tons of functionality, there’s still room for improvement and expansion in 2012. Last year I did a list of jailbreak concepts Apple should implement and low and behold, they implemented quite a few of them. But that’s part of the game. Part of what spurs more innovation is creativity and pushing boundaries. And at the end of the day it’s really the user base that is the most useful when it comes to helping developers out. They can’t create it if they don’t know we want it. So this is our list of the top 5 things we’d like to see jailbreak accomplish in 2012.

A jailbreak for A5 devices

We already know pod2g is working on this. While we will most likely get one in 2012, I’m not excluding it as one of the biggest wants for many users. We just received an untethered jailbreak for A4 and older devices. Hopefully a jailbreak for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S aren’t that far behind. While an untethered version would be epic win, I’d take a tethered version for starters.

Cydia updates

While Cydia is probably one of the most used apps on my iOS devices, it can become rather frustrating at times. Saurik made some updates to Cydia in 2011 but nothing to get too excited about. Cydia could use a facelift and some speed enhancements.

While it may not be at the top of saurik’s list right now, I know Cydia is frustrating for many users on a day to day basis. Not to mention the organization of packages is rather daunting for many new jailbreakers. They have no idea where to start or what apps they should be downloading. Sure, they can always come to TiPb but for those not familiar, how about adding a jailbreak starter pack in Cydia? I know several new users revert back to stock quickly out of confusion and frustration.

I’d like to see Cydia step up its game to show users what jailbreak is all about. It isn’t about pirating apps and installing illegal software at all. It’s about enhancing and customizing your experience.

More iPad compatible apps and tweaks

While there is support for jailbroken iPads, it’s very minimal. I’d really like to see that change. As of right now, I really can’t find a good reason to jailbreak my iPad. A lot of this could have to do with the lack of support for current iPad 2 users. Jailbreak developers may not want to put the time and effort into supporting the low number of jailbroken iPads.

Hopefully a jailbreak for A5 devices will create more interest in jailbreaking the iPad. Even though there are a few good reasons to jailbreak the iPad, I’d like to find a reason I can not live without. I’d like to have a reason or find a jailbreak application compelling enough to make me not want to live without my iPad being jailbroken.

If I’m missing out on some to die for jailbreak utilities for iPad, please let me know. I’ve yet to find them.

More support updates from developers

After iOS 4 was released, Cydia was plagued with tons of apps and utilities that were never updated to support it. Even though jailbreak tool after jailbreak tool was released supporting almost every device on the market, tools were left to collect dust. Some of them were actually very useful utilities that I really missed using after updating. Things like changing keyboard styles were little tweaks that were left untouched for months.

Some developers are extremely good about updating their tools. Others are not. Where that happens, I’d really like to see new jailbreak developers step up and come out with new solutions. Heck, just improve upon someone else’s idea. It seemed as if the jailbreak community was left with a ton of tools that were left in limbo. A package may work, it may not, it may just crash your springboard. I’d like to see less of this.

Maybe this is something that needs to come bundled with updates to Cydia. This is another reason jailbreak may be off-putting to some new users. They download tweaks that aren’t compatible with their devices and when it isn’t stable, they restore and never give jailbreak another chance. We need to avoid experiences like this as developers.

A more unified jailbreak process

This one may be asking a bit too much but heck, I’ll throw it out there. While redsn0w and tools like it are pretty user friendly to begin with, there are tons of tools out there and that’s confusing to new users. What tool do they use? Is one not compatible with their device? Programs like ipswDownloader aim to make it easier for beginners, but a lot of beginners won’t know what an IPSW is let alone what the tool does, where to find it, or know why they need it.

If jailbreak developers could come together to make a great tool that accommodates all users, I think the jailbreak community would see a great benefit and many more users. I see tons of people in my office every day that bricked their device or jailbroke it with an incorrect tool. I also see people that searched and researched jailbreak online, became overwhelmed, and would rather come and pay me to do it correctly than mess something up themselves. I know there are tons of other users out there that are put off by the overwhelming amount of information and tools out there. Working together to find a way to make the process more streamlined would be time spent that would pay off in the long run.

Bottom line

I think my overall outlook on jailbreak is this – people buy Apple devices because of the experience and the ease of use. If jailbreak complicates things too much, they’ll stray away. Of course there will always be power users and ninjas that will put in the time to make it work. But the bottom line is that most iOS users just want their device to work and work well. If jailbreak developers can find ways to make the process and overall experience better, I think they’d see a lot more users willing to give it a try or a second runaround.

What do you guys want to see jailbreak developers aiming for in the coming year? Let us know!

The Let’s Talk iPhone event is now over and we officially have the iPhone 4S, Siri, iOS 5, iCloud, and several other cool new features to be excited about.

But what about what we didn’t get?

What about all those iPhone 5 cases we saw mysteriously pop up over the past several months? While Apple announced a good amount of hardware improvements to the iPhone 4S, the update still left a lot of people underwhelmed. In some ways, this is understandable given Apple had more time than ever between launches to come out with a new device.

A lot of people were still holding out for a new design. Apple also seems to be attempting to deter cries of antenna-gate this time around with a newly designed antenna system with a technology known as “intelligence switching”.

Likewise, there was no LTE radio for faster internet speeds, not even real HSPA+ at 21mbps or 42mbps. The proper LTE chips that Apple would need to keep battery life and thinness won’t be ready until 2012, but why no HSPA+ at this point?

Many people also wanted an alternative to the glass back of iPhone 4. Aluminum, like the iPad, was a frequent rumor. So whether you love the all glass front and back design or not, you’re stuck with it for at least one more year.

While I didn’t mind the general design staying the same I really was holding out hope for a larger screen. With a flooded market of Android phones boasting screens of 4″ or more, I really would have liked to see the new iPhone step up to compete with that. While the screen on the iPhone 4 and 4S are gorgeous, they really are on the smaller side when you look at the competition. I’m expecting at least 4″ next year.

We also heard rumors of Apple implementing NFC into the next generation iPhone. Yet there was no mention of NFC and as far as we know, the iPhone 4S won’t be supporting it. Given this would be a pretty cool feature, I don’t really think it was a deal breaker for a lot of folks just yet.

iOS 5 announcement was clearly Apple’s flagship announcement this year. Features like iCloud, iTunes Match, OTA backups, and others will come to the older devices, but Siri will be iPhone 4S exclusive.

That, Cards, and Find my Friends were the only new software announced alongside iPhone 4S, however. While we can’t expect another 200 new features, was Cards really the best use of Apple’s time? Sure they can use it to sell some prints but what about an Airport Utility app? A Files app that does for documents what Photos does for images? An improvement for the Maps app, perhaps? What about FaceTime over 3G? Panoramic photos?

Add to the list no Steve Jobs appearance, no “One more thing…” and there’s lots to gripe about. Don’t get me wrong, Apple certainly brought a lot to the table yesterday, but they left a lot off as well. Were there any killer features you really wanted that you didn’t get?

At WWDC 2011 Apple once again “borrowed” a lot of great ideas from the Jailbreak community and gave them to iOS 5, including lock screen info, notifications, WiFi sync, volume buttons to take pictures, and a lot more. That’s not a bad thing — I even asked them to do exactly that this year. Whether you jailbreak or not, whether you realize it or not, the jailbreak community benefits all iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users — pure and jailbreak alike.

Follow along to find out why.

For years, the common argument against Jailbreak (aside from the DMCA, from which Jailbreak was granted an exception last year) was stability — it could make your iPhone buggier, slower, or crash more. The jailbreak argument is typically functionality — it could let your iPhone do far more than Apple does out of the box. The great news, and the real secret here is, everyone benefits from Jailbreak.

Jailbreak to iOS

Over the years, several jailbreak applications and tweaks have slowly trickled down the pipe and found themselves becoming a core function of iOS at some point or another. For old school jailbreakers, they’ll remember Installer fondly. Installer just recently made its way back to iOS as well. It truly was the first official App Store. I remember downloading games and programs to my iPhone first gen through installer on iOS 1.x via Installer and AppTap. Then Apple came along with iOS 2.x and the official App Store. Installer even had page dots when you accumulated more than one page of apps. This was an idea that went straight to iOS 2.0. It wasn’t a similar concept, it simply appeared in iOS 2.x with the exact same functionality.

While Apple practices a pretty rigorous app approval process, the jailbreak app stores continues to allow developers to submit applications that Apple would not allow in the official App Store. A lot of would be rejects seem to find their way into iOS as core features later on.

Prime examples of this are jailbreak apps such as MobileNotifier, which looks strikingly like the notification system Apple showed off at WWDC 2011. Coincidentally, Apple recently hired Peter Hajas as an iOS and frameworks employee.

Other developers such as Greg Hughes, the creator of Wifi Sync, have also seen their applications later crop up in iOS. His iteration of Wifi Sync is very simliar to Apple’s newly announced iCloud wireless sync and backup feature that’s slated to appear this Fall in iOS 5. His version of the app was rejected by Apple previously.

Creativity and innovation

Since the release of the first generation iPhone, the mobile industry has come a long way. A huge part of that was due to the fact that the first generation iPhone was not like anything currently on the market. It lit a fire underneath other manufacturers such as Palm and RIM (ok, maybe not RIM so much). We also got Android out of Google which has become one of the hottest smartphone platforms on the market.

The jailbreak community is full of young and talented developers that more often than not, land jobs at these companies or create programs and tweaks that eventually become the heart and soul of each respective platform. Whether Apple gives it to us or not, the jailbreak community always seems to find a way to make it possible. I have yet to see a company produce a device that meets every consumer’s wants and needs. Some may argue that’s why we have choice. While that’s very true, we still crave a mobile OS that will fill our every need. While that may not yet be possible, independent developers strive to innovate and provide unique solutions through other channels. These innovations eventually crop up in official releases which are then built upon even further.

Jailbreak developers have the ability to create individual solutions. Apple has the ability to refine those even further and produce a product that benefits mainstream users in a way that even the most novice user can understand. So while jailbreak may not be for everyone, a lot of the innovation and creativity is already done by the time Apple decides to refine it and slap an “i” in front of it.

And the cycle continues…

Even if iOS 5 has everything you could possibly want in a mobile OS, next year Steve Jobs will walk on stage again and unveil that “next great thing”, and you’ll want it. Odds are, the jailbreakers out there already have it in their hands. We are, in some ways, beta testers. David Ashman, creator of LockInfo, has already stated he’ll be back next year with an even greater version of LockInfo. Independent developers won’t take it lying down. They’ll simply bow and accept the challenge laid in front of them with more excitement and motivation than the last time around.

So whether or not you plan to jailbreak the next iteration of iOS, you can rest assured Steve Jobs and all the folks up at Cupertino already have.

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Apple’s gigantic quarter, iPhone vs. Android, and the new MacBooks. Listen in!

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Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast.

Our music comes from the following sources:

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via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge
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• DC 3000 by Thievery Corporation via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future

[Here's a bonus TiPb of the Iceberg for you this week, courtesy of the humongous news coming out of Apple's Quarterly Conference Call]

Tuesday’s news that the iPhone has been selling well stupendously well, in case you weren’t paying attention, was really big. It’s tough to express how big. Some of the bullet points:

• They exceeded their sales goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008 already, with the holiday season still ahead of them
• They sold nearly 7 million iPhones in three months.
• They sold more iPhones than RIM sold BlackBerrys (yes, that’s the proper plural spelling)
• Based on revenue from iPhones, Apple was the #3 cellphone maker last quarter, behind only Nokia and Samsung.
• They achieved all this in 15 months.

Now, there are caveats to these numbers: there was pent-up demand for the iPhone 3G so these numbers almost surely won’t hold; RIM’s sales were depressed because of delays releasing the BlackBerry Bold. Don’t let these caveats mislead you, though, what Apple did with the iPhone 3G in the past three months is unprecedented in the mobile industry, it was pretty much unprecedented in any industry.

The most recent numbers we have show that RIM and the BlackBerry enjoy the undisputed lead in US Smartphone marketshare, while Nokia has the undisputed lead worldwide. Apple may have its work cut out for it going after Nokia, but it seems very clear that they are on track to seriously challenge RIM in the US market.

What’s amazing about that possibility is that RIM and Apple have very divergent strategies. RIM has dozens of different BlackBerry models aimed at nearly every demographic imaginable: from the Pearl Flip and Pearl for the low end all the way up to the Bold and Storm for the high end. They have phones available on every carrier. Most importantly, they have practically locked-up the enterprise market and are as effective as anybody (but Apple, perhaps) at targeting the consumer market.

To counter that broad, multi-pronged strategy, Apple has one model on a single carrier. Steve Jobs:

Well, I wasn’t alive then but from everything I heard, Babe Ruth had only one homerun, he just kept hitting it over and over again. So I don’t think that — I think the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties. But as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing and most of the competitors in this phone business do not really have much experience in a software platform business. So we are extremely comfortable with our strategy, our product strategy going forward and we approach it as a software platform company, which is pretty different than most of our competitors. [Seeking Alpha]

Apple’s dedicated to presenting the iPhone as a single platform as much as possible. That strategy appears to be working. Not only is it easier for developers to target a single device (or, if they do indeed introduce an iPhone HD, a single device with multiple resolutions), it’s radically easier for Apple to continue to develop the platform.

RIM’s platform challenges are much bigger. As Mike and I discussed in this week’s Podcast (forthcoming!), RIM’s BlackBerry Operating System may need to be completely overhauled in the coming years, but the recent BB Developer Conference did show that it has more legs than I previously gave it credit for. Still, BlackBerrys have a confusing array of Operating System versions that vary from device to device, from carrier to carrier, and from region to region. On top of that, they’ve recently added the Storm to the mix, which features a touchscreen and requires a different UI.

Although RIM does have an aggressive development roadmap that’s clearly a response to Apple, it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to roll out their improvements quickly enough to counter the iPhone onslaught.

In short — Apple has not only hit the ground running like a Formula 1 racer, they also are not towing a trailer full of backwards compatibility and multiple-device compatibility issues. If this were the entire story, I would have little hesitation in simply saying “Game Over, Apple Wins.”

But there is one area where Apple is still going to have a tough time of it: the enterprise market. There are a couple of reasons for this, but both of them have to do with companies feeling ‘locked in’ to the BlackBerry ecosystem. The first (and perhaps smaller) lock-in is BlackBerry Messenger, a BlackBerry-specific IM-like protocol that does indeed see heavy use. Our friend CrackBerry Kevin noted that while he was in New York he met a ton of people who purchased BlackBerrys specifically so they would be “in” with all the Wall Street types who use this form of communication extensively.

The second, and bigger, lock-in is the array of features tied to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Internet Server (BES and BIS). This includes not only push email and PIM, but comprehensive device management, enterprise applications, and (soon) a protocol to push any information whatsoever to a BlackBerry (much like Apple’s now-late push notifications). Much has been said about the iPhone’s Exchange support, but push email via Exchange isn’t a magic bullet. In fact, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has had Exchange support for several years now and they recently introduced MSCMDM, which offers comparable device management to the BES. These features haven’t so much helped Windows Mobile gain traction as they have helped stem the bleeding. Of course, we can have another discussion about why Windows Mobile isn’t gaining traction against RIM (Hello UI), but for now I’ll just make the smaller point that simple Exchange integration doesn’t cut it.

Apple also has not traditionally be able to ‘get’ enterprise on the Mac front either — fundamentally many see them as a company that’s not focused on the enterprise. That may continue to be the case — in fact I think it will be — so don’t expect RIM to be forced to close up shop as quickly as Apple has established themselves. This is a fight that will go on for awhile.

Wither Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Android? I honestly believe all of the above have the potential to become more than 15%-ish players in the US smartphone market, but I don’t think any of them will be able to pull it off in the next year or so. Heck, even if they never pull it off, 15% of the US smartphone market is totally legitimate given its rapid growth. But for right now, the big boys are Apple and RIM.

One last thing to mention: as John Gruber notes in his excellent analysis, if you dig a bit into the numbers it becomes clear that the iPhone is soon going to be Apple’s biggest business and the platform will soon become their most important platform:

So the question is: Despite continuing strong iPod sales and record-breaking Mac sales, how long until the iPhone is undeniably the primary product and platform made by Apple?
My answer: Not long.
And I think Apple’s executive team sees it the same way.

Agreed. Looking back, it’s amazing we didn’t see this coming the moment Mac OSX became a great platform with 10.2. The Mac is an elegant operating system with a creative and engaged developer community; it’s only sold on incredibly good hardware; it ‘just works’ and rarely crashes. That’s exactly what has long been needed in the smartphone market.

Whereas the Mac faces a market where the superstructural elements prevent it from rapidly gaining marketshare, the smartphone market is much more fluid. It’s no surprise that the iPhone is coming on strong when you think of it in this light. It seems surprising because we assume that the smartphone market is like any other market that has come before — it’s not. People can switch phones more easily than they can switch computers if only because of the lower prices, and they do.

Companies are different, though, they hold on to their platforms — both PC and Smartphone — for 4-5 years before they consider a change. Now that we have number portability, the last real thing keeping people from switching smartphone platforms every few years is Enterprise lock-in. RIM’s managed to get it, Microsoft less so, and so the question becomes twofold:

1. Will that lock-in hold?
2. If the iPhone can’t crack Enterprise, will the consumer / small business market be enough to push them up to #1?

The answers are “For at least a few years” and “Yes.”

In the Phone different forums, surur (with the help of marcol) has posted up some fine analysis on the question of all those missing iPhones we mentioned a couple weeks back. The question: whether or not iPhone sales had slumped over the holidays (they didn’t), but more importantly, how big is the gap between what Apple says they’ve sold and what AT&T says they’ve sold. As you can see in the graph above, it’s a big gap that’s getting bigger.

I’d previously doubted that a significant part of that gap was unlocked iPhones and unsold inventory. It seemed like the 1.5 million gap had to be some error in reporting or other such strangeness. But based on what analysis is available, it’s starting to look like “unlocked and unsold iPhones” are exactly what makes up that gap.

The real question, then, is what the ratio is of unlocked to unsold. Actually, the real question is what does this gap tell us about how Apple is going to be able to talk about the iPhone. Read on for the answers to both questions, after the break!

BusinessWeek has done some analysis. Once you factor out the iPhones sold “legit” via European carriers, the data suggests that as many as 800,000 iPhones have been purchased, unlocked, and shipped overseas (many to China). It also suggests that somewhere around 400,000 iPhones are sitting in inventory somewhere. That’s an awfully high number (at least for Apple), but no big deal compared to many other of AT&T’s SKUs. It basically works out to around 3 weeks of inventory, which is again slightly high but not at panic levels — though one wonders how that inventory of 8 gig iPhones will move now that the 16 gig has been released.

I make no claims about the accuracy of the above numbers, but I think they’re fairly close. Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to make that disclaimer?

The thing that I’d like to see, and that I doubt I’ll ever get, is a clear explanation from Apple. The gap seems to have given investors the willies, but it’s not exactly going to calm anybody down if Apple talks directly about two things that look bad on their face: unsold inventory and iPhones that aren’t bringing in residual income via carrier agreements. Like so many companies who have to sell via carriers, Apple is in the awkward position of not being able to be as transparent as they otherwise might be regarding the financials behind their product.

Again, “not being transparent” is nothing new for Apple. They don’t, for example, make a habit of detailing exactly what ratio of the types iPods go into their sales numbers. The iPhone situation feels different, though, because Apple has made a deal with AT&T that may last for as many as 5 years. The confusion here feels, heart-sinkingly, much like the confusion that Palm sometimes is forced into because of their deals with various carriers.

The whole situation solidifies my feeling that Apple missed an opportunity to shake up the wireless industry business-wise in a way that benefits consumers. What’s best for consumers is to make carriers into dumb tubes for our data and calls. Though I can’t fully fault Apple for not trying to take down that system, I do wish they hadn’t introduced another layer of confusion and payola “synergy” into it.

The counter-argument is that if you have no choice but to make a deal with the Mafia, you might as well get a piece of the action. I have to say it’s a compelling argument and I can’t pretend I would have done differently in Apple’s place. At least we know that Google’s demands for openness on the new wireless spectrum auction will have to be met. As soon as their deal with AT&T allows it, Apple needs to jump on the open wireless access bandwagon with Google.

Holy smokes! Apple has put a $200 price cut on the 8 GB iPhone, and dropped the 4GB version altogether. That’s right, the 8GB iPhone is now $399. Where do I line up for my $200 check? I’m equal parts filled with rage for paying a $200 early adopter fee, and equal parts filled with glee for a $200 price cut. I’m glad that it makes the iPhone that much more accessible for everyone else. I just feel a little sore when I sit, that’s all.

I have colleagues that believe the price cut is a portent of a hardware refresh. I have a hard time believing Apple would refresh their iPhone hardware so soon after launch, but I should float the idea out as speculation. I believe a 3G version is possible, perhaps in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2008. The part of me that hopes I’m wrong is the part of me that wants my iPhone to be new forever. Sigh

There’s an iTunes update tonight that will bring Ringtones support. For a select portion of their music catalog (about 500,000 songs altogether, or 8% of the songs available on iTunes), you can make a ringtone if you’ve already purchased the song. All in all, the song to play on the iPod and the song to play as a ringtone is $1.98. Song portion: $.99, same as always. Ringtone: $.99. I think the extra fee is for the ‘public performance’ licensing aspect of ringtones. It will be interesting to see if the iTunes update breaks iToner, iFuntastic, or the indomitable iPhoneRingtoneMaker. Let’s hope not.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store will come to the iPhone in an update later this month. Look for it on a Tuesday afternoon this month, I’d bet. You will be able to purchase any music from the iTunes store and download it via wi-fi. I doubt you will be able to purchase it via EDGE. After all, it’s not the iTunes Wireless Music Store. Why not, though? It’s easier to say, and less cumbersome to type.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music store will also be available from a bunch of Starbucks in most areas by 2009. The Starbucks in the larger top-ten cities in the US will get the update treatment first, and Starbucks figures they’ll have “most major metro areas” by late 2008. Um, I could rollout a storewide wi-fi network faster than that.

In other iPod news, Steve announced the iPod sister to the iPhone, the iPhone touch (8GB for $299 and 16GB is $399), to be available later this month. It’s slightly smaller, you’ll note from the picture above, and its application functionality has obviously not been totally disclosed. Notably missing from the iPod Touch thus far is a notes app and a maps app…. Hmmm.

The iPod, newly rechristened the iPod Classic, saw updates bringing a new, drastically thinner 80GB version ($249) and a thinner-than-the-previously-thickest 80GB version is the 160 GB version ($349).

The new iPod Nano, regarded by many as an ugly duckling, gets the full iPod treatment. It gains a video-quality screen, and is available in 4GB ($149) and 8GB ($199) versions, and it still works with the Nike+iPod sport kit. As you can see in the picture from Apple’s website above, it’s a little wee thing, absolutely tiny.

Huh. Apple’s iPod lineup looks like a steamroller right now. The Zune, Creative Zen, Sony Walkman line, et al, all look like bumpy roads waiting to be flattened this holiday season.

[via, via, via]

Apple is hosting another media event today. iPod Nanos are expected, and they look drastically different than the current nano. Not everyone is happy with the new look, but from what I can see it looks pretty functional. I think I’m withholding judgment until I’ve seen what all of their iPod lineup looks like.

Meanwhile, ThinkSecret basically guarantees touchscreen iPods. They also say the iPod nano, featured in the above Gizmodo link, will pack some seriously updated iPod software, and it will be great; it will be revolutionary. Or evolutionary. One or the other, really.

Please note that the screenshots from ThinkSecret above include albums from the Beatles that aren’t yet available in the iTunes Store.

Microsoft always seems to pop up with a little snippet of news on event days like this. I think they do this so they can play the ‘sour grapes’ role of the day, now hints that making a Zune phone is ‘not unreasonable.’ This is more or less the opposite of what CEO Steve Ballmer said at the D5 conference, so I’m glad to see that they’re still talking from both sides of their mouth. They’re champs of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Emphasis on the ‘uncertainty’ part here. And now you know why they play the sour grapes role — it gets them in the news. But everyone knows somebody that can’t tell the difference between negative attention and positive attention, and it’s not like there’s surging demand for a Zune phone, though I’m sure Windows Mobile users would be happy for the extra functionality.

But back in focus, there’s no shortage of hype — read a paragraph and you can see why Apple’s stock is so volatile after announcements. Taken from Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge:

I seriously believe tomorrow is going to be different. I think it’s going to be the day when iPod die-hards, technology geeks, and mainstreamers alike are all going to be genuinely excited by what Apple is going to show. In short, if the release of the iPod mini signaled the start of Apple’s dominance of the digital music player business, and the nano and 5G signaled the end for most of its small competitors and beginning of its video initiative, tomorrow is going to be the final nail in the coffin for Microsoft, Sony, and the bigger players as well. Yes, even with their recent announcements. The only people who will be upset are those who aren’t already on the bandwagon, or the few who (sorry, NBC) jumped off early and got hit by it.

You know though, the scary thing is that he could just as well be right. John Gruber thinks so, so it must be true.

And in other news, T3 reports that a 3G version of the iPhone will be announced today. I think that’s a pipe dream; there’s no way Apple would update a flagship product 2 months after it came out for the first time. That would flat-out anger the almost-1-million purchasers of an iPhone here in the U.S.A.

Of course, any time Apple updates iTunes, it’s always possible that they will also update the iPhone, so I’ll be keeping my ear close to the news to see what they have planned. There’s plenty of speculation for iPhone Games and ringtones. And it’s not just the iPhone Ranch that’s expecting it, it’s also the New York Post.

iPhoneSIMfree.com chose CNN as their 2nd news outlet that got to verify their iPhone software unlock method. The good news is that CNN re-verified what Engadget already verified. So yeah, what we thought was true before? We were right. It looks like they’ve set the cost of the software unlock pretty low — $36 US each for each block of 50 licenses, and the price drops to $25 if you buy 5000+ licenses. The licenses are supposed to be available as of today, though all’s quiet on their website.

That’s right, they’re not going to sell to the end user. And since the price point is now available, end users won’t be willing to pay too much past that for the unlocking software. My guess is that they want to avoid that AT&T lawsuit, and their law-talkin’ guy thinks that this method will be their DMCA loophole. iPhoneSIMfree can distribute the software to other folks who then assume the legal risk of a lawsuit for distributing software that bypasses a security measure.

Engadget notes that due to the way this deal is set up, the best way to not distribute this software is to either

1. Send your iPhone in to be unlocked, or
2. buy a new iPhone that they’ve unlocked.

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Michael Ducker is formerly Senior Editor of one of our sibling sites, TreoCentral.com. He now works at Synthesis Studios, a Cambridge, Massachusetts product design and consulting firm with specialties in embedded and mobile computing. Michael can be reached through his personal website, miradu.com, or by email at miradu@miradu.com.

Introduction

When I watched Steve Jobs introduce the iPhone six months ago at MacWorld, of course I was caught in his reality distortion field, but some skepticism remained. Surely this would be an incredible device, but would everything come together such that I’d actually want to use it over my trustworthy Treo? The answer, after 72 hours of using it, is a handsdown “absolutely, yes.” Apple has introduced the age of the smartphone to normal people, a not-so-simple task that competitors like Palm and Microsoft have been trying to do for nearly a decade.

I could go on and on about the iPhone’s strengths (which are myriad) especially concerning the hardware. Taking the device out at parties, I was the center of attention for hours on end, and everyone in my young twenties age group was shocked at the size of the device, the clarity of the screen, and the intuitive emotive interface (what other device do you stroke to communicate with? sorry HTC touch, you’re just not an iPhone). It seemed that most people assumed the iPhone would be about the size of a Treo, a big brick that made you look like a super nerd. Instead, Apple successfully created a form factor, complete with all the requisite gloss, to attract and impress the crowd of normal users.

But a big Apple fanboy article isn’t the intent for this essay, as it would not add much to the crush of articles gushing about feature after feature throughout the web. Instead, I want to try to answer the questions of “Why is this important?”, “What needs to be improved,” and (I can’t help it so I’ll be brief) “What did Apple do right?”.

Like the SAT, easiest questions come first.

What did Apple do right?

1. Copy the Treo.

Palm did an incredible job at figuring out how to make a good interface for a phone, and Apple copied it, straight up. As a consumer, I’m happy, but I certainly feel bad for Palm’s team. The genius ringer switch, the icon based home screen, automatic parsing of phone numbers and email addresses, threaded SMS, and especially the amazing in-call interface (including three-way calling); they all remind you of that little keyboard-based brick we used to love.

Of course, Apple did make some improvements. The in-phone interface’s buttons are bigger and shinier, and the proximity sensor to protect the screen from being used by your face is pure simplicity. It works. It’s great.

2. Touching is fun.

Touching is fun. Stroking is better. Apple has capitalized on its multitouch interface, without having too many gestures to confuse users (double tap, single tap, flick, pinch, swipe). Multitouch is great, but Apple took the next step in making this interface incredibly intuitive by providing feedback when you try to scroll/flick/zoom past the boundaries. Instead of simply ignoring your gesture, the iPhone will actually continue to scroll the whole window, or zoom in on the photo when there is no more zoom, but with a very high damping force that makes you feel that the device is resisting your continued motions. When you let go, the window bounces back to its boundary position. It’s extremely intuitive, and is used in nearly every application to great effect. Without this feedback, I am certain that users would become quickly frustrated at why their flicks and swipes weren’t working.

3. Camera.

My pet peeve with normal cellphones is watching crappy interface after crappy interface make its way into phones. It is painful to watch my mother struggle with her Motorola RAZR and have no easy way to get her photos off of that device. With that, I find Apple’s one-button camera a refreshing take. This is what the interface to mobile cameras should be like. One button, take the photo, and it’s ready to view. Sync to iPhoto, and the photo is on your computer. This feature alone will be a selling point for many consumers, especially the non-technological ones. I disagree with others online who think that a cellphone camera needs white settings, focus settings, and all the other software junk. How many normal users actually use them? I don’t think they do, that’s what a real camera is for.

That said, Apple painfully ignored the huge population of people who like to take photos of themselves. It is difficult to do that on the iPhone, because there there is no hard button for taking the photo, and no mirror on the back to see yourself in (no, the shiny Apple logo does not work). Sure it’s dorky, but people do it, a lot. A software update could half fix this by allowing you to take a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen, not just the tiny button at the bottom.

4. Great Built-in Apps.

I said earlier i didn’t want to spend the entire time gushing, so I’ll keep this brief: The iPod is amazing. Coverflow is better on my iPhone then on my Macbook Pro. The photos app is super fast, and includes some great core animation transitions for slideshows. Weather is a perfect demo app (though I wish they updated the icon with live data as they do the calendar app), and maps works just as you’d expect it (honestly, aside from better searching, it’s similar usability to Palm/Windows Mobile versions). YouTube is extremely fun on a wi-fi network, and a great time killer (who needs mobiTV when you have YouTube for free?).

5. Keyboard is surprisingly good.

Three days into it and I’m already typing fluently with two thumbs. Needless to say, I’m shocked.

What needs to be improved?

1. Dialing interaction.

The dialing interaction on the iPhone is better then on normal phones, but that’s not saying much. The weakness is the number of interactions required to dial a contact. At best, it’s on/unlock:press phone:tap favorite contact number – three interactions. That’s nice, but rarely how it ends up. In my 72 hours of use, it’s generally more like, on/unlock:press home:press phone:press contacts:search for contact/tap contact:tap contacts’s number. That’s six interactions. On a Treo 650, it’s on/unlock:type 3 letters of name:dial number – three interactions.

Apple can make the iPhone much quicker to dial by implementing two simple changes. First, have a button sequence that directly launches the phone app’s contact or favorites list (user’s choice I guess). A double-tap on the home key has been previously suggested. Secondly, instead of searching for a contact, tapping the contact, and tapping the contacts number, the contact list should display all numbers for that contact, directly available to dial. To maintain speed in scrolling, the numbers could collapse into the name when scrolling, and then expand back out when the scrolling slows down. Or for another solution, Apple could use the keyboard dialing interface from their SMS app to allow users to quickly type in names.

2. Voice Quality, Speaker Volumes.

It may just be myself (and PC Magazine), but I was generally disappointed with call quality on the iPhone. Calls just sound muddled. The speaker is barely loud enough for busy environments, and the speakerphone is qualitatively a joke. The vibrate is hardly noticeable at all. While these features do work, for me, they did not work super well, and i’ve known many people who have stopped using phones because of these issues. (counterpoint: this site quantitatively claims iPhone is best quality smartphone out there.)

3. Crash Happiness.

My iPhone randomly crashes a lot. When an application crashes, the phone simply returns you to the home screen, as if you pressed the home button by accident. In fact, I bet many users will think that that is what they did. Alas, you didn’t. Safari seems to be the most crash prone, and especially so when trying to listen to music at the same time. I have witnessed YouTube and other apps (though not the phone) also crash. Low battery life <20% seems to encourage more crashes as well. Apple needs to fix these bugs fast, because crashes get annoying quickly. In the meantime, rebooting the iPhone seems to temporarily fix many of them.

4. UI Inconsistencies.

Why can I double finger, double tap in Google Maps to zoom out, but not in photos or the web? Why is the back button for Safari in the lower left, but in most applications “back” is in the upper left? Why, if I chose shuffle mode in the iPod, and then rotate my screen to view coverflow, and choose another song, does it switch me out of shuffle mode and into per album mode? Why doesn’t the swipe-to-delete work in all apps? Worst of all, why doesn’t the keyboard auto-correct in some text fields, such as the weather widget, URL bar in Safari, or Google Maps?

5. Adding new data could be better.

The forms for adding a new contact and new calendar entry both have two of the same significant issues. First, instead of typing important fields such as title/location, or first/last name inline, you have to tap into a new form to enter such data. Secondly, a “cancel” button is in the upper left corner, where generally the iPhone interface has back buttons. Instead, one is supposed to tap “save” in the upper right. But, if I’m a two-layers deep in the forms for adding a contact, mentally, i am not saving anything yet, as I’m only halfway done entering my contact’s data. I need to go back to the previous form to click into the number button. Hence, I think of the “back” interaction. To fix this, Apple could bring required fields inline, and switch the placements of save and cancel (and perhaps rename save to “done”, “back”, or “continue editing”). For reference, cancel is in the upper right in the Weather, Stocks, and Safari.

6. Safari rendering mobile webpages.

Safari does a phenomenal job at rendering normal webpages, but as a side effect of this, it does a pretty poor job rendering mobile web pages. As long as slow networks exist, specially formatted mobile pages will be a blessing for mobile devices. Table constrained mobile webpages end up being a tiny blotch in the upper left of a field of white until you zoom in. Mobile facebook doesn’t even load. Sites with no fixed width have “issues”. In general, CSS based mobile web pages fare much better. On another note, Palm’s mobile portal is still an excellent mobile portal, even on the iPhone.

7. Poor Calculator, Notes apps.

Simply put, Apple could have done better. Calculator could have greatly benefited from having unit conversions, and few more advanced scientific features, perhaps via slide-across different calculators ala the weather widget. Notes, I’ll defer to John Gruber’s criticism: Marker Felt? WTF?

8. SMS

Only one recipient? blahgh.

9. Lack of features _, and __.

No point going to much into this, but what was apple thinking not having any games or any expandable ringtone support? (even the original iPod came with games). Not to mention A2DP, and bluetooth OBEX, DUN, wi-fi Sync… I sure hope Apple has software updates a plenty.

Why is this important?

Hype aside, the iPhone is the game-changing device that will turn the cellphone market from being about hardware to being about software. That’s no small task given that the main customers of cellphones (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile) haven’t seemed to care much at all about software. Instead they’ve focused on encouraging handset makers to go ever sleeker and smaller, marketing each subsequent handset as the next sexy fashion accessory. That was great and all, but we’re pretty close to an optimal size for a hold-in-your-hand handset. Where is the innovation going to happen next? Aside from power management, it will happen in the interactions you have with the device. And these interactions are governed by software.

Palm and Microsoft have been trying valiantly for years to get across this message, but they missed creating the simplicity, flash, and consumer appeal when making their devices. The Treo is ugly and slow. Microsoft at least does a better job utilizing the color depths of their screens, but the interaction is poor. They’ve failed because they have fallen too short of appealing to consumers. Microsoft has done a good job appealing to business users, who often seem to take whatever is stuck down their throats. Yes, there is a significant part of the iPhone’s appeal from marketing — but marketing only gets people to ask to see my iPhone. The iPhone sells itself once people start using it, and see what technology can now do in your pocket.

So what’s important? Here are five features of the iPhone that I think make this device a revolutionary product, especially for users upgrading from normal cellphones.

Your digital life communicates with your real life, through a device in your pocket

To me, this is the killer feature of smartphones. It brings together my digital life (music, movies, photos), with my real life (the world around me, my friends, people I need to communicate with, places to go), and integrates them together, by allowing me to share and inquire (Email, Phone, Maps, Google). There are several parts to this problem, which various devices have tried to address in the past.

The iPod very successfully synced your digital life onto a portable device, but couldn’t communicate.

The cellphone very successfully allowed you to communicate with your contacts through voice, and nothing else.

The Treo very successfully allowed you to communicate with your contacts, and could answer questions about the world well (Google, Google Maps), but had pretty poor media support (I gave up syncing Palm devices a long time ago).

Laptops have allowed one to combine your data with some non-verbal communications, but are unwieldy.

The iPhone is the FIRST device to EVER allow you to seamlessly combines your digital life and your communication, with little user intervention required to set up. My digital life follows me in my iPhone, my real life contacts me via my iPhone, and I can answer questions related to both using my iPhone. That’s a revolution.

Mobile Web Browsing comes to the Masses

I’ve been using mobile web browsers since Handspring’s Blazer 1.0. It was a proxy based system that stripped out most everything from a web page to try to get to the pure content. Guess what? Mobile browsers don’t do much else six years later. The goal of every browser is to display a page, which has a lot of extraneous junk on it, in a way that I, the user, can efficiently view and on a small screen. Browsers have come in all shapes and sizes, zooms, proxies, images, wide page and optimized… but nothing, nothing has ever come close to the speed and usability that Safari on the iPhone has.

This is the feature that switches me to the iPhone, as Google, for me, is the killer data feature of a mobile device. For a smartphone user, Safari is a huge leap in usability. For a normal cellphone owner, who’s never even had the web in their pocket, the fact that Safari exists is perhaps seemingly unbelievable. The ability to consume and generate information on the go, wherever you are, changes how you interact with the world. When a thought pops up in your mind, you immediately satisfy it.

Mobile Media comes of age

Qualcomm is investing billions in DTV systems. mobiTV is an extremely successful offering from carriers. Mobile video, and likewise mobile media in general, have been the aspirations of the cellphone industry for years. Yet, the iPhone does it better, and in higher quality then any other offering before. I can find nearly any show or clip on YouTube or Google Video. I can watch movie trailers from Apple’s website, or I can simply have the media pre-synced onto my device. Whatever I do, it is seamless, for me the user, to get the content and consume the content. There are no costs, there are no complicated interfaces, or special service plans. The iPhone demonstrates that mobile media comes best from the users, and not from some special monopolized one-to-many network or service (that said, there is of course still room for these services in the market, they just won’t be the dominating force). In the iPhone, mobile media has come of age, as for once, users can actually use it.

Animations improve usability.

In January, when covering the iPhone launch for TreoCentral.com, I made a comment that I pretty much immediately regretted making: “I think that flashy graphics don’t make a UI. A UI is defined by the ease of navigating between forms and the ability to quickly find your information on the display. And for the bulk of the applications, I saw very little differences between Palm OS and Apple’s UI”.

While I stand by the second part of my statement in my definition of a good UI, my gosh, Apple’s animations are all tools to help your eye track where to go, where information is moving, and how you are navigating the device. My favorite example is when emailing a photo:

• After tapping the large “Email Photo” button,
• the share interface slides away, but the photo stays.
• It then shrinks and centers on the display.
• Following which, the email interface slides up underneath the photo.
• Then, the photo drops down into the email body.

In the iPhone, animations don’t just add flash, they significantly improve usability. To do that took talent, and it will be extremely hard for competitors to replicate. This is perhaps the greatest innovation to mobile user interfaces.

Font Rendering.

This is perhaps the iPhone’s most important feature-that-you-don’t-think-about. Never before has text looked this good on a mobile device. Even with similar a similar DPI as a Treo, the iPhone’s fonts are absolutely stunning compared to the fuzzy, pixelated Palm OS or Windows Mobile fonts. And don’t even bother comparing these fonts to those on a normal cellphone, that would just be a joke. Clean fonts lead to cleaner UIs, which lead to better user experiences. Need I say more?

Apple has a phenomenal first entrance into an incredibly competitive market, and I cannot wait to see how the other big players respond. For once, software is a competitive point, which is great news for Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson, and bad news for Asian OEM manufacturers with little knowhow in high end UI software development. Ignoring cost, the future phones that compete against Apple will have to not only have slick hardware, but will have to have an intuitive, easy to use interface, and complete solution to integrate my digital life with my real life.

Microsoft, in particular, is extremely well positioned to provide operating systems that look good, run on great HTC hardware, and sync well with Windows — if they could only get over their current start menu based application model (soon, I hope). Even the Zune does, believe it or not, have pretty good software (just hideous hardware).

From a mobile content side, the more iPhones out there that use existing free content, the less consumers will want to pay inflated costs, such as $2.99 for a song, or $10 a month extra for mobile TV. I’m so sick of seeing these monopolized, overpriced, products be successful, and cannot wait for them to have reasonable prices or die out.

The scary part is of all this, is that if Apple pulls this iPhone launch off, and continues to succeed over the next few years, we’ll have a new platform for computing… without the platform. We’ll have tens, if not hundreds of millions of users using devices that are locked down and will not be opened up without significant investment or relationships with people inside AT&T or Apple. Webapps do not allow the extension of the actual functionality of the device. In my opinion, true innovation on the smartphone platform can only happen on the device side. It pains me to think of the iPhone 3 years from now if Apple doesn’t change their tune: we’d have a closed platform, low competition, overpriced market full of crappy products, like software on cellphones and iPods are today.

If all of these were made into news slices, we’d have to reconfigure the page to fit everything in. So, it’s going to have to go into a roundup article instead. We’ll start with the above cartoon from Gizmodo, who apply the curious moniker of “Jesusphone” to the iPhone. I’m more prone to calling it the Mosesphone, as it’s leading me to the promised land of smartphones. If it really was the Jesusphone, all of my other smartphones would suddenly stop sucking, right?

Activation and Deactivation? Inactivation?

Should you wish to avoid these problems, perhaps try this advice, or just trust in the fact that AT&T has fixed the server bug and you had a 98% chance of going through anyway. I’ve only seen one gripe of a defective iPhone, and the article about it is here.

iPhone Firmware Hacking

The next big story is disassembly and hacking. In addition to our takeapart coverage, there’s more at Wired and All Things D.

Wired launched a call to hack the iPhone, as did iPhoneTunes. It was not long before their call was answered, and the iPhone firmware was found [via] They found out what kind of processor the iPhone uses, it’s a beefy Samsung processor.

Around the World in 80k

There are still places in the world the iPhone isn’t available. If you live in Alaska or the Midwest, this may interest you: AT&T is buying Dobson [via], who owns cell phone companies in Alaska and the midwest. If you’re in Europe, this rumor was posted, claiming Vodaphone and T-Mobile both as the iPhone vendor. We’ll find out tomorrow if it was true, eh? Also, still no official word on Canada, besides that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t work on any network besides AT&T, as it’s not available unlocked. A somewhat clueless U.K. company claimed Java is surely the route for games on the iPhone, when Steve Jobs confirmed otherwise.

Activation Hacking

Fear not, though; the race is also on to unlock the iPhone. It’s been claimed to be done already, but I think they may have confused activation with unlocking. Speaking of activation, if you want prepaid, there’s an easy way to ensure prepaid is offered to you.

Huh, the i-What?

Competitors are unafraid, naturally. In the off chance that they admit they’ve heard of it, they thump their chest. RIM, makers of popular Blackberries, saw their stock surge up, and by quite a bit. Verizon stayed open late for iDay, but for no apparent reason.

Apple News

Then, there’s some Apple news. Apple sold anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000 iPhones. This kind of component speculation is always anyone’s guess, but current groupthink puts the actual component cost (that’s minus R&D) to be about 200 bucks (more or less what iSuppli predicted), which is a tidy sum of profit for Apple and Foxconn. Also, User guides have been posted online. Secret workings of iTunes 7.3 have been discovered. Apple has posted official store accessories for the iPhone. Universal, clamoring for attention, wants more money and is “threatening” to pull out of #3 music retailer iTunes. $ure, they are.

Other Reviews and Roundups

In addition to ours, there are some full reviews and first impressions at some well respected sites. If this is not enough, there are other roundups out there.

Upsides:

• Safari: The web browser is great. I haven’t missed flash yet, and the fact that YouTube is built-in more or less means that I’m not too broken-hearted about Flash. Maybe we’ll see it in an update, maybe we won’t. If we don’t, I hope they give me the ability to turn it off.

Downsides

• Web Applications and built-in apps in general: Most applications that Apple has included are great: Text, Calendar (mostly, see below), Photos, Camera, YouTube, Maps, Weather, Clock. I found Notes and Stocks to be underwhelming (and as of this writing, undeserving of the front screen), plus there’s an entire empty row sitting there waiting eagerly to have application buttons stuffed in. You can’t replace this kind of immediacy with web services — I don’t want to open Safari, create a new window, or find it with a bunch of button presses in my bookmarks. I want it there, on the main screen.
• To Do: Implement To Do: The sync doesn’t bring over to-dos from iCal, which is going to be a big hullaballoo. On the flip side of events, it doesn’t sync notes from the notes app back to the computer, so there’s no way to back them up either. I’m guessing something will happen here once Leopard comes out, or that we’ll see some updates here, but this aspect is very disappointing; the omission of this is actually downright weird. Any fans of GTD will have to use a web app for To-Dos as of this writing.
• Activation: When I first installed the iPhone to my computer, it took a while to activate. The system failed on me. I was nervous of a double-billing situation, but I resubmitted my information anyway. The activation system found my info and to my relief I had already been accepted. Other folks in our organization were not so lucky; Chris Kingree at our warehouse had to wait 60 hours (!) for his activation to go through.
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR: So what? there are *no* supported profiles for interfacing with a computer. None! That includes DUN, AVRCP, OBEX, the whole shebang. This means you can’t use the unlimited internet on your computer; nor can you sync your iPhone via Bluetooth. A2DP seems to be unimplemented as well. This one is downright weird to me; if I was assigning a score to this review, they’d lose some serious points here.
• Preferences: They don’t allow you to set too many preferences. Granted, this keeps things simple to support and you’re never in a situation where you’re not sure where the preferences are (they’re right there in the Settings app). But if you don’t like the default SMS message alert, tough! You can’t change it. You can disable it, but not change it.
• Ringtones: Apple has included ringtones on the iPhone, and some of them are pretty good. Thank you for the effort, Apple, but I would prefer to be able to use my own. I’d love to be able to blare video game sounds from Galaga or the theremin-like intro from Dr. Who whenever someone calls me, but that functionality is not with us. I’m guessing they just haven’t finished it yet, or don’t have legal agreements with labels yet in place.
• AT&T / EDGE: If you’re a technophile, you expected this here, and I am not willing to disappoint. EDGE brings me back to dialup days. AT&T’s coverage in my area is adequate, but it’s nothing to praise. I dropped two calls on the first day of use. AT&T’s commercials about dropped calls are like salt to my wounds now.
• Filesystem and Mass Storage: The iPhone doesn’t show up as a mass storage device when you plug it in to a computer, nor is its filesystem browseable. I can’t peer around on the inside, much with things, see how it works, and the like. It’s essentially a black box, which is annoying. This doesn’t bother me too much, but nor does it make a lot of sense. I didn’t think I’d still have a use for memory cards once the iPhone came out. This one doesn’t bother me too much.

All in all, what Apple has completed is mighty. That’s not to say that there aren’t missing pieces; there are serious missing pieces from the iPhone. Still, for an entry to the smartphone market, or mobile phone market in general, it’s a very impressive device. I’m glad I bought it; I’d recommend it to anyone while making note of the above caveats, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a phone in a long time, and I haven’t even installed any games on it yet. Oh wait, that’s still a sore spot.

It fascinates me that Apple’s marketing and commercial videos for the iPhone so far has also been all training. They show the iPhone being used for the main tasks that people will use, and that’s it. The interface is good enough that it sells itself and doubles as a training video, which is brilliant.

• YouTube
• Google Maps
• Internet Browsing
• iPod Video
• Overall How-To

• the guided tour video
• activation and sync video

I haven’t heard a peep out of Microsoft for quite some time; not really since Mossberg’s D5. Nonetheless, Microsoft is in the news today.

Babygotmac is disgruntled that the iPhone doesn’t have Exchange support and posted a response to an earlier post by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, himself repudiating cruft posted in the Wall Street Journal. What the article at babygotmac doesn’t seem that he realizes is that the iPhone does have support, from a certain point of view: you can sync iCal and Address Book (and Mail.app too, but that’s not relevant to this discussion) to an Exchange server. From there, the iTunes sync will copy over anything from Exchange you want. So really, what he’s griping about is the lack of push, not a lack of Exchange support. It’s a minor niggle, sure; but it’s an important niggle. It’s not like there’s no way to get data from Exchange on the thing. Other than that, it’s a great article, and I agree that push would be most welcome.

So what I’m getting at here is that I hope the rumors of push and Exchange support in the iPhoneare true. Apple licenced Exchange protocols (MAPI) for Mail.app, Address Book, and iCal already. Apple would just have to program the iPhone apps to understand MAPI well, and maybe get more licenses for the additional iPhone apps.

Lastly, there’s an article at eWeek’s Microsoft Watch that talks about what Microsoft should learn from Apple and the iPhone (with some frosty commentary from the iPhoneBlog, where I found it). There are some things Microsoft could learn from Apple, sure (UI, UI, and UI — I’ll hopefully be downloading that shell before the lawyers take it down), but the article doesn’t seem to address one of the larger tangles that Microsoft faces:

1. Microsoft Needs Transparency So They Don’t Freak Out Their Customers
2. We are not Microsoft’s primary customers
3. that would be OEMs and carriers and phone hardware makers, etc.
4. Man Those Guys Hate Surprises
5. We Love Them (case in point: birthday presents!)

They hate surprises because surprises tend to affect the bottom line, and not generally in a positive way. So, Microsoft, at least to a point, has to make sure they are pointed in the right direction to make sure their customers are happy. You don’t just slog off the customers that got you to 90% of the market.

Apple, of course, is a consumer-directed company, so they don’t really worry about the enterprise customers so much, which gives them a ridiculous hype advantage. But again, it’s still a great article.

Engadget got one of the 200 iPhone testers to spill some beans about features of the iPhone, and the tester told Engadget what they thought of it. The important snippets are mostly about the keyboard and text input:

• overall: “disappointing.” The tester had troubles with two-thumb input after trying “a number of days;” the iPhone video up at Apple says “a week and you’ll be fine.” I have no idea who’s right here.
• “It won’t replace a BlackBerry. It’s not good for text input. It’s just not a business product.”
• text correction needs a bigger dictionary for proper names [they don't mention if it finds dictionary proper nouns from the address book, which is important]
• keypresses require strong force and “needs some getting used to”

It would seem that Engadget’s leaker works in the Obvious department, which should help Steve Jobs track him down:

• Apple Bluetooth Headset will be $100+
• page loads are slow on EDGE network
• the screen smudges when you put your fingers on it

The din about the keyboard is really starting to reach full force. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to lose points in reviews because of people not being able to master it out-of-the-box.

Speaking personally, I’m ridiculously excited and nervous about a software keyboard. Less for unused buttons and more for the display is a win in my book, but you still need to be able to use it. If it’s about as fast as T9, I’ll be fine. If I want to write a magnum opus, I’ll use a keyboard. That is to say, a hardware one, not a software one; I have a secret hope that Bluetooth keyboards will someday be available (or that they’ll work out of the box).

Steve is said to be “wrestling with the issue,” which basically means that he knows it’s the right thing to do for the iPhone platform but likely isn’t excited about giving up control. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Businessweek’s top fifty is determined by a poll of 2500 executives — it’s not a customer poll, or a internet poll, it’s a poll of movers and shakers. This poll isn’t as subject to the usual online poll hijinx. Who knows, though; maybe they admire Apple as #1 because they think Steve Jobs’ paycheck is innovative. Over $600 million! It helps explain the so-called “Apple Tax,” for sure.

At any rate, not just one, but two #1s in one week. Congratulations Apple.

Update:Macworld.co.uk seems to assert Microsoft only has about 5.6% of the mobile market. This puts another quote of his in perspective — “Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market?” He doesn’t have 96% of the market, not in this segment anyway. He’s sweating bullets in this market segment.

In other news, he promised to not release a Zune with phone features, stating “It’s not a concept you’ll ever get from us.” I’m not sure I believe him — if Linux phones really have 3 times more market share than Windows Mobile, I’d be surprised if he didn’t have a team on it already.

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