After waking up on Tuesday to face the dreaded Blue– er… Pink-Screen-of-Death (?!) that signaled the expiry of the 2nd beta release for the iPhone SDK, would-be-developers managed not to go to bed angry as Apple kissed and made-up in the form of SDK Beta 3.

Erica Sadun over on TUAW reports that the latest/greatest weighs in at 1.4GB, or just three-quarters the size of the original beta, with the matching firmware at under 200MB according to a commenter.

What new goodies does this release hold? We’ll have to wait a bit to find out. But with the continual slow, grinding, excruciating march towards an anticipated June release (WWDC? June 30 at 11:59 pm? Little help?) waiting is something iPhone lovers are used to.

Rumor gets reported there will be Flash on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rumor gets reported there will be unlimited music on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rinse and repeat.

What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting these stories straight?

Turns out maybe these stories weren’t meant to be gotten. Turns out maybe these stories were meant to get us.

There was a time when media really was the fourth estate, when it reported the news. In something akin to the scientific method, media observed what was going on in the grand experiment that is society, looked for pattern and flaw, then contextualized it, gave it form and flavor, and broadcast it by mule and truck and cable and fiber to those who wanted or needed to know.

Now media is entertainment and is competing with itself and other forms of entertainment for your attention and your dollar. One of the ways to compete is to get mysterious “un-named sources” to give you the highly prized “sensational headline”. And instead of digging for these sources and convincing them to come forward, the anonymous sources now trip and push past each other to get to the reporters first. Why? Because controlling the story is important. Information is power and spin is leverage.

Okay, soap-box, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Two interesting and very similar blog posts emerged recently shedding new light on both the Flash and unlimited music stories that have been all over the web lately. Let’s take a look:

Flash first. GearLive heard it was good to go. Adobe said they didn’t know. Steve Jobs said not so much. Adobe’s CEO said the SDK would allow it. Then Adobe contradicted their own CEO. Is there really so much confusion? Is Adobe’s CEO really that tech un-savvy? Is El Jobso?

Robert Scoble (via Fake Steve) calls shenanigans on all of them:

Today I got a note from someone I know who works closely with Adobe and Apple. [...] He says that he’s seen Flash running on an iPhone in a lab and that it’s been running for quite a while and that it’s not a technical issue that caused Steve Jobs to go public about not putting Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone. [...] So, what’s the reason, according to my source? Adobe is playing hardball with Apple over their PDF renderer. “Adobe wants Apple to use the Adobe PDF renderer.” His thesis? Steve Jobs is playing hard to get to get Adobe to give up this demand.

Unlimited music next. The Financial Times reported that Apple, long hating on the subscription model, was doing an about-face and embracing unlimited music, only to have Business Week report the exact opposite the very next day. Both cited high placed sources. Both can’t be right, can they?

Matt Buchanan over at Gizmodo believes they can — if only by virtue of opposing manipulations:

The labels, particularly Universal, are known to be hot on a subscription deal, since it’d provide more reliable revenue from iPods [...] Apple, on the other hand, is already [earning revenue] with iTunes just the way it is. [...] Since the labels really want a subscription model, it makes sense that label sources would play it up to the press, giving them more leverage at the negotiating table by showing the heavy buzz/demand the rumor is generating. Apple-side sources would spin the opposite way, since—if they really were considering a subscription model—it would give them weight to push down the price, both what they’d give labels and what they’d charge us. And as both the FT and NYT have noted, price is likely to be the major sticking point.

Nate Anderson coverage on Ars Technica also reminds us that the manipulations aren’t just limited to Apple, Adobe, and the recording industry — iTunes competitors aren’t going to miss a chance to rattle the “monopoly” saber either:

The argument is a simple one. “Apple has a monopoly,” [eMusic CEO David] Pakman told me Friday, citing their US market share at 80 percent. Companies in that situation have to play by a “different standard,” especially when it comes to anything that could be construed as “tying” (recall that Microsoft was accused of exactly this sort of tying when it rolled new “features” like Internet Explorer into Windows and then had to deal with years of litigation). If every iPod comes with [the hypothetical service], that’s tying,” Pakman said. eMusic and others would certainly bring the matter to regulators’ attention.

Could they be right? Is whether or not the iPhone can run Flash academic? Is whether or not some consumers might want the subscription model just as irrelevant? Are Adobe, Apple, and Big Media just playing games? Are would-be competitors playing along to send a message? Are reporters, desperate to fill column inches and make post counts, playing along? And are consumers — the people to whom these issues matter most — providing very loud, very public reactions, only to get played by all sides?

If so, this means iPhone users won’t get Flash or unlimited music — even if we want it, even if big business would make money and increase market share by giving it to us — until “those who sit above in shadow” decide they’ve leveraged and manipulated every last little bit they can from us and from each other.

And we should know that by now, shouldn’t we?

Macnn/iPodnn (via The Inquirer) reports that unlike CoreLocation, which gives access to the Google Maps-like location-based services, Apple’s new iPhone SDK will be providing absolutely no access to iPod functionality or the onboard iTunes:

Any functionality related to music playback is inaccessible by the iPhone SDK, a new report claims. While the SDK allows access to many other functions of iPhone and the iPod touch, such as dialing, the camera and Internet access, The Inquirer writes that any components connected to iTunes are off-limits, preventing developers from accessing one of the most popular features of the phone

While this could be an anti-competitive move meant to keep VLC off the iPhone — or to protect consumers from the horror that would be RealPlayer Touch… — it may also cripple any Guitar Hero, Rockband, or iPod-style Phase gaming. (Unless Harmonix and other big game developers like EA are granted that oft-mentioned “special dispensation”…?)

Did it used to about the music, and Apple’s now telling us to just “sl@g off!”? Or are you happy they’re keeping developers’ tone-deaf mitts off your shiny (i)tunes? What do you think?

iLounge tells us that Apple has sent out a second note to would be $99-level iPhone SDK developers:

“We have many more requests than we can serve during this initial beta period, so we must limit the Program at this time. We plan to expand it during the beta period, and we will contact you regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. We appreciate your patience.”

This follows up on last week’s far more confusing note, and the rampant speculation it caused.

Now TUAW brings word that some developers have, indeed, been granted access to SDK paradise:

The accepted developers were apparently among the first to apply. The accepted developers previously received the rejection letter. The acceptances appear to be random. The program is firewalled. Five iPhone limit. Test devices are iBricks [or maybe not: see update at TUAW]

So does that really clarify anything? Will anxious developers get in before June? Or is Apple dropping the ball?

Engadget honcho Ryan Block got his techie mitts on a pre-release version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, and here are the highlights (and lowlights!):

Exchange over Wi-Fi is not instantaneous (!). No contact search he could find. New button in Calendar don’t do nothing for him yet. App Store error’s out. Cisco branded VPN screen. Parental controls are good-to-go. Wi-Fi order can be specified in prefs. Calc has new widescreen scientific mode and icon. And his favorite new feature — Multi-Select in Mail!

Head on over for a full rundown and gallery o’ pics!

Ah, Apple gone and done it now! SXSW debuted this year’s hottest social trend: Mass Twitter-steria, and now the 140 character mob has its torches and pitchforks ready to storm Cupertino. Or not.

Let’s back up a step. Following the Apple SDK announcement, pretty much everyone and their neck-bearded uncle rushed to developer.apple.com and started their download engines. 100,000 of them in the first few days alone. That’s a lot of love. And even more expectation.

Today, many would-be developers, including tippity-top tier indie sensations, received the following cryptic response from Apple (via Daring Fireball)

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Apple slamming the door, or asking a larger-than-anticipated crowd to take a number and please be patient? Sadly, no rosetta stone was provided to help us suss that out.

My money is on the latter. 100,000 certificates is a lot to process (and almost certainly weed out). That Apple didn’t communicate this effectively is, unfortunately and increasingly, par for the course 1 Infinite Loop way.

It should also be made clear that this in no way prevents anyone from developing on the iPhone, using the free ADC membership and the simulator environment. What this does, however, is prevent anyone who hoped to sign up for the $99 membership from receiving their authentication certificates. This means no transferring apps to an actual iPhone, and more importantly, no testing on an actual iPhone for now.

The internet in your pocket. That’s what Steve Jobs and Apple advertising have promised us since Macworld 2007. Not the watered-down WAP internet, the server-pre-rendered kinda-sorta-internet, or the stunted mobile internet. Just… the internet.

In large part, they’ve succeeded. By promoting open, standards-based support for HTML (hyper-text markup language) structure, CSS (cascading style sheet) design, Javascript actions, and the hybrid interactive richness of AJaX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) that enable WebApps, Apple has brought us the closest thing yet to a desktop-class browsing experience on our mobiles.

About the only thing missing, many would argue, is Flash.

Adobe’s ubiquitous interactive, multi-media technology powers everything from online office apps to easily embedded video clips to in-our-face banner adds. It also powers it’s own “cookie” (online state-saving and tracking) system. Didn’t know that? Advertisers do. They already exploit Flash cookies on the desktop. And as much as we want our videos clips on the iPhone, they want their cookies more. After all, the iPhone is the “next generation mobile” devices — the one that know everything about us, including who we are and where we are, with all of our private contacts and secure contents just there for the tracking, aggregating, and selling.

The Good, the Bad, and the Flashy

Flash’s general pros and cons have been debated up and down the web. On the pro side, countless users clamor for access to the gigantic online video libraries (both popular and “adult”) that leverage Flash for deployment, as well as web-based applications that use Flash as a development environment. For the cons, the proprietary nature (Adobe owned), accessibility issues, DRM, search engine un-friendliness, and standards non-compliance, along with the history of resource issues with OS X (memory and CPU) raise red flags galore.

Even Steve Jobs, whose company makes and markets both the iPhone and the arguably competitive QuickTime technology, has weighed in: Flash desktop too heavy, Flash Lite not heavy enough, and what iPhone needs just plain missing in between.

But the one issue we haven’t heard much debate about is also potentially the most troubling: Privacy.

The Cookie Conundrum

Most of us are familiar with bowser cookies, those little text strings placed on our systems by many (if not most) modern websites.

Cookies were originally designed to innocently preserve state (the current condition(s) of the browser). For example, when we log into a website a cookie is placed on our system so that the website can keep us logged in as we browse from page to page. This benefits us because it makes our lives easier — we don’t have to login over and over again each time we change pages. Likewise, we benefit from cookies that maintain our preferences or keep track of our secure connections.

Online advertisers quickly saw benefits of their own. With cookies, advertisers can track us not only through their own sites but across the web. And they can use that data to more specifically target their advertising to us, and they can package our data (aggregated with the data of thousands or millions of others) and sell it for their own profit. While we (consumers) may benefit from this in certain narrow cases (Amazon providing better recommendations when we visit the site, or loyalty programs offering discounts on purchases), we are not formally compensated (they don’t share revenue), and it can be difficult or impossible for us to opt-out (ask and ensure that they don’t track us or sell our data).

Luckily, because of the privacy and security issues raised by cookies most modern browsers, including Apple’s Safari (including Mobile/Touch Safari on the iPhone), Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Mozilla’s Firefox provide settings to delete or even disable them entirely.

Advertisers know this, of course, and they don’t much like it. Enter Flash cookies.

Flash Bang

The Flash plugin is installed on almost every browser on every computer on the internet, and not only does it provides a cookie system all its own, it provides a way to tie Flash cookies back into browser cookies.

So, what’s the big deal? If old fashioned browsers are already storing cookies, what’s the difference if Flash does it as well?

The difference is that most end-users are completely unaware of Flash cookies. We don’t know that Adobe is providing a way to track our information, we don’t know that they are re-enabling browser cookies we’ve gone to the trouble of removing, and we certainly don’t know how to stop or prevent them from doing it.

To give a typical example, we go to a commercial site and it sends a cookie to our browser. We’ve set Firefox to refuse or delete cookies on exit, so we don’t worry about it. Our history is a clean slate. However, this site also sends a cookie to Flash. We go online again and the Flash cookie doesn’t see a clean slate, it sees everything, and it just keeps on tracking us again (and maybe even sees that we’ve deleted our browser cookie and picks up that trail as well). We’ve lost control of our own privacy.

Not so bad? Imagine it was a cheap film-noir detective following us everywhere we go. The store. The bank. Our office. Our bedroom. How would that feel?

Now remember the iPhone knows who we are. It holds all of our private contacts and personal data. And it knows where we are. Google and Skyhook have driven down our streets and through our neighborhoods mapping cell towers and even the Wi-Fi routers in our homes. And EDGE and Wi-Fi allow a virtual open pipe between the devices in our hands and the servers at Apple, Google, Yahoo, the carriers, and now with the iPhone SDK, any developer calling CoreLocation services. And who knows who else? (Not us, that’s for certain.)

So now we not only have our film-noir detective following us around, but we have him (potentially) accessing our phone, digging through our pockets, our wallets, and virtually low-jacking our each and every move. Bigger deal yet?

PCs and Macs have had security experts, privacy advocates, and massive user bases pounding away on them for years. On the desktop transparency is higher, architecture is more easily explored, and environments are far more open and customizable. If we don’t want a certain app, daemon, or service running, chances are someone’s already posted instructions on how to stop or remove it. And if we need an app, daemon, or service to help fix an existing privacy or security problem, chances are someone’s already developed it.

Not true on the iPhone. Though it’s given us a desktop-class browser and has made us comfortable (and indeed eager) to browse on a mobile device, Apple’s “next revolutionary platform”, even post-SDK, is far more of a black box than a little beige one.

(This is not to say people like noted pre-SDK developer Erica Sadun and countless others won’t bang on the iPhone faster and harder than ever to find out, its simply the state things are now and may well remain for most casual iPhone users who don’t scour the blogsphere on a daily basis).

And the Cons Have It

As a longtime corporate web developer who has routinely used Flash (though never Flash cookies!) for years, I thought I would miss it on the iPhone, and that I would quickly file a feature request with Apple and add my voice to the endless comment stream demanding it.

Turns out, not so much.

The clean, low overhead, open standards-based web experience Apple has promoted is compelling. I don’t miss the noisy banner adds, the instant-on video clips, and most importantly, I don’t miss Flash cookies.

But What About our Vidz??!1

While Apple already provides a YouTube app, having struck a deal with the Google-owned online video mega-power to transcode their content from Adobe’s codec to the iPhone-friendly MP4 (H.264) format, all this still leaves us with many, many other sites (among the fastest growing on the web, no less) still rocking the Flash, and thus excluded from our mobile enjoyment. What about them?

Adobe itself has recently announced support for H.264 encoded video in Flash, so there’s always the chance they may produce Steve Jobs’ “just right” sized Flash solution in-between Lite and desktop.

Third party WebApp and native App developers have also discussed technologies that would that would transcode Flash video to H.264 specifically for the iPhone, so if Adobe and Apple can’t get it together, maybe some enterprising young startup will?

Let’s just hope, whatever the solution and where ever it comes from, it provides the excellent user-experience iPhone owners have come to expect, and at the same time allows for the privacy and security control we now demand.

Appendix: Flash Cookie Management

Notes security expert Steve Gibson has previously provided instructions on how to manage Flash privacy settings and control cookie behavior:

Adobe Flash Settings Manager

Steve [Gibson]: So I wanted to mention that to everyone whos listening because many people wrote in having done this experiment. They deleted their cookies, they emptied their browser cache, they shut down their browser, they rebooted their computer, they took their laptop to somewhere else, and they were – and literally at least 40 people wrote in and said, “It still knew me. How did it know me?” And so I appreciated this confirmation that this use of Flash cookies is becoming more widespread, clearly in this case, as he says three out of the three financial institutions he used plant Flash cookies.So to all listeners, into Google you want to put “Flash player settings manager.” Just put in “Flash player settings manager,” and you get a link to Macromedia, maybe it says Adobe now, Im not sure, I dont remember whether theyve changed the URL. But the point is, most of us have Flash loaded in our machines now, which unfortunately is why the banks have all started using it. Its something that survives, as many listeners have discovered, it survives casual cookie deletion. And exactly as this guy has mentioned, it annoys him because it is unknown and is unclear.The good news is, its possible to control these settings and to prevent sites from using Flash cookies if for some reason you really didnt want that, or to restrict sites that you have specifically allowed. Anyway, theres good Flash cookie management available, and its a web-based interface. You dont use your local Flash player, running it like standalone, because it is an embedded web page object. Instead, if you put in “Flash player settings manager,” thatll take you to the Flash site, where youre then able to go to some web pages to bring up a little tabbed interface. Basically it runs your Flash player on the page and gives you access to a user interface you never knew you had. And youre able to browse through and see the domains that have registered cookies on your machine. You can delete them right there. Youre able to change settings. Youre able to do some worrisome things, like you can tell it dont ever turn on my microphone and camera without letting me know. Its like, okay, well, thats probably a good thing to tell it. So youre able to do that and a number of other things.So again, “Flash player settings manager,” and poke around in there. Youll find out who has stored cookies, so you know. Youre able to delete them. Youre able to then block them and prevent them from changing. Anyway, theres a whole bunch of tabs and settings that are definitely worth poking around in.

Bonus Podcast!

We couldn’t wait until our regularly scheduled podcast to talk about the iPhone Software Roadmap. Mike and I were also lucky to be joined by Phone different writers Chad Garrett and Rene Ritchie! Listen in as we chat up all the new announcements about the new Enterprise features and the SDK.

This post is also a Wait-a-Thon post! Your comment posted here enters you for a a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Also note that starting today, you can use your User Referral Link (found here when you log in) to get two entries in this week’s drawing.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Everybody here at the iPhone Blog is very, very excited about the iPhone SDK Roadmap. We can’t wait for native apps, for more functionality, for games, for Apple to go after BlackBerrys. We can’t wait – seriously – it’s going to kill us waiting until “Late June” for all this good stuff. We’ve called in a team of psychiatrists, it’s not looking good.

We bet you feel the same way.

So to help ease the pain we’re instituting the iPhone Blog App Wait-a-Thon! Starting next week and then every week until Apple releases the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, we are going to give away a $100 iTunes Gift Certificate to a lucky reader.

You may not be getting your native apps now, but at least your can download some emo music to drown your sorrows, or a Pixar movie to cheer you up, or the first three seasons of LOST¹ to help remind you that it’s not that bad.

Here’s how it will work: Sometime during the week, two to three of our blog postings, articles, or reviews will have “Wait-a-Thon” after the title, that’s your cue to comment on that entry. Comment on that entry and you’ll be automatically entered in that week’s drawing. (Just one entry per post counts, max three per week).

The latest Wait-a-Thon post is always available here. Just take a look over next to the Wait-a-Thon contest graphic!

Full details after the break!

Them Details:

1. Open to everybody who has an iTunes store in their country (Yes, Mods too!)
2. One entry per “Wait-a-thon” post counts, but feel free to post as much as ya like!
3. No cheating on the referrals, we’re watching and we know.
4. Contest will run each week until “Late June” or whenever Apple releases the iPhone 2.0 software update. Yes – if Apple’s late we’ll keep it running. This is a Wait-a-Thon, after all.
5. We’ll announce the previous week’s Wait-a-Thon winner in the next week’s first Wait-a-Thon posting.
6. You can win no more than twice.

¹: Has anybody seriously considered the Apple angle with all the stuff that’s been happening on LOST? That satellite phone was iPhone-esque… Is Steve Jobs Alvar Hanzo? Or did he perhaps spend his early days studying with the DeGroots? Think about that: timeline fits, his counter-culture experimentation fits, …it all fits!

We’re not able to liveblog the event here at Phone different, but we are able to put our two cents in — stay tuned to this blog post during the event for color commentary on what Apple announces. It won’t be up to the second, but you’ll get a little more analysis in exchange for those extra minutes.

Bonus: comment on this post and we’ll quote our faves in at the top.

T-Minus 25 minutes. When you see the “read more” link below, it’s showtime!

All times below are EST, subtract 3 hours for actual Cupertino Time.

12:45: I’m feeling the Reality Distortion Field even though:

1. I’m not there
2. I don’t expect to be happily surprised by today’s announcement.

I’ve definitely crossed through that permeable membrane into his Steveness’ realm, though.

12:55

Bri Guy: I’ll give my first-born for cut ‘n paste.

I’d give your first born, too. :p

Bad Ash: why delay a week for an announcement?

Exactly. I still think that they were working their butts off to get something real out the door but couldn’t manage it. That’s the one ray of light here – that we might actually be pretty close to real apps getting released because they were this close to getting it out.

rener: Games ready to ship? 3G iPhone announced? ActiveSync licensed (purely for Dieter, of course)?

No. No. partly cloudy, with a 30% chance of Exchange.

12:58: Reports that Disney employees have preferred seating — that’s interesting? Can’t imagine that Disney has any relation to apps — maybe we’ll get more info on just why iTunes hasn’t met the goal of getting movies in quickly enough, with a side of “every Disney film in on iTunes now”

As an aside, I will forego sourcing each little tidbit here during the liveblog, but will add them after. Kudos in advance to: Ars, Gizmodo, PhoneMag, Macworld, and Engadget. …who are relegated to the back, but they get free power — Apple’s finally admitted that this live blog thing is real and they’re paying attention to it.

Update again: going to put new stuff at top.

12:01: It begins. “Welcome” from Steve, in a turtleneck of course. Stats on the iPhone, 2nd to RIM in the US. Huuuge Safari usage stats, as we’ve previously reported. I wonder: 90% of people reading these live blogs must already know a lot of these figures — or am I just so deep into cell phone news that it doesn’t occur to me that not everybody knows that the iPhone is rocking the mobile industry.

12:05: Bam. Jumping right into Enterprise news. That bodes well – usually these things end with a bang. If we start with enterprise support, that may mean that the “bang” will be apps NOW. Crossing my fingers.

Yes, he said “push email” wouldn’t say it if he wouldn’t get it. Right? Right?

12:07: They’re doing ALL of these things: push email, push contacts, VPN, security, remote wipe, enterprise config. I didn’t expect that. This might just be bigger news, sales-wise and mindshare-wise, than the SDK. I care most about the SDK, but America and Wall Street cares most about enterprise.

Active Sync and Exchange support confirmed. BOOM. Except no “Boom.” This announcement was given to Phil Shiller — a sign that Steve still doesn’t really care about Enterprise.

…now, the devil is going to be in the details. How will they implement this. Will the iPhone work with MSCMDM (search WMExperts for that one). If so, this is a RIM KILLER. Both MS and iPhone using the same device management tool? Goodbye RIM.

12:10: Demoing the support. Good and interesting that the support is built directly into the default PIM and Email apps in the iPhone. Good because it just might mean that Apple is going to have real (instead of half-a**ed) Exchange support on the Mac too. Interesting because, well, Apple licensing Microsoft’s biggest Enterprise service (Exchange) is big big news.

12:15: Hehehehe! There’s a photo showing how ActiveSync is direct, while RIM’s NOC is indirect and a failure point. Hi BlackBerry Outages! Just like Palm, Apple’s not going to let you forget about that one. When the marketing comes out for this stuff, Apple is going to take potshots at RIM. I wonder – Microsoft Guy and Mac Guy vs BlackBerry guy. I’ll give a $25 Phone different Coupon to the person who comes up with the best candidate for BB guy in the comments!

rener: 802.11x is also a must for a lot of university networks

I am stupid – what’s 802.11x and why do universities in particular care?

12:19: SDK time. They’re really rolling fast. Overview of web apps and adding icons to the home screen. Please please — give us an admission that “No SDK Needed” was a gigantic slap in the face. We need to hear you say that, to hear that even the Jesus Phone can sometimes stray.

12:20: Whoa – are they “releasing” today? Yes – starting today, we get the same “APIs and tools that Apple uses.” Wow – color me pleasantly surprised. I was all doom and gloom before the event started (ref. the last PD podcast, as Bri Guy mentions in the comments below). They’re calling it “Cocoa Touch.” The basic idea here is that the iPhone is OSX at its core, but as you get to higher layers at some point it assumes you have a mouse and keyboard and no touchscreen. So development must be very similar to OSX development with Cocoa, but instead of Cocoa you have Cocoa Touch.

If they’re not blowing smoke about this, then app development for the iPhone is going to be as advanced or more advanced than either Windows Mobile or Symbian in very short order. There are some similarities to developing for Windows Desktop and Windows Mobile (ref. .NET), but that pales in comparison to this.

12:27: Another “Boom” moment without the “Boom:” Core Location. Just like any app can look up a contact, any app can look up your location just like Google Maps does. How does this thing not have GPS?

I guarantee the 3G iPhone, the very next iteration, will have GPS built in. No question. If Location is a deep, OS-level service, then they’re planning on GPS. Bank on it.

rener: Curse you Rogers and Canadian Data Rates!

:p

12:28: Aside for Windows Mobile nerds who know about the HTC video driver issue — hardware video acceleration is built-in deep and available globally. Send the pitchfork-wielding mob over to Qualcomm and HTC.

12:30: Things we get access to: “multi-touch events, multi-touch controls, accelerometer, view hierarchy, localization, alerts, web view, people picker, and image picker camera” (via PhoneMag).

Hm. I assume that “data” via radio and WiFi are just assumed somehow, that the iPhone itself handles that. “Web view” is a really big deal — allows for seamless integration of local and remote data, AKA true widgets.

WRT “true widgets,” isn’t it funny that Palm got this EXACTLY RIGHT nearly 10 years ago with their first wireless Palm device, then dropped it because it was too difficult to code for and not enough people had the wireless devices. Why didn’t they bring those back?

12:33: Discussing the development platform now – it is XCode as expected. Want to develop for the iPhone? Get a Mac. That’s just fine — Apple is better off focusing their resources on one development tool on a single platform, they don’t need to bring XCode to Windows users, they know that Windows users will come to the Mac just to be able to develop for the iPhone.

rener: That Apple’s techs have fit Darwin, BSD networking, OpenGL, and all the Core services into this thing is unbelievable.*

You damn skippy.

12:35: Interface builder is drag’n'drop. Full iPhone emulator on the Mac. This is incredibly full featured and way more powerful that I expected — I was half expecting them to hand out a flyer with a list of calls and bits of code.

Something this full featured makes me suspect that it’s not ready TODAY. But they did say it was. Crazy. They really did delay it a week to polish this thing off. No… maybe they delayed a week to give some 3rd party developer a bit more time? Are we getting APPS TODAY?

12:39: Requisite “Hello World” app building demo. Able to build/compile/whatever (I’m not a developer) quickly. You can test in the emulator or test directly on a sync’ed iPhone.

Ok guys, give us time table. Tell us about distribution. Pricing for developers to get this stuff on iTunes. Apps.

12:44: Demoing some apps now. Touch Fighter — full access to a really good accelerometer means you can just move the phone around to control the fighter.

Lots of people poo-poohed the touch screen and accelerometer on the iPhone because we’ve seen both on phones before — but a high quality touchscreen and accelerometer, now that makes a big different, doesn’t it? What used to be gimmicks can become genuinely new and engaging ways of interacting with a device.

I officially declare 2008 to be the year that the Stylus Died.

12:47: Mike Overbo, Editor Emeritus of Phone different and the host of our Podcast, is going to soil himself. EA is on stage and intimating that they have ported Spore over — with a dev. platform they’ve never seen before — in about two weeks.

12:50: Just in case you are missing what’s happened here today: Apple took the “IT” phone of 2007 and early 2008 and just made it simultaneously ten times hotter to Business users (via exchange and, just now, a salesforce.com app) and general conumsers (via fun games).

And Steve Jobs hasn’t been on stage the entire freaking time. What’s the deal there? Giving credit to a team that’s clearly been working quadruple overtime? Still bitter that his precious work of singular art is getting sullied by people who don’t work at Apple?

12:55: AOL is coming up next. AIM? Yes: AIM. Hunh. That’s interesting and I think in a good way. Apple could have said “Screw you guys, we’re going to do iChat and stay the heck away from our iPhone, much less our big app announcement.”

Instead, they eschewed their own program and let AIM write one instead. Kudos. Kudos Kudos — it took AOL FIVE days to build it. FIVE. DAYS.

Oh, and now epocrates. I know that a lot of Doctors are hanging on to antiquated PDAs just because of a few medical apps. This helps them a lot.

2:01: Super Monkey Ball with accelerometer support. Swoon. “We had to fly a developer in to upscale the art for the iPhone”

Nintendo DS: You are going to lose market share to this. The big, high-resolution screen is the difference here. see my comment below about quality components.

chadman: Too bad I have to use GroupWise

Take heart, remember that there were rumors of Lotus support. If Apple is willing to support Microsoft and (rumor) Lotus and they’re willing to forego writing iChat and let AIM have a shot at it instead, then they’ll definitely not complain if somebody cobbles together groupwise support.

…though it might not be as deeply integrated, instead it would be standalone, I guess?

rener: they could seriously contend for mobile gaming market share.

I was thinking the exact same thing. It also seems like it’s a big slap in Nokia’s face — they still haven’t gained any traction with their N-GAGE platform.

2:05: “App Store.” You can buy apps directly on the iPhone. I can’t believe I didn’t think they’d do this. It’s obvious. Grumbles about having to go through iTunes are going to get overshadowed by the fact that you don’t have to think about syncing, .cab files, .prc files, etc.

Good that Steve’s finally back on. And yes, you can also buy through iTunes. And yes, I’m seeing the word “Free” next to apps. And yes, unlike iTunes WiFi, you can buy over EDGE or WiFi. And yes, you’re alerted if there’s an update. And yes, it’s exclusive. No other way (short of jailbreaking)

A bit of a bummer, that last bit, but not surprising at all.

2:09: No charge to developer if they give the app away for free. Otherwise it’s a 70/30 revenue split, Apple taking 30% is about what I expected. Actually, it’s better. Apple is eating hosting costs, cc fees, and they’re paying out monthly.

Apple says “no malicious apps or porn.” Guess that means this stuff will be policed and vetted by Apple. Does that mean you have to submit your source code to Apple in order to distribute your application?

eeeeeeee.

2:11 iPhone firmware version 2.0. Beta is going out today to developers. Customers will see it in June as a free update.

Darn. Darn Darn Darn. June is close, but not close enough. It’s what I expected, though. Unexpected — another charge for iPod Touch owners because of accounting. $99 bucks in order to publish on iTunes. so Apple’s not eating everything, but $99 is much less than I expected it to be.

2:15: One More Thing: iFund. Some VC firm is giving away $100 million (yes, that’s the right number of zeroes) to iPhone developers… I guess you can go apply at www.kpcb.com .

That’ll spur development and right quick.

rener: No pr0n, realistically, means stay-of-execution for jailbreak

True that. Jailbreak isn’t going away… but it’s certainly going to be minimalized.

2:20: Asking the press to stay for just a few more minutes. Hm.

Bodes ill? Or it could just be a Q&A

2:23: Q&A Starting. We won’t do all of these questions. Just the juicy ones.

Q: Business apps are coming, should RIM be worried? Steve: Go ask them. We’re not sending them a message, we’re sending customers a message [Gizmodo]

Seriously – Where did Apple buy that humungous gauntlet? You’re most definitely sending them a message, Jobso. You’re practically mooning them.

2:28: Q: What will happen if someone does a VOIP app? A: We will only stop VOIP over cell networks, but not WiFi.

That’s interesting — I wonder if it’s because they know that VOIP over an EDGE connection will be an inherently horrible experience or if AT&T wouldn’t let them because of their deal. I suspect it’s both.

It’s also a little foreboding — Apple gets to decide what gets published and what doesn’t, but I’m still unclear on what the criteria will be. Malicious – No. Porn – No. VOIP isn’t either of those… So is the 3rd “No”:

• “Whatever hurts our business model with AT&T”
• or is it “Whatever we think will deliver an inherently bad experience to the customer” ??

…Either way I don’t know that I like that Apple should get to decide that for me.

2:34: a SIM unlock program will not be allowed in the iTunes Store.

That’s an LOL right there.

2:38: Quote from Macworld:

• More talk about iPhone versus Blackberry. “Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device, goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”*

On Phil Shiller’s office wall: A photo of the BlackBerry Pearl with a giant target painted over it. I said it before and I’ll say it again, expect a massive anti-BlackBerry, poke-fun style campaign from Apple this summer in the same style as their current Mac vs. PC ads.

2:40: “Parental Controls” are coming.

Super Monkey Ball PLUS mom can turn off Safari to stop junior from looking at porn on the net. They’ll sell a million this year to pre-teens alone.

2:45: We’re done! Expect a LOT of posts in the coming days analyzing this big big news!

Mike and Dieter speculate on the SDK announcement, discuss enterprise email support, and read from your letters. Listen in!

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News

• SDK Event Thursday (tomorrow)
  • Predictions article
  • locked down (Dieter told ya so!)
  • Lotus, Exchange?
• 3G iPhone Rumor that’s actually believable
• Jailbreaking and unlocking remarkably drama-free with 1.1.4
• iPhone LoJack
• Web Apps vs. Native Apps

How To

We discuss the benefits of an RSS aggregator site optimized for your iPhone. Whether it’s Bloglines, Newsgator, or even just Mobile Safari’s RSS support via reader.mac.com

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Community

Contact Us!
To contact us, dial 866 757 7752 extension 222. or you can email us at podcast at phonedifferent dot com, it goes directly to both of us.

New Writers

Rener, Chadman, Brian, and Casey – Welcome aboard!!

Thanks to Janric and Anthony for your emails!

• Wow!!! Farewell Treo…hello iPhone
• What app are you most looking forward to?

Credits

Thanks to the Phone different Store for sponsoring the podcast.

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge
• Relaxation Spa Treatment by Dan the Automator via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• Wataridori 2 by Cornelius via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• DC 3000 by Thievery Corporation via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future

It’s coming, the SDK is really really coming. Thank the lord. Apple has sent out invitations to an event titled “iPhone Software Road Map.” That may or may not mean they’re actually releasing the SDK, but it doesn’t sound like we’ll be getting a slew of new apps next week.

Yes, it technically is late for the February release, but it’s a relief to not be so in the dark anymore. Also interesting:

Apple also said to expect details on “some exciting new enterprise features,” which at first blush sounds to me like a method of getting the iPhone to work more closely with corporate e-mail software – CNET

Hello Exchange support?

The SDK might be delayed one to three weeks, says Arik Hesseldal of BusinessWeek:

I’m hearing from one source that its going to be late. I’m not yet hearing any reasons why, and it’s sounding like the official release date could slide by anywhere from one to three weeks. [...] However I’m also hearing that the situation is fluid, and a lot of last-minute decisions are close to being made about what precisely will or will not be disclosed next week, if anything. There are, apparently, a lot of moving parts to something this complex.

A lot of “moving parts,” eh, ya think? It would be a major bummer if the SDK is delayed, but it wouldn’t be too shocking – the sand is quickly running out of February’s hourglass. Fairly soon, though, we’re going to have some information about the SDK and I have to admit that my expectations are rising the more I think about it.

This is related (again) to Mike and my discussion in our iPhone Podcast last week. As I see it, there are four ways that the SDK announcement (whenever it comes) can shake out. Read on for some thoughts on what we might see and what I hope to see.

So those four ways are a combination of two sets of possibilities. The first set is pretty straightforward, and they’re what Mike and I discussed:

1. The SDK is announced, as is the method of distribution (iTunes-only or something more open), but no apps are released.
2. Same as above, but we’re treated to new, 3rd party apps immediately.

I am sincerely hoping for the latter, of course, but my hunch is we’ll see the former. The big question here is whether the distribution method is iTunes-only or whether developers can distribute directly (and whether 3rd party software stores can get in on the action). Again, my preference is for the more open option, but hunch is that we’ll see the less-open option.

The above questions aren’t as important to me as the below, however. The real question is what kind of SDK Apple will provide. Although it’s not quite right to break this down into two categories (a sliding scale is probably better), I’m doing so anyway for the sake of a quick and dirty analysis:

1. A “lite” SDK that offers “high level” access to the iPhone’s operations but doesn’t offer “low” level access that lets you get into the “guts” of the OS.
2. a “full” SDK that really opens up the iPhone and enables all sorts of system-wide hacks and tweaks.

Obviously, if you haven’t gathered by now, I’m hoping for the latter but expecting the former. If we receive the “lite” SDK, I fully expect the current Jailbreaking / app developing iPhone subculture to continue — there are just too many people too interested in doing too many interesting things with the iPhone to stop it. It would be a real shame if Apple kept the sort of innovation that’s happening with iPhone app development marginalized to those who are willing (and able!) to jailbreak their iPhone.

This fits into an overall feeling I have about the Smartphone industry, one I’ve expressed (perhaps in a flawed manner) over at WMExperts by saying that the iPhone isn’t a smartphone. Here’s the important bit:

It may have been crude, but Ballmer was exactly right when he chanted “DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!!.”

It’s almost impossible to state just how important 3rd party developers are to a platform like the iPhone. They’re what make it a platform in the first place. The “fuller” the SDK, the better off we will all be. A full SDK will allow many — if not most — of our hassles with the iPhone to go away.

By making that claim, I’m disagreeing with a guy I don’t often disagree with, John Gruber, who wrote over the weekend that:

To add third-party support for “corporate” email — by which he means Microsoft Exchange — you’d have to write your own entire email client. Possible, perhaps, but an enormous undertaking. And copy-and-paste? No way will that be something that a third-party developer can provide. The whole point of copy-and-paste is that it’s a service provided by the system, shared between all apps. To be clear, just like everyone else, I hope Apple does add copy-and-paste — but if it doesn’t come from Apple, it isn’t coming.

Yes, an email client is an “enormous undertaking,” but it’s one that many developers have successfully undertaken for both PalmOS and Windows Mobile — sometimes with more success than the original developers of the platform. Given the many complaints about Apple’s iPhone Mail client, I have little doubt that the same can (and will) be done for the iPhone.

As for cut-and-paste, it clearly is going to depend on whether or not we get a “full” SDK or a “lite” SDK. If it’s a “full” one, then a developer will find a way–just like PalmOS developers found ways to alter the behavior of the Treo’s LED, vibration, screen, alarm system, and more. The Windows Mobile Registry offers so much deep-level customization that it’s almost difficult to believe. Will the iPhone SDK allow us to change the hated Marker Felt font in notes? I have to point out that changing the font on the PalmOS is fairly easy and it’s even easier to change the font on Windows Mobile.

The point is that I fully believe that if Apple doesn’t offer system-level improvements like cut-and-paste, somebody will eventually. The breadth, depth, and persistency of development on the other smartphone platforms and the “Jailbreaked” apps we currently have are both evidence that developers will always push a smartphone as far as it can go. (Heck, there’s even a PalmOS emulator for the iPhone now.) I could be wrong — the technical hurdles on the iPhone could be too great — but I doubt it.

I hope that when these system-level improvements come, they’ll be available to everybody, not just the people savvy enough to jailbreak their iPhone. If a delay means we’ll get a fuller-featured SDK, then my response is simply Yes, please delay it.

Mac Rumors is reporting that the Apple Event, the one we were all hoping would bring the announcement of the SDK and end the omgnoappz saga, happened last night. It was Linkin Park playing a show at an Apple Store. They’re also reporting that the dearth of press invites bodes ill for a full-on press event for the launch of the SDK.

In other words, though we’ve heard that Apple is supposed to still be able to meet their self-imposed February deadline, things are starting to look bleak in terms of their being much more than just the release of the SDK. I hope I’m wrong and that I was wrong in my podcast prediction: that if Apple makes the deadline, we’ll just see an SDK released to developers and the iPhone update that allows for apps will take awhile longer.

(Also: Linkin Park is still around and popular? Hunh. I thought all they did was get stalked.)

Two weeks later and we’re still waiting for the SDK. Mike talks about what he hopes will come, Dieter about what he fears. Plus we discuss the Tiny Code excitement (lies!) and, yes, Google again too.

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News

• The Crazy Unlock / Millions of missing iPhones Drama continues
  • 1 in 10 iPhones on China Mobile
  • the Gray Market is huge
  • would be nice if apple told us what the deal was
• The SDK Waiting Game
  • Tiny Code accidentally leaks info — Just Kidding!
  • event planned for feb 27
  • super double overtime
  • Multitouch + cut/paste == love
• Google! iPhone! 50 TIMES any other device
• AT&T and Starbucks – they store the songs locally, sounds like
• seriously doubt flash

How To

Hey, don’t forget, Google Maps has a bookmark feature that’s not obvious but obviously useful. Could keep you from making an accidental detour to Home, Kansas. Seriously.

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Community

Contact Us!
To contact us, dial 866 757 7752 extension 222. or you can email us at podcast at phonedifferent dot com, it goes directly to both of us.

Highlights from the community:

• Upgrading to 16gb iphone – the method is simple
• What’s missing from AppleTV take 2
• New writers coming soon!

Credits

Thanks to the Phone different Store for sponsoring the podcast.

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge
• Relaxation Spa Treatment by Dan the Automator via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• Wataridori 2 by Cornelius via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• DC 3000 by Thievery Corporation via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future

Tiny Code

Tiny Code no longer produces fixes or applications for firmware 1.1.3. We can’t say much, but we are working with Apple and with their SDK for the next firmware release and SDK applications and we shouldn’t be missed for long. We will no longer update our Installer.app repo for legality reasons and you should see us soon on iTunes.

They said this at http://tiny-code.com, which if you visit you’ll note is now redirected at the iPhone Dev Center. This, it turns out, was something developer “Kelly” did in order to, well, stop the tsunami of questions that followed his statement. It also turns out Apple was none too pleased about the leaks in the above statement.

Leaks? Yep:

1. “shouldn’t be missed for long” sounds a lot like “that event that’s coming on February 26th“
2. “you should see us soon on iTunes” sounds a lot like “iTunes is definitely going to be the way that these apps get distributed, sold, and installed.”
3. Next to the statement above was “Now targeting fw 1.1.4 Alpha 2.” Oops.

Each of the three above “leaks” is a surprise to exactly nobody who’s been watching the iPhone news with any degree of attention lately, but nevertheless Apple did some hand-slapping, as Kelly explains in this MacRumors forum post

One: Yes, I have a copy of the Apple SDK for the iPhone targeting firmware 1.1.4. Two: Yes, Tiny-Code.com was ordered to be removed from operation by Apple, Inc because by releasing firmware versions and stating I had possession of the firmware and SDK was apparently a violation of the Non-Disclosure Agreement I agreed to when I accepted a copy of the SDK and firmware. Three: Yes I was wrist-slapped by Apple and won’t be included in any further firmware beta’s or testing/coding.

Yeouch.

What does the iPhone lack? Besides the obvious — 3G, Office Doc editing, the ability to actually make julienne fries — what the iPhone lacks is games. Real, on-board games. Some of this pain is mitigated by the fact that you can get web-based games (including some great iPhone games by our very own forum member cmaier). Still, though, do you know what the most popular video game on the planet is?

Solitaire. Because it’s built into Windows.

So getting native games on the iPhone is a Big Deal because people are much more likely to form an affinity with a device if they can play a game or two on it. I speak from experience — the most painful part of leaving the PalmOS for me is still the fact that I can’t find a crossword application as good as stand alone’s. Add the love for the iPhone to love for a device with games and you’ll start seeing people getting buried with these little guys.

…All of which is to say that seeing that Apple is extending their trademark to include handheld gaming strikes me as a good sign. Sure, as MacRumors points out, this doesn’t mean much — Apple’s been making games for the iPod Classic for awhile now. Still, though, we need games, Apple, please please release a couple when you announce the SDK. Or announce that partnership with EA that we’ve been hoping for.

Coda: Another reason we need native games (to say nothing of apps): stuff on the web disappears. For example, I just realized that Duck Hunt has shuffled off this series of tubes mortal coil.

This is the month we are supposed to see the unveiling of the iPhone SDK, finally ending all the omgnoappz drama and obviating the need for Jailbreaking for all but the most hardcore of iPhone users. It feels like the wait has taken forever.

Now we see that TUAW is reporting that there will indeed be an Apple event at the end of February. Many are hoping that it will be the release (or at least more details) on the iPhone SDK. Others are hoping for a 3G iPhone announcement — but that seems much less likely given that Apple just released the 16GB model.

So let’s join the bandwagon and assume it’ll be an SDK event. Cool. Now the real question, the one that put an icy lump of fear and doubt into our hearts during the last Phone different podcast: what if it’s just an announcement of an SDK for developers, that Apple won’t let the apps on for another 6 months?

If you’ve hacked your iPhone or iPod Touch, look for the “App-A-Day” source.

It all depends on what the app ideas are. If the app’s purpose is to show a pumpkin on the main screen, it could suck. Even if it does suck, it’s still a herculean effort.

The New York Times has a neat article on third party applications and how the iPhone is currently the only device on AT&T’s network that doesn’t support them. The article has some good things to say about Palm too, which I always welcome. The big gist of it is how Jobs’ quote from a January Newsweek interview doesn’t jive with reality:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform… 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.”

Whereas the reality of the situation is that Cingular/ATT welcomed development on every single other phone they had on their network, whether it be Java/J2ME, PalmOS development, Windows Development, or Flash Lite / whatever. This is backed up by Mark Bercow, Senior VP of Development at Palm. Talk about your David vs. Goliath situations here; I feel like Steve Jobs’ famous reality distortion field just failed for a second or something. But, there’s another quote that the Times dug up that I’d forgotten about from his video conversation with Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference in July:

“This is a very important trade-off between security and openness. We want both. We’ve got good ideas, and sometime later this year, we can open it up to third-party apps, and keep security.”

The more I think about this quote, the more I think he’s talking about widgets here. You only really have to worry about a widget’s security if there’s a browser bug or exploit, and HTML/CSS/AJAX is definitely open. He probably doesn’t want to open up a full native SDK until the software and hardware platforms are stable and proven, much like he did with the original Mac series. That is, if he wants a full native SDK available to the public at all.

There are a few other interesting tidbits from the article that I can’t help but mention:

1. Two-thirds of Treo owners have purchased 3rd party apps
2. Ten percent of Treo owners have purchased 10 or more 3rd party apps
3. AT&T has a website to get developers on all of their development platforms except the iPhone.

Apple has posted their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG, PDF link) for programming for the iPhone. What this means is that they’ve completed the rules and guidelines for how they expect you, the iPhone user, to interact with applications on the device. It also means that now that they have interface guidelines, they can begin focusing on building the software they need for native third party applications and not web applications. Yes, I said it; worst of all, I believe it. Even worse, I think this is the big news of the weekend, even more than bricked iPhones. You’ll have to brave the cut for why.

First, John Gruber of Daring Fireball at least scanned the front page and noted the temporality of the word currently. Their language implies that another document they’ll have to post another set of HIG for native apps.

“Note: Currently, developers create web applications for iPhone, not native applications. Therefore, this document focuses solely on the presentation of web applications and other web content on iPhone.

I posted long ago that John Siracusa of Ars Technica posted an excellent article back in June stating that Apple needed to get their Human Interface Guidelines finished before they could provide any kind of programming support for the iPhone. The HIG are essentially a required element before one can work on, or at least finish working on, a system development kit (SDK) for the iPhone.

Not everyone is a developer, so not everyone is going to understand what Siracusa is talking about throughout; he gets a bit technical at times. To that end, I’ve cherry-picked a few of his excellent paragraphs that detail why the HIG are important and necessary as a foundation before 3rd party applications can arrive (emphasis added):

“But the second thing that attracts developers to the iPhone is more profound, and it explains a lot of the anxiety surrounding iPhone development. The iPhone is not just a new platform, it’s an entirely new set of rules for interface design. That is what struck me the most once the actual iPhone demos started. There are no windows, no close/minimize/zoom widgets, no checkboxes, no radio buttons, no scroll bars, no nothing.”

“But what does an application behave like in this new world? What makes a pleasant, easy to use iPhone application? Where are the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines? No, seriously. Yeah, sure, we’re all such old pros that we can just ignore the Mac HIG and riff, right? After over 20 years of the Mac-like GUI, maybe that’s true. But you have to know the rules before you can know when to break them. We’re all in the dark on the iPhone.”

“And that includes Apple. Not only does Apple have to figure out what makes a good iPhone application, it has to actually create the APIs to produce such a thing. Okay, so no scroll bars, but surely there will be some standard way of scrolling, some standard gesture recognition engine, and so on. Apple has to create all this, if only for its own internal sanity, before it can really get cranking on iPhone application development.“

So… now that the Human Interface Guidelines folks at Apple have finished the web guidelines, what do you figure is next on their plate?

Web Duck Hunt. It’s a bit slow, you have to lead it a fair bit on the iPhone, maybe a duck length or so and hope it doesn’t turn. Via iPhoney, though, it works great. If you want to see a lot of the dog giggling at you, though, go ahead and start it up. The above results were done with iPhoney; there’s no way a person could get their web high score of 150,000 from an iPhone without it. No way.

Update: I take it back. This web application is fully data-url-able, which means you should be able to run it from your iPhone bookmarks (i.e., it supports boonies mode). I still have a few card games to review, but this is by far the most impressive web game I’ve seen so far.

The hacking community continues to delight and amaze. Hacker stepwhite has ported the InfoNES core over to the iPhone. It’s not ready for general consumption; the controls apparently suck (as quoted by stepwhite), and it runs too slow to be playable… yet. Other important emulator functions like saving states and cheating outright also not supported, but at the rate that the hacking developer community has been moving, we’ll be playing Xbox 360 games on it by next week. The code is available at Google Code. [via]

It’s like a real breaking news story. There’s now an unofficial Terminal client for the iPhone. It’s important to note that this Mobile Terminal is not a web app; it’s a real GUI meat-on-the-bones fire-on-the-grill application. The project is hosted at Google code, which is interesting; it could mean an unofficial nod of approval from Apple, as the above gizmodo post details. The Terminal app will be an important development for further hacking at the iPhone, and it’s incredible that it was done without any kind of official SDK from Apple. My hat is off to you, good sirs and ma’ams.

In terms of getting to a place where they can unlock an iPhone and host applications, this is a big step; it means that hackers can interface directly with the iPhone instead of having to reload firmwares, reset the iPhone, test, etc: they can test changes on the fly now. A video is after the break, and you can visit the MobileTerminal.app page directly.

So, yeah. Favelets and bookmarklets. In the podcast, I promised a review article about useful bookmarklets and favelets, for the iPhone. And here it is.

I’ve written a few simple bookmarklets as well; it seems a lot of the bookmarklets are designed for web editors, and not always so much for the average web user. I’m guessing that not many regular folks need to edit CSS from the iPhone, and those that do already have those bookmarklets synched over. But still, there’s a void for popular sites. It seemed that all I found were eBay, Amazon, and Google sites. So I set out to make a few of my own, and edit a few others so that they’d work on iPhone Safari (henceforth, iSafari).

If you have any requests for a custom bookmarklet, put them in the comments. It has to be said that I make no guarantees that I can make the resulting request as I’m not an expert with javascript by any means, but the worst that can happen is that I say no. Okay, that’s not the worst that can happen. The worst is that I say no VERY IMPOLITELY.

As always, the best way to install these bookmarklets to your iPhone is to drag them to the bookmarks bar in Desktop Safari and give them a name you can remember them by. Then, it may be a prudent idea to organize them into a folder. I’ve organized my bookmarklets in the last bookmark folder in my menu bar, so it’s always the last folder I see.

General Searches

• Find in Page
  From the I-Don’t-Understand-Why-It-Wasn’t-Built-In Department. This updated version highlights searched-for text as bold with a yellow background it stands out a bit more. It is no help if the background is already yellow. There’s not much helping a site with a full-on yellow background, though. At any rate, for those rare occasions, here’s one that changes the background to orange.
  [via]

Entertainment Searches

• Yahoo! Movie Times by Zip code
  This one is pretty self-explanatory. I wrote this one quick to see if Yahoo! results are easier to read on an iPhone than Google results.

Writing & Blogging Related Bookmarklets

These are some of the tools that I use to blog and write, though they could be used for many other purposes.

• Post to Del.icio.us
  Of course, it’s always handy to have a bookmark to your del.icio.us bookmarks nearby. [via]

Math Tools

These are quick bookmarklets for math. Not something that I use every day, but every once in a while stuff like this is useful to have.

• Random Number
  This favelet asks you to enter a maximum integer, and generate a random number from 1 to that integer. [via]

Passwords

• Find Login with BugMeNot
  BugMeNot is a useful site where people can share logins for sites that require compulsory registration. I wrote this one for quick queries on the iPhone.

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.

iPhoney is an application that allows you to check what your website would look like on an iPhone (we’ve reported on it before). They have a new version, which requires Mac OSX 10.4.7 and is now open source.

Web app functionality is something you talk about if either

1. you’re not ready to talk about the external SDK. We already knew it would do web apps — reference the “kinda sorta internet” commercial. We knew it would do the full internet, javascript, the whole shebang — last January.
2. There is no SDK, Web 2.0 / AJAX all the way.

• Jobs said at D5 that if folks are willing to hold on for a while, he’ll have an answer for that. I have said that I didn’t think we’d have an SDK at launch, and it looks like at least that much is true. I still think we’ll get one later.
• though I’m not excited about Web applications, they are powerful. Case in point: Google Documents. There’s an interesting wee tidbit from that website: “Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!” I don’t see Opera, Minimo or Pocket IE on their list of compatible browsers.
• Web 2.0 / AJAX devleopment is going to be a boon for web developers, and it’s simultaneously a shot in the arm for Safari. It’s quite possible that Safari as a targeted web platform is more important to Jobs right now than an SDK (it does burn me to say that). Conversely, web apps significantly lower the bar of entry for application development, and opens up subscription and service-based application licensing models.
• I’m still convinced the market potential is large for iTunes as a signed app delivery vehicle. I think I’ll stick to my guns on this one; we’ll see what other announcements Jobs makes in the next year or so, maybe as early as January at MWSF.

That said, there are still some vexing questions:

• Whither YouTube?
• is Adobe’s flash supported? If so, expect it to basically become the default application language. This would be a huge boon for Flash Lite apps.
• Can you store web apps on the iPhone directly, i.e., run them from flash storage? If you can run apps without incurring bandwidth, that’s great. If not, this could be a huge issue.

It’s very clear to me that we still don’t have all of the SDK answers yet; I don’t think this issue will be resolved yet on launch day.

I’ll admit, I was hoping for a full-blown SDK; I had surmised a widget-based application stack earlier but foolishly abandoned it in the hopes of a full-blown SDK, if not just for the sake of games. More after the end of WWDC to follow!

The article even goes into detail concerning Jobs’ worry that an application could bring down a network, which has been pooh-poohed by various technical people:

I happen to know of one actual incident in which a bug in a certain first-party smart-phone application caused, essentially, a denial-of-service attack on an important data service—one that happened the same time every day for weeks before it was tracked down.

If you’re tweaked out about the iPhone SDK issue, go read it. Some programming knowledge might help.

The iPhone is not just a new platform, it’s an entirely new set of rules for interface design. That is what struck me the most once the actual iPhone demos started. There are no windows, no close/minimize/zoom widgets, no checkboxes, no radio buttons, no scroll bars, no nothing.

Seriously, I could quote this article all day. I wish it went into why an SDK is so important, but it doesn’t, so I’ll follow up where it left off.

There’s never been any question in my mind that Apple would have an SDK for the device. Sooner or later, I wouldn’t know when, if it would be at launch, or what have you. Apple doesn’t want to have to write all of the applications for it themselves; they’d rather let other people do some of the work, so they can catch some of the fringe uses of the device.

Let’s look at games on the iPod, as an example. Steve Jobs has never been focused on games, but he needs them on the iPod platform, so he outsources that development. So, game developers like EA or Gameloft probably grab some Pixo SDK from Apple, and port their game code over using that SDK — it affords the developers use of the scroll wheel, the center button, etc. Without that SDK, there’s no simple access to the iPod click / scroll wheel interface.

But if this SDK is so much trouble to do right, why release one at all? That’s really the golden question: it’s important because of the money.

You have to ensure that there’s a rich ecosystem for developers, as the developers are the people that ensure that a platform (platform meaning smartphones, computers, video game consoles, etc) has applications available on it. Applications are the lifeblood of any platform, and Apple knows it. Think of how important Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop has historically been to Mac OSX. Think of how important computer games have historically been to Microsoft Windows. Think of how important Grand Theft Auto III or Final Fantasy was to the PS2. Think of how important Oracle was to UNIX vendors.

Developers have to be able to write software for a platform to ensure its survival, to keep it alongside (or ahead of) its competitors in the marketplace. So that’s part of the money.

The other part of the money is this: Steve Jobs has the perfect avenue to sell 3rd party applications in the iTunes store, a potential gold mine. Rumor has it that the iPhone will only run signed applications — that is, applications without Apple’s signature of approval won’t run. It would not be too hard for Apple to sign apps; they sign AAC files every time someone purchases music or iPod games or whatever from the iTunes store.

So, Apple can use their huge content delivery system to store applications, sign them to individual users, and ensure that developers get paid when someone buys an application. Apple can take a cut for housing the applications, just like they do for the record labels. The astute will note that this method ensures that developers get paid for their software products (if they like, I’m sure there will be some free or possibly open apps on the platform), which is of course a major concern for independent developers.

The only niggle I see is if Apple decides they want to test the applications for security, malware, and the like before they certify them. To that, I have no idea; they may just be selective about who they release the SDK to.

But rest assured that they’ll release an SDK, because it’s about the money, and Apple likes to make money: it’s their singular purpose as a corporation.

“one of those phones that crashes a few times a day…. We would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we’ll do it.”

OMGAPPZ. kthxbye.

One of the best parts, for me, is that Jobs confirmed they’re still working on 3rd party applications for the iPhone, how to do it right; how to do it without making the device crash twice a day. A more in-depth article should follow this afternoon or evening.

In any regard, D5 has posted a highlight reel, but I’d personally recommend just watching the individual flash videos. Read on for the links.

• Prologue
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

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.

I have no idea if the story is true, there’s no video of it in action; it could be a photoshop, it could be false, it could be a brazen lie by Walter Biscardi to capture traffic. But if it’s true, it should quiet the doubters worried about the application ecosystem a bit, especially if it’s a sign of things to come.

[via My iPhone]

Odds are very good that he’ll remind everyone about the iPhone too. I suspect he’ll probably put some of the lingering questions to rest about the iPhone. Hopefully he’ll tell us what day we have to get in line to purchase one. Since it’s WWDC, I’m guessing that he’ll announce some sort of SDK and official capacity for third party apps. Otherwise it would be like rubbing developer faces into mud: “Here’s a groundbreaking platform that changes everything that you can’t be part of! Besides buying one! And switching to Cingular!” Not likely; or at least, not for long. Personally I think we’ll see 3rd party applications in iTunes the day the phone is out.

via Wired