Don’t confuse me for a die-hard Apple-rules fan.
I’ve been pondering the news of Apple’s iPhone for about 24 hours now and I’m confident enough to assert now that their iPhone changes everything.
In an industry that was in absolute dire need of innovation, Apple have swooped in and made every single handset manufacturer look ridiculous. The greatest asset with the iPhone is that it’s running Apple’s OSX — a proper big boy, grown up operating system, that affords phenomenally huge opportunities.
The introduction of the iPhone is what changes everything. Not the actual piece of hardware. The fact that someone has dared to innovate and offer such wide potential in a connected handset is what changes things.
Irrespective of whether the iPhone is actually any good, it’s effect should soon be seen.
Innovation demands innovation.
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola — they’ll be motiviated to up their game, big time. At least, I hope so. Such a ‘leapfrog’ offering should prompt action and innovation from the rest of the players, manufacturers, operators, software designers. That’s what changes everything. That’s from where my utter excitement is derived.
Continuing on the theme of the iPhone changes everything, here’s what I mean. I’ve been thinking not about how delightful it will be to flick through my iTunes albums on an iPhone, but about the market potential. Tons of companies, known well to SMS Text News readers, have been going through my mind.
Move your mind to the point whereby the Apple iPhone has been launched and is receiving broadly positive reviews. Consider then that hopefully some other manufacturers (Creative even?) should come along with their me-too hardware, innovating themselves. (Although, what they’ll do about software…. forget that for the moment!) Work with me and assume that people begin to warm to open platform iPhone style devices.
Can you imagine what Hotxt could do, freed from having to arse around with stupid limitations imposed (often involuntarily) by mobile handset manufacturers and operators? They could focus on delivering a really, really good communications service. All of a sudden they can easily update and improve their offering without having to guide every single user along a complex and challenging upgrade path.
Justin and the team at BuddyPing would be free to design entire interfaces that work beautifully. ShoZu could substantially innovate without having to worry about silly limitations.
When you actually sit down and think what the industry could do with a lot of people using open-platform devices running something like Apple OSX, well…. geez. It’s like imagining every single person is sat there with a computer. Now you can control the presentation layer. You don’t need to arse around with complex certificates. You want to introduce a better way of texting? Cool. Come up with an application, drop it on to the device and see how folk react to it.
If I wanted to activate a Hotxt style application on my iPhone, all I’d need to do is visit hotxt.com, click ‘install’, press ‘yes’ on the device and …… woooooosh…….. I’m now using Hotxt. When they make a change, I get the update sent to my device and implemented immediately. When I open up the application, it immediately interfaces smoothly and transparently with the mobile phone systems, the audio systems, everything. Gahhhh. It’s all there, you see.
You know what would be cool? Linux. Someone get hold of a really good device — something similar to an iPhone in terms of form factor, and stick Linux on it. Then let the market decide which flavour works.
If you’re a fitness community and you want to offer a really smart fitness service, you might choose to do so via the device web browser. But really. Screw Mobile Ajax… just build the little application in Linux or Apple OSX or whatever, and get it on to my device in a click.
If you’re a dating site, you can now finally control the experience on mobile. You don’t have to accept the horrifying limitations imposed by Symbian and the various other operating systems. You might choose to make it all web based. You might decide to build a slimline client. You might decide to create an application to run on the device. Who knows. You decide and then get it live. Then the audience, the market, they decide. That’s what changes everything.
Ooooh it’s exciting.
Tread carefully, Ewan, nothing’s been said about the ability to install third-party software on the iPhone, and Jobs’ comment that it “runs OS X” could mean anything at this point. It’s a little early to declare the iPhone an open-platform device without the “horrifying limitations” of other mobile platforms.
That’s a fair point Carlo — I think, in this context, I’m more excited at the possibilities of what an open-platform device could offer, rather than the actual realities specifically related to the iPhone. You’re quite right, it’s certainly quite a large assumption to assume you can put your own applications on the iPhone. What a depressing day that’ll be, finding that out, eh? 😉
Open platform? No:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-iphone-is-not-a-smartphone/
“Noted analyst and Engadget pal Michael Gartenberg stated that the iPhone is first party software ONLY — i.e. not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed.”
Oh, and it doesn’t sync with Office/Outlook.
Well, I’ll eat my hat if they don’t allow you to develop widgets and pieces of software to run on it!
And if I have to eat my hat, I will NOT be impressed!
oh, and don’t hold your breath for skype or an IM client:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2372
wait for neo1973 and openmoko.
will be available in mid february (hope so), with being around 350$.
Oh, I just read that it doesn’t support MMS either.
“Well, I’ll eat my hat if they don’t allow you to develop widgets and pieces of software to run on it!”
Got your knife and fork ready, Ewan?
“I just got back from Macworld Expo where I had a chance to speak briefly to one of the iPhone “experts” on the show floor. I assume this means that he is a member of the iPhone product team. He told me that no decision has yet been made on whether or not to include Java on the phone and, if so, to use J2SE or J2ME. He also said that the phone does use Cocoa but that it is “not an open system”.
“I asked specifically if individual developers could write applications for the iPhone and the answer was not yet, but that Apple would listen to input from developers when deciding how or if third-party applications could run on the phone. He agreed with me that filing a Radar request would be the best way to for developers to let Apple know about their interest in writing third party apps for the iPhone.
“He also confirmed that although the home screen of the iPhone looks like Dashboard and the applications are called Widgets, it does not use the same technology and standard Widgets will not run.”
Apple Java Developers’ mailing list
(If the url is stripped from my reply, just search for “Does java run on these new phones”…)
And now Mr Jobs has said it himself (I wondered why he bothered demonstrating the ringtone)
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36919
Ewan, no recycling the photo of you eating your hat last time!
Well I will certainly eat an original hat, but first, let’s see how things go when it launches.
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