Tom's Musings About the iPhone

I get mail. Usually what might be described as "hate mail" or a note from my mother asking why I haven't emailed her. But occasionally I do get a real gem. Today's gem is from frequent Dr. Dobb's contributor Tom Thompson who checked in about the iPhone. Having written all kinds of applications for a long time, Tom knows what he is talking about when it comes to (1) mobile phones, and (2) anything Apple. That pretty much says "iPhone," wouldn't you think?

So here's Tom's musings about the iPhone:

It's going to be interesting seeing how the iPhone plays out. First and foremost, it's got to be a great phone. By great phone, I mean just that: it's got to receive and place calls reliably. If it can't do that due to the hardware or it crashes, then it's game over. If they've got that issue taken care of, then everything else is icing on the cake.

The iPhone has limited memory, no SIMM card, and no slots for memory or peripherals. Chris Sorenson, a Microsoft executive, said it was a "closed device." Darn tooting it is.... For the product launch and probably the first year Apple should have that thing closed. Nobody can download apps or obtain them from a memory card for a reason -- you don't want an errant app crashing the thing or turning on the transceiver. This isn't a PC we're talking about here, it's consumer electronics. I'm not saying that Apple shouldn't open the iPhone to third-party developers, but they're going to have to wait. And as for Steve Jobs saying you can write "Web 2.0 applications" for it, come on Steve, let's be honest -- those are just fancy scripts running in a browser.

The iPhone has already scored one big win: It's made phone OEMs rethink the UI. With the touchscreen, Apple got rid of the tyranny of the keypad/push-button interface. I've written simple example apps and a game for cell phones, and trying to deal with that minimalist UI was tough.

There's also tremedous interest in the iPhone because it promises to break the vagrancies of the carriers on data services. People are frustrated over carriers who disable certain features in phones to suit their own purposes, download only their apps, or curtail how you browse the web. If Apple's arrangement with AT&T makes them money, it stands to place some of the choice back into the hands of the consumer. The one fly in the ointment that I see here is that to load music, you have to "side-load" it from a PC via iTunes. The music restriction has to be in response to an objection from the RIAA, because AT&T would rather you download the music over their network and make money off you. Instead, consumers have to go to iTunes to do the job. Apple doesn't have a problem with that, as it further promotes iTunes as the front-end to a digital hub for phone, TV, iPod, and computer.

The iPhone doesn't have 3G technology, so it's going to be interesting to see how it holds up for extensive browsing and other data operations. Apple engineers probably went for the middle ground on the hardware to hit a price point and for reliability. Same on the limited memory. It's good enough to hold a few apps and songs, but not enough drive up the price. The GSM is a good idea, since it's available worldwide. The one big hitch in the hardware is the non-removable battery. Road warriors who make heavy use of their mobile gear sometimes swap a spent battery with a fully charged one, and worry about charging the exhausted battery later. You don't have that option with an iPhone. Again, it was probably done to keep the system closed, but I think they should have thought about usage patterns a bit more on this one.

If the iPhone is a success -- and that is a big if right now despite the high interest -- Apple will want to open it up. How they're going to do that will be interesting. Steve would like you to write Mac OS X apps for it. All well and good, but there are other factors at play here. First, the IT departments are going to initially balk at iPhones, and not because it's "irrelevant to business users" as Mr. Sorenson says. It's going to be because the IT guys will want to validate that the iPhone isn't a security risk. Steve doesn't like Java. I can understand part of that, because Java has such horrid UI elements, although it's been getting better at adopting the UI of the host operating system. UI aside, from my personal experience Mobile Java is pretty good at making small yet powerful, crash-resistant applications. Java has good security, and a number of enterprise applications will probably require Java clients. It's easy enough to put Java and Mobile Java on the device. It would also allow the iPhone to tap into existing, field-tested mobile apps and games. As much as Steve would like a whole raft of Mac OS X apps written for it, he's not going get the iPhone adopted in the enterprise unless Java is on the iPhone.

Nice letter Tom. Thanks.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 02:19 PM  Permalink