Apple iPhone and related items (cont.)

[Gromit]

Its a balance, future proofing but not over-doing it because the industry encourages the upgrade cycle of future product consumption.

Apple seem to sell lower future proofed specs but lock people into longer contracts. You are desperate for their next phone by the time you are allowed to buy one.

 

[grit]

Its a balance, future proofing but not over-doing it because the industry encourages the upgrade cycle of future product consumption.

Apple seem to sell lower future proofed specs but lock people into longer contracts. You are desperate for their next phone by the time you are allowed to buy one.

Having lower powered hardware is like an Apple design feature at this stage.

 

[Crispy]

600MHZ was near the top of the pile when the 3GS launched, and an A4 an 1GHZ will be comparably well equipped, won't it? It's only a couple of months away. Will there be anything faster at launch?

 

[Gromit]

600MHZ was near the top of the pile when the 3GS launched, and an A4 an 1GHZ will be comparably well equipped, won't it? It's only a couple of months away. Will there be anything faster at launch?

It can run at 1Ghz though. So they deliberately nerfed the speed instead of maxing it. So that later they could release they woo even faster 1Ghz version, despite it being the same chip.

However their plan has been foiled by someone else going 1Ghz first.

 

[editor]

iPhone blog lists what it thinks is missing from v4.0.

I *really* miss the notification system of webOS.

http://www.tipb.com/2010/04/09/iphone-40-missing

 

[Structaural]

2 years is not that quick.

They've upgraded the iPhone on a pretty much yearly basis. The reason for the underclocking is to preserve battery power - the iPod Touch is clocked higher for instance as battery preservation isn't such an issue.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

iPhone blog lists what it thinks is missing from v4.0.

I *really* miss the notification system of webOS.

http://www.tipb.com/2010/04/09/iphone-40-missing

Yeah they would have been very cool for the iPhone, no idea why they don't. There's already something similar, when you are in a call and push home the call is reduced to a glowing green strip, why can't they have notifications use a similar visual style?

 

[Structaural]

iPhone blog lists what it thinks is missing from v4.0.

I *really* miss the notification system of webOS.

http://www.tipb.com/2010/04/09/iphone-40-missing

Should be some great jailbroken apps/widgets coming up, but yeah Apple could have done a lot more with the lockscreen/widget/SBSsettings type thing. You can't even page back through the notifications you get, which is a bit crap when it's such a big part of their low-power multi-tasking.

 

[Sunray]

iPhone blog lists what it thinks is missing from v4.0.

I *really* miss the notification system of webOS.

http://www.tipb.com/2010/04/09/iphone-40-missing

All about priorities.

The next update might well fix it, might come sooner than that one, because that was a bemoth of an update. Might not be obvious to users but its a massive amount of work to get all that done and dusted. Quite possibly why its not come with the iPad.

 

[grit]

Regarding how developers have gotten fucked about with the announcements this is a great summary.

http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-has-just-gone-mad.html

"If you need to "originally" write your code in Swahili, while listening to Milli Vanilli, while reclining in a patch of mud, and then you need fifty oompa loompas to translate the Swahili into C, that is none of Steve Jobs fucking business."

 

[editor]

Regarding how developers have gotten fucked about with the announcements this is a great summary.

http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-has-just-gone-mad.html

"If you need to "originally" write your code in Swahili, while listening to Milli Vanilli, while reclining in a patch of mud, and then you need fifty oompa loompas to translate the Swahili into C, that is none of Steve Jobs fucking business."

This is akin to telling people what kind of desk people sit at when they write software for the iPhone. Or perhaps what kind of music they listen to. Or what kind of clothes they should be wearing. This is *INSANE*.

That's a great piece, and there's some interesting stuff in the reader comments too.

 

[sunnysidedown]

That's a great piece, and there's some interesting stuff in the reader comments too.

Great?

I agree though there is some interesting comments, like this one:

All this does is prevent native code not compiled with Apple's tools - that's it. It doesn't prevent you from using a third party generator in order to spew out Objective C based on some other language, but that code must be compiled using Apple's development tools. If Adobe creates a tool that spits out an XCode project there is NO effective way for Apple to prevent you from compiling it.

What Apple is trying to do here is to enforce their ability to openly examine and manipulate the running code processes of your application from within their OS, and they need to do that in order to elegantly handle multitasking the way they want to. If you write a web application in JS and that application is running inside someone else's implementation of a native wrapper, executing calls to native code functions through some proprietary format that you invented, they can't do that. While I agree that this is a pain, I don't see this being the terrific slap in the face many people take it to be.

 

[editor]

An Adobe employee is most definitely not happy about recent developments:

This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/09/apple-adobe-flash-ban/

Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for third-party editors like [Flash Development Tool] to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn't even think or consider something like that.

Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.

And it gets more heated:

Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple

Adobe blog post here: http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888

Ouch!

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Haha fun and games but Adobe aren't going to change Apple's mind so what's the point..?

 

[sunnysidedown]

I'm just waiting for that well used clip of hitler to turn up...

 

[editor]

I'm just waiting for that well used clip of hitler to turn up...

You might be in for a long wait because I'm pretty sure that most of us here are more interested in talking about developments related to the phone.

Least I am...

 

[sunnysidedown]

Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation.

 

[editor]

And back on topic, Apple's latest move seems to be upsetting more and more people:

Apple's New iPhone App Policy: Unreasonable and Unjustifiable

Joe Hewitt, who programmed the iPhone's Facebook application, lashed out against the updated developer's agreement on his Twitter stream.

"So much for programming language innovation on the iPhone platform," Hewitt wrote. "It's so hard to reconcile my love for these beautiful devices on my desk with my hatred for the ugly words in that legal agreement."

Developer Hank Williams, meanwhile, questions whether Apple's change will lead to a legal challenge.
"This concept of what language something is written in is an insidious concept and strikes at the core of product development and of computer science in general," Williams stated on his blog.

"Trying to control where something is originally done is attempting to control the thought process that yields a given result."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/1939...pp_policy_unreasonable_and_unjustifiable.html

 

[sunnysidedown]

You might be in for a long wait because I'm pretty sure that most of us here are more interested in talking about developments related to the phone.

Least I am...

good for you squire.

you do know the clip I refer to? the one trotted out every other week showing old aldof kicking off (complete with humorous subtitles referring to some sport/political/... news item?) It won't be long till there is one featuring hitler as the CEO of Adobe hearing about OS 4.0.

although having already seen a few variations of these myself, the humour factor has worn a little thin...

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Oh god the world does NOT need another fucking Downfall 'parody'...

 

[sunnysidedown]

An Adobe employee is most definitely not happy about recent developments:

And it gets more heated:

Adobe blog post here: http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888

Ouch!

that's a rather embarrassing rant there, looks like Adobe has stepped in and told him to delete/change a few things.

Comments disabled as I’m not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.

Someone give him his milkshake back.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Twitter have just bought Tweetie, it'll become free and be renamed Twitter for iPhone.

 

[sunnysidedown]

good break down of OS 4.0 here

I'm sure some keen eyed folk will notice the change from 'google' to 'search'.

 

[hendo]

I don't know much about computing languages but it does seem to me that restricting technical freedoms cripples the ability to innovate. And despite Apple's brilliance this strategy will eventually bite them on the bum when someone else comes up with better phones and gadgets.

 

[editor]

you do know the clip I refer to? the one trotted out every other week showing old aldof kicking off (complete with humorous subtitles referring to some sport/political/... news item?) It won't be long till there is one featuring hitler as the CEO of Adobe hearing about OS 4.0.

although having already seen a few variations of these myself, the humour factor has worn a little thin...

Why are you banging on about a clip that apparently hasn't even been made?

 

[sunnysidedown]

Why are you banging on about a clip that apparently hasn't even been made?

what? the 'computers, OSs, phones & gadgets' forum has a fair amount of threads banging on about things that haven't yet been made

Ars gets the boot into Apple here

 

[editor]

what? the 'computers, OSs, phones & gadgets' forum has a fair amount of threads banging on about things that haven't yet been made

Ars gets the boot into Apple here

What do you think of the article's conclusion? It's more or less what I've been saying for ages.

Apple's current—and in our opinion, objectionable—position is now close to the complete opposite of its initial stance.

From promoting openness and standards, the company is now pushing for an ever more locked-down and restricted platform. It's bad for competition, it's bad for developers, and it's bad for consumers.

I hope that there will be enough of a backlash that the company is forced to reconsider, but with the draw of all those millions of iPhone (and now, iPad) customers, I fear that Apple's developers will, perhaps with some reluctance, just accept the restriction and do whatever Cupertino demands.

 

[sunnysidedown]

What do you think of the article's conclusion? It's more or less what I've been saying for ages.

well it certainly makes for better reading than that crazy Adobe guy's blog post.

The thing is I'm actually in favour of Apple's decision here in the long run, I do however feel just a little bit of sympathy for Adobe due to the timing of this and CS5 - at the same time we are dealing with the mobile market here which is a totally different beast. Of course devs and users have the luxury of choice here and can go and use Android for instance if Apple's practices leave a nasty taste in their mouths, I for one prefer Apples model - that doesn't mean I think it's perfect, far from it, I've had many, many issues with Apple and their choices/decisions over the years!

The Ars piece mentions how this will hurt Android, but one of the posts on that article makes a good point :

I'll preface this a bit. I do mobile games for a major game company, so my experience is with games and not application development.

I now do almost all our work in C++ only, we use external C functions to filter out any necessary OS based calls and languages (like Objective C which wont compile with straight C++ files). With this approach, we generally only have 5 areas that change between platforms. Graphics, File I/O, Sound, Main App/Window creation, and our internal Image class.

So doing this, I can hit Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Brew mobile devices with 90% of the code written, and just change the last 10% per platform. There's even some common stuff between as I can do standard C file function calls for both iPhone and Windows mobile for example, and OpenGL works across 4 of the platforms.

It doesn't take that much to do cross-platform development without the tools and without falling afoul of Apple's new rules. Just need to be smart about it and plan it out.

 

[editor]

The thing is I'm actually in favour of Apple's decision here in the long run, I do however feel just a little bit of sympathy for Adobe due to the timing of this and CS5 - at the same time we are dealing with the mobile market here which is a totally different beast.

Really? You're an advocate for an even more locked-down and restricted platform?

 

[sunnysidedown]

Really? You're an advocate for an even more locked-down and restricted platform?

the main thing here is user experience, apple knows that if all apps are compiled to their spec then they are not going to get any potential issues arising from wrapped applications after a software update (for instance), and yes it's about restricting to a degree, which is not necessarilly a bad thing in my book.

I am looking forward to watching the development of a more open system like Android, that should be interesting to compare as seperate models.