Apple iPhone and related items (cont.)

[Kid_Eternity]

No, because the phone has to have your mobileme details entered into it first.

Lame...

 

[grit]

Lame...

How else could they identify the handset?

 

[ChrisFilter]

How else could they identify the handset?

IMEI?

 

[grit]

IMEI?

How do they link that to you?

 

[stupid dogbot]

http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/iphone/pricing.html

Essentially the same as o2. £10 more for the handset.

 

[Vintage Paw]

The Apple website has pushed back shipping dates even further. It seems there are display ordering issues from LG, and that coupled with the frenzied rush of pre-orders has meant they simply do not have enough.

I'm holding off on ordering, and will possibly saunter into my local reseller Thursday morning on the very, very slight off chance they may have stock.

Perhaps.

I haven't decided yet.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Turns out, if you want to have a Simplicity tariff and buy the handset outright, you will be able to do that in an O2 shop on the 24th (stock permitting, yadda yadda), but they still don't have the handset prices for that option yet.

So you can't buy the handset and get a PAYG tariff on the day, but you can buy the handset and get a Simplicity tariff on the day

And, of course, you have to be an existing O2 customer to buy it as soon as it comes out. They just announced that today, I believe.

 

[Lazy Llama]

Guardian article has a graph and link to spreadsheet of iPhone 4 pricing, though the spreadsheet seems to make the mistake of ignoring the O2 statement that:

All our smartphone tariffs for iPhone include Visual Voicemail, up to 1GB of UK data and unlimited Wi-Fi.

 

[stupid dogbot]

I tend to use the 3g over the free wifi, tbh. Because it's utterly, utterly shit.

So, on that basis, my choice to go back to Voda seems a good 'un. Which considering as it was made on the basis of "fuck o2" makes me

 

[Vintage Paw]

Guardian article has a graph and link to spreadsheet of iPhone 4 pricing, though the spreadsheet seems to make the mistake of ignoring the O2 statement that:

Very useful graph, that. Cheers LL.

I'll be sticking with my plan to buy the handset and get a Simplicity tariff. Now just got to decide between the 16GB and the 32GB. I've got a 16GB 3G, and it's only half full, but I've not put all my music on there, and with the better camera quality and HD video on the new phone I can see it filling up far quicker. I think I'll plump the extra for the 32GB. Maybe.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

I've got a 32gb 3GS with only 6 gigs space less so it's got to be 32gb for me...

Think I'm gonna wait till the end of the year and upgrade on a 18 monther then (assuming nothing amazing comes out or the 3GS doesn't kick the bucket!) which will mean it will finish in time for the new 2012 iPhone...

 

[Vintage Paw]

Yeah, I'm almost certain I'll get the 32gig. What's £100 between friends?

I'm armed with phone numbers to my local O2 shops, which I plan to call on Monday to ask if they've ever had queues on iPhone Day™ I'm in the back of beyond (sort of), so I'm hoping that means there won't be nobbers sat outside all night. I'm not desperate to get it on the day, but because my contract runs out on the 8th July, and it's likely to sell out and go on backorder, I don't want to be paying over the odds on my tariff while I'm waiting for one to arrive (Apple store now says 14th July shipping, which is an improvement on the 20somethingth July, yes, July not June, that it said yesterday).

This will be my first ever time as an 'early adopter'. Let's all watch it backfire

 

[Vintage Paw]

Also, why would someone want the white one? *vom*

 

[Sunray]

I'm in Glastonbury on Thursday so unless I get up early and see if the O2 shop in Glastonbury town has one or I stay up all night and queue, reckon I can wait till July, its not the end of the world.

Gonna take my handy cam to Glastonbury this year see what I can take.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

So...iOS4 rocks into town tomorrow. Must say I'm looking forward to it; unified email inbox and better exchange support are both welcome.

Oh and that little desired multitasking thing looks nice too.

 

[ChrisFilter]

So...iOS4 rocks into town tomorrow. Must say I'm looking forward to it; unified email inbox and better exchange support are both welcome.

Oh and that little desired multitasking thing looks nice too.

I've heard it's disappointing. A mate of mine has rolled his back to 3.1.3. But then like me he's jailbroken his phone and has a lot of the features OS4 offers. In some cases, multitasking for example, what OS4 offers isn't as good as the jailbreaking option.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

I've heard it's disappointing. A mate of mine has rolled his back to 3.1.3. But then like me he's jailbroken his phone and has a lot of the features OS4 offers. In some cases, multitasking for example, what OS4 offers isn't as good as the jailbreaking option.

How's the multitasking work on a jailbroken iPhone compared iOS4? Also, what's the impact on battery life?

 

[ChrisFilter]

How's the multitasking work on a jailbroken iPhone compared iOS4? Also, what's the impact on battery life?

Loads of different options. One like the Pre's card system, for example. I'm using kirikae which I've set to activate by sliding my finger across the top of the screen. I'm then presented with a list of running apps which I can open or close from there. Not dissimilar to OS4, just a bit slicker and doesn't use hardware button.

Slide my finger the other way across the top and it opens sbsettings - a sort of quick access control panel.

 

[editor]

I've heard it's disappointing.

A view shared by this writer:

Phone 4 multitasking will disappoint


People who expect to be able to run any application in the background on the upcoming iPhone iOS 4 are going to be disappointed. Apple is keeping a tight leash on application multitasking, with only a very limited range of capabilities allowed to run in the background.
This isn't a secret, but a lot of people aren't paying attention. Take, for example, Stuart Miles at the blog Pocket-lint, who reported this week: "EXCLUSIVE: iPhone 4 multitasking - massive delays expected." He notes that initial testing of the iPhone 4 shows that only Apple's own apps, like Clock, Mail, and Safari, currently support multitasking. "That's it!" Miles writes, with the exclamation mark.

It seems that, as Jobs pointed out, developers will need to enable multitasking on their apps for the function to work, before it comes with the free iOS 4 update on June 21. Something that's unlikely in a vast number of cases.
When we spoke to a number of developers, that aren't keen to be named in this article for fear of backlash from Apple, they all confirmed to Pocket-lint that, for any app to take advantage of the new multitasking features, it will have to be updated. Furthermore, many of those we spoke to felt that many apps simply won't be.
"Why would you want to multitask during a game," explained one.
Another said that, "the way Apple is marketing it is a bit misleading. Out of the 200,000 apps available, only a few will be able to multitask, and possibly not from day one."
​

Also:

The news is likely to come as a massive shock to current and new iPhone customers, who will no doubt expect to be able to multitask any app from day one.
It also means that if you do want to multitask, you might not be able to with your favourite apps until that developer updates them.
​

Not paying attention
I think Miles is right about customer expectations. Many customers will expect full multitasking of all apps from the moment the iPhone comes out of the box. It's what you get on a Mac or a PC, after all. And those customers will be disappointed.
Apple has been quite explicit about multitasking limitations since it announced iPhone OS 4 (now known as iOS 4) back in early April. As my colleague Gregg Keizer reported then:

As experts expected, Apple did not throw open the multitasking doors, letting just any developer add full-function multitasking to their applications. Instead, Apple added seven multitasking-specific APIs (application programming interfaces) to the iPhone OS 4 SDK.
Among the tasks that will be allowed to multitask, said [Scott Forestall, Apple senior vice president of iPhone software] are audio play, voice over IP (VoIP), location services, task completion and what Apple called "fast application switching," which suspends an application, then lets a user resume at the point he or she left off.
​

For example, you'll be able to stream Pandora, receive Skype calls, use location-aware apps, and finish tasks like uploading photos to Flickr, in background. But apps will have to be rewritten to take advantage of those capabilities. Many apps will support multitasking from the moment iOS 4 becomes available June 21, many others will take time or never support multitasking at all. Apple started accepting iOS 4 apps on Thursday.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/16307/iphone_4_multitasking_will_be_disappointing

Palm are the only people to have nailed this properly. Using lovelier phones like the iPhone and Desire still feels like a step back after any amount of time on the webOS.

As an aside, it sure seems a crazy situation that developers have to live in fear of getting on the wrong side of Apple: "When we spoke to a number of developers, that aren't keen to be named in this article for fear of backlash from Apple..."

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Loads of different options. One like the Pre's card system, for example. I'm using kirikae which I've set to activate by sliding my finger across the top of the screen. I'm then presented with a list of running apps which I can open or close from there. Not dissimilar to OS4, just a bit slicker and doesn't use hardware button.

Slide my finger the other way across the top and it opens sbsettings - a sort of quick access control panel.

Ah right, and what about battery life?

 

[Sunray]

Power is a precious resource in these type phones. Everything is a compromise. People had got use to long standby times with candy bar phones, switching people back to daily charges was about all they could get away with and while most took it on the chin it, most grumbled about it, but what it gave you over the old phone was enough to offset the complaints.

What Apple can do is to stick a power gauge onto all the key bits of the system to work out what take the most power and when. These phones have a fairly limited battery 1100mAh or so, so anything that impacts the power significantly had to be neutered to some degree.

Apple really don't like 3rd party stuff impacting on their products, look at Jobs problem with Adobe as a good case in point. To understand why, consider the Microsoft problem. They had to deal with lots of complaints with the blue screen of death. This was nearly always caused by the graphics card manufactures and their near constant beta drivers yet MS got the blame. Windows NT itself was very stable. In my old work we had the DEC Alpha version of windows NT 3.51, in the 11 years it was in service 24 hrs a day, it never crashed once.

Its a compromise, but this form of MT will prevent dodgy apps from crashing in the background and then tight looping your battery to zero in 1 hour, while its in your pocket.

 

[editor]

Its a compromise, but this form of MT will prevent dodgy apps from crashing in the background and then tight looping your battery to zero in 1 hour, while its in your pocket.

Can't say that ever happened with my Palm, but I very much appreciated being able to have an app or a website stream music in the background while I worked on something else, or keeping an IM window open.

I'm a big boy, so I like to decide for myself how I want to use up my battery life.

 

[Sunray]

Can't say that ever happened with my Palm, but I very much appreciated being able to have an app or a website stream music in the background while I worked on something else, or keeping an IM window open.

I'm a big boy, so I like to decide for myself how I want to use up my battery life.

So you think you know better than Apple as to how to write mobile phone operating systems?

I fail to see that Apple are imposing these restrictions for anything other than engineering principals.

That was quite probably because all the applications were written in Javascript or by Palm and therefore reasonably reliable. I've one app on my phone thats I quite like but holy crap it crashes a lot.

 

[ChrisFilter]

Ah right, and what about battery life?

No different.

 

[Pie 1]

Heh.

http://apfelblog.ch/iphone/das-etwa...ed&utm_campaign=Feed:+apfelblogch+(ApfelBlog)

 

[editor]

So you think you know better than Apple as to how to write mobile phone operating systems?

I fail to see that Apple are imposing these restrictions for anything other than engineering principals.

What a strange post.

Palm have managed to make multi-tasking work perfectly well with multiple apps from multiple authors, so I'm curious as to why you think it's impossible just because (you presume) Apple are saying that's the case.

 

[grit]

Apple really don't like 3rd party stuff impacting on their products, look at Jobs problem with Adobe as a good case in point. To understand why, consider the Microsoft problem. They had to deal with lots of complaints with the blue screen of death. This was nearly always caused by the graphics card manufactures and their near constant beta drivers yet MS got the blame. Windows NT itself was very stable. In my old work we had the DEC Alpha version of windows NT 3.51, in the 11 years it was in service 24 hrs a day, it never crashed once.

Its a compromise, but this form of MT will prevent dodgy apps from crashing in the background and then tight looping your battery to zero in 1 hour, while its in your pocket.

WTF? The adobe issue is not over power consumption. Also, MS have no relevance in this discussion.

As mentioned Android and Palm pull this off without any issues, so its not engineering.

 

[Crispy]

Just been reading up on new features of iOS4, and one that editor will like is full access to the Calendar database - should finally allow decent calendar apps.

 

[editor]

Just been reading up on new features of iOS4, and one that editor will like is full access to the Calendar database - should finally allow decent calendar apps.

That could be enough to drag me back if stuff like Agendus emerges. I'm still missing a decent calendar app, even if Android does a better job of it than the current contenders.

 

[elbows]

WTF? The adobe issue is not over power consumption. Also, MS have no relevance in this discussion.

As mentioned Android and Palm pull this off without any issues, so its not engineering.

One of the many issues relating to Flash is power consumption. I wait with interest to see if the Android flash stuff turns out to be any good, initial reports seem to be rather mixed at best.

As for Apples 'multitasking', its certainly going to be a pain if people are expecting full multitasking or lots of apps dont update to take advantage of the stuff Apple has added to iOS 4. In a few senses its actually quite an elegant solution, with engineering principals at its heart, engineering that is trying to deliver what Apple believe is appropriate. As well as power consumption I think Apple are rather keen not to have a background app slow down other apps in a noticeable way, but I can certainly see why people arent impressed and I shall just wait and see what the reality turns out to be. Given time I believe it will be fine for many of the applications people want to multitask, but its too early to be sure.