Apple iPhone and related items (cont.)

[Sunray]

That software might have been in the works at Apple before that guy did it, software when you are Apple and not one guy, takes time to get right. The pod cast bit of iTunes is very good so its not really surprising that they blocked it if that was the case.

*shrug*

All boils down to what is and isn't allowed and they should be a lot more open about it.

Apple have a history of being very tight lipped as to new hardware and software. Obviously they don't want to give competitive advantage with new hardware etc. With the iPhone I can't see why they are being so precious about future updates.

 

[Kanda]

Don't be daft. Opera is a mainstream consumer product, not some kind of niche app for techies.

No way is it a mainstream product!

I'll tell you what, I'll walk around 60 people in my office tomorrow and ask anyone if they know of opera.

You'll get IT and R&D saying yes, the rest a big fat no.

I'll ask Firefox too if you want... that'll be mainstream, gaurantee it.

 

[editor]

That software might have been in the works at Apple before that guy did it, software when you are Apple and not one guy, takes time to get right. The pod cast bit of iTunes is very good so its not really surprising that they blocked it if that was the case.

Well, it might have be in the works, Or they may have nicked the idea. Apple rejected the origina program because they said that it duplicated the functionality of the podcast bit of iTunes, but - hey! - all of a sudden it doesn't!

Either way, it's a disgraceful way to treat developers. Why bother coming up with great new ideas and apps if Apple is only going to arbitrarily reject them on spurious grounds, or just nick the idea for themselves?

And even if Apple did have a similar program already in development, what's wrong with competition?

It sucks and the more powerful Apple get, the worse it's going to get for developers and consumers. Thank fuck there's some great alternatives coming through.

 

[editor]

No way is it a mainstream product!

It's the most popular mobile phone browser in the world. 12 Million users.

Oh, I see you're getting confused between desktop and mobile browsers.

 

[Crispy]

12 million users out of the billions of mobile phones is not mainstream. firefox has around 20% penetration worldwide - now that's mainstream.

 

[Sunray]

I think the App store is starting to creak under the weight of waste of time applications. Its got probably > 10,000 applications on there now, and there are less than 5 that I think are of any real use and even those aren't so great.

It appear that Apple don't allow press accounts, so sites like this one

http://www.appcraver.com/

have to pay for them. If that continues, even if there are applications that are good will just get drowned.

My take on this is that Apple wants to control the things that it knows will give the phone marketability in the future, which of course are all the things that everyone would consider useful. Apple can't market the phone based upon software that they didn't produce.

 

[Crispy]

You can get a 'Browse' view of apps

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20081104050201660

much quicker than the web-based interface

 

[Kanda]

It's the most popular mobile phone browser in the world. 12 Million users.

Oh, I see you're getting confused between desktop and mobile browsers.

No, not confused at all. Everyone that works with me has a mobile phone too.

 

[Sunray]

Not so useful tbh.

I've given up going to the store these days. Too many things, too much shit. 99% a waste of time. That browse mode makes it easier but its just a fuck off list of stuff that you spend hours going, 'oh god' to.

The App store is failing and thats without Apples help blocking stuff.

e.g. DLR Times. 59p for an application that is available on the DLR web site for free.

 

[Crispy]

Tethering (ie. using the iphone as a 3G modem) is "coming soon" according to AT&T

http://gizmodo.com/5078562/confirmed-3g-tethering-coming-to-iphone

 

[paolo]

Blimey - didn't expect that.

 

[Gromit]

Will never happen with O2 in the UK

 

[elbows]

Will never happen with O2 in the UK

Why not, is tethering not normal in the UK? I can tether the Vodafone N95 no problem, but beyond that my experience is limited.

 

[cybertect]

Well, that rather depends on how weight you put on a source described as, "informed sources who do not wish to be identified because they were not authorized by their employers."

Will Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO do?

The journalist who wrote the story that kicked the whole thing off, followed it up.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/why-you-will-not-see-opera-on-your-iphone/

A paragraph of my post last week about Opera Software, which makes browsers for cellphones and PCs, got a lot of notice on tech blogs. But, as often happens, the retelling of the story has created an odd snowball of misunderstanding.

I asked Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Opera’s chief executive, about the iPhone, after he mentioned how the Opera Mini browser was popular on other smartphones. He replied that in fact some Opera engineers had started developing an iPhone version, but the company didn’t pursue it because Apple doesn’t allow products on the iPhone that compete with its own software — in this case, the Safari browser.

I wrote that, figuring it would tell iPhone owners what they really wanted to know: They are not going to be able to use Opera Mini any time soon.

Boy, was I wrong.

The discussion has been raging about how Opera came to know that its software wasn’t going to be welcomed by Apple. In particular, iPhone fans wanted to know if the company submitted a fully working version of Opera to the iPhone App Store.

So I went back to Mr. von Tetzchner for more details. He said that the development of the iPhone browser was more an “internal project” of some engineers than a product that management was committed to introducing. Indeed, development was halted after the company looked at the details of the license agreement in Apple’s software development kit and realized that it would not be permitted.

“We stopped the work because of the prohibitive license,” Mr. von Tetzchner wrote in an e-mail message.

The eagle-eyed Mac blogger John Gruber had wondered whether there was a technical issue because Opera Mini appears to run on Java, which is not available on the iPhone.

But Mr. von Tetzchner wrote that Opera has a version that runs “native” — that is without needing an environment like Java.

Unfortunately, he doesn't say which clause(s) in the iPhone SDK Agreement led them to this conclusion. It's also worth noting that he's talking about Opera Mini and not Opera Mobile; a different product and a fully fledged browser, which Mini is not according to Opera.

Is there any end-to-end security between my handset and — for example — paypal.com or my bank?
No. If you need full end-to-end encryption, you should use a full Web browser such as Opera Mobile.

Opera Mini uses a transcoder server to translate HTML/CSS/JavaScript into a more compact format. It will also shrink any images to fit the screen of your handset. This translation step makes Opera Mini fast, small, and also very cheap to use. To be able to do this translation, the Opera Mini server needs to have access to the unencrypted version of the Web page. Therefore no end-to-end encryption between the client and the remote Web server is possible.

[emphasis added]

There was some speculation that it's the section that prohibits interpreted code outside the iPhone's built-in interpreters (i.e. Opera's HTML and JavaScript interpreters)

No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s)

However, because of the way that Opera Mini delivers its content (interpreted externally on an Opera server and compressed for delivery to the Opera Mini client on the phone, effectively as an image) this seems unlikely - the app doesn't do the interpreting, the Opera server (which is off the iPhone and therefore not covered by the SDK Agreement) does.

Since von Tetzchner explicitly states that their development version Opera Mini runs natively, the Java interpreter to support it can also be ruled out as the sticking point (hypothesised by Gruber in his blog).

We're still not exactly clear why Opera thought it wouldn't be worth pursuing the project, but it's certainly not a direct 'this competes with Safari' clause nor has Opera Mini yet been 'rejected' by Apple as stated in the original NYT article.

 

[Gromit]

Why not, is tethering not normal in the UK? I can tether the Vodafone N95 no problem, but beyond that my experience is limited.

Because they won't want to effect their dongle market and unfortunately know that UK customers can be easily pushed around and won't exactly riot about not having it too.

 

[Sunray]

I can't see what is stopping anyone buying a dongle and sticking the sim into it? Only issue is that taking out the sim from the Phone requires tiny tool that you will lose.

 

[Crispy]

Just hassle isn't it? Nice to be able to Bluetooth to the phone without having to even take it out your pocket.

 

[Gromit]

I can't see what is stopping anyone buying a dongle and sticking the sim into it? Only issue is that taking out the sim from the Phone requires tiny tool that you will lose.

That and the fair usage policy.

 

[paolo]

Opera Mini would be retrograde browser for a device with a full browser and decent bandwidth. It's proxying mechanism prevents it from running some otherwise entirely standard websites. AJAX sites in particular can suffer, and those with client side JS stuff can either be part functioning and/or provoke server round trips (I.e. Lag).

It now appears though it wasn't actually a finished thing anyway.

As one wag put it "The application that didn't exist, and noone would have wanted, that Apple would have banned. Meh."

I'm no fan of Apple's non-compete policy, but this particular story is a bit 'whatever'.

 

[Sunray]

That and the fair usage policy.

But they aren't going to notice unless your going mental with bittorrent and soulseek. I suppose that Wifi thing would be very useful and that is a phone only thing.

Always surprised how often I am in wifi in London.

 

[paolo]

When I was commuting through the city, I managed (just about) to use the Cloud's WiFi on the bus

 

[cybertect]

Always surprised how often I am in wifi in London.

You shouldn't be

http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39328236,00.htm

 

[iskande]

motorla razr no longer top selling handset : http://www.appleinsider.com/article...zr_as_most_purchased_us_consumer_handset.html

"
Apple's iPhone 3G dethroned the top-ranked Motorola RAZR as the leading handset purchased by adult consumers in the U.S. during the third quarter of the year, according to market research firm NPD.

The shift puts an end to the RAZR's three-year run atop the market, with the Motorola handset falling to the second slot, followed by Research in Motion's Blackberry Curve, LG's Rumor, and LG's enV2, respectively."

 

[Kid_Eternity]

That's an incredible rise considering the phone hasn't even been around for 2 years!

 

[zenie]

I can't see what is stopping anyone buying a dongle and sticking the sim into it? Only issue is that taking out the sim from the Phone requires tiny tool that you will lose.

or have already lost

 

[paolo]

That Quarter included the 3G release. I suspect people buying upgrades were counted as sales.

So, eyes forward then to Q4 results - that'll be a better indicator.

 

[editor]

Apple's iPhone 3G dethroned the top-ranked Motorola RAZR as the leading handset purchased by adult consumers in the U.S. during the third quarter of the year, according to market research firm NPD.

According to this article, Samsung rule:

Samsung takes No. 1 spot in U.S. cellphone market
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd passed Motorola Inc in the third quarter to became the leading cellphone handset vendor in the United States, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Friday.

The research firm said handset shipments in the United States -- the largest cellphone market in the world -- defied the economic gloom and grew 6.2 percent from a year before to 47.4 million phones in the quarter.

"Attractive bundling schemes from operators, healthy subsidies and aggressive pre-stocking by distributors ahead of the holiday season helped to lift volumes," said Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics.

South Korean vendors Samsung and LG Electronics Inc both won more of the market, controlling 22.4 percent and 20.5 percent respectively.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSL620185720081107

 

[cybertect]

No contradiction there, there are two different questions being answered.

iPhone is the most popular handset
Samsung sold more phones than any other manufacturer

There was a bit of a kerfuffle a few years ago when the BMW 3 series became the UK's best selling car, taking over from the Mondeo. I suspect Ford still sell more cars than BMW in the UK though. Same thing.

 

[editor]

Bosh! And another app bites the dust!

Apple rejected CastCatcher 1.3 from the App Store on Monday, according to Return7 developer Amro Mousa. The reason? "CastCatcher Internet Radio cannot be posted to the App Store because it is transferring excessive volumes of data over the cellular network, which as outlined in the iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.15, is prohibited."

If that's Apple's policy regarding streaming radio applications, Mousa is a little puzzled, because he has already released three versions of CastCatcher with no problems since it was first released to the App Store in September. And there are several other streaming radio applications on the App Store, such as the one developed by CBS subsidiary and CNET corporate sibling Last.fm, that also operate over the cellular network using the same amount of bandwidth as CastCatcher, according to Mousa.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10093165-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

 

[iskande]

if you read down into the comments theres this intresting gem :

"I'm going to leave out names, but I was able to talk to actual Apple iPhone Team programmers about these types of situations. The app I questioned them about the most was the Podcaster rejection.

While the programmers in question would be specific about the exact reasoning for the podcaster rejection, the programmers did say that it's not why people think. He then went on to comment on how had the developer simply chose to communicate with Apple, instead of taking the issue to the media, he could very well have gotten his app on the App Store. Instead he chose to break the NDA he had agreed to between him and Apple. As soon as he broke the NDA, there is nothing Apple can do. Policy is they're cut-off cause they can't be trusted to be confidential.

So with that said, the developer of CastCatcher is essentially making it much harder on themselves by using the media to apply pressure on Apple. Based on personal knowledge this could all be resolved with simple networking techniques. Go to Apple's Developer Conferences. They have 1 big one every year and many small ones around the world the rest of the year. Not only do you learn great techniques and best practices, but the best asset is the direct networking with Apple. The people that create and run the systems. They help you get through that system when you need it."

always at least two sides to anything !