amper's Journal: iPhone 2.0

Well, now that I've gotten my Apple TV Take Two hooked up and watched the March 6 Apple Event podcast, I have a few things to say...

While I certainly applaud the efforts that Apple has made thus far to improve the iPhone, it strikes me as incomprehensible why they have also thus far failed utterly to address most of the original, glaringly obvious, shortcomings of the iPhone software. Furthermore, while I am sure that licensing Microsoft's ActiveSync technology will be a good thing for Microsoft, it is much less certain that it will ultimately be a good thing for Apple.

I having been beating the drum for a decade and more now about the need for the industry as a whole to focus more energy on products that can compete with Microsoft's Exchange platform head-to-head. Superior and inferior products have come and gone, but it is still Exchange that delivers the best experience in an integrated messaging and calendering/scheduling solution, absent the continuation of Netscape SuiteSpot. What makes this even more problematic is that Apple itself now has all the tools it needs to build a standards-based full-fledged competitor to Exchange with it's integration of OpenLDAP, Postfix, Cyrus IMAP, and Darwin Calendar Server in Mac OS X Server v10.5, and yet, rather than configure the iPhone so that it can make direct connections to iCal Server, Apple elects to bow before the beast?

Certainly, there is much money involved in selling iPhones into the enterprise, but I submit that Apple should be more concerned with getting in the back door rather than pleasing corporate IT managers and bean counters. This is not the sort of revolutionary thinking that we have come to expect from Apple.

That aside, let me return to my original point about the various and sundry shortcomings of the iPhone, as I related in my original journal entries on the iPhone...

1. No USB Disk mode. Still not available.
2. No tethering. Still not available.
3. No user widgets. Finally, we have the iPhone SDK, closely similar to what I expected.
4. The contract cancellation fee. Still a problem.
5. No Bluetooth sync, No Bluetooth file transfer. Still not available.
6. No Wi-Fi sync. Still not available.
7. No infrared. OK, this is a hardware feature, but I'm sticking with my original list here, *and* I now have an Apple TV.
8. No 3G. Again, a hardware feature, but more on this later...
9. No voice dialing. Still not available.
10. No sync of Notes. Still not available.
11. No Flash, No Java. OK, Sun's committed to Java on the iPhone, but SJ's explanation on No Flash rings hollow. Let's face facts here, the iPhone needs Flash, and if Adobe's not up to making it work, then Apple needs to invest in getting it done.
12. No RSS Feed reader. Yes, my RSS bookmarks *did* transfer over from Safari, but they only work through Apple's servers. Not ideal.
13. Only 200 messages in Mail. Still a problem.
14. No removable battery. Another hardware feature, about which more below...
15. No voice recorder. Still not available.
16. Desktop computer required. Still a problem, especially as noted before and above concerning iCal Server.
17. No QuickTime in the browser. Still not available, as far as I can tell.
18. YouTube. I still would have rather seen a custom movie trailer client with local theatre lookups and ticket purchasing.
19. The camera on the back, No iChat AV client. Again, this is more of a hardware thing...
20. No 802.11n. Another hardware thing...
21. No insurance. Still not available.

I will reiterate that the software features I think the iPhone suffers from the lack thereof that were missing from it at the launch date are mostly items that would have required a relatively insignificant amount of effort to address, compared to the total effort expended on the iPhone. While I am certain that the SDK is a critical item, I am equally certain that the lack of the SDK has not been a significant hindrance to iPhone adoption, and had Apple spent the intervening nine months addressing the issues above, the lack of an SDK would have been even less significant.

Let me now turn to the hardware problems. If there is one thing that I have discovered about the iPhone (oh, did I mention that I ended up with a iPhone being given to me?) in the last four or five months of usage, it's this--it's too thin. I can't hold the thing reliably without it slipping out of my hand because there is insufficient surface area on the sides to properly grip the device. Had Apple made the iPhone just a smidge thicker, it could have had much more internal space to incorporate at least some, if not all the hardware features I list above without dramatically impacting the aesthetic values of the iPhone.

No 3G? The official line is battery life was a problem. A thicker iPhone could have had a bigger battery to compensate.

No removable battery? While Apple surely has a battery replacement program, that means that I'm without a iPhone while the battery gets replaced. The bigger problem is that due to the insufficient battery life, especially when the software goes into a loop or I'm using Bluetooth, I'm constantly attached to a charger. This is truly cumbersome. Give me a swappable battery and a charging cradle for a spare.

No 802.11n? I'm probably going to move to a new AirPort Extreme network in my house soon, replacing my WRT54G's running DD-WRT. What with my iMac, MacBook, and Apple TV all supporting 802.11n, it's about time to upgrade, especially since I use network home directories for several of my accounts. While I'm sure the inclusion of 802.11n would probably impact battery life, I'm also sure that had the thing incorporated a user-swappable, larger battery, this would not be a problem.

The camera situation? I'm never going to use my iPhone as a real camera when for $200 or less I can get a camera that far outshines any cell phone camera. Even the $200 Sony U20 2.0 Mpixel I purchased in 2003 is incomparably better, and has user-swappable memory and AAA rechargeable batteries that last a long, long time. Now, I'm using a $200 Canon A540 5.0 Mpixel camera, again with user-swappable memory and AA rechargeables. My U20 is broken, but since there still isn't a comparable unit on the market, I'm going to send it back to Sony for repair. It's the best travel snapshot camera I've ever seen. I would have stuck with Sony, as I've always been pleased with their cameras, but I purchased a Nokia 770 in the meanhile, and I wanted memory compatibility with a camera. The RS-MMC cards for the Nokia work great in the Canon.

Which means, of course, that the only purpose I really have for the camera in my cell phone is for quickie video conferencing, so put the damn camera on the front, thank you very much.

Well, at least we'll finally get new apps, but come on Apple, get on the ball with the annoyances!