iphone rant part deux.

so apple finally had their press event today for their iphone SDK, which is far from impressive. here are my thoughts on some things.

1: activesync/exchange

HA! first off on activesync. i do rock a windows mobile device (HTC wizard with custom windows mobile 6.1 cooked ROM) on a daily basis. i don’t mean to be a windows mobile fanboy, but the holes in the iphone design make it so much easier. things that simply don’t work (bluetooth 2.0, GPS, etc), and things that you have to hack to get to work that are built into winmo (tethering, wireless sync, etc) make me a winmo fanboy by default. i realize that winmo has lots of problems as well, but the thing is that microsoft embraces what the public wants where apple tells the public what they want. i’m a huge fan of activesync, in the event of losing my phone, all of my data is backed up on multiple pc’s and on google. i can even sync over bluetooth (also while synced over bluetooth, access wireless internet over bluetooth), which is super convenient. i remember hearing some hack for the iphone a couple months ago but was patched with firmware 1.1.4.

i find it amusing how apple was trying to pull people away from windows mobile, but simply can’t. also, with exchange, apple not licensing it from microsoft was a huge mistake as it was immediately put off as a possible business phone. the majority of corporate america is based on microsoft products, and exchange is one of those. i believe the iphone could originally kinda work with exchange servers but wasn’t true push mail, plus it required reconfiguration of servers which IT people didn’t want to deal with. exchange technology is great technology too and should have been supported from the beginning.

2. the SDK

with android growing stronger and stronger every day and their SDK getting such heavy development, i don’t know why apple is being such a bitch over these apps. yea, the SDK is free. but if you want to develop apps, you have to pay a $99/yr “developer fee”; lame. on top of that, there’s no guarantee that your app will even get published. apple has final say as to what apps make it to the store.

the good: you can finally program multi-touch gestures into apps, use the camera, use the accelerometer. developers get to choose price of app and get 70% of sale. apps can also be sold for free. each app is tracked by a security certificate. good i suppose, but i’ve NEVER had a problem running the 9000 3rd party winmo apps that i use.

the bad: 30% of sale goes to apple for “store upkeep”, whatever. you still can’t address the majority of hardware. still no bluetooth 2.0+ stack. GET WITH THE GOD DAMNED TIMES, APPLE. but what really gets me is you can’t use the dock connector. this removes the possibility of a tomtom gps receiver (which i LOVE on my winmo device) and a ton of other applications. oh and STILL no flash or java (winmo wins again). plus even though the finally announced it, it’s going to be MONTHS until users start to see the products of the SDK. right around the time that android is starting to launch…

3. the games

pathetic. not even worth me typing.

4. aol instant messenger

should have been in there from the beginning. however, better late than never i suppose.

frankly, despite my hatred for the iphone, i’ve heavily been considering buying one in the past few weeks. the design is gorgeous, i’ve always been in love with the screen, and i feel that multi-touch is going to be huge in the next few years. however, this SDK doesn’t impress me one bit. this is how it should have been from day one. apple thought they could just get away without it and after getting a lot of bad press for no 3rd party apps and limited compatibility, they finally had to cave.

i’m still half considering it. but the main things that i look for in a phone (3G, QWERTY keyboard, true 3rd party app support (open source if possible)) are still far from what the iphone can provide. i’m just curious at how android is going to be at launch. until then, apple needs to see what’s going on in the real mobile world and adapt to it, not make everyone adapt to what they think it should be.

in terms of windows mobile, i think the fight is still far from over. last year, HTC shipped 11.8 MILLION windows mobile smartphones. the new sony ericsson XPERIA is also moving to windows mobile.

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