iPhone Tops Windows Mobile Share; MS Releases iPhone App 269
walterbyrd notes that new data from Gartner indicates that the successful launch of the iPhone 3G was enough to push iPhone market share over that of Windows Mobile devices — the entire range of them. And reader Spy Hunter writes: "Seadragon Mobile is Microsoft's first iPhone application. Seadragon is a technology for streaming zoomable user interfaces, and this iPhone incarnation allows viewing huge collections of gigapixel-sized images over WiFi or 3G. If you don't have an iPhone, you can also try Seadragon in your browser via Seadragon Ajax."
Innovation pays (Score:5, Interesting)
When Apple launched the iPhone two years ago, they announced that their goal was to ship 10 million iPhones by year end. Frankly, no one had any clue how many or how few would sell. It was just a guess on the part of Apple management (really!).
And somehow, they hit the number and blew past Microsoft smartphones, Nokia and blackberry. For once innovation pays, I love it. In he last 5 years I was involved as an engineer with some of the companies designing cell phones. Ground-breaking innovation is not in their DNA. Instead, they take last year's technology and make it 20% better and faster. Middle management has no clue how to foster innovation.
You need those companies around because they drive down cost and make technology accessible. But you also need a few Apples that forego incremental improvements and shoot for the moon.
--
French iPhone Apps review site applicationiphone.com [applicationiphone.com] looking for contributors
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, it really is amazing. I don't think anyone could have guessed it would have done so well.
I wonder how much this says something about the iPhone and how much this says of the competition. Of the competition, the way I see them:
- For me Windows mobile suffers from the fact it feel like a desktop OS shoe horned into a mobile device.
- Palm lost focus and the separation of hardware into two separate companies that caused more problems than it solved. Then there was the fact they decided to go with Windows mobile.
- RIM is still the better contender, but maybe purely focusing on a business solution limits the potential size of the market.
- Android suffers from the fact they don't control the hardware, so the quality of the experience depends as much on the device manufacturers as the work Google does.
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Interesting)
Android has good chances, but it has arrived a bit late. For most practical purposes it STILL has not arrived (G1 device is too 'niche').
Re: (Score:2)
And it's only available on the G1!
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the iPhone didn't stand a chance against Windows Mobile, because there were apps and apps for WM. There were apps for every kind of conceivable thing you could put on a mobile device. It was like... windows... You know you don't want it, you just don't have a choice because you needed your apps supported. Never mind it crashes all the time. Never mind you might miss important calls and never know it. It had app support.
Then what happened? Apple releases an SDK that enables rapid app development. They produce a storefront that enables you to hang out your hat almost immediately. They even provide back-end infrastructure for apps that need to do background communication. Once again, they are a major contender. And in record time.
My question is this: Do you see this happening for Android?
Re:Innovation pays (Score:4, Informative)
The iPod has forced every other mp3 player maker out of business!
Yeah, all the other makers except for Microsoft [zune.net], Sony [sonystyle.com], Creative [creative.com], SanDisk [sansa.com], iRiver [iriver.com], Archos, Toshiba, and a dozen generic Asian manufacturers...
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Funny)
According to a recent article, you may be suffering from dementia.
Re:Innovation pays (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like a cheaper, better version of the iPod shuffle(it's almost identical except that it's black and has an excellent 2-color backlit screen with neat animations and tons of configuration options) which costs much less than 2 gig shuffle($70) and it uses the mass-storage protocol(caveat: you must first set that option in the menu) so that I can copy and paste my music directly into it without having to install that godawful iTunes(and by extension Quicktime and other crappola.
My girlfriend bragged about getting an ipod shuffle and itunes gift cards for Christmas and I had a good chuckle before I explained to her the benefits of non-apple hardware...seeing people's eyes open is truly a beautiful thing.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I had a good chuckle before I explained to her the benefits of non-apple hardware...seeing people's eyes open is truly a beautiful thing
What you experienced is generally known to others as something called a "hallucination."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except... most people don't want cut and paste. They WANT iTunes to manage their music for them. They WANT their stuff to be automatically transferred to their Shuffle without thinking about playlists or what to transfer or anything like that.
This is the reason people like you don't "get" the iPod, or other products that seem to sell well despite a perceived wall of difficulties. Most people want things to work without much fuss; they couldn't care less what "mass storage" is or how that might be better
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Laughable at best. Tell me, how do you listen to all the songs you haven't heard in four months but you like (you've rated more than 3 stars) and have the words 'puke' in the title? Oh that's right, you can't, unless you write some insane script that no normal person could ever hope of doing. Meanwhile, the iPod user can do it in less than a minute.
Let me tell you something - the iPod was not the first media player, nor is it the only media player. Why does it dominate? Sure, Apple has a good marketing
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that, as they did for the mp3 player marker, Apple has shown the world that customers do care about quality a lot more than the established manufacturers give them credit for.
Once the competitors take that into account, Apple's market share will start to decline. But it may keep going up for quite a while before the competition catches up.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Innovation pays (Score:4, Insightful)
What? Beat one of the most niche market shares (Windows mobile) in the mobile phone market?
I agree. I'm not sure why you got modded down - this statement is to the point of the matter. The other day, there was an article where people were saying how great the Iphone because it had sold more than the only just released Android. I don't know if it's true that the Iphone is more popular than Windows Mobile - if it is, then that's bad for Windows mobile, but comments on this story are as if people think that these are the only two phones that exist!
Wake me up when they're competing with the likes of Motorola and Nokia - why don't we ever get stories about them?
(Trying to claim that the Iphone is a "smart" phone, and then restrict the market they are looking at, doesn't really help - most phones these days can do the things that were once the domain of smartphones; other new phones by major manufacturers such as Nokia have just as much right to claim the "smartphone" label as the Iphone does.)
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, it really is amazing. I don't think anyone could have guessed it would have done so well.
Some of use knew right from the moment we saw the demo that it would become incredibly popular. Of course, many of us also get ignored when we start ranting about how important usability is and how there is more to design than aesthetics.
Re: Android (Score:2)
Android suffers from the fact they don't control the hardware, so the quality of the experience depends as much on the device manufacturers as the work Google does.
Totally. The Android phone T-Mobile is selling is kinda under-specced. One of my bosses at a MS-centric organization got one (because it's cooler than the Windows Mobile phones he had before, which he never talked smack about until he got the Android... and yet, very importantly for him, it is not from Apple, who he hates for reasons I don't know). MS-centric organizations of course have Exchange servers, and his Android can't do jack with ours (except Outlook Web Access, maybe)... funny, those of us who
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Insightful)
I always felt like most of the hype around the iPhone's launch missed the point. The hype was deserved, but everyone was hyping the wrong part.
What I saw was Apple not launching a cell-phone, they were launching a new mobile computing platform that could also be used as a cell-phone. It's a fundamental paradigm shift. Even now when I read rumours of Apple launching a netbook I think to myself that they've already done it- the iPhone. Back then journalists scoffed at the price and laughed at suggestions that Apple might worry giants like Nokia but they simply didn't get it. The iPhone isn't simply a phone, it's the first of the next-generation in mobile computing.
Comparing Apple's market share to Nokia's or other established phone manufacturers misses the point, because they are simply making phones. Even RIM just makes phones - call them smart phones if you prefer, but the basic way in which RIM have approached the Blackberry is the same as the way Nokia approaches the design of their phones. They do different things in different ways, but they are, first and foremost, phones. The parent poster is spot on when he refers to a new phone simply being the old phone but 20% faster etc etc etc. It's like car manufacturing, where many of today's cars are just the result of decades of incremental improvements on an old and outdated design.
In some ways the iPhone is a technical trojan horse but with a sophistication beyond Sony using the PS3 to get BluRay players into living rooms. The iPhone is getting real mobile computers into people's hands, with the 'real' internet (ignoring the Flash issue), and a real operating system. If people think it's just a phone that can play games, or a combination of a phone and an iPod then fine- Apple have done their job. They've made a mobile computer that is so easy to use people take it for granted...
I always thought that the iPhone deserved every bit of hype it received when it was launched, but not for the glossy interface or slick design. It was taking on industry giants such as Nokia and instantly making their corporate model obsolete, and offering instead a new paradigm in regards to mobile personal computers.
Amen, don't forget iTouch (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly what I saw. It's putting OS X on a phone, but in a way that doesn't feel like you are using a desktop OS. That's why I sprang for the iTouch. With the WiFi I essentially have a "netbook" in my hands!
Not to mention a development platform that shares a great deal of functionality with the iPhone.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The iTunes store.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even the multi-touch is not new, I was using military hardware in 1995 that did this.
On the one-in-a-thousand chance that your entire post isn't one long exercise in juvenile puffery, you could do the world a big favor by elaborating on this. Right now, other vendors aren't able to use multi-touch because Apple has patented it out the wazoo. If their patent(s) could be invalidated by prior art dating back to 1995, that would be great for everyone else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A computer doesn't just "draft up a circuit diagram" and connect chips like Lego. PCB design and layout is a real engineering discipline that takes real engineers to make a real working product. The computer tools are just that, they provide tools to make the engineer's job easier, but they don't magic up a circuit diagram automatically. It takes a real engineer with real experience to make a high speed digital design work properly. It is much more tricky than writing software because the real world (which
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Afterall, white plastic coated in clear plastic is a whole lot of plastic. It feels like quality because its shiny and has some weight behind it. Metal feels more firm than plastic.
The "original mini" you were complaining about was cased in aluminum, unlike every other MP3 player on the market at the time. iPod Nanos are still made with aluminum, unlike... that's right, every other MP3 player on the market.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I would *love* to see something that backs up this assertion.
Last I checked, Nokia has way more overall market share AS WELL more 'smartphone' market share.
Re: (Score:2)
What's so innovative about the iphone? Not trolling, I really am curious what is so innovative about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never come across a device that allows me to use it how I LIVE, more than the iPhone does. Most every device forces you to adapt to how it works, make changes to how you like to do things in order to get productive use out of the device. The iPhone just seems to fit like a glove to how I like to do things with a smartphone.
I dont have to compromise, I just use it, it works, especially the GPS feature.
Re: (Score:2)
The iPhone was the first phone I haven't wanted to throw out the window immediately. A touch screen interface to a phone works much more intuitively than a pen or small trackball, and the multi-touch allows you to really maneuver around oversized data without too much hassle. The e-mail / phone / internet / ipod integration is simple and straightforward. And how phones had gotten by without Google maps prior to the iPhone is befuddling.
Really, what makes the iPhone good is how all of the steps of the pro
Re:Innovation pays (Score:4, Insightful)
What's so innovative about the iphone? Not trolling, I really am curious what is so innovative about it.
They made it work like a phone with web functionality, as opposed to making it work like a PDA with cell phone functionality.
It's difficult to explain until you've sat down and used it. It's not about feature comparisons, it's more like comparing a regular coffee cup to one of those fancy thermal mugs that have a thicker handle, a lid, and a flap to close it. They both do the same job but the latter was a little more thought out for a coffee drinker. (It's also more expensive and lots of people find ways to make due without it.)
Re: (Score:2)
Pardon? They did what? From TFA:
Stop press: Article is misleading/wrong (Score:3, Informative)
The article linked in the summary is misleading and borderline outright false.
The suggestion in the summary, that the iPhone now has a bigger marketshare than the full range of Windows mobile devices is wrong. For starters, the stats available are only relevant to Windows mobile phones- this does not include say Windows mobile PDAs without phone features so to suggest the iPhone has outsold all Windows mobile devices simply isn't true.
More importantly though is the suggestion that the iPhone has a bigger ma
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'm not sure I agree. Every mobile interface I've used before wasn't intuitive and felt rushed and unpolished.
The iPhone's interface is nice, so for those who can afford the whopping price tag, and don't mind the stigma of "ooh you've got an iPhone, you must be a Mac guy", it is an nifty phone/pda.
Everything else is either a phone trying to have PDA features (and failing), or uses windows (crash city).
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that I never have to use a stylus or navigate an extremely poorly thought out menu bar at the top of the screen makes an iPhone so much less aggravating as a portable device.
I've used a Treo, and I'd rather keep my old Motorola V300 than use one of those daily.
Re: (Score:2)
The interface matters (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no office software, there is no remote desktop, there is a pretty interface though.
If you think the iphone interface is just pretty you haven't really used it despite claims to the contrary. While the iphone is hardly perfect it is a HELL of a lot more usable for most folks than any Windows mobile, Palm or Nokia phone I've ever held - and I've used a LOT of them. Seriously - a LOT.
As for remote desktop you are wrong [iphoneappl...onlist.com], they do exist.
Regarding office software, I'm quite sure it will come for whatever it's worth. I've never seen anyone actually do anything genuinely useful to a word, excel or powerpoint file on a PDA or smartphone - and I'm pretty geeky about this stuff. It's a nice checkbox feature that never actually gets used. I had the ability on my last PDA and I never once used it. I can't even think of a situation where I would use it. Maybe you actually do but that would make you very unusual.
That is nice, but it's a very long way away from matching the feature set of my 6 year old phone.
My Nokia E70 has roughly the same feature set as my wife's iPhone. But you know what? Only on paper are they comparable. Other than the physical keyboard the interface on the iPhone is vastly superior - and the virtual keyboard works well enough. Yes I can often get the same stuff done but it's way more of a pain in the ass on the Nokia. Same with the Treos I've used in the past - some Windows mobile, some PalmOS. There is more to a mobile device than just a feature set - it has to actually be usable.
So what makes the Iphone so awesome? Nothing.
There are millions of folks who actually use one that would probably disagree with you, myself included. I've heavily used numerous smartphone and PDA devices from RIM, Nokia, Palm, and a bunch based on Windows mobile. For most (not all - most) people I'm not aware of a device I could honestly recommend as better than an iPhone. If you have particular needs, yes there are other good devices that might suit you better. But the iPhone isn't selling so well because it is mediocre - it actually works pretty darn well. I can't say the same for a lot of other "smart" phone devices.
What makes it popular is the apple mystic and excellent marketing, but there is a reason serious business users shy away from it.
No, the reason business users don't use it is because Apple hasn't created the back end security and administration features corporate IT departments REQUIRE and RIM currently provides. Apple has recognized this and made some moves in that direction but it will take time to develop. It has nothing to do with any inherent superiority of blackberries as devices. I've used plenty of them and they are fine but corporate types don't use them because of the device itself - they use them because of the infrastructure.
Re:The interface matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks. I get so tired of the grumpy "featurism" of Slashdot posters. My old phone did everything and more than what my current iPhone does... on paper. In truth, I never got the music player to work anywhere near as well as my iPod, the display of Office documents was illegible, I couldn't find contacts worth a damn, every time I installed a program, it didn't work, and even though it had a 2 megapixel camera with optical zoom, the pictures from my iPhone look as good or better.
You can't judge a product by reading a feature table. You have to try to actually use it. What Apple did is what they always do: Take a product that someone already thought of, and made it actually do what the original people promised.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This comment makes no sense. If your point is that you'd rather use your old phone or your Amiga because you feel that they are better integrated or work better for you, then good on ya. Use them away (though if they ever break you might feel the lack of qualified service or replacement parts), you've just made GPs point, sometimes, for some people, a better feature list does not make a better experience. If you're point if that ALL things with shorter feature lists are by definition better than things w
Re: (Score:2)
Regarding office software, I'm quite sure it will come for whatever it's worth. I've never seen anyone actually do anything genuinely useful to a word, excel or powerpoint file on a PDA or smartphone - and I'm pretty geeky about this stuff. It's a nice checkbox feature that never actually gets used. I had the ability on my last PDA and I never once used it. I can't even think of a situation where I would use it. Maybe you actually do but that would make you very unusual.
I frequently find myself away from a computer but wanting to refer to some piece of information out of a Word document that's attached to some email I got. Often, it's minutes from a meeting. Being able to read (and preferably search, too) Word documents is pretty useful. I've never felt the urge to compose or edit a Word doc on a phone or PDA, though. Simple spreadsheets occasionally, but I usually am better off using a clipboard and typing the data in later.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I frequently find myself away from a computer but wanting to refer to some piece of information out of a Word document that's attached to some email I got.
I'm mystified as to why people still think storing important stuff in formats that can only be read by one program from one manufacturer is a good idea.
If I made a document in (say) InDesign, Quark, Wordperfect or Illustrator, and then complained I couldn't view it on the road or others couldn't view it, people would rightly suggest that I just saved it as something the recipient program could understand - pdf, rtf, jpg, png, or even txt.
However for word documents people seem to have this idea that everythi
Re:The interface matters (Score:5, Insightful)
The one most obvious and simple example of where Apple gets it, and NO OTHER MANUFACTURER does, is the clock.
On Apple's iPhone screen is a big, nicely rendered, white, TEXT clock telling you the time.
Without exception, ll the other developers are completely blinded by marketing or geekery and think that the clock must look cool, so they damage it's function almost to uselessness. They have some wanky simulated LED, LCD or analog clock, with shiny gradients and 3D edges, some of them moronically without numbers, or in tiny fonts. My own cheap Nokia 6234 got a shiny looking analog clock with no numbers, not even any hour marks!
Yet, when the backlight goes off and you want to quickly read the on-screen clock at an angle, the Apple one is 10x as easy to read. The others' gradients just reduce contrast, the 3D look makes them incomprehensible, the fake real-world look makes the numbers harder or non-existent.
And many people don't wear a watch anymore, using a phone instead, so this happens A LOT. The most commonly used function EVERY DAY, and everyone but apple gets it wrong. This tells you how out of touch phone developers generally are.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, have you been reading the thread? First, some things are just not quantifiable. I can tell you that I use many more of my iPhones features than I did my old Treo because it's easier to use them. I can tell you that pages render more correctly and are easier to navigate in Safari than they ever were in Blazer. I can tell you that my e-mail app works with POP, IMAP, and MAPI and is a single app that came with the phone, whereas the Treo could only handle POP with it's default app and did that poor
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing. What makes it popular is the apple mystic and excellent marketing...
If that was enough, we'd all be watching Apple TV's [apple.com] while jotting notes into our Newtons [wikipedia.org]. Heck, Apple was one of the first Digital Camera manufacturers [retrothing.com] and had a video game console [theapplecollection.com].
Apple's "mystic and excellent marketing" is clearly not enough to sell any old box. Really, you might want to look into why the iPhone is so popular. I'm sure Palm as we speak is adjusting the Treo line with the lessons learned from the iPhone.
Full di
Re: (Score:2)
Uhh, dude. There are not only multiple versions of remote desktop clients but also a smattering of Office clones.
Don't worry, we will see a real office suite soon. (I want one too!)
Saying there is no remote desktop is ignorant as balls. http://www.mochasoft.dk/iphone_rdp.htm [mochasoft.dk]
Re: (Score:2)
As former Treo, now iPhone user all I can say is "Huh?". Blazer is all but useless as a browser, Opera never worked right on the PalmOS version of Java. Push e-mail never worked right unless you paid the fortune and a half for "Good" and had an Exchange back-end for it. The screen was fairly awful, and I was constantly replacing the little screen protectors. It was tremendously uncomfortable to use as an actual phone, it has no wifi or GPS support (without expensive add-on cards), it's 2G and doesn't ev
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Innovation pays (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had numerous cell phones over the past 15 years from a variety of manufacturers, as well as a few PDAs. The iPhone is the first of them that I really use regularly for a variety of tasks. The interface is relatively easy to use, the applications perform well, and updates and syncing are straightforward. This isn't about any individual component in the mix, it's the overall integration.
As to the innovation, Apple is the first company to tell the US wireless carriers that the cellphone vendor is defining platform. In the past, you never really knew what features you were going to get and what features would be removed so that the wireless carrier could charge you to use the feature. I can't imagine that Verizon would have agreed to network changes in order to support visual voicemail without having it disabled by default and then charging on a per message basis (or some other equally obnoxious plan). In fact, Verzion probably would have required that all of the interface buttons be reordered or some other silliness like they seem to do with so many of the Motorola phones they carry. Apple also worked to ensure that the data plan was unlimited so that you would be encouraged to use the device without fear of bandwidth charges.
Certainly there are improvements to be made - it's not as if it's perfect by any means - but at least I know that I can get upgrades as they come out, rather than getting a device that gets little or no improvement over the course of my 2 year contract. Or one that requires me to go track down a kiosk and hope for the best.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hilarious.
Re: (Score:2)
SoftBank here in Japan charges a monthly fee for it, but I don't actually pay for it because I get maybe 1 voicemail a year and don't mind paying 20 yen to retrieve it. It's less than 315 yen a month.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
You can complain about cut and paste or how the iphone is locked down or too expensive or doesn't run linux, but it's been a real donkey punch to the industry, and even rival companies acknowledge (and applaud) it for raising the bar (at least in the US).
Re:congratulations (Score:5, Informative)
And as far as it being a 'real donkey punch' to the industry, MS actually writing an app for it pretty much confirms this, although they have also written ads in Flash despite marketing Silverlight
Re:congratulations (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds like Fedora 10 on my laptop right now...
Re:congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
> You can complain about cut and paste or how the iphone is locked down or too expensive or doesn't run linux, but it's been a real donkey punch to the industry, and even rival companies acknowledge (and applaud) it for raising the bar (at least in the US).
Yes, I can, (except, who cares if it runs linux?) and also complain about 3G/Edge issues, dropped calls, and lack of MMS and flash and java. But despite all that it demonstrably kicks Windows Mobile's butt. (In fairness, from a technical standpoint, it was an easy butt to kick.)
The biggest lesson the industry needs to take from this is: People use Windows Mobile devices because they have to. People use i-Phones because they want to.
Microsoft promotes the "have to" mentality by selling interoperability and similar look-and-feel with Winders and Winders-related services. As more and more people (and corporations) realize that the Start button is not a good paradigm for a phone, and sufficient interoperability can be achieved without having to put up with the Windows Mobile code base, Windows Mobile will diminish to an also-ran and, like Disco, we'll all look back and wonder what madness made us think we liked it.
However, these other issues still need to be fixed. Here's hoping that Apple isn't so arrogant to believe that they can innovate *once* and retain the market. Nokia and RIM now have offerings that are similar in concept, without the drawbacks. Apple set the bar -- now they need to show us how to rise above it. Merely increasing the memory in the next model will not be good enough.
Personally, I'm still clinging to my old beat-up Palm-based phone whilst I see how Apple fixes the problems enumerated here in the next release. Or if someone catches up to them in the meantime.
For example, my daughter is a rabid user of MMS with her Blackberry Curve. On an i-phone, I'd not be able to receive her messages. That is not acceptable. Having a cool interface is not an acceptable substitute. Apple, give us the features we really want, instead of the features you think we should be using, and there will be no stopping you.
Re: (Score:2)
However, these other issues still need to be fixed. Here's hoping that Apple isn't so arrogant to believe that they can innovate *once* and retain the market. Nokia and RIM now have offerings that are similar in concept, without the drawbacks. Apple set the bar -- now they need to show us how to rise above it. Merely increasing the memory in the next model will not be good enough.
Judging from their actions with the iPod, I don't think you'll have to worry about them standing still. For all the talk about about people catching up to the iPod, Apple generally improved it faster than the competitors caught up, improving capacity, form factor, and interface at an impressive pace while keeping prices flat or decreasing them.
Considering that they did the same thing from the first iPhone to the second, I think it's unlikely they're going to stand still and wait for the industry to catch u
Re: (Score:2)
Just as an n-size of one, I'd like to say I've had no connection problems at all here in Japan on SoftBank's 3G network. None at all. I really suspect that its an infrastructure problem in other countries. Japan's had 3G the longest of anyone, and I live in the Tokyo area.
The lack of copy/paste is the only thing that has irked me.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry to be a prick but why doesn't your daughter just e-mail you instead? I'd rather e-mail than MMS, but I'm not much of an MMS'er so I'm mostly clueless.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Sorry to be a prick but why doesn't your daughter just e-mail you instead? I'd rather e-mail than MMS, but I'm not much of an MMS'er so I'm mostly clueless.
I don't think you're being a prick. She uses MMS because that's what all her friends use. There doesn't need to be any other reason. That's the point, really. It's not up to Apple to change in what way we communicate with each other. They can provide a different, more positive experience, and have. But that doesn't give them the right to di
Interesting (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Why must it use Javascript?
Seadragon on the iPhone is a native app. I suppose they could have made it work through one of the existing web-oriented interfaces, but they certainly didn't have to.
Microsoft releases iPhone app FAIL! (Score:2, Funny)
Seadragon isn't an app (Score:2)
Microsoft seems to be less about programmers and more about wordsmiths. Technology instead of application, innovation instead of stealing an idea...
Re: (Score:2)
I just downloaded the app. Photosynth works perfectly fine.
You quoted one source, not multiple. Did you try it for yourself?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
How about if I quote MS's own Live Labs team? [getsatisfaction.com] Or perhaps another source [moconews.net] or yet another one? [cnet.com] or one more? [theregister.co.uk]
Just because you may not want to hear the news does not mean that it does not exist.
Re: (Score:2)
It is when the source is an obvious Apple fanboy (a column called "Apple Ink"? Duh!) and is needlessly trollish ("Apparently Microsoft achieved its expected quality goal") rather than simply being a statement that there is broken functionality.
Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, the iPhone isn't my cup of tea at all; but I believe the term is "p0wn3d."
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Now, the iPhone isn't my cup of tea at all; but I believe the term is "ph0wn3d."
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
Not "ip0wn3d"?
Old, dying turgid software ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it surprising?
WinCE was originally developed as a PalmOS competitor/beater, running on fat Psion 5 look-a-likes with dire keyboards, snail-like interfaces and the stability of Mount Etna.
Since that time the platform has remained the same. The browser is still ancient, and their best promises for the next version are "IE 6" quality, i.e., irrelevant. Sure, there are new interfaces, the software is a little more up to date, the kernel has been switched to a more modern variant, it does wireless, bluetooth, 3G, etc, but it's still the same at heart. Rubbish.
Microsoft - you could sell iPhone Office for $99 and make a mint. Or you could sell licenses to WinMob+Pocket Office to manufacturers for cents. Microsoft have always said they'll develop where the market is. If the iPhone and iPod Touch ecosystem continues to grow, surely it is but a matter of time before they develop iPhone viewers, and then editors, for their file formats - before the formats become irrelevant... Pocket Project for iPhone would result in many a fevered brow in managers' offices around the world.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure my iPhone can open MSWord .doc files without any added application installed.
since they are the market leader (Score:4, Funny)
can we expect an onslaught of viruses? It is much easier to attack a single platform, if I understand the virus marketing info properly.
Re: (Score:2)
No, that is the reason Apple won't let you run an iTunes competitor. If I understand the Apple marketing properly...
Re: (Score:2)
We've never had a properly secured platform as a monolithic target. It will be interesting to see whether or not the iPhone can prove or disprove the old addage that the #1 platform will inherently be virus prone, or if that was just excusing poor programming.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure we have. Apache has approached 70% of all webservers at various times. It seems to have fewer in-the-wild exploits than the underdog IIS.
Mr. Sid part deux? (Score:2, Informative)
tops? (Score:2)
The iPhone is not at the top of the Windows share, it is a non-Windows mobile phone that exceeds the Windows share.
If I top the class in a subject, I am the best student doing that subject. So if the iPhone tops the Windows share, it would be the highest-selling Windows-based mobile phone. Which is false.
So the title is misleading and/or confusing.
Re:tops? (Score:4, Funny)
So the title is misleading and/or confusing.
Welcome! You must be new here!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What English are you using? "Tops" is a verb that means "bests" or "surpasses".
And in this case, the usage is perfect. The iPhone surpasses Windows Mobile Share; or, in other words, "tops".
iPhone achilles' heel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iPhone achilles' heel (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you know you're probably right to an extent. But the flip side to the arrogance shown developers is that Apple has managed to centralize, simplify and ensure a certain quality of apps for users. Apple has the upper hand right now because they've attracted a lot of eyeballs by addressing problems that no other cell phone company seemed able to address. Time will tell whether their arrogance will hinder them.
As a dedicated Blackberry Bold user myself (who regularly plays around with his girlfriend's iPhone 3G) I am left with a distinct 'last-generation' feeling when it comes to finding, installing and using apps designed for the blackberry. Of the ones that I manage to install (typically OTA via sms-sent URLs), many are designed for last-generation low-rez BBs or are converted java-midp apps that don't map navigation keys the same way RIM does... Or they're very buggy, or cause the OS to crash. Don't get me wrong, it's a plenty usable email device and good mobile phone, but it's missing a certain attention to detail when it comes to end-to-end user experience that Apple seems to have achieved with the iPhone and App Store.
Seadragon? (Score:2)
I have to laugh at myself a little bit (Score:3, Interesting)
The techie in me took over shortly after that, and I began losing sleep until I chose to go to the store and buy one (1st gen 2G).
It's been an odd journey for me. I was a Windows guy. Not a fan by any means as their pricing and licensing infuriates me, but I didn't use any other OS as a primary.
Since my iPhone purchase, I have since purchased my first Macbook Pro, and bought my second 3G iPhone. Don't get me wrong. I see the same sort of corporate headedness from Apple that I saw from MS. Maybe not as extreme in most cases, but it's there. That being said, Apple does do things in a very polished manner which makes the attempts to lock you into Apple much less 'painful'. I just don't know how else to describe it.
All because I had to get curious about what the fascination was all about.
Kudos on what has to be one of the most innovative and most duplicated pieces of tech for the last few years running.
Proves that 'innovation' is not just tech (Score:2)
Oh how we bitched and mocked about the iPhone V1, (me included). Locked down, no 3G, GPS... 'Geeks' users I know were all disppointed by their purchases.
But the market is not geeks; it's my wife, teenage kids and other technical 'don't care' or illiterates - I think the iPod is poor value, (and don't get me started on iTunes) - but they all rejected the (cheaper, more functional) mp3/4 players I offered them and wanted iPods. (Although they do prefer MediaMonkey to iTunes).
So the market did not listen to
Steve Ballmer called it (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5oGaZIKYvo [youtube.com]
'nuff said.
Great... (Score:2)
I'm seriously debating whether I want to stick with the iPhone myself. Its a great phone... when it works. I've already had to have it replaced by Apple four times for myriads of issues, including the negative black problem, dead zones on the touch screen rendering menus unusable, and consistent lock-ups during boot that would make my phone unusable for 12-hour stretches of time. I'd really like a phone with a great interface that just worked.
It doesn't help my opinion of Apple that my MacBook's internal
Re: (Score:2)
You have incredibly terrible luck. My Macbook has taken a beating, including being dropped onto cement and accidently left inside a smoking hot metal trunk, and not a peep. Not one iPhone that I use or that anyone I know owns has failed for any reason, and some of these things see massive usage (movie industry people). And my iPod Nano has been through hell and back due to my travels - dropped more times than I can remember, left lying in super hot direct sunlight, buried in sand - and it works fine, althou
What Gartner really said (Score:4, Informative)
"The success of iPhone 3G sales in the third quarter of 2008 propelled the Mac OS X to the No. 3 position in the global OS provider rankings. For the first time, iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America."
So in the 3rd quarter of this year, iPhone sales exceeded sales of MS mobile devices in the same period. Unless you define "market share" in terms of the last quarter sales only, MS devices still have a larger market share than the iPhone.
Re:What Gartner really said (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, don't get all technical on us now, trying to use the proper meaning of words to deflate our high is the worst form of haberdashery!
Apple FUD (Score:2)
First, just because Gardner says it doesn't make it gospel. Gardner DOES blackmail companies to include them in their surveys and they have a bias towards US companies. I suspect this survey basically excludes the Asian market. So the results are highly suspect.
Second, the article on Edible Apple is highly misleading in implying the marketshare of the iPhone is greater than that of Windows Mobile. It is not. The marketshare of PHONES SOLD IN Q308 ONLY is 12.9% vs. MS' 11.1% in a quarter when Apple introduce
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's too bad they don't exist. [wikipedia.org] Anywhere. [newegg.com] For any price. [newegg.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, technology can be pretty scary and unsettling, but there are plenty of simple phones for those who think technology isn't really for them. Such as http://www.dorophones.com/ [dorophones.com].
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure you can, but no one is forcing you to use the "Menu" button.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Where can I get a phone? You know, something that lets me talk to anyone, anywhere? Not a camera, not a pda, not a music player, not a videogame, but a phone. Anyone?
I like how you came into a smart-phone thread to ask about how to get a not-smart-phone. "...but I was
only in there to get directions on how to get away from there."
Re: (Score:2)
Several orders of magnitude? Several means at least 3, so you're saying that simple phones outsell smartphones by at least a thousand to one. Are you sure?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Simple? (Score:5, Informative)
More phones every 3 days than iPhones in existence? Really?
Let's actually inject some numbers into the discussion, shall we?
As of October 21, 2008, there were 13 million iPhones sold. Let's be as charitable as possible toward your position and assume that not a single iPhone has been sold since then.
You state more Nokia phones sold in 3 days than 13 million. That works out to at least 1.58 billion Nokia phones sold per year.
According to Wikipedia, Nokia's sales in 2007 were about 440 million. So they would have had to increase by over a factor of 3 in 2008 for your numbers to be correct.
Furthermore, Wikipedia claims that this 440 million was 40% of global phone sales in 2007, meaning that global phone sales in 2007 were around 1.1 billion. So for your claim to be correct, Nokia would have had to sell about 50% more phones just from Nokia in 2008 than everybody in the entire industry combined sold in 2007.
Is that really the case?
Now, let's take that 1.1 billion figure, assume it's gone up a bit, and call it 1.5 billion phones sold per year at present. Three orders of magnitude give you 15 million smartphones sold per year in the entire world. That barely accounts for the iPhone, let alone Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm....
So again, three orders of magnitude? Don't think so.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually the iPhone and the Treo can both multitask their "phone" apps and keep you talking while you look at contacts and notes and such. I'm sure any other modern smart phone can too. You need a headset of course, but the iPhone comes with a really nice one and I'm sure other smart phones have something decent. Bluetooth headsets are aquireable for $30-$40 these days too. The iPhone (and I'm sure any other wifi enabled smart phone) can even use the Internet through WiFi while you talk on it. It obvio
Re: (Score:2)