Obviously, it would be bad for Apple if iPod nanos turn out to be incendiary devices, but this is within the realm of \"things with lithum ion batteries going boom\" phenomena and not peculiar to Apple (but, um, didn't the guy notice it getting hot?). The really interesting thing is Apple's continuing to suffer apparent PR damage from the iPhone situation without commenting. It reminds me of the whole Greenpeace / Apple eco-cred thing.
Native Apps for the iPhone
A while back I argued that the iPhone doesn't need native apps so much as a nice way to store web apps locally (effectively store them as Mac OS X widgets). I hope Apple is planning to do this. That said, there is clearly some kind of demand for the iPhone to (a) not come with AT&T and (b) allow third party native apps (for games if nothing else). So, why has Apple not done these two things, and when might this change?
One argument posits the release of Leopard to bring about opening of the iPhone for third party development. This argument is predicated on the iPhone's APIs in some way \"giving away\" the Leopard SDK, and thus having to be held back until Leopard is out. Well, um, Leopard has been out to anyone with a spare $1000 for about a year, so that argument is just hooey.
Setting this argument aside, the Leopard release might be an appropriate excuse for opening up the iPhone. In other words, it might offer plausible deniability -- \"oh we always planned to make it open but we couldn't until...\". Yeah, whatever. This doesn't really seem terribly likely either. Apple could have said \"we'll open the iPhone up for third party development once we're through the initial release, in Winter 2007 (or whatever)\" and most everyone would have been pretty happy.
It's the network, stupid
Now the other issue -- AT&T bondage -- is completely obvious to anyone with a clue. Apple needed to pick a network partner and AT&T was the prettiest belle at the ball. There are costs and benefits to picking a partner, and Apple made a decision knowing what it was getting into. It's sad if you don't like AT&T (I don't), but get over it.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T10:51:15.420+00:00",path:"iphone-musings",_created:"2024-07-09T20:33:44.603Z",id:"113",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:33:44.603Z","$id":"113",_path:"post/path=iphone-musings"}}