The iPhone, light years ahead of other devices

Yesterday I read a rant about how the iPhone is a crappy Mac. The author is completely misguided; he's comparing a handheld device to a desktop saying what it doesn't do. It comes as no surprise that the author writes desktop applications and not handheld applications. I've been writing handheld applications for most of my career; I started writing Newton applications in 1994 and then started writing Palm OS applications around 1997, I think. In terms of a handheld device, the iPhone is not only a joy to use, but it is a joy to develop applications for it. While the Newton was way ahead of its time when it was canned, it didn't survive long enough to be a competitor in today's world. If you look at Palm OS, it is still so backwards. It has never (natively) supported different screen sizes (the Dana and the HandEra 330 had extensions to handle larger screens), it doesn't have protected memory, it has no where near the capacity of an iPhone and many applications don't look as elegant as iPhone apps.

Granted the Palm OS has some ability to have background tasks (at least through alarms and some people have actually gotten true background tasks working), but how stable are Palm OS devices? I know, people have had the iPhone crash, but it is leaps and bounds above the Palm OS in terms of stability. If you want to get into distribution of applications, the author rants about that as well. There are definitely pros and cons of having Apple control everything. For the most part, having centralized distribution is ideal for developers and users; users don't have to look around to tons of places to find stuff and for developers, they have a huge audience. At the moment, I think the pros outweigh the cons on distribution.

The iPhone does have some things that need to be improved, but its first (or second start) is so much better than what competitors have had years in the market to refine. Thinking of the iPhone as a desktop may lead to disappointment; thinking of it as a handheld will definitely make people smile (OK, at least me). For all those developers that complain about the iPhone, I think that they should write a Palm OS application and see what it is like to have to create jump tables because your application is over 16K and you have to have a launch code execute something not in the first 16K. Or create a table of data that scrolls. Or present a list of contacts in the address book? Or dial a phone number? I could go on and on. I really enjoy the iPhone and developing applications for it. My views might change later, but this has gotten me excited about writing handheld applications again.

Comments

August 5th, 2008
Tyler

I’m a Blackberry user and have to disagree. The iPhone is slow and clunky. The power user doesn’t need animations (which just hide the time it takes for the iPhone to open things). By the time I can take out my Curve and fire off an email, an iPhone user would still be typing in the To field. You can’t beat the speed or accuracy of a physical keyboard. And why does Apple feel they need to lock EVERYTHING up? No card slot? No copy/paste? No file transfers via Bluetooth? And what happens if the Appstore goes down (Mobile Me anyone?), then all updates and app downloads are halted, for who knows how long until Apple fixes it. What Apple is doing would be like having Safari only view Apple approved pages, it’s just stupid.

Hopefully 2.1 will fix the crashing problems, as having a crash while typing an email is just plain annoying, during a phone call would be even worse. I’ve had my Curve for about 10 months and no crashes, iTouch for 6 months and it crashes once a week, mostly while opening apps. While developing might be nice, that’s not what a normal end user looks for when choosing a device. Just to end my rant, the iPhone release was pathetic. Lines and lines of people for no reason but to get a phone that most didn’t even get (apparently Apple can’t estimate needed server power very well). There are still lines today at my local Apple Store for the phone, it’s nice that when the BB Bold comes out I can just go on and order online (like most of the tech world does today)

August 5th, 2008
Scott Gruby

The iPhone can do amazing things compared to other handhelds; while some prefer keyboard based devices like you do, the iPhone really IS the smartphone for the masses. Look at the process for the average user to find and download BlackBerry or Palm apps? It really isn’t that good. Palm never solved this and I don’t believe that the BlackBerry has a central way to get applications. If the AppStore goes down, it isn’t the end of the world. Look at what happened when the RIM servers have gone down? It was a huge issue for businesses.

The iPhone isn’t for everyone, but I think it is for a lot more people than other devices.

August 6th, 2008
Tyler

Yea, both platforms have problems, well, all platforms have problems. I agree, one device can’t please all.