iDon't care. And neither should you, yet.
Yes, more mobile stuff. What can I say, it's where I've been at work recently. Moving on, has someone launched some kind of new phone recently? There seems to be a lot of fuss in the news at the moment about some kind of Smartphone. Perhaps the HTC Touch is really capturing peoples imaginations (sure I've seen that idea somewhere else lately)? Or the latest Nokia sensation perhaps?
iPhone as an Individual
Anyway, I think Apple have something new out. I'm sure you've probably not noticed because it isn't like anyone has made a big fuss about it just yet. Clearly this phone is going to be a sensation but I don't think it's all that just yet. It's v1.0 hardware and it's set the bar very high for any other new entrants to the field, yet there are some things missing that I find very hard to understand, and a good few critiques are starting to appear among the praise.. Note that I'm writing from the point of view of a European, what with being one and all, the way we use phones is different to America so things I mention here might not be a big deal in the US yet can still be an absolute dealbreaker here.
- One obvious one is 3G. I guess this is an American phone after all, and 3G isn't as popular there as it is in Europe and Asia, but still this one gnaws at me. The iPhone is clearly designed to offer a rich experience for communicating on the move yet it misses fundamental technology for making that anything other than a chore.
- MMS picture messaging. Don't use this much myself to be honest so it wouldn't bother me. But... it is a standard for modern phones, not all of which support email, and by not including this Apple are locking their users out of talking to a lot of people.
- Lack of cut and paste. Or some other method of moving blocks of text between apps. If I get an email with a contact phone-number or URL that's in a format that doesn't get automagically picked up by the phone as a live link to something, how am I supposed to get it into the browser or add it to a contact so I can dial it? What about extracting a block of text from a webpage to email to someone (directions you've found on a website, prices from tickets purchased online, etc).
- Browser limitations and the lack of a 'proper' RSS reader. When you intentionally lock people out of adding their own 3rd party RSS reader you assume responsibility for adding one of your own that can actually step up to the plate and replace it. When you make a big fuss about how amazing your browser is for viewing the web the way it ought to be viewed, you don't leave out things like Flash which are pretty much required for using the Internet today whether we like it or not.
- Apple should have actually finished adding Bluetooth support prior to launch. Seems that all you can do is add a headset at the moment. No hands-free for the car (unless your hands-free kit pretends to be a headset), no transferring files, no wireless sync (c'mon Apple this one is so lame), and no ability to use your phone as an 'emergency' modem to get your laptop onto the Internet.
- Can't download music on the go, and certainly can't use a downloaded song as a ringtone. Hardly a showstopper in terms of functionality, true, but this is something where you just expect more of Apple somehow.
- The inability to add 3rd party software. Don't waste my time pointing at AJAX apps either, you know what I mean here. This is disappointing for two reasons, obviously the inability to expand the device's abilities, and secondly, this is where Windows Mobile and the other phone OSes score big time.
As part of my research putting this article together, I happened across the superb Jeff Attwood's article on the iPhone, and he talks about a lot of the same things that concern me. The iPhone is hopefully going to jumpstart the mobile market in general and the SmartPhone market in particular. HTC have already made one lukewarm response with the HTC Touch I mentioned earlier, and I doubt that will be their only response or that they'll be the only ones to respond. In either case, and especially with WM6 upgrades available, there's life yet in my HTC TyTN.
iPhones in business
This is where some fur will definitely be flying. John Gruber has made much of the attitude of IT departments to devices they can't control, and he manages to make a few very valuable points, but as much as I love your site John and as much as I enjoy reading your thoughts I've got to say I don't think you know how IT works in large business.
Firstly, John talks about the fuss people have made about whether or not iPhone supports Exchange server, and about whether or not IT departments will allow iPhones to work with their email servers. Good, important points here about how Apple are supporting open standards and that products like Exchange should also support these standards. No arguments coming from me on that one.
However, in response to the news that IT departments could enable IMAP but won't, John goes on to say "Translation: IMAP has cooties. Think about it: the difference between IMAP and
Exchange isn’t that only IMAP is exposed to the public. If your
Exchange server wasn’t “exposed”, how would employees receive or send
email while outside the office?"
Not that simple I'm afraid John. In terms of impact on IT, turning on protocols like IMAP has a cost. Supporting IMAP means another service to run on your server, another service to monitor for vulnerabilities and to patch when needed, another hole punched in the firewall, another set of support issues for your corporate helldesk to field on the phones. Once you get into businesses larger than a few people in a loft somewhere then things become a lot less easy.
Let's be clear about a few things here. I'm not player-hating on IMAP. I've supported it for years on various mail systems, my current phone uses it to syphon my mail from the mvps.org servers when I'm out and about, and I've used it on Exchange to support mobile mail back in the days when that was the only way of doing it.
This isn't about any particular protocol 'having cooties', it's about reducing complexity. If I was supporting an Exchange server doing mobile mail for phones that only worked with IMAP I'd be turning off the proprietary Exchange stuff for exactly the same reasons many corporates aren't keen on opening up IMAP when their standards point to Blackberry or MS email push.
John goes on to point at this post on craigslist as an example of the kind of IT admin mentality that stops people using iPhones over IMAP, and suggests that IT departments need to remember they work for the users, not for themselves. Good responses to the craigslist post here and here by the way. Couple of other things of my own here...
Firstly, whoever made that craigslist post is either ranting / joking or is a serious asshat. Or quite possibly both. They absolutely do not speak for me or for any other IT professional I know.
Secondly, John, but I don't work for J. Random Other Employee, sorry, I work for my employer. Seriously, I checked my payslip twice just to make sure. If the business wants to support iPhones then of course I will work hard to make it happen. If the business doesn't want to support them then there's a limit to what I can reasonably do for someone who purchased one of their own. That includes myself - the smart money at work has me down as the first person to come through the doors with an iPhone, but even if that turns out to be true I won't be changing the way our systems operate for just one random employee, even if that employee is me.
Summary
In some ways, the iPhone is the revolution Apple promised. It should shake up the mobile business markets and produce some interesting responses from other phone manufacturers, who should be left in no doubt that if they let things stand as they are right now, Apple will proceed to eat their lunch.
As things stand, I won't be buying a v1 iPhone. It does far less than my current phone. With the problems I list near the start of the article I honestly thing that even with the fantastic interface it would be a downgrade for me right now. Let's be clear about this... each one of the problems I mention at the start of the article are all things that had me stunned when I first found out about them.
At the moment the iPhone is a great statement of intent but in terms of what it can do for you today it's a SmartPhone for people who don't know what a real SmartPhone can do.