Apple needs to stop dicking around with these updates. Stop adding in things that are completely superfluous, and focus on the core functions: phone, SMS, email. Give us individual SMS timestamps and deleting, a unified email inbox, lock screen email notifications, more reliable email fetch, user profiles (for sounds and network settings), etc.
CrzyCanuck72, on forums.macrumors.com, discussing iPhone firmware version 2.2
I posted an article recently called “Apple’s Jobs Gives iPhone Customers What They Don’t Want” that discussed the upcoming 2.2 firmware and its new features. iPhone firmware appears to give us Google Maps’ “Street view” and several other “features.” It does not, however, make available any of the most requested features: MMS, copy & paste, Flash, voice dialing, bluetooth/wifi syncing, A2DP (stero bluetooth), landscape Mail view, video recording, text-message forwarding, or any of the over 1800 issues listed over at pleasefixtheiphone.com. So what gives? Why is Apple not giving us these things?
I should start by saying that MMS, or lack thereof, is the one things that bugs the crap out of me on the iPhone. I’ve detailed before how useless and silly viewmymessage.com is. I can’t believe it’s not even something that can be accessed via a clicked URL. But I don’t think the iPhone will ever have true MMS. If Steve Jobs wanted MMS on the iPhone, it would be here by now. No, they are phasing it out, which is arguably good in the long run, but at the expense of its usefulness today. I don’t mind paying the extra few pennies each month for MMS. Even just to receive the messages, but not send them. But stop making the decision for me.
I hate to say that the iPhone, a device that literally converted me from a mobile phone carrier to a smart phone carrier, as someone who sold more of these puppies in the last year than most Apple employees, is doing more to turn me off to Apple than anything else. The iPhone and AppleTV both have let me down. A lot. So much so that even though I recently bought a new iMac (the 24″), I considered a nice new PC at a fraction of the cost, as prep for Windows 7, which looks to be really cool.
Apple’s arrogance and inability to listen to its customers didn’t matter nearly as much when they were a tiny niche company. But they play in the big leagues now, and I suspect that now that they have serious market share in the laptop and education market, they will find a mass defection in a few years as people start to get wise to their control tactics.
I find the new iPhone firmware, even before I get my hands on it, a let down. My iPhone can’t do what phones from 3 years before the iPhone existed does without sweating. If Apple doesn’t start delivering, I suspect that the odds are very high that by the end of 2010 I’ll be carry an Android powered phone.
Yesterday, Facebook released Facebook for iPhone 2.0. I have to say, this is one of the best app updates I can ever recall. I’m incredibly impressed.
First of all, it introduced what appears to be a pretty decent speed boost. Interacting with the app is significantly faster for me on both Wifi and 3G.
Facebook for iPhone 2.0
Secondly, and more importantly, the app is much more robust and complete. Whereas before, the Facebook experience was very limited, the new app is almost a wholesale replacement while on your iPhone. The old version was so limited that you’d have to go to the browser for most operations such as adding a friend, viewing a photo tag, viewing requests, etc. And going to the browser directed you to m.facebook.com, which meant you had to login and go to the full site – a multi-step process to be sure. Also, the iPhone optimized Facebook site, iphone.facebook.com, was woefully underpowered. Both served as great platforms for basic browsing, but severely handicapped when it came to truly using the site.
So it’s that much more of a welcome treat that the new app is a full on competitor. As Apple continues to let me down, Facebook continues to do right by me.
I used to love my iPhone, because it kept me all up-to-date and synced. See – on my mac, Address Book and iCal were fully matched up to my calendar. But then I realized that I really don’t need to sync very often, at first because syncing pre-version 2.1 was painful, but later because it’s just not needed. MobileMe syncs over the air, but I’m not paying $99/yr for that service, especially not after the well covered problems with it, and the fact that I don’t see myself migrating from Gmail anytime soon. IMAP, however, was handling my work mail. When iPhone firmware 2.1 came out, I began immediately using ActiveSync, which easily crawls through port 443 (or 80, I think, if you have no cert) on the firewall. I set it up to handle my email and calendar. Then I realized, now that my calendar was handled by ActiveSync and Exchange, iTunes wasn’t syncing it anymore. And by the way, it was seconds behind live data. And I had to sync my phone even less.
Fast forward a few weeks and I finally decided to sync my contacts. I backed up, then wiped my phone contacts and synced them with Exchange. My contacts all arrived in good shape with their pictures. But now iTunes doesn’t sync Contacts with my iPhone. So the backend is now complex, but only on the Apple side.
On the phone, email, contacts, and calendar are pushed to the phone, often times before they even show up in Outlook itself. I sync my calendar from Outlook to Google and I pull my Google calendar down to iCal, only when I open iCal, since I’m subscribed via an ical file on Google’s servers. I set up Address Book to sync with my Exchange server via the OWA interface that Address Book supports by default, but it only syncs every hour, and only when the Mac is running. So it seemlessly syncs with Windows/Exchange, for free. But it takes several programs to get to the Mac, and then, only once an hour.
I sync less and less these days, but if the iPhone included the ability to sync via Bluetooth or wifi – both of which should be fairly trivial to implement – I’d sync much more regularly and trust my Mac to be the master copy. Instead, due to Apple itself, I rely on Exchange.
All of this makes me wonder if one day in the not too distant future, I’ll be using a phone running Android. After all, if all of my core data is synced elsewhere anyway, why would I want a phone that has no voice dial, can’t do picture messaging, can’t view flash, can’t do copy and paste, doesn’t allow for any wifi syncing, permits apps seemingly at will with no guidelines, gets more closed every month, has shitty battery life, and drops calls randomly? Just because it has a pretty apple on it?
iPipes on the iPhone
Long before the SDK, long before jailbreaking your phone became a one click process, backwhen a jailbreak was a 45 step, multi-hour committment, there were “web apps,” iPipes has been my favorite “web app” for the iPhone since then. There are many apps out there, but – put simply – web apps just don’t compare to native speed, especially on a 1st gen iPhone’s EDGE connection. iPipes, like the other software made by “themacbox,” is top notch, works very well, and is still a challenge long after games like Dominos and Rock, Paper, Scissors have lost their mojo.
iPipes is based on a very simple concept: given a time limit, contruct as long a pipe as possible using the given pieces to contain a crawling green “snake.”It’s easy to string together the first dozen or two pipes, but eventually you may find yourself backed into a corner or wrapped around with no way out. Passing several levels is easy and you will likely do so in the first try. But stringing together 100 pipes is a challenge, even on the early levels.
Although I’ve never really spent too much time obsessing over high scores (I usually get somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-85 per level), I once got 99 and then the counter stopped counting, the green stopped crawling, and it just… stopped. So I sat down determined to finally break 100 and see if the game would crash again. It didn’t. I got a 107 — which could probably be easily beaten by someone with more than 6 minutes to spare — but is still my high score. If you have an iPhone, I encourage you to check out iPipes – it’s free and available online.
I have so many gripes about my iPhone 3G that I could write a decent sized essay, and yet, it’s still the greatest phone ever invented, and by a very comfortable long shot. Poor Nate and Jensey caught a glimpse of mine yesterday, and suddenly their plan to “get iPhones this Christmas” was rapidly directed to the rubbish bin as Nate informed me about an hour ago that they were headed to the AT&T store. How many people have purchased the iPhone after inspecting mine? Enough that Apple ought to be giving me some kickbacks.
But alas, I kid, because, honestly, the thing sells itself. One glance at the silky smooth native apps, Google Maps, MobileMail.app, MobileSafari, multi-touch, the App Store… it’s hard to resist.
iPhone 3G
This device is magical, and once you have one, it’s hard to deny that no phone has ever been as slick, as useful, as integrated, and as beautiful.
I had some issues with battery life with my 3G where it would only last about 8 hours, talk or not, with the 3G enabled. I did a reset and restore on it last week and since then, I’ve had fantastic battery life even with 3G on. And you know what, the 3G is faster than before. I love this thing. I feel so damned connected.
Dear Steve,
It’s really time for the 3G iPhone. It’s getting to be ridiculous. Check out Engadget’s news on the 3G iPhone. The news is everywhere, everyone already expects it to be announced on June 9 at your WWDC keynote. I suspect, with the shortages of iPhones everywhere, that the phone is not truly ready. If it was, you would be silly not to release it and take advantage of all the people (a) who are actually looking to buy new iPhones and (b) the people just waiting to snap up a 3G, like I am.
But if it is actually ready and just sitting in a warehouse in China until some crafty worker snaps a spy photo and emails it to a site like ThinkSecret or EngadgetMobile, ship the dang things over here and let’s have at ‘em. We’re champing at the bit for a friggin snapshot of the damned thing, imagine the mass orgas celebration when it actually arrives. It looks like AT&T is going to have their HSPA network complete next month, but we’re ready now. So how about you just release it already so I can buy one and give my wife mine 1st gen? Ya dig?
Thanks,
Adam
I love my jailbroken iPhone, and I am always looking for a new “game of the week.” I’ve been through several, at first, it was LightsOff, but that ends at 225 levels or so. Then it was Five Dice. Then 4 Balls, Domino, and finally PuzzleManiak. I was so happy recently when someone decided to port Dope Wars to the iPhone in the form of “iDope.”
iDope currently has a lot of bugs. Mainly, your jacket storage is irrelevant, you can actually store unlimited items, you just can’t buy unlimited items unless you hit “buy all.” You can’t store money in a bank. It never ends until you die. You are mugged or fight the cops maybe 80% of the time you travel. But most importantly, this:
Notice my dollars? That’s right, I have $2,147,483,647. Two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven dollars. Recognize that number? If you read my blog regularly, you might. After all, it’s the upper limit of signed integers. The game is officially boring – no matter what I do, I’m always capped at that number, I can never get more money. I wonder if the iPhone can support BIGINT.
Anyway, I really hope to see iDope get some love and attention, because Dope Wars is a fabulous and addictive game, but as is, I eventually get to the upper limit and have to start over… and over… and over.
First, there was the PC.
Then, there was the web.
Now, there is the iPhone.
At long last, the iPhone will become what it was destined to be. In June, when the iPhone 2.0 update is released, the iPhone’s true potential will be unlocked. VoIP? Sure, why not!? Games? You betcha. Exchange, ActiveSync, Remote Wipe, 802.1X? Check. How about access to the entire SDK via XCode, a compact framework (Cocoa Touch), a native emulator, and access to the SQLite databases present in the iPhone file system? Yup. Lastly, how about the most innovative platform in the last 20 years that has single handedly made the mobile web viable? Present and accounted for.
In fact, the iPhone is a new generation, and it’s been grunting along the sidelines as a gloried browser. But come iPhone 2.0, it will validate itself as one of the most amazing devices out there.
I bricked my iPhone attempting to upgrade from 1.1.2 to 1.1.3. Last night I tried iJailbreak Mobile twice, but I mysteriously dropped off my wifi at 93% and then 94%, and that wiped me out. So I used iJailbreak, but it requires the “Soft Upgrade” package from the Installer repo, which has since been removed, which left me with 300+ megabytes of trash littered all over my iPhone. So I ran the “Official 1.1.3 Installer” and it worked! But then it rebooted and gave me the dreaded “Your phone is damaged, please bring it back to Apple” nonsense.
Luckily, you can put your iPhone into restore mode – aka “dfu” mode – by holding down the home key and plugging it into your computer. I restored to 1.1.2, and then upgraded to 1.1.3. So I am on 1.1.3, and thankfully, my phone works, so that’s good. But I’m no longer jailbroken, and that really sucks.
Here’s hoping the SDK is not as lame as some fear it might be.