blizeH has a very good point--tactile feel is important for texting. I admit I haven't watched the keynote either, and don't care to. Never having owned a cell, (or wanting one for that matter) I'm simply not in the market.
Safari webkit happens to be the most standards compliant browser in the world. Safari passed the Web Standards Project's Acid2 test in early 2005 — just weeks after it was introduced.
"WebKit contains the WebCore and JavaScriptCore components that Apple uses in its Safari browser. Based on KHTML and KJS from KDE's Konqueror open source project, this software has enabled Nokia to achieve improvements in Web site usability on smartphones through the re-use of a proven desktop rendering engine that has been developed and optimized by a large open source community over many years." — Nokia.com
@Wanderer: I realize that it has its uses (otherwise why would they even bother?, but my point I was trying to make was that one of the main advantages I saw in the multi-touch system was being able to use both hands to fluidly manipulate on-screen objects as if it was a real desktop. The iphone screen is (relatively speaking) quite small; you could probably use at max three fingers at one time, and I suspect most people will be doing the scrolling and navigating with just one. In addition, the fluidity also relies on a processor fast enough to keep up with the users movement and changes, which the iphone probably wouldn't have (especially when in comes to scaling photos and larger graphics).
In these respects, it dosn't seem to me like the multi-touch system adds a whole lot of extra functionality to the iphone, which is what I was trying to say.
dan39, I'm not bashing it (or the OS devs either!?), I'm just giving some perspective - it's not perfect, other browsers do some things better than it. I'm not taking anything away from what it does do very well eg CSS.
Unfortunately my coding skills are no where near good enough to help in the effort of improving it, but also, since it's pretty much limited to OSX right now, it wouldn't be worth my time either as I spend my whole working day using Windows and futzing around in Linux command line from time to time. Yes, yes, I knopw it could be ported to other OSs etc, but the reality of it right now is that it *isn't* and when Apple adds something they (rightly) only care if it works in OSX, so other OSs would always be playing 2nd fiddle.
Anyway, accusations of me "bashing" WebKit all came from me saying it was pointless having such a good browser with such a slow connection! I still stand by that. IMO you don't want anything more than WAP (ie HTML, CSS, bitmap graphics and Flash!) on a GSM net connection.
Np, we're all friends here. A lot of the criticism of the iPhone is due to people wanting it to be perfect the first time round, which almost never happens. I eagerly await next year and v2
SirNOt which the iphone probably wouldn't have (especially when in comes to scaling photos and larger graphics).
its interesting how people have already made up their minds on what it probably can and cannot do. when though they haven't touched it or even watched it and that more features are to come as well.
It can render a 480x320 px movie in H.264 in full 30fps and it won't be able to scale pictures or large graphics. H.264 is CPU hungry codec. scaling pics is a trivial job multitouch in scaling graphics is just an example. try to think of what else can be done with multi touch
Second to all geeks. their argument is always this "Product X doesn't have this and that feature which everyone wants. So it will fail miserably", and they are almost always wrong. when u confront them their reply always is "Those people are idiots and morons who bought product X when u already have Y product that does so much more" and then they buy product X so they can be cool and less geeky. Rinse Repeat ad infinitum
btw blizeh what % of smartphone users actually use third party software. do u have any statistics to back it up. I'll assume next to zero. People buy smartphones for emails, contacts,web and opening word and excel files, which it does out of the box. I doubt they do anything other than basic stuff. no need for third party apps. the ones that actually do install third party apps are geeks. read above for my comments about geeks.
I would love if it allowed third party apps. but guess what its not about me or you. Its about the average user which could care less about third party apps.
The thing is though there is (as far as i can see) zero reason they shouldnt allow installation of third party apps, is there? It's pretty much a pda, and they've had installable apps for years on far inferior OS's...
The New York Times did an interesting article on the pitfalls that Steve Jobs and Apple could face with iPhone. (I believe giginger quoted a slashdot snippet from the article earlier about a reference to 3rd party apps).
The article really covers all of the "ifs" and "unknowns" that everyone is talking about when it comes to the iPhone. In the article, Jobs gives the reasons why the iPhone can't be completely open (it has to do with Cingular and its priorities more than the technology in iPhone). It also talks about the potential and implications for 3rd party apps (such as Skype).
Jobs is quoted on how they will likely sell new 3rd party applications to iPhone users in the same way that they sell games to iPod users (over iTunes). He says they need to have control over the types of applications that are being used on the phone so that it doesn't interfere with the Cingular network and the Cingular core business.
The excuses just keep rolling out yet it would appear a lot of people are now saying the iPhone is a pile of shite.
I, personally, wouldn't go that far. I think it's a good phone but they seem to have mixed their markets up, a rarity for Apple, and have aimed it at nobody but the people who buy anything with the Apple logo.
People buy smartphones for emails, contacts,web and opening word and excel files, which it does out of the box.
Assuming this is right, it sounds bloody limited and *seriously* controlled, as in Fascist state. It's like 3 was three years ago, only worse.
Here's a wacko theory for everyone. The first gen of the iPhone is a public beta. Providing the results from it are promising and/or good, Apple will release the "final" product as version 2 (or 3) which will be a useful business device. Currently the iPhone is not in the least business friendly, and I wonder if that is deliberate while the new screen technology is in "public beta" with the, err, public
Like I said, it's a wacko theory and it's late here, so I thought I'd throw it out there just for fun
Minisweeper, there is zero reason for Apple to include it. beside the fact that they might not have an sdk for it yet. there is lot more to come once its out in the wild and people have their hands on it, Apple can just release a firmware upgrade to allow third party apps.
it will happen and it will come.
I'll end by a quote from cultofmac
The innovation of the iPhone is first, next and last about its incredible multi-touch interface and fantastic integration with iTunes. It will take features that have technically existed on cell phones for years and years and years and make them something my Mom could actually figure out how to use. Honestly, I'm not sure if she's ever even sent a text message in her life. She would with an iPhone. It's an adoption curve problem. Features might come first to other phones -- and certainly to the Japanese market -- but Apple will make sure people understand how to use it and that it's meaningful for them. Features are irrelevant if people don't know how to use them. More than irrelevant -- alien, non-existant.
It can render a 480x320 px movie in H.264 in full 30fps and it won't be able to scale pictures or large graphics. H.264 is CPU hungry codec. scaling pics is a trivial job multitouch in scaling graphics is just an example. try to think of what else can be done with multi touch
There is a definite difference between decoding a series of images and fluidly creating dynamic animations based on user input. I'm not saying the iphone can't handle image scaling, I was pointing out that it may not be able to seemlessly, dynamically and graphically respond in the way demonstrated by the multi-touch demo. When I mentioned the scaling of large images and graphics, I was refering to the smooth, animated way in which one would want a UI to respond to such a multi-touch input, shown clearly in multiple demo applications in that video.
Another reason I say this is that I noticed a (rather expensive) phone of a friend took a good while (several seconds) rescaling a 640x480 image to screen size, let alone smoothly animating it. And yes, I know the iphone is more powerful, but I was using that as an example, as the processing power difference can't be that huge.
@giginger Steve jobs already said that there are going to be lot more apps for iphones. word and excel will definitely happen. Leopard already has support for OpenXML fileformat from Microsoft. iWorks will have that support too. and iphone will work seamlessly with it.
Let me repeat it one more time. the product hasn't released yet. there are still tons of questions unanswered. this is the same attitude people had for the first ipod. I guess we are inherently unforgiving. we wants things now not later.
Comments
and
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/12/0430200&from=rss
Oh dear
Take the Acid2 test on your browser of choice:
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/
(Opera 9 finally passed Acid2 late last year, and Firefox will pass it later this year)
Safari is Open Source, so if you know of any bugs (or how to fix them), you should really get involved:
http://webkit.org/projects/javascript/
...or I guess you can just sit back and bash the app and all of the Open Source developers throughout the world who contribute to it.
BTW. Nokia is now using OpenSource ports of Safari's WebKit in some of their phones.
In these respects, it dosn't seem to me like the multi-touch system adds a whole lot of extra functionality to the iphone, which is what I was trying to say.
Unfortunately my coding skills are no where near good enough to help in the effort of improving it, but also, since it's pretty much limited to OSX right now, it wouldn't be worth my time either as I spend my whole working day using Windows and futzing around in Linux command line from time to time. Yes, yes, I knopw it could be ported to other OSs etc, but the reality of it right now is that it *isn't* and when Apple adds something they (rightly) only care if it works in OSX, so other OSs would always be playing 2nd fiddle.
Anyway, accusations of me "bashing" WebKit all came from me saying it was pointless having such a good browser with such a slow connection! I still stand by that. IMO you don't want anything more than WAP (ie HTML, CSS, bitmap graphics and Flash!) on a GSM net connection.
It can render a 480x320 px movie in H.264 in full 30fps and it won't be able to scale pictures or large graphics. H.264 is CPU hungry codec. scaling pics is a trivial job
multitouch in scaling graphics is just an example. try to think of what else can be done with multi touch
Second to all geeks. their argument is always this "Product X doesn't have this and that feature which everyone wants. So it will fail miserably", and they are almost always wrong. when u confront them their reply always is "Those people are idiots and morons who bought product X when u already have Y product that does so much more"
and then they buy product X so they can be cool and less geeky.
Rinse
Repeat
ad infinitum
btw blizeh what % of smartphone users actually use third party software. do u have any statistics to back it up. I'll assume next to zero. People buy smartphones for emails, contacts,web and opening word and excel files, which it does out of the box. I doubt they do anything other than basic stuff.
no need for third party apps. the ones that actually do install third party apps are geeks. read above for my comments about geeks.
I would love if it allowed third party apps. but guess what its not about me or you. Its about the average user which could care less about third party apps.
The article really covers all of the "ifs" and "unknowns" that everyone is talking about when it comes to the iPhone. In the article, Jobs gives the reasons why the iPhone can't be completely open (it has to do with Cingular and its priorities more than the technology in iPhone). It also talks about the potential and implications for 3rd party apps (such as Skype).
Jobs is quoted on how they will likely sell new 3rd party applications to iPhone users in the same way that they sell games to iPod users (over iTunes). He says they need to have control over the types of applications that are being used on the phone so that it doesn't interfere with the Cingular network and the Cingular core business.
Steve Jobs Walks the Tightrope Again
I, personally, wouldn't go that far. I think it's a good phone but they seem to have mixed their markets up, a rarity for Apple, and have aimed it at nobody but the people who buy anything with the Apple logo.
People buy smartphones for emails, contacts,web and opening word and excel files, which it does out of the box.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/the-ultimate-iphone-frequently-asked-questions/
I guess this makes the iPhone a not too smart phone?
Here's a wacko theory for everyone. The first gen of the iPhone is a public beta. Providing the results from it are promising and/or good, Apple will release the "final" product as version 2 (or 3) which will be a useful business device. Currently the iPhone is not in the least business friendly, and I wonder if that is deliberate while the new screen technology is in "public beta" with the, err, public
Like I said, it's a wacko theory and it's late here, so I thought I'd throw it out there just for fun
it will happen and it will come.
I'll end by a quote from cultofmac
multitouch in scaling graphics is just an example. try to think of what else can be done with multi touch
There is a definite difference between decoding a series of images and fluidly creating dynamic animations based on user input. I'm not saying the iphone can't handle image scaling, I was pointing out that it may not be able to seemlessly, dynamically and graphically respond in the way demonstrated by the multi-touch demo. When I mentioned the scaling of large images and graphics, I was refering to the smooth, animated way in which one would want a UI to respond to such a multi-touch input, shown clearly in multiple demo applications in that video.
Another reason I say this is that I noticed a (rather expensive) phone of a friend took a good while (several seconds) rescaling a 640x480 image to screen size, let alone smoothly animating it. And yes, I know the iphone is more powerful, but I was using that as an example, as the processing power difference can't be that huge.
Steve jobs already said that there are going to be lot more apps for iphones. word and excel will definitely happen. Leopard already has support for OpenXML fileformat from Microsoft. iWorks will have that support too. and iphone will work seamlessly with it.
Let me repeat it one more time. the product hasn't released yet. there are still tons of questions unanswered.
this is the same attitude people had for the first ipod. I guess we are inherently unforgiving. we wants things now not later.