Re: This iPhone SDK thing is a pretty big deal...

In article <13t89nblcieqm55@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Daniel Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Craig Koller" <cwkollertwo@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:cwkollertwo-FACB31.09083209032008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <13t7u8m6f01pk58@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Daniel Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[cut]

Well, while I'm sure we all wish Apple well with their new gadgets
business,
it's not got a whole lot to do with Macs.

Potentially the Mac/iPhone app combo could offer a number of integrated
solutions: remote control of a Mac with an iPhone;
Accelerometer/multitouch input to a Mac,

This seems like it would be a fairly useless gimmick.

Possibly. Let's see what the kids come up with...


iWork mobile (Keynote
presentations from your iPhone, remote data input/display in conjunction
with a Mac database backend, etc.

I think it will be quite difficult to get iWork- not exactly a lightweight,
zippy app- to work acceptably on an iPhone.

Agreed, not a zippy app. But what better motivation to address this?
Opening MS Office attachments on a BB is a PITA. Even a better viewer of
iWork/Office apps would be a good thing.


And there are places where saying "Mac database backend" will get you funny
looks. I think this newsgroup is one of them. :D

And on top of all this, it also lures
developers to the Mac and to Cocoa.

Well, Cocoa Touch. You do have a point though- anything that increases the
pool of fluent Objective-C programmers will benefit the Mac. Conversely, the
iPhone will be hurt by the comparative rarity of these guys today.

I doubt we will see any large effect though. Even if Cocoa Touch is the best
thing ever- and I've seen nothing to indicate that it is, yet- as long as
the iPhone remains a closed platform, there won't be all that many
developers working on it.

Just like the iPod, Apple is creating yet another halo effect.

I have never seen any convincing case made that the iPod had anything to do
with Apple's modest market-share gains; more likely they are due to the
considerable improvements Apple has made to those products.

What the iPod did was turn millions of Windows-only folks into Apple
owners. No, most would never consider the Mac, but they now have a
(pardon the MBA speak) positive relationship with the brand. A CPU-only
Apple (a PPC one, no less) was doomed to have to lure switchers across a
very broad chasm. Today, a broader product range and a strong consumer
presence has changed this. Vista woes are helping as well. Let's regroup
in a year to see what the market share shift is.


Plus it
hasn't been discussed yet, but given the common foundation of the Mac,
iPhone, iPod Touch and AppleTV, chances are that many apps on the iPhone
will easily migrate to the desktop and to the TV.

I think this is very doubtful. The iPhone is very different

Again, the SDK beta just went out a few days ago. Let's see.


AppleTV Take2 is already a serious leap forward from the 1.0, and the
ability to buy iPhone games the caliber of Spore would boost it even
further.

Last I heard, AppleTV was not exactly a success story. "Boosting it even
further" does not seem like much of an accomplishment.

No, it wasn't a success out of the gate. Frankly, except for the
occasional YouTube foray, I wasn't using it much. But 2.0 is a vast
improvement now that it bypasses the computer for most purposes - this
is truly a very cool gadget that costs less than 20 DVDs. If Apple could
boost its TV/Film catalog this thing would be even more compelling.



[snip]
Which is swell, but... this means that one of Leopard's big, headline
features, Core Animation, is a hand-me-down from the iPhone. Leftovers.
It
clearly shows where Apple's priorities are, it's not the Mac.
[snip]

IIRC, Core animation has been around for years, long before the iPhone.

Where did you hear that? I find it quite surprising. Should not we have
heard something about it if that were so?

I am sure it was under development long before the iPhone- it must have been
in order to premier with the iPhone. But was it in any product? If so, which
one?

Nope, I was wrong.


However, if the lean requirements for iPhone operation yielded some
optimization benefits that found their way back to MacOSX then you can
call it a synergy bonus between the two platforms.

I think the bonus is Core Animation itself.

[snip]
And it's not clear that Apple intends it to be more than a toy anyway.
They
spent a lot of time on games in the recent roadmap event. And the
"enterprise" stuff they showed was not very impressive.

The recent Google mobile search stats (showing 6-month iPhone activity
eclipsing all other smartphones) are an indication that most enterprise
users barely touch their BB and WM phones' features beyond email,
calling and maybe texting.

I fail to see how any Google "mobile search stats" could possibly indicate
this. The big question is how much mobile phones are used to run third party
apps, and how much they are used with custom enterprise software.

My point is that most of the functionality of smart phones is generally
underutilized because it's a pain in the ass to use. Like the iPod
before it, no doubt some will protest that the iPhone is "nothing new"
except that it repackages existing functions into a much more
user-friendly package.


RIM has had its issues with server outages, and now it appears Apple's
direct Exchange licensing model will offer a measurable cost savings in
comparison to RIM. Apple is appeasing IT and accounting to allow
individual user preference to drive enterprise mobile. If they can prove
increased productivity then they'll get in easily. Having a BB and an
iPhone, I don't believe this will be hard at all.

I do not see how they can "prove" that.

How does anyone prove productivity? Reduced frustration at accomplishing
tasks is as much a benchmark as anything else. And that is anecdotal and
viral. If execs "fall in love" with their iPhones, and Apple eliminates
the IT roadblocks, then it makes adoption that much more imminent.


[snip]
A very attractive device, the iPhone.

...whose potential is barely being tapped at this point.

That's because Apple's been pretty slow to release an SDK.

So you say. I don't know how easy or hard it is to launch a mobile phone
platform, much less open it up for 3rd-party development.


[snip]
For Apple, the effect of this is to make the iPhone hardware more
expensive
to produce, since it has to run this beast.

I've read 256 and 512MB RAM figures.

You can run Windows XP on that kind of memory! Wild stuff, if true. But I
read it's 128MB.

Not sure which is right. I've also
read recently that Apple doesn't encourage multitasking of apps due to
hardware/OS limitations. Given how new they are to this market (not to
mention how long MS has had to get its act together) Apple is doing
quite well.

What I have read is that they do not support multitasking of multiple 3rd
party apps. Pretty limiting, but presumably the iPhone just hasn't got the
grunt to do it.

Neither did the first Mac. But at least you could cut and paste... just
not into another app.


I imagine the whole wireless agreement with AT&T was meant to give Apple
five years of extra capital to offset development and hardware costs.
Teardown estimates of the device put the COG at a little more than $200.
Seems as if they have a good deal of wiggle room to beef this phone up,
especially when the 3G models come out.

It wouldn't be an Apple product without a nice juicy profit margin! :D

No, it wouldn't.

[snip]
Perception is extremely powerful. There are Windows advocates who
believed MS "saved" Apple in '97 with its stock purchase/cash infusion.

That's true. That's another thing Apple didn't actually say, but kind of
implied back then.

There are people who have historically stalled purchases of other
products (sometimes killing smaller companies) based on MS vaporware
tactics.

Meh. This is just one of the Standard Excuses.

Since the arrival of the G5 (advertised as a 64-bit CPU) in 2003, Jobs
stated "the 64-bit revolution has begun and the personal computer will
never be the same again." True or not, lets face it: he does a better
job stirring the mob than MS can. Obama is a better orator than Clinton.
Stuff like that makes a difference.

Absolutely.

Though perhaps not *that* much of a differences. Apple's success tends to
track pretty closely to how good their products are, I notice. AppleTV
hasn't set the world on fire, for instance.

[snip]
Apple seems determined to *avoid* having an open platform. The iPhone is
to
be a walled garden, where anything you do must have Apple's approval, or
you
can't do it.

I don't know if it's that draconian. Jobs stated no porn and a few other
restrictions. Beyond that Apple seems to have made it pretty easy for
developers small and large to sell on the iPhone. And, again, the
platform is six months old. I'll bet they loosen the reigns as the
platform matures and their revenue streams continue to diversify.

Maybe. But I think they probably won't: they've always preferred to retain
control in their own hands. And that worked really well for iPods at least.

Apple's only real market distinction (beyond the cool factor) is to
out-innovate the competition. Gotta run lean and mean and often alone in
order to do that. An open iPod platform would probably have made the
iPod touch (and iPhone) impossible.

Unprecedented that MS would abandon its Plays-for-sure coalition and
pull a page from the Apple playbook with Zune. In the past, MS would
have offered the "open/clone" alternative in order to steal Apple's
lunch. Apparently not so easy in the realm of gizmos.


The other major influence will be that of the competition. If RIM, MS,
Samsung, Sony, et al don't put up a fight then Apple will have no reason
to yield, except to pure customer demand.

Sure.

[snip]
I would imagine this will turn out not unlike the Mac: Apple will show
the
world what a smart phone should look and feel like, but their desire to
maintain complete control will prevent them from dominating the market.
In
time, their competitors will copy what they have done right, and whoever
does *that* will dominate.

That's been the past model. I just don't think Apple is that foolish any
more.

Is it foolish? They could make a lot of money this way.

Given its taste of global adoption via the iPod (accessories,
partnerships) vs. the struggles of nichehood on the Mac, I think Apple
would want to avoid iPhone nichehood at all costs. But again, in order
to successfully launch something totally new to them (this is a phone
after all) I think they're simply minimizing their risk up front by
maintaining a closed environment. Once they reach the fork in the road
re small but profitable vs. large and universal, I think they'll opt for
something in the middle. I truly believe Apple's headed for a more open
business model in the next few years, once they know they can execute it
properly.


A closed platform does allow for more control and faster
innovation - the iPod exemplifies this. The iPod also benefits from its
brand dominance. It's the "Kleenex" of mp3 players. To be seen with a
lesser alternative just isn't cool (gotta love that reptilian consumer
brain). But if the heat is properly applied by the competition, Apple
will have to loosen its grip.

I don't the innovation thing. Certainly they've got a hell of a brand.

Understood. Agree to disagree - there is a pile of hype with Apple, but
as someone who works between both platforms every day, I'd rather use
the hardware/software with a strong point of view, vs. another seemingly
designed by a committee.

Ideally, there should be dozens of OSes that cater to specific needs and
tastes. Frankly, I believe MS has crushed all comers on that front. If
Apple can continue to crack Redmond's hegemony then perhaps other rivals
will offer more personalized solutions to Bill's Model T approach.

Thanks for the intelligent, thoughtful response btw...


[snip]

.

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