The iPhone Software Revolution

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001280.html

by wyday • 17 years ago

93 82 17 years ago

Tomer• 17 years ago

This is an amazing web site! where do you get from the news?! you have so many good web sites you refer to...

wallflower3• 17 years ago

If you do not yet read it, I highly recommend Daniel Eran Dilger's RoughlyDrafted Magazine for cogent, prescient, detailed, forward-looking analysis of Apple as Apple evolves. Unfortunately, some of his better stuff is buried in his archives.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/

"The big 3.0: How iPhone will shift peripheral devices"

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/03/20/the-big-30-how-ipho...

"Why Windows 7 is Microsoft's next Zune"

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/05/09/why-windows-7-is-mi...

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22By+daniel+eran%22+%2B+...

From June 2007:

"Apple’s updates will draw a stark contrast between the iPhone as a handheld Mac, and the basic smartphones that can only run mini-apps and a few poorly drawn, overpriced software titles.

Apple has turned the mobile industry into a consumer facing market, where consumers will buy the phone, get updates, and buy software from Apple. That makes Apple responsible for their security, their demanded features, and their support. That’s not how things work today in the mobile world...

Once users get accustomed to a full handheld computer that works intelligently, are they going to make any attempt to break free and grab a smartphone that really does very little, like the Motorola Q?

It will also be very difficult for other hardware makers to match Apple's product on an engineering scale. Sure, Nokia, Sony, and others can make fancier phones with features the iPhone lacks, whether its a 6 MP camera, a GPS unit, WiMax, an FM radio, or a cheese slicer, but the real trick to engineering is to know what to leave out."

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/73805E44-AEF...

TwoSheds• 17 years ago

RoughlyDrafted is extremely biased. I can't stomach the site and I'm an Apple fanboy.

tsally• 17 years ago

Hrm. So on the one hand, your personal beliefs prevent you from using a computer that is completely controled and locked down, but because everyone else is doing it for phones, it's ok then? I'm not criticizing Jeff for buying an iPhone, but let's be very clear on the price of the 'hacker mentality' in this case. :-)

An important lesson here for free software advocates as well. Only now are free software operating systems catching up in usability and user friendliness. Let's not make the same mistake on mobile devices as well.

compay• 17 years ago

Android is quite a ways along already. Though it's not as polished as the iPhone's OS it's much closer than, say, Linux desktops are to OS X.

In fact I just ditched my first generation iPhone for a G1 running Android. While I admit the iPhone is a better device, the G1 with Android is good enough and much more freely hackable.

newsio• 17 years ago

Good point. Atwood's essay about the proprietary nature of the industry neglects Android. It's not even mentioned once.

stalf3• 17 years ago

Actualy, Android's interface on the recently released HTC Hero is far better than iPhone's.

Android's the future.

mixmax• 17 years ago

The bad usability and user friendliness in free software is a product of the process, namely that anyone can change anything, and that there isn't one master designer. The reason Apple's products work so well is that there's a strict hierarchy, and only one person gets to decide how the product looks.

This won't change.

stalf3• 17 years ago

It is changing. Canonical's CEO (Mark Shuttleworth) said their aim is to deploy interfaces as good as Apple's.

What do you say about projects like GnomeDo with great interface?

igorgue2• 17 years ago

And here we go again criticizing the Free Software (or Open Source) model, without any valid reason... remember that the iPhone is highly based on OSS, you just make a lot of non-sense.

Also probably you haven't tried the latest distro versions of Linux or an Android phone or WebOS.

Then you say: "Why do you call me fanboy?" read your comment and you'll know.

mcav• 17 years ago

> remember that the iPhone is highly based on OSS

Based on, yes. But the stuff that makes the iPhone an iPhone -- Cocoa, multitouch, etc. -- is far from open.

PieSquared• 17 years ago

Sigh. How many software revolutions can there be in a year...?

Tichy• 17 years ago

If progress accelerates exponentially and "revolution" is defined as a fixed width leap, perhaps it is naturally if the density of revolutions/year increases.

joubert• 17 years ago

We're in the middle of the singularity, silly.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

Hmmm is it just me or does it sound like Jeff has fallen under the Apple marketing spell.

I think so :D Kudos Apple.

The Iphone is a fantastic product (dont get me wrong): but even more interesting is the unbelievable marketing job Apple did on it. They put an OK phone into the markets ahead of it's time (with V1) and whipped up a demand. Then fullfilled it with the 3G and now the 3G S - nothing else can get a look in at the moment.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

> They put an OK phone into the markets ahead of it's time (with V1)

Yes, don't we all have a short-term memory and forget that some people were criticizing and evaluating the v1 iPhone based on feature lists of other smartphones at the time (video, MMS, copy-and-paste). And the lack of 3G. Lack of multi-tasking (that's still WIP).

If Apple had not closed itself off and did it their way (ignoring the pundits talking about the missing features), the v1 iPhone might never have come out (or would have been delayed).

Maybe Apple is successful because it is not transparent. Because it understands that the consumer doesn't want complete control over their personal devices, but that the user wants a good experience. iTunes isn't perfect but it lets people buy music and go off on a run and listen to that music. Do you really think the average iPhone consumer cares that Cocoa is behind the scenes?

You can't compare Apple with any other company. They are unique. Yes, they have their flaws but no one company or product is perfect.

Apple is not just opaque from the outside:

“I was at the iPod launch,” said Edward Eigerman, who spent four years as a systems engineer at Apple and now runs his own technology consulting firm. “No one that I worked with saw that coming.”

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

They were criticising it and bemoaning it. And there were arguably "better" products coming onto the scene.

Apple naikled every aspect though and sold it to the mass public. That is hard - but they had a foothold because of the Ipod market and years of experience in making "must have" products :)

I never said anything about transparency: I agree as it happens, secrecy IS one of Apple's biggest strengths.

Apple know what ticks customers boxes (as you say Itunes isnt the most perfect player in the world - but for many consumers it hits what they need perfectly).

Flankk• 17 years ago

I'm sick of people repudiating Apple customers' rationale as falling under Apple's "marketing spell." Perhaps people buy the iPhone because it is a fantastic product, not because of the marketing job Apple did on it.

Jeff specifically pointed out that the iPhone wasn't ready until the 3G so your latter point is moot.

wmeredith4• 17 years ago

Hear, hear. I like Apple's marketing sometimes because I thinks its slick, if a little snotty. But the reason I keep buying their products is because I actually enjoy using them as opposed to the Palm Centro and the Dell Latitude I've owned in the past.

I've owned Apple products for 15 years now, and most of the time, when exploring other options (like those mentioned above) I end up coming back because their UX is good, not because "I drank the kool-aid."

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

Hey I wasnt saying it was a bad thing - I was trying to sound impressed.

Anyway, mostly his post just sounds like over-eager "they sold it to me" stuff :) just what I took away.

The Iphone is a fantastic product. That doesnt matter in the slightest (it really doesnt, welcome to sales :)). What does is that Apple knew their market, played the product into it and pushed all the right buttons in the right sequence. It's an exercise in how to launch and maintain a product :)

zimbabwe• 17 years ago

They put an OK phone into the markets ahead of it's time (with V1) and whipped up a demand.

Just for fun, last week I had some friends over and we streamed that iPhone keynote where Steve Jobs first announces what the iPhone is capable of. The iPod controls, the iTunes syncing with Address Book support, the full web browsing of Safari, the multitouch, the photo support, the visual voicemail. Merging calls with a touch. It was pretty engrossing, even for friends who weren't huge techies, to see that keynote and remember that back then the Razr was considered a cutting-edge phone.

The original iPhone wasn't perfect, but it was leagues beyond anything else both in design concept and in actual performance. There are still no phones that come close to the iPod part of the software, and perhaps one or two phones can match any other part of the iPhone's functionality. It evolved, and it had to evolve because it was flawed, but that original design was mindblowing when I was a kid (a lot of people cut class to go to the library and look at the initial reports) and it still has that effect if you look at the original unveiling. The new stuff makes the original attempt look amateur, but the original attempt was pretty bitching as well.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

I love your friends. I'm going to have to steal that idea. Popcorn + Jobs keynote.

> There are still no phones that come close to the iPod part of the software

I hate to reuse this comment yet again but:

Before the iPhone, some smartphone manufacturers (Microsoft) thought it was normal to wipe out the user's data with a mobile operating system upgrade.

The vintage iPhone (1.0) was a 3rd generation product.

Founder/principal of User Interface Engineering Jared Spool's definitions

1st generation - All about the technology. The 1 pound Motorola brick phones.

2nd generation - Features - camera/games/ringtones/contacts/SMS/mms/mp3/games/voice dial/speakerphone/etc

3rd generation - The experience (iPhone, arguably Facebook too)

troystribling• 17 years ago

I owned a couple of Win Mobile phones prior to the first gen iPhone. The first iPhone was the first where browsing the internet was practical.

smikhanov2• 17 years ago

Placing OK phone on the market, and adding features in the next revisions is called "release early, release often".

Having AppStore turned out to be more important then having copy/paste, this is why it they appeared in this order on the device. A lot of smartphones out there were able to beat 1st and 2nd generations of iPhone in terms of built-in functionality (and 3GS will reconcile this), but no phone will ever beat iPhone in terms of the number of available applications (which is much more important).

praptak2• 17 years ago

"A landmark, genre-defining product, no longer a mere smartphone but an honest to God fully capable, no-compromises computer [...]"

You lost me there. Can I run whatever software I choose on it? No? Then please shut up about "fully capable, no-compromises" computer.

wmeredith4• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure he's talking about hardware, you're talking about a software issue.

edw519• 17 years ago

Does the iphone have a USB port? Can I plug in my 19" monitor, keyboard, or mouse?

dinkumthinkum3• 17 years ago

Without software, the hardware is just a bunch of ICs. I don't see the point here.

praptak2• 17 years ago

I am pretty sure I am talking about the device as a whole. I don't care for the exact reason that prevents me from running arbitrary software on it, be it hardware, software or even legalware ("you agree not to execute any unapproved software...").

It might even have a supercomputer hidden inside - as long as someone else decides what I run on it, it isn't a fully capable computer.

smikhanov2• 17 years ago

I read once that "3GS is everything 1st generation iPhone should be". True enough. Now, as market position of iPhone becoming more and more stable Apple will inevitable drift in the direction of offering more open platform.

I predict one of: (a) removal/simplification of application review process, or (b) official SDK available in more languages with time (first being Java or Python) in couple of years.

derefr• 17 years ago

> Can I run whatever software I choose on it?

Yes—you just lose the [legal] ability to connect it to the networks of any of the major phone providers. They're all too scared of what a "fully capable, no-compromises" computer could do to their network if it so chose.

dejb• 17 years ago

Well many of us around the world have been running '"fully capable, no-compromises" computers' on mobile networks for years and so far Armageddon hasn't happened.

ph0rque• 17 years ago

> But a cell phone? It's a closed ecosystem, by definition, running on a proprietary network.

It might be a closed system now, but give it a few years; I don't see any reasons why a cell phone (small computer, really) will remain closed for long.

dfj2252• 17 years ago

Exactly. My prediction is that as cell phones become increasingly powerful, they will eventually replace computers, as we know them today, in most average consumers' lives.

When this is the case, I don't think that closed systems can or should be tolerated. Phones will simply be too important and too central to everyone's life to allow for this.

This is why I'm hoping that Android (or some other similarly open platform) gains a prominent place in the market, showing the rest of the industry the way forward.

herval2• 17 years ago

Computers are quite central to everyone's lives, and still, 98% of people 'tolerate' Windows and OSX...

Plus, cellphones are much more seen as appliances than 'computers' (at least today). As they get smarter, so do videogames, DVRs and other appliances - and still, there's no rush for making any of those electronics 'open source', nor claims for intolerance.

Android has an edge since the company behind it knows how to make software - I'm not convinced, though, it would be any different if Google did it all closed-source...

garply2• 17 years ago

I guess I just don't get it. I was recently in the market for a cellphone and with a $200-300 budget I was choosing between the new iPhone and an A1600 Motorola Ming. I ended up shelling out about $250 for the Ming for several reasons:

1) The iPhone feels bulky - I don't like such a massive phone.

2) The Ming has a clamshell model - this ties in with the iPhone's size problem, but it also deals with protecting the screen... I've seen people using skins just to protect their phone.

3) The Ming's battery is trivially replaceable (~$10 for a battery).

4) The Ming runs Linux.

I've used both and find the software interfaces comparably pleasant, although different. And contracts were a non-issue because where I'm located (China) the carriers don't lock the handset down.

The only downside I've found - and this comes with the size reduction - is that some of my activity is stylus-based. For some things (like calling contacts) fingers work fine though. Overall, I'm quite happy and I wonder if the iPhone is overhyped.

yardie3• 17 years ago

I just checked the specs on a Ming. No 3G, No wifi (china doesn't allow it someone posted), lower resolution screen, and a stylus?! BTW, it weighs as much as an iPhone. Linux on mobile phones is at a dead end. Even Motorola is jumping to android. And actual useful MIDP applications are few and far between.

If you wanted the cheaper phone then just say so. But the Ming is truly not in the same league as the iPhone, HTC, or Blackberry.

garply2• 17 years ago

I wasn't actually looking for the cheaper phone. Before I made the purchase, someone else pointed out to me the hardware difference - lack of 3G, wifi, and screen resolution - I didn't see how they were selling points. Having used a friend's iPhone extensively, I never made use of wifi or really benefited from the screen resolution. And 3G is just higher transfer speed, right? Perhaps the issue is that I don't watch videos on my cellphone? I like to make calls, check email, and use GPS on my phone. To me, the loss of those hardware features didn't seem to be anywhere near worth the loss of the clamshell design and the extra battery.

ghshephard• 17 years ago

Re: Bulky - It's a tradeoff on screen size. Hard to make a screen that's as large as the iPhone and make it any smaller. Does anyone make a cell phone with the same size screen as the iphone that's significantly smaller?

Re: Screen - While I've read that the iPhone is a magnet for screen cracks, I'll note that I've carried three generations in the same pocket as my keys, am clumsy as heck, and haven't managed to damage my screen yet. Very nice optical glass covering.

Re: Battery - Yeah, a $10 Replaceable battery would be nice. One (major) suckage about the iPhone. I carry a couple extra TruePower batteries for my iPhone. For $80 It both powers as well as charges the internal battery. I can go on a trip for a week without an external charger, and play games, watch movies, listen to music, etc... But they are big, bulky and expensive. Thumbs down on the iPhone on this one.

With all that said, the iPhone is not overhyped, it really is a pretty amazing/revolutionary system. I've had 3 generations of Treos, and honestly - the iPhone is almost a different _class_ of hardware, it was so different. A not uncommon scene when hanging out with friends is for us to all kick back with our favorite iPhone Games, Apps, Movies and just sit back for three hours with them.

Ironically - on a feature-by-feature comparison, the iPhone actually doesn't compare with a fairly large number of devices, but the Application experience is incomparable. Kindle, Eucalyptus, iPod, Camera, Clock (Stopwatch, alarm), Google Maps, Photo Roll, ZombieVille, GoogleEarth, WhiteNoise, iTunes, AppStores, WorldWar, SitckWars, FlightControl, Warfare Inc, are all Apps/Games I use (out of around 80 installed) _every day_ - I don't recall ever interacting with my Laptop with such a diversity of applications on a constant basis.

I've got a couple _seasons_ of TV Episodes (seamlessly) synced from iTunes, and I do the majority of my TV watching on my iPhone now. Don't even bother with the Laptop Screen most of the time. It's been at least seven years that I've actually turned on a television.

gcheong• 17 years ago

I was thinking about how much I used my iPod touch on my last vacation: to check e-mail, browse the web, as an alarm clock, for games and, occasionally, to play music.

awolf• 17 years ago

Apple is master of the user Interface hands down. Where else besides a device you use contantly, in quick bursts, while on-the-go does user interface matter more?

Sure some folks on HN will prefer an open OS- but for the general public it will be a very long time before any other mobile OS catches up in terms of ease of use. And when they do catch up it will be from copying Apple's every move.

nailer7• 17 years ago

I'lll be sure to consider that when switching between a contacts mail and messages without switching apps, browsing a web page with a Flash enabled, Skyping over 3G, or calling peoplewith a single hit from the home screen on the HTC Hero I'm going to replace my iPhone with.

roc• 17 years ago

And that flexibility comes at a direct cost to ease of use. Particularly on a mobile with limited battery life.

And can we stop with the adobe marketing bullet-point? Do real people actually -care- if they get flash on their phone?

IME what people are looking for is support of video sites that aren't youtube.

But shouldn't we be calling on those sites to support vanilla h264 and html 5 rather than h264-wrapped-in-proprietary-inefficient-mess?

Why call on -phones- to destroy our batteries trying to make that proprietary inefficient mess run acceptably?

plinkplonk4• 17 years ago

This is a very USA centric post. Nothing wrong with that of course.

"Locked in to a single vendor? Everyone signs a multi-year contract."

in the United States.

Here in India (set to become the second largest cell phone market in the world, behind China and replacing the USA by 2010), most (> 99.5%) phones are unlocked and so vendor neutral. You can switch vendors and phones independently. The Telecom Ministry is putting in place a regulation to allow phone number portability. This should happen in a couple of months and then you can switch service providers and your old cell number remains valid with the new vendor.

"I predict they will dominate the market for years to come. "

The US market. Sure.

"and signing up for the $99 iPhone Developer Program -- can build an app and sell it to the worldwide audience of iPhone users."

Rant mode on.

I'll be damned if I pay 99$ a year to be "allowed" to develop software for a device I paid for. AFAIK (correct me if I am wrong) I have to pay to deploy an app on my own phone.

Rant Mode off.

dinkumthinkum3• 17 years ago

In the U.S. there is cell number portability. Also, sure you can jailbreak the phone but then that engenders a whole host of other potential problems to say nothing of the fact that that is untenable for most users.

plinkplonk4• 17 years ago

"In the U.S. there is cell number portability."

That's good to know. Just curious, do people even try to buy unlocked phones in the USA?

yardie3• 17 years ago

Here in the UK, FR, DE, US, and etc. you buy the iPhone on contract to get it subsidized. It costs 700$ in the US unsubsidized which is approximately what it costs (34,000Rs) in India according to Vodafone. And if you're going to buy a phone you might as well get the carrier to cover part of the costs. Except for PAYG you'll still pay way too much on your plan.

Development is free. It only costs you when you go to submit it to the store. Not everyone likes a closed system but, not everyone likes to pay for something that could be done for free. But not everyone has the time to setup their own store. If you don't like the terms you are free to go to Blackberry app world (also costs money to join), or Fandango (if you thought 70/30 split was high they want 50/50).

If you are really determined not to pay the fee you can jailbreak install SSH and sftp your application onto the phone. There are myriad guides on the net explaining how to accomplish this.

plinkplonk4• 17 years ago

"And if you're going to buy a phone you might as well get the carrier to cover part of the costs."

but that is the point. I don't want a phone locked to a particular carrier for predetermined period of time, thanks. I, and a vast majority of Indians, want the freedom to switch carriers and phones independently. That is something Indian consumers actively prefer.

The IPhone in India is still locked to a specific carrier. A vast majority of phones sold in India are not. And the IPhone was a big failure in India (except for very very small numbers of apple fanboy types) and continues to have a miniscule market share, not even 1% of the market. The overall numbers sold are in the low thousands, and this in a market which grows by millions in a year. Nokia rules here, followed by Samsung and Motorola.

Indian customers constantly shift plans, looking to optimize for their particular patterns of usage. They constantly change phpones, across brands. A phone locked to specific vendors or plans will never be a success here.

SMS is huge in India. Incoming SMS is free and outgoing sms costs about half a rupee - a tenth of a cent - per message. A non SMS friendly phone (the original IPhone had some defects wrt sms I don't know about the latest one) will never be a success here.

"If you are really determined not to pay the fee you can jailbreak install SSH and sftp your application onto the phone. "

I was talking of default and legal ways to use one's cellphone. Sure any hardware can be hacked, with enough effort. I shouldn't have to do that with something I paid serious money for.

"Development is free. It only costs you when you go to submit it to the store."

How is development "free"? Can i deploy an app I wrote on my Iphone (without selling to other people, just for my use) without paying Apple money? I think not. Hell, even Windows ME phones allows me to deploy any application I want on my device, for my own use.

" It costs 700$ in the US unsubsidized which is approximately what it costs (34,000Rs) in India according to Vodafone. "

The Iphone costs 34000 Rs in India and is locked to specific vendors. And a huge failure in India. For that money I can buy a very high end unlocked phone (HTC, Nokia, RIM - yes an unlocked blackberry - <any other vendor>). Indians in general don't warm to overpriced locked phones.

dinkumthinkum3• 17 years ago

It seems ironic for someone who derides learning anything about computer science and finds knowing anything about the C programming language to be totally ridiculous and antiquated to be lauding a system that is primarily programmed in Objective-C (rather than VB6 or whatever), on a programming blog no less.

But to be fair, not much programming is talked about on that blog from what I can see so maybe it is more Engadget-lite-lite.

jpeterson• 17 years ago

Couldn't help but be reminded of this article:

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

wmeredith4• 17 years ago

Couldn't help but point out that on a 3gs iPhone running 3.0 OS almost everything in that article is refuted. (It's still hilarious, though.)

calambrac• 17 years ago

I have a new game, where I see how many sentences into a Jeff Atwood article I can get before the first completely idiotic statement, and then I stop reading. I don't spend a lot of time there.

"But as I predicted, 12 months later, the iPhone 3G rectified all the shortcomings of the first version."

The 3G had a slightly different form factor, a flush headphone jack, and 3G. I guess I just never internalized how serious some people were in their demands for less aluminum, adapter-less private music consumption, and the ability to flush their battery for spotty slightly-faster data downloads.

Threadjacking attempt: if you could excise one overly-influential blogger from the interwebs, who would it be? Atwood's quickly approaching Enderle/Dvorak/Scoble territory on that list for me.

mcantelon2• 17 years ago

What does this article say that is interesting that caused people to upvote it?

wmeredith4• 17 years ago

You can answer your own question by spending a few minutes reading this comments page.

mcantelon2• 17 years ago

I did and came up with nothing. What do you see as interesting about his article?

jsz0• 17 years ago

"Here's how far I am willing to go: I believe the iPhone will ultimately be judged a more important product than the original Apple Macintosh."

I've been saying the same thing for a while. Like many revolutionary products the iPhone isn't the first device to ever offer these features but it IS the first device to make them accessible to the masses. Part of that is a good user interface but an equally, or possibly more, important part of it is advertising. Apple educated customers on what the device could do out of the box. Now they're even advertising third party apps. As a result many people are able to use services & technologies that were out of reach to them before -- or they were ignorant these things even existed. Lots of people will say marketing doesn't matter and it's just fluff and blah blah but making people aware of something, and making it possible for them to use it, is a huge part of what makes a technology revolutionary.

The iPhone Software Revolution

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