Yishay Mor :: Blog :: thinking iPhone?

Comments

1. Yeah - but when what you are selling is as beautiful as an iPhone you can afford to make such rules. The difference between Apple and MS is that if MS tried to do this noone would touch it - when Apple do we still love it! I am one serf who does not want to be liberated!

   Janet Finlay on Thursday, 07 February 2008, 15:29 UTC # |

2. It is a complicated old world. I think Apple has gone too far for this serf. I do not like my hardware hardwired to infotainment troughs where I can snout around in the 21st century version of bread and circuses. I am very tempted to ditch iChoonz and the rip-off iChoonz store and hack my i-pod... but it is oh so simple to subscribe to all those brilliant UC Berkley lecture series. I am sure I could find another easy rss subscription server that would update some playlist software. So, I keep iTunes and buy Russian MP3s; download the odd torrent of wierd old stuff and occasionally get pissed off when the only place I can find a song is on iChoonz. And then I get even more pissed off when it tells me that I am only authorised to play that song on a limited number of nominated devices.

   But wait a minute.  Things have changed. When buying digital thingummys it it different. Old Nick (Negroponte) hit the nail on the head when comparing bits and atoms. In the old days when you bought atoms of vinyl that happened to have songs on it you didn't really worry about the licence. Bars subscribed to some national authority that allowed them to have juke boxes or play canned music. You lent your records to your friends. Maybe you taped some for your car. Now, one does not buy atoms or even bits. One buys a licence to play things under certain conditions (read the small print). You do not buy a song; you buy a licence to play that song on certain devices under certain conditions.

   So I don't like it. But if you don't like it you don't have to buy it.

   But... it is just sooo easy. It's a quandry. I'd like an iPhone but - though I use a Mac - I don't like the interface. It isn't the touchy-feely thing I object to. It is the implicit, tacit, coded value system that permeates the design of the i-world. 

   George Roberts on Thursday, 07 February 2008, 17:17 UTC # |

3. It's an interesting mix - give the user mostly what they want (functionality with simplicity and beauty) but deny them the ability to enhance it to make it exactly what they want. Something for UIDM to ponder - does the user really know best?

   Kim Whittlestone on Friday, 08 February 2008, 10:23 UTC # |

4. The SDK is due out soon and in the meantime there are hundreds of WebApps  - so it is actually quite possible to enhance the standard provision considerably - and this is only going to increase as third party apps will become available. But the main reason I am sold on my iPhone is that it has - like nothing I have used previously - successfully enabled me to integrate all my key information/communication/organisational stuff in one device - and all synched seamlessly to my Mac. This alone has been hugely empowering for me. The fact it is beautiful, simple and pleasurable to use is a bonus!

   Janet Finlay on Friday, 08 February 2008, 20:14 UTC # |

5. What an interesting debate. I think there is value in both arguments, however the power of the Apple product line up and success is that Apple controls the hardware and software developments very keenly across all their products to ensure the best user experience possible.

   I used to own a Palm Treo device which has numerous applications available for it which on the upside means that I have access to loads of applications to place on my device. The downside (and many Palm users will vouch for this) is that there are far too many poor quality 3rd party Palm applications that end up making the device unstable and the user experience poor.

   I for one am pleased that Apple controls the development of the applications as it safeguards users from poor quality application and user experiences and also protects us Apple users from viruses that plague windows mobile and palm operating systems.

   As Kim points out is it always safe to give the user too much control (isn't that how most things get broken)? 

   Simon Thomson on Saturday, 09 February 2008, 10:21 UTC # |

6. So Apple is the same as Microsoft, only better - much better. As long as you fit the centre section of the bell curve, and are willing to pay indefinite royalties, they offer the most convinient, best looking, smothest integrated sollutions.

   But what if you're on the long tail? Or what if you don't have the money? Does iTunes work as a means of distributing knowledge in the developing world? 

   Yishay Mor on Friday, 29 February 2008, 10:00 UTC # |