Comments on: Why the iPhone Can Be a Hard Sell

By: Grant

Grant — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:13:16 +0000

Hi Jeff:
Thanks for sharing that. What I found so disappointing was that you can not (at least according to said vendor’s support staff along with what I could find out on the Internet) do so with a 3GS, ever.

By: Jeff Carroll

Jeff Carroll — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:08:56 +0000

I have an original iPhone as well as a 3G. The original-generation iPhone, which is no longer activated, accepts firmware upgrades and functions perfectly for any functionality that does not require a cellular network connection; in other words, it’s essentially identical to an iPod Touch of the same vintage, except with a microphone.

For what it’s worth.

By: Grant

Grant — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:51:45 +0000

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for posting about the N series. Having looked at the N8xx, I loved its potential but was disappointed that it was not a phone. Now I see that the N900 is going to change all of that; it looks like a powerhouse!

My favorite handheld was my Psion 5mx; sadly time has moved forward but it has not.

The iPhone form factor and user interface is so compelling. It just begs people to pick it up and touch it. That draw is hard to resist; and despite the obvious lock-in as you pointed out, it is hard to resist from the perspective of providing a pleasant user-experience to how many millions of users out there. For me, the iPod Touch is an acceptable compromise, for the sake of the users if no one else.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:45:01 +0000

Hi Grant, This is just one more example of Apple’s restrictive practices. I will not buy or develop for the iPhone because of their closed and restrictive policies. Firstly I can only develop on a Mac even though the toolchain would easily compile for Linux. This means that I would have buy a Mac (at a cost of GBP1000 for a machine worth around GBP400) unnecessarily lining Apple’s pockets. Then I would not be able to distribute my software unless via the iStore and then only with Apple’s blessing so they can ensure that it has no way to download any other executable content ! Sorry Apple but it’s not acceptable if I buy a device – I’ll decide what software I run on it not you.

Instead I bought a Nokia N810 which runs a lovely, completely open, Linux distro called Maemo. It took me 10 minutes to compile an existing Scheme interpreter, tinyscheme, for it and install it on there. There’s probably enough resources to run something like Gambit on there so I could try that at some point.

Nokia are about to release some serious iPhone contenters based on Maemo – good luck to them I say. It’s about time Apple’s restrictive monopoly was challenged.