Six productivity iPhone/iPod Touch apps, six check-mark icons.
UI Nightmare
Palm developer Steven’s Creek Software vomited out this app for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
The question is: will this app be “accepted” by Apple for inclusion in the AppStore or is UI design going to be a deciding factor in which apps get in and which don’t?
As leery as I am of having one gate-keeper giving the thumbs up or the thumbs down to every app I would be just as leery of having to wade through crap like this to get to the good stuff. Time will tell …
Update: pilkycrc says “no”
Original linkage, as well as the screenshot of this train wreck of a UI, courtesy of Mr. John Gruber.
John Gruber mulls over the shortcomings of the iPhone as presented by Brian Caulfield at Forbes.com
Anchored
Michael S. Rosenwald at The Washington Post creates the inaugural post on his new blog “The Financial Lobe” and he addresses an issue that I wanted to address but did not have time or, probably, experience to address: why it is that a $199 iPhone sounds like a better deal than a $399 iPhone when, if you look at the total overall cost over even as short a time as a year, the average iPhone 3G consumer is going to pay at least $20 more than those that bought the original. It’s a good read and raises some excellent points but I think it still falls short in some ways.
An Incomplete Analogy
As far as Mr. Rosenwald’s restaurant analogy is concerned (read the article and you will understand what I mean), I think that it misses the mark a bit. The situation he refers to assumes that the restaurant patron is sitting down already, scanning the menu for a dish he or she prefers. At that point one is a bit of a captive audience. You’re hungry, you’re there and I am assuming that there are few people, once they decide they are going to eat at a restaurant, who are going to get up and leave because of prices. They are, instead, going to look for some menu item that will fit their budget. There are more people that will be willing to walk out of an AT&T store because they are, maybe, unhappy about how much they are going to have to pay for their phone and contract, iPhone or not.
The Cost of Entrance
Furthermore, even though I am happy that someone addressed this subject I still have a problem with the current popular analysis. I think Mr. Rosenwald’s article continues to place the consumer into the role of the unwitting victim of marketing manipulation. It assumes, I think wrongly, that the consumer is being played as they blindly fall prey to their iPhone lust. I think that, for the most part, those that choose to buy the most recent edition of Apple’s seminal phone effort, having eschewed the first edition, are not victims of marketing but instead are making a conscious decision based on the cost of entrance.
I would like an iPhone. I have wanted one since they came out. I think that I could, indeed, justify the monthly expense of owning an iPhone if I could just afford to get one. $600, even $400, was a steep amount to shell out all at once simply to gain entrance into the iPhone market. $199? Now that I might be able to do. And even though it is going to cost more, over time, to own the phone, that increased cost is going to be diffused, paid in small increments over a long period of time and that, my friends, is alot easier to handle than one large chunk of cash, shelled out all at one time, just to save $20 per year. Yeah, Mr. Rosenwald — and everyone else who has followed this same line of thinking — I am indeed thinking about utility.
I was thinking, while I was watching the keynote (via liveblog), that If anyone was the victim here it was Apple and maybe, now that some time has passed, even more so, AT&T. First, it is entirely possible that Apple came to the conclusion that there was no way they were going to reach their sales goal for the iPhone while retaining such a price premium and, so, slash the price they did. Planned at the birth of the iPhone or not, they realized that for the iPhone to explode in the U.S. market, the price needed to come down.
Second, AT&T has flatly stated that their profits, and therefore their stock price, are going to take a bit of a hit now that the decision has been reached that the iPhone is going to follow the same subsidization model every other phone they (or anyone else, for that matter) offer follows.
I am not saying that there are not some people out there blindly throwing themselves at the new iPhone but I also don’t think that the bulk of the people that are excited that the latest iPhone is cheaper to acquire than the old one was, are just brain-dead receivers of magical marketing signals. I think they we deserve a bit more credit than that. In fact, we may just deserve the credit for the presence of a $199 iPhone in the first place. Maybe.
Once again, thanks go to Daring Fireball for the link.
If sales drop because potential iPod Touch buyers opt for a $199 iPhone 3G instead, don’t expect many tears from Apple executives.
– John Gruber
From “WWDC 2008 Miscellany” on Daring Fireball
"Steve Jobs's Appearance Grabs Notice, Not Just the IPhone" (@ WSJ via DF)
I was wondering how long it was going to take until someone mentioned this.
All you people who bought your iPhone to improve your personal and business productivity, let me tell you — those days are over
–– Macworld Editorial Director, Jason Snell
Yes, gaming has come to the iPhone/iPod Touch. Jason Snell is liveblogging from Apple’s 2008 WWDC keynote.
A New Word?
Has Ellen Lee, in the process of writing, in the San Francisco Chronicle, about today’s expected iPhone announcement, invented a new word?
It’s Coming
WWDC! Yay! by Gernot Poetsch © & John Siracusa’s WWDC 2008 Keynote Bingo board
The next best thing to Macworld for Apple geeks has got to be Apple’s annual WWDC. A few years ago the conference, held every year at San Francisco’s Moscone West (site of last years’ Macworld admission fiasco – god I hope it’s not a repeat of that nasty scene), flowered into a second venue – joining Macworld – through which Apple regularly introduces new hardware and software.
This years’ near sure bet is the much rumored 3G iPhone but there are other possibilities being thrown around as well. It seems Apple always has something up it’s sleeve. I am sure this year will be no different.
The keynote will begin at 10:00 AM on Monday, June 9th. I am sure there will be some sort of live coverage, weather it be various sources liveblogging the event or a video stream (more likely, it will be the former) but there is usually a video of the event posted on Apple’s website the day after if you prefer to catch “His Steveness” in action, live, tossing out his reality distortion field into the audience … and beyond. One thing is for sure: don’t expect to be able to access Apple’s website from around Noon to, say, 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Think about that — in just nine years, the specs that then described Apple’s top-of-the-line desktop computer now describe their phone.
–– John Gruber of Daring Fireball “BlackBerry vs. iPhone”
You’ll have it next year
…says AT&T Inc. C.E.O. Randall Stephenson. Sounds like as good a source as any.
Some say “this isn’t news”. Hokum, I say. It’s news because it is a second affirmation of the inevitability of a 3G iPhone and it’s news because, as vague as “next year” is, it is a more definite date than “sometime in the future”. It’s “next year” not two years or three years from now.
So, the only question that remains is when? Macworld ‘08 or the WWDC 08?
I wonder if Mr. Jobs is freaking out that Mr. Stephenson has a such a big mouth (talking about a better product that comes out next year right in the midst of the holiday buying season? Hmmmm…). Damn partners.
Verizon Plans Wider Options for Cellphone Users (@NYT).
There has always been talk of the iPhone contributing to the end of the pernicious business-as-usual practices of locking the consumer to a particular carrier. And so it begins. Thanks, Apple.
Passive Voice ≠ Weak Writing
Gruber, Gruber, Gruber… First the whole Intel sticker debacle and now this. You certainly are a lover of (the possibility of a) scandal.
The article you link to on passive writing does, indeed, state that there is a place for the passive voice. It certainly does not equate it to “weak” writing.
I mean I understand you are a great lover of the Mac and that you value, with immense intensity, the indie Mac developer community. I understand that you are a great defender of said community’s honor as well but it’s starting to sound like too many people are on the verge of being the JOTW for just the slightest of slights (if I may) or even the perception, however misguided, of there being even a sliver of disrespect towards the Mac communty.
I love DF. It’s my first stop on the pipes nearly every day. I just thought I would let you know that I am sensing a bit of arrogance creeping in. Be careful.
Daring Fireball’s “Jackass of the Week” and the iPhone class action suit.
Designed Deterioration iPhone vs. the cast iron pan: which is more…”intelligent”? (via TreeHugger)
Another cool thing about the casing is that if you hold the iPhone correctly in bright sunlight, you can shine the reflective Apple logo onto a wall like the Batman symbol. I played around with this for about 20 minutes on the seatback in front of me on a recent plane ride.
The person next to me didn’t get it.
Whoops. I guess that Apple is getting a grip on it’s supply & demand issues.
I can’t remember the last Apple product that demanded a premium because of scarcity. Was it the MacBook? Maybe the black model?
I guess the best these people can hope for is to break even. I have a feeling they may get low-balled, though. Even an idiot can see these guys are stuck with what now aren’t anything more than replacement iPhones should their purchase for personal use fall in the toilet or something.