The iPhone the simple must have gadget for the conspicuous consumable crowd. Yes I would love one, and yes there is a small note of jealousy and envy in that tone you hear. But read on dear listeners to see what i see as some of the tragic mistakes of the mobile phone industry in general.
We all understand that Mobile phone carriers are under no delusions when they lock down phones, they bolt them tightly to prevent unauthorized content from being put on their machines, without paying through the nose first. Now the iPhone is a different beast entirely. Built like a smart phone but not so. Windows mobile devices have the ability to load software from third parties on them, a value ad feature to say the least. Buy our device and you can put all kinds of nifty tools on it. The iPhone is a closed system, much to the apparent delight of some. No third party software, no possibility, or less of a possibility of problems with malformed code.
Wonderful but in your walled garden bad things can grow, the dangers of creating a monoculture can be seen in windows. While they do no isolate themselves as much as the iPhone plans to, users of windows can count on third party software to fill in the functionality holes that windows may have missed, to appeal to a wider gamut of people in the process. Image if windows only let MS software run on it. Graphic designers would shun it, but businessmen not so much, afterall MS runs Office. But not Photoshop. so by closing their system you remove a possible demographic.
Just for once i wish there was a possibility for people like myself to have two options when buying a phone. Would you like a locked down version or would you like a wide open playground of mini computing fun? Simply garuntee that the locked phone will function to meet quality standards, and function within certain parameters and don’t give such assurances to those who wish to sandbocx their phones.
As it is i have to spend three months digging through the Razr to enable features which Verizon turned off for no reason. Why disable the ability to ring and vibrate at the same time? did it cause errors? battery life problems? No you just fealt it wasn’t useful.
Bets on how long it takes someone to crack the iPhone into running linux? I say three weeks. Rant over but expect more to follow in the upcoming days and weeks. Feel free to comment below, or email.
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