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Firmware 2.1: "Secret Feature" Predictions?
- Thread starter ViPa
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yep. I predict we get nothing in 2.1 but PUSH and bug fixes. These secret features are just smoke. Nothing will be added that will make us happy.
Speaking of headless chicken, where's arn on such an important issue?
maybe resting for tomorrow?
As Apple has already said, they have prioritised things, e.g. MMS, etc are lower on their priority list. I don't think anyone's disagreeing that they're hard at work, just what they're working on. I think if the world hasn't collapsed thus far, MMS, Blue tooth etc can wait a while. For all we know, they'll keep those kind of changes for v3 iPhone/ OS 3...
Don't forget the new bugs that will be in there. Apple had better pray to God the push they have been promising isn't an embarassment.
I am - or at least that the iPhone OS development team is massively under resourced.
There are a lot of things that should have been done in eighteen months that haven't been.
Phazer
It's actually quite ironic, that the iPhone 3G has the most advanced bluetooth chips out there, but only supports headsets. I think that Apple will improve on this in the future, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to incorporate this chip.
App push notification is a (poor) kludge to get around not allowing background apps.
1) Power usage. Consider the problems even now with push email. Power usage can go way up since you'll need a heartbeat (or a changed-IP client-to-server notification) so that "push" can work.
Each phone will need a second heartbeat for the app notifications. Power usage also goes up because each app has to save its state, die, then get restarted from scratch when a notification comes in.
2) Potential for mass failures. If you think 3G problems were a mess, consider millions of phones with apps not working right because of Apple's servers being down. And Apple so far doesn't have a great rep (or experience) at keeping everything up 24/7.
3) Burden on programmers. App push notification requires the poor app programmer to find and maintain their own servers to send notifications to Apple's servers. This major stumbling point seems to get glossed over.
Example of why app notifications can be a dumb solution to the background problem:
Consider writing an app that is supposed to remind someone when and which pill to take. At the right time, it will vibrate and show what the pill looks like. On any other device, this is easy.
On the iPhone, your app must send an alarm request to a server somewhere. The server then must, at the right times, send a notification to Apple's servers, who then push the notification down to the phone, which starts the app so it can alert you.
That's a LOT of pointless work, battery, expense, and potential failure points, for such a simple app. Worse, put your phone into Airplane Mode, and the app doesn't work at all.
Hopefully Apple will come up with a better solution for cases like this. Or perhaps I'm totally off base. Corrections welcome.
Forget turn by turn GPS...something better
An iPhone dock for your car that when GPS is activated on the iPhone, the car goes into autopilot and the iPhone drives your car. Only available on 2000 car models and up.
An iPhone dock for your car that when GPS is activated on the iPhone, the car goes into autopilot and the iPhone drives your car. Only available on 2000 car models and up.
All I want at least is the push notification so AIM is useful, and I don't have to check Twitterrific every 5 minutes. (though I'm sure there would have to be a software update for that to do 15/30/60 minute intervals)
The "find and maintain your own servers" bit kills it for me. That expense alone would make it completely not worth it.
My #1 request at the moment would be an intelligent and fast synchronization & backup process built into iTunes 8 and firmware 2.1.
Right now it's taking 5 minutes to chew through all data only to discover (for the 15th time in a row) that nothing has changed. If you pick up the iPhone from the dock and put it back 2 seconds later, it runs through the whole arduous sync and backup process all over again.
I mean... seriously. The interface of the iPhone is superb and makes my previous 3G smartphone (SonyEricsson P1i) look like something out of the 1950's, but when it comes to sync and backup it's the other way around. I've seen single cell organisms more intelligent than the iPod/iPhone sync.
What else, um... just fix all the bugs. App store bugs, 3G bugs, Safari bugs, you name it. I'm not sure exactly when, why and how Apple's quality control dropped to the level of Microsoft circa 1995, but they better damn well shape up soon, or I'm gonna have to adopt the Windows upgrade attitude to Apple's products (e.g. "Thanks, but I'll pass on the initial release and wait X months for the first Service Pack to come out").
Right now it's taking 5 minutes to chew through all data only to discover (for the 15th time in a row) that nothing has changed. If you pick up the iPhone from the dock and put it back 2 seconds later, it runs through the whole arduous sync and backup process all over again.
I mean... seriously. The interface of the iPhone is superb and makes my previous 3G smartphone (SonyEricsson P1i) look like something out of the 1950's, but when it comes to sync and backup it's the other way around. I've seen single cell organisms more intelligent than the iPod/iPhone sync.
What else, um... just fix all the bugs. App store bugs, 3G bugs, Safari bugs, you name it. I'm not sure exactly when, why and how Apple's quality control dropped to the level of Microsoft circa 1995, but they better damn well shape up soon, or I'm gonna have to adopt the Windows upgrade attitude to Apple's products (e.g. "Thanks, but I'll pass on the initial release and wait X months for the first Service Pack to come out").
