Hey Mods,
Can this be made a "Sticky"? It should be mandatory reading before any post is made.
Can this be made a "Sticky"? It should be mandatory reading before any post is made.
You've answered your own question.
No, he's not. It's called being a sensible and practical consumer. If you have no evidence whatsoever as to future features, you can't reasonably apply your personal expectations to a device. You must purchase it with the assumption that it will never do anything worthwhile that it doesn't right out of the box.
You have no way of knowing what or how much will be added in the future or whether it will be the least bit interesting, useful, or innovative. They very well could have been referring solely to the WiFi Music Store. Maybe there's no more to come after that at all--there's nothing dispositive to the contrary. Obviously, that's unlikely, but if you bought it assuming they would add things you think are essential, you're rather foolish.
Only because you created runaway expectations from a device, got in a large group of other over-excited Internet people, and created an iPhone in your collective heads that doesn't reflect reality. You blame all the hype, but you're forgetting that it's people like you who drove the hype in the first place.
Because you can't get from the specified features to "open platform" without a number of serious leaps of logic and major assumptions.
AppleTV runs OS X; it is not an open platform. The new iPods run OS X. They're not an open platform. Multitasking doesn't get you anywhere--it just specifies that you can switch seamless between applications on the phone. You can play music while checking the weather or texting. "Desktop class applications" simply refers to the quality of what's installed--YouTube and Safari are quite comprehensive, and Google Maps is full-featured. I won't lump Mail in this category because it sucks. It doesn't say "desktop application support" or anything at all about development.
No, you just refuse to listen because you hear what you want to hear. You can't take away a feature that never existed. There are any number of practical considerations to consider for why the platform is closed. The software is clearly unfinished, and you don't write APIs for a moving target. The software is also heavily based on some Leopard technologies, and Leopard was far from finished throughout the entire development process. You can go from there to stability issues and memory management (the device can't handle large numbers of open applications, and many of the ones written caused a general slowdown and unresponsiveness). Then there are business concerns--an unlimited data plan coupled with VOIP would degrade service quality of the data network, and would simultaneously lower demand for voice services.
It's obvious that third-party software will be coming officially to the iPhone at some point, but it was always foolhardy to believe that would be before the release of Leopard. Did you ever stop to consider the "future updates" might not be immediate?
I don't see how. The iPhone is easy to use. It also has a great deal more sophistication in "smart" applications. If it said something about "number of applications" or development in any way, shape, or form, you might have a position that makes more sense.
You're linking "smart" with "open"--a clear fallacy. The "smartness" of the phone refers to the level of its functions; Google Maps is a clear example of this. It automatically locates points of interest and provides immediate access to directions and to call from the screen. Smart applications and ease of use are highly correlated, since often similar functions on Windows Mobile are quite complex.
