It's disappointing that the iPhone is still closed, and it's a shame they've resorted to barely concealed sophistry to hide this. HOWEVER:
This is not intended to be a "smartphone" even if the word was used once at the first iPhone keynote. It's a straightforward multimedia/communications device. It's not what computer enthusiasts and phone industry people think of when they hear "Apple phone", it's what ordinary consumers think of when they hear "iPhone". It's not a computer married to a phone, it's a phone that can do some useful, cool, things in a really cool way, the single personal device that replaces the multitude of personal devices we currently carry (namely, a cellphone and music player.)
Piggybacking onto this is an interesting idea for how user-device interaction might evolve over the coming years, a UI based upon gestures and touch rather than pointing and clicking. It's radically different from what we're used to, and throws out the baby with much of the bathwater. For this to develop, Apple has to work with it for a bit, and get people used to how it should work.
At some point in the future, it seems probable that Apple will release a more open platform. It will probably not be called an iPhone.
People are disappointed they can't program this for a variety of reasons. Part of it is that, as an Apple board, you'd expect a disproportionately high number of computer enthusiasts here. Well, the iPhone is not a computer. It's not unique in that: neither was the iPod.
Part of it is that this feels like the first time anyone will be able to play with Apple's new UI and many of us want to see what it can do. But I don't believe Apple will make this permanently locked to locked-down devices. And third parties will, patents or not, be producing their own equivalent user interfaces over the next few years.
Part of it is Apple's fault: the use of the already defined word "smartphone". And Apple's failure to communicate the reasons for the lack of programmability. Hey, that leads me to a tangent:
- Has Jobs been off his mark of late or what?
I mean, look at this WWDC. There were some really radical things in there, but Teh Steve blustered his way through them as if they were the same as everything else. Hey everybody, Leopard has a new Finder! No, seriously, completely new, totally unlike anything anyone's ever developed before. After regressing with the first Mac OS X Finders, actually making them run in three modes (NEXTSTEP, Mac OS, and, by default, Windows Explorer. What's the deal with that?), they've looked at it and found new approaches that deal with the difficulty identifying files and contents. It's quite amazing.
Normally we'd all oooh, and aaah, and wait for John Siracusa to give us the ten page arstechnica low-down on what works, what doesn't, and what Apple needs to do to fix it. But somehow everyone missed it? What happened?
Oh yeah, it was one feature on a list of (what felt like 100) that Jobs just sped through, treating as just important as the already demonstrated Time Machine (nice, BTW, but it was a mistake to do a whole presentation on it again), etc. That's what the problem was. If the Finder had been, say, 50% of the Leopard part of the presentation, we'd all be going "wow" right now rather than talking about how Jobs somehow forgot to mention anything new.
Anyway, getting back on topic:
- Steve Jobs did the wrong thing in many ways by presenting the phone as something it isn't. He:
- Announced it at a Mac show (implying it is a computer)
- Called it a "smartphone", a hot-button word with a specific definition the iPhone is clearly not meant to occupy.
- Told everyone it runs OS X.
- Let the discussion about the programmability of the thing happen at all. The last few months have been all "Will they or will they not". In all honesty, a straight "No, iPhone is not a computer, though we plan in future to create devices based upon similar platforms that will be open." would have done it.
- Gave misleading (that's the polite term) reasons to why iPhone isn't programmable. Cingular's network is that fragile huh?
- Finally turned up to WWDC and somewhat insultingly suggested developers might be satisfied with the AJAX support of Safari
This is not Jobs at the top of his game.
This is a consumer device intended to replace the iPod and cellphone in your pocket, and be better than the sum of its parts. It's also a radically experimental piece of technology. It is not a computer. If you're still asking if you can program it, you're looking at it the wrong way. This is Apple's equivalent of the RAZR, not the Nokia 9500.
