Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Slashgear, and many other sites, are today posting a story about “Jibbler,” the alleged code-name of the voice control subsystem present in iPhone OS 3.0. If this is the case, let me gently and professionally say “HALLE-FRICKIN-LUJAH!”
It’s about time the most amazing and groundbreaking mobile device ever had a proper hands-free solution.
I called iPhone OS 3.0 a few months ago. I said we should expect the next release of iPhone firmware to be a revamped version 3.0. I still feel fairly confident in my predictions: I still think we’ll see cut-copy-and-paste, better app management, and better enterprise management.
I’m still convinced that we will not see MMS, bluetooth sync, or video, although I’ll be very happy to be wrong on all three fronts. I’d also like to see wifi and bluetooth sync, voice dial, and — here’s a novel idea — a faster phone app, but I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m not expecting any of those, but again, would welcome them warmly.
I don’t expect to actually see firmware 3.0 until late spring or early summer, but I suspect we’ll have a nice overview of what to expect by the end of next Tuesday.
Someone is going to sue Apple in the not-too-distant future for their inconsistent and subjective App Store approval process. I think they violate many anti-competitive practices. It’s crazy to think that Apple has gone this long selectively allowing certain apps, all the while only defining guidelines for inclusion nebulously, and only considering applications after the work is done. Furthermore, rejections are often without any explanation whatsoever.
Someone, sometime, is going to sue. And they should. Apple is best of breed in most markets they have their toes, but they are really starting to behave pretty badly.
I haven’t heard much about what to expect in iPhone OS 2.3. A quick Googling of the term, as of today, yields nothing of value, other than speculation. iPhone 2.2 came out in November, almost 2 months ago. Since we haven’t heard anything about 2.3, that leaves just a few possibilities.
First, it’s possible that Apple simply stopped development on the iPhone. I think the likelihood of this is practically null.
The other possibility is that Apple has been working on things, but nothing is ready. In two months, we haven’t heard anything at all – there’s been no SDK update, no betas. That means either they are working slowly, or they are working on things that are taking some time.
Rewind to iPhone OS 2.0. There was supposed to be a “push” mechanism by which applications would report to Apple, and a single iPhone tether to Apple would act as the pusher for all background services. That was delayed until “October” timeframe, and has since been ignored. Or has it?
My prediction: the next version of the iPhone OS to see light of day will be iPhone OS 3.0. It will feature background notifications via Apple’s push services (which I further suspect will take between 2 and 3 months to work properly). It will feature some sort of tool for better applications management, maybe folders, as the current springboard is inelegant and cannot handle large numbers of applications. It will include copy & paste, if only to shut up the online crowds, but also because it’s necessary for a true smartphone-type device.
I think the biggest changes will be at enterprise level. The fact is, the iPhone is getting a lot of play in executive settings, and I think better management tools and business integration is a mound of cash waiting for Apple. They’ve conquered the home market, everyone I know has a damned 3G now. The business world is ripe for the taking, as Blackberries are so far behind the iPhone in features and style it’s not even funny.
What won’t be a 3.0 iPhone OS? Wi-fi and bluetooth syncing, unfortunately. There will be no voice dialing, no MMS, no Flash, no video recording.
Why? Wi-fi and Bluetooth sync seems unlikely to me. Apple did not want to allow Time Machine over Airport for some time either, possibly because of data corruption. I think the holdup here is that the SQLite databases on the phone may not be atomically updated, and therefore, an interruption in signal availability could damage the phone. Of course, this could happen with the cable too, but I think the fact that the battery would be in use may also be of concern. This is, of course, pure speculation.
Voice dial and MMS seem unlikely, because if Apple wanted to ever include these standard phone features, it seems they would have done so by now.
Flash is a third party app. It won’t be in the OS. If Apple wants to bless it, they can and would do so for 2.x.
Video recording would be unlikely largely because the camera on the iPhone sucks. So why bother, if every iPhone filmed video would be poor quality, 100% of the time? Perhaps if new hardware came out that wasn’t camera-shorted, it would be more likely, but current models, with the terrible 2mpx camera, will not produce video worth watching.
This is entirely assumption, I have no inside information. However, I think the major gap in time is suggestive of big things to come.
Perhaps it was just me, but I had no idea how cool iTunes was until last night. I’ve used iTunes exclusively for my master music collection for about 5 years now, and, in that time, I’ve been very focused with my music collection. I can’t say the same for my video collection. Only recently, as I began working with my AppleTV, did I actually allow video into my iTunes library.
However, I’ve got a brilliant combination working now. iSquint, the gorgeous free video editor, converts my files into high quality mp4/m4v files and adds them to iTunes. iTunes then pushes them to my AppleTV. It’s incredible to tell iSquint to covert several dozen videos and then the next morning they are waiting on my AppleTV.
In the meantime, I just discovered something on iTunes that I hadn’t realized existed. I went into the overcrowded “Movies” section of my iTunes library and found that you can convert “Movies” to “TV Shows.” Here’s the best part, by filling in the metadata – by adding the TV show title, the season, the episode, iTunes will properly group and organize them. Whereas before, I had a huge section of movies, randomly plunked down in the same view, now I have a view of many logically grouped subsets, much the way iTunes handles artists and albums in grid view.
Furthermore, AppleTV obeys the organization as well! Instead of a silly, long list of movies, I go to TV Shows and then drill down by show, where they are sorted by season and episode.
Using iTunes just got much better. I had been thinking, lately, about how well music organization works in iTunes and how poorly video organization does. I still think that’s the case – Videos are a mess. But TV Shows and Music Videos work well.
I got my new iMac in late last week – the 24″ 3.06 Ghz aluminum one with 4GB RAM – and it *is* sweet. I’ve set up a Mac fresh, I’ve set up a machine using the Migration Assistant, and I’ve used target disk mode, but I’ve not yet had the chance to rebuild from a time machine backup. Did it work?
Suffice it to say it was incredible. Using just my external hard drive, it read my backup, asked me what I wanted to restore (it found 4 things: Users, Network Settings, Applications, and “Files and Folders”). I checked them all. After a few simple questions, it told me that it would take just shy of 4 hours to complete. Surprisingly, it was done a scant 150 minutes later. When I booted up, I was amazed. Not only did everything come over, it was almost as if it was my exact machine. Barely a noticeable difference, save speed and size.
A few things slipped by, for example, I had changed /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg to a custom image, which it did not preserve. I had changed some system icons, and those new icons did not preseve, but, for example, my external time machine drive had a custom icon, and it did remain. The new install also required many updates I had already applied to my old OS X installation.
Time Machine Restore: Incroyable!
All in all, though, I’ve never seen a smoother or faster migration. The power of UNIX – everything living in predictable directories and segregated into “Library” folders, means that both backing up and restoring have a power that the Windows Registry simply can’t match. In fact, in wading through all of this, it has a severe handicap when it comes to system migration due to the fact that data is mashed into so many inconsistent places.
Apple has pissed me off quite a bit recently. But – oh boy! – did they re-energize me with this one!
Update: worth noting, here is a great article on restoring from a time machine backup.
Apple needs to stop dicking around with these updates. Stop adding in things that are completely superfluous, and focus on the core functions: phone, SMS, email. Give us individual SMS timestamps and deleting, a unified email inbox, lock screen email notifications, more reliable email fetch, user profiles (for sounds and network settings), etc.
CrzyCanuck72, on forums.macrumors.com, discussing iPhone firmware version 2.2
Today is NOT my day when it comes to Apple products. I bought Mobile Me, the ridciulously overpriced service Apple offers, specificaly for its photo album capabilities, but I cannot activate it. Although I am logged into iTunes using my AppleID, and I am registered with my iPhone, AppleTV, etc, for me.com, it says there is no such user. So I figured that I could very quickly get this fixed by calling 1-800-MY-APPLE.
But Apple offers no phone support for MobileMe. When you dial and tell the comoputer you want to discuss “Mobile Me”, it says “Our support is now available online at me.com/help. Thank you. Goodbye.” Then it promptly hangs up on you. Fail.
My solution? Call and just ram through any menu prompt until I get to an operator and force them to help me. Apple support is generally pretty decent, but aside from the fact that Mobile Me is priced about 5 times too high, they have the audacity to provide no real manner of support other than the massively un-realtime web.
Boo, Apple, boo! You’ve let me down a lot recently. I hope my new iMac makes me happy, or it may be my last Apple product (for awhile, at least).
I posted an article recently called “Apple’s Jobs Gives iPhone Customers What They Don’t Want” that discussed the upcoming 2.2 firmware and its new features. iPhone firmware appears to give us Google Maps’ “Street view” and several other “features.” It does not, however, make available any of the most requested features: MMS, copy & paste, Flash, voice dialing, bluetooth/wifi syncing, A2DP (stero bluetooth), landscape Mail view, video recording, text-message forwarding, or any of the over 1800 issues listed over at pleasefixtheiphone.com. So what gives? Why is Apple not giving us these things?
I should start by saying that MMS, or lack thereof, is the one things that bugs the crap out of me on the iPhone. I’ve detailed before how useless and silly viewmymessage.com is. I can’t believe it’s not even something that can be accessed via a clicked URL. But I don’t think the iPhone will ever have true MMS. If Steve Jobs wanted MMS on the iPhone, it would be here by now. No, they are phasing it out, which is arguably good in the long run, but at the expense of its usefulness today. I don’t mind paying the extra few pennies each month for MMS. Even just to receive the messages, but not send them. But stop making the decision for me.
I hate to say that the iPhone, a device that literally converted me from a mobile phone carrier to a smart phone carrier, as someone who sold more of these puppies in the last year than most Apple employees, is doing more to turn me off to Apple than anything else. The iPhone and AppleTV both have let me down. A lot. So much so that even though I recently bought a new iMac (the 24″), I considered a nice new PC at a fraction of the cost, as prep for Windows 7, which looks to be really cool.
Apple’s arrogance and inability to listen to its customers didn’t matter nearly as much when they were a tiny niche company. But they play in the big leagues now, and I suspect that now that they have serious market share in the laptop and education market, they will find a mass defection in a few years as people start to get wise to their control tactics.
I find the new iPhone firmware, even before I get my hands on it, a let down. My iPhone can’t do what phones from 3 years before the iPhone existed does without sweating. If Apple doesn’t start delivering, I suspect that the odds are very high that by the end of 2010 I’ll be carry an Android powered phone.
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So here’s the day: WWDC 2009 keynote, and we’re discussing iPhone OS 3.0. But there are still some major things I think are missing from the iPhone. Here they are, in no particular order: