iPhone 3.0
March 17th, 2009, 2:41pm by JakeDiscuss.
Discuss.
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March 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Great that you set this up, even before the conference was over! 😉
My thoughts so far — not all that great, but a nice incremental improvement. For me personally, the big bummer is:
So, “free for iPhone 3G,” and “works on original iPhone.” Hmmm. Doesn’t sound like it’s definitely gonna be free on original iPhones. I think they should definitely guarantee that software upgrades are free for the duration of the original contract you’re forced to sign — that doesn’t seem unreasonable.
And I’m not aware of the hardware changes that make it so that MMS and A2DP wouldn’t work on the 1st gen iPhone (particularly MMS — maybe the Bluetooth radio changed…) — seems like a case of planned obsolescence to me. Gotta love it when Apple takes a page from GM’s playbook.
Now back to catch the end of the Q&A…
March 17th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Yawn. Not a whole lot to be excited about on the end user side (A2DP, copy/paste, search, landscape keyboard). The stuff for developers might make for cool apps (push notification, network gaming, in-game voice, etc), but otherwise, kind of incremental. Neat that they can add bluetooth to the iPod Touch. I’ve been thinking about getting one for Lucas for traveling, but still have to test out some toddler headphones. Our portable media center is probably good enough, but I’m not sure the speaker is loud enough for plane use. No games, unfortunately.
Think there’s going to be a v3 hardware refresh by the summer for the iPhone?
March 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I can’t imagine they would charge for upgrading the iPhone 2G. In fact, I think the accounting treatment they have chosen for the iPhone would preclude it. Either way, are A2DP and MMS features that you would miss in an update? I like A2DP, but I haven’t actually used it much after the novelty wore off. It’s really a battery drain. As for MMS, hopefully they’ll at least enable 2G’ers to receive MMS. You could always send MMS’s using email workarounds (@messaging.sprintpcs.com, for instance).
March 17th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
No, I wouldn’t miss MMS’s at all — I’ve only ever received 2. And as I told you the other day, I don’t use my iPhone for music anyway, so A2DP isn’t a big deal.
I’m not a huge fan of charging money for some hardware users and not others, when the hardware will support the upgrade (see Jake’s complaints about iPod touch upgrading, for example, which I agree with — $5 to upgrade the firmware probably generated more ill will than cash for Apple). If I heard a hardware-based reason why MMS messaging wasn’t supported on the orig iPhone, that would be totally acceptable — but to charge a “you haven’t sent us a check recently” tax smacks of how Quicken treats their users.
On a side note — is my phone the iPhone 2G? I mean, it’s the 1st gen iPhone, but uses 2G mobile phone technology. The model name of the newer model is the “iPhone 3G,” but the iPod shuffle, for example, names models based on the hardware generation. Personally, I think it was dumb to name the new iPhone the “iPhone 3G,” particularly since they’ll want to do a hardware rev long before the new wireless standards are in place…
March 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
So, over on TUAW, they’re saying that “1st gen iPhones will not get the fortune of using MMS due to the use of a different cell radio).” Duh, of course it’s a different cell radio, but it’s not like EDGE devices are unable to send/receive MMS messages.
Kinda fun to get a little worked up about something you really don’t care at all about. As if there’s not enough stress in life otherwise.
March 17th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
The improvements sound nice, but a lot of the new features are things that I thought were already included or should have been years ago. MMS, landscape keyboards and news in the stock application are just things that should have been in there a long time.
It’ll be interesting to see what developers do with the ability to attach hardware. I think what will hurt Apple is the application approval process. Developers will not want to spend months or years developing iPhone applications/ hardware with the threat of getting denied from the iPhone store hanging over their head. Probably not a huge concern for big companies or 1-man shops, but for a medium-size developer, that’s a big risk.
March 17th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I echo Mike’s complaints… if I buy an iPod Touch now, I’ll have to pay $10 for the v3.0 features. If I wait a few months, I’ll get them for free. That’s just rude. Apple should have just called this v2.3 and avoided the whole mess.
One interesting tidbit that came out was that they’ve sold 13 million iPod Touches or so vs. 17 million iPhones.
March 17th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Another gripe– what’s the thinking behind giving spotlight it’s own homescreen, rather than making it a launchable app? Seems useful enough that some might want to pin it to the “dock,” but now you can’t.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Well, if you buy it now then you have a chance of surviving two 6 hour flights and two 12 hour flights with a very active 2 year-old boy. That’s a pretty compelling deal for $10!
BTW, that $10 upgrade didn’t bother me too much. It’s when they wanted $20 just so I could get Mail and Google Maps onto the Touch that I was annoyed.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Re-read the last thread I linked to, and man, that 2nd-to-last post was one of my most epic rants.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Good point from Gizmodo on why in-app purchasing could be really crappy. I had this thought when I first read about it, but quickly got distracted by “ooooh, cut-and-paste!”
March 17th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I can see it leading to a slew of “free” apps that are actually demos. But hey, I don’t think it’s Apple’s job to prevent that practice.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Figured out why iPhone users with the same hardware I have (whatever you call it) won’t have mms. My theory is that it has nothing to do with hardware, but rather the fact that I have 200 free text messages built into my plan, as does every 1st gen iPhone user. For iPhone 3G, you either pay $5 extra for SMS, or you pay per message. AT&T probably didn’t want us old skool users to get something for nothing.
Wonder how much they’ll charge for tethering?
March 17th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
… And supposedly free apps can’t then turn around and charge for things in-app — it sounds like they’re only allowing that in for-pay apps. So no free demos, which is kind of weird, but nice to know that once you download a free app, it’ll stay free.