OK, we’re not the only ones totally underwhelmed by Apple's announcement of the new iPhone. Not only is it a dumb name (Can't we PLEASE stop making everything "i-something"???), but I don't like the idea of tapping on a touchscreen (I'm with Fabrizio on this one). I'm sure lots of people will buy them, but I doubt many business users will be happy. Then again, maybe I'm not their market for this one.
What really chafes me today is Jobs' announcement that there will be no third-party applications on the iPhone. The Mac is a relatively closed platform but people manage to add value to it. But it sounds like the iPhone will be all Apple. That's a bad idea, no matter how much you like Apple (and as regular readers here will know, I'm a bit obsessed with the company - I own several Macs, iPods, etc. I love the company and its products).
No one company has all the answers. That's why open source is so important or, at least, an open platform. Even Microsoft hugely trumps Apple on this one. It understands that good products often require good ecosystems. Apple has just cut off its ecosystem at the knees.
Jobs raises the old canard:You don?t want your phone to be an open platform. You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn?t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.
That's interesting, because last time I checked one of the best things about the Treo (and any Palm-based device, as well as Windows devices) is how many third-party applications run on it. In fact, that's almost its primary value. You don't have to own everything to make sure it runs well. And I highly doubt that a third-party calculator is going to bring Cingular to its knees.
This is disappointing, Apple. Don't let the media fool you on this one: the world has not shifted to closed platforms, end-to-end developed by a single company. People are heralding your vision for doing it all on the iPod and lauding Microsoft for finally "getting it" with the Zune and XBox. But these are moments in time, or perhaps anomalous products.
The future is open - it always has been. Microsoft won on the desktop because of its ecosystem approach. You will lose on the phone for the same reason. You are not the source of all wisdom. You need a community to inform your product. (And the last company you should be looking to for guidance in how to innovate in the mobile world is Cingular.)
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/01/skip_the_appleo.html
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