iPhone - Official Thread

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Juice said:
Memory has NOTHING to do with the rule. The iPhone is built on OS X with as much memory as many machines that were built for OS X around its debut. iPhone can multitask just fine.

All it has to do with is bandwidth. Bandwidth in that, background applications that require network access will stack up, and having 30 applications in the background using EDGE consistently would cripple AT&T's margins.
I'm actually guessing its more of a security issue.
 
Bboy AJ said:
Can I talk about it without getting people jumping down my throat about my concerns? I didn't come in here to bash it.

This stuff:

Bboy AJ said:
. It just doesn't do as much, despite what others want to say.

You can tell this phone is designed for the kiddies.

no way does this thing work for professionals.

it's really not for those of us who need to get things done.

Aren't 'concerns'. This is the same kind of thing you'd see in a fanboys war in the gaming side. You are aware that people do use it to 'get things done' and in 'professional' environments?

Calling it for the 'kiddies' is the kind of stuff that 'fanboys' (which you are trying to call everyone else) uses.

Give me a break.

But hey, you got your post quoted and stuff so I guess it all works out.
 
Bboy AJ said:
I'm not speaking ill of your precious iPhone (no wonder the gaming forum is always up in arms about fanboys). Wow, get a fucking life. I'm not insulting your mother, I am looking to address my problems with the phone.
You have reasonable complaints about the weather icon, Calendar on home screen, voice dialing, and phone volume. But somehow, in your twisted, professionally-adept mind, these minor interface complaints bring you to the conclusion "this is a kiddie device, I'm a professional that needs to get things done." Forgive us for not making the same neuron jump that you've accomplished.

You'd be more likely to get congenial answers to your questions and complaints were you to engage in proper intelligent discourse and form your correspondence in a manner that doesn't make you sound like a holier-than-thou jackass. Get off this "oh, this is how fanboys are" bullshit, because no one brought the issue into play until you threw out a non sequitur about kiddie phones and professional-oriented dynamic weather icon display devices.

No one jumped on the people complaining about AIM not staying active when the phone is idle because those people are actually having intelligent discussion instead of baiting people and then calling them fanboys while still asking for their help.
 
Okay, forget all of that then. Fair enough. I can see how others would take offense but that's not what I wanted to convey. I just want to get these issues addressed and see if anyone else comes from a similar position. It's a good phone with a lot of potential but there are a lot of simple things that should have been done right in the first place. I'll be using it for the next two weeks to see how things fare.

I've come to realize how much sooner I can't wait for the update to come. I also hope to be able to use the keyboard in landscape mode in places other than just Safari. SMS would do well to have that as I find the keyboard easier to use in landscape mode. I also know that some phones don't receive texts over 160 characters. No character count. And some SMS messages have the time while others in that conversation don't. Is there a way to solve that by having each message with a timestamp? When I get a text saying, "Meet you in 90 minutes," I'd like to have that reference.
 
I just dunno if the iPhone is for me :(

I been unlocking them for the past couple-a-months now for a friend so I have had a chance to play with them a lot. I love the phone as a media device and a "pull it out on a train and floss" device, but I don't know if I will still love it a few weeks down the line.

One of the main problems is that I am on T-Mobile (UK) and the iPhone is released on O2 over here, so FW wise I won't be able to benefit from the essential upgrades and shit. I am coming from a N95 and a P1i and plenty of other phones (I am a "collector" of some sort) and I have experienced all types of phones but nothing out there excites me anymore :(

I got till next wkend to really decide, so I don't know what I will do. It's really between an iPhone and....nothing :'(!

As for the phone being "kiddy" I can some what agree, but it is catered towards the ipod/playstation/starbucks generation who need their ipod, email and phone all in one stylish unit which it succeeds in. If people wanted the extra "PDA/Blackberry" features well then they are gonna be understandably feeling like something is missing out. But until the X1 comes out in 09, this might have to be my SMS & phone unit for now
 
There really is no shame in saying the iPhone isn't for you. I find that it has a fundamental flaw in that it's two devices I use on a regular, daily basis. "But xsarien, that sounds perfect for you! What's the problem?

It's two devices I use on a regular basis that share the same battery. Until Apple lets me carry a spare around (read: probably never), I could never trust myself to make sure to have enough juice left over in case of an emergency.

I'd rather carry around a Touch and a separate phone. If I REALLY need to check something on the Internet while I'm out I've got Opera Mini on my mobile. Yeah, it's no Safari, but the chances of me wanting to check something more substantial than movie times or an RSS news feed while I'm walking around are pretty slim. (I've owned a totally small, somestimes-gets-lost in my bag Garmin for some time now, so I've already lapped it on mapping capabilities.)

On a more general level, EDGE is pretty bad in terms of data rates, the location functionality of Google Maps is awful, and a smartphone that, with the SDK announcement can only be (officially) as smart as Apple wants it to be is pretty hypocritical considering their near-absolute demands that the carriers supporting the phone be very hands off and let them do as they please.

The allure of the iPhone is something to behold, don't get me wrong. But the elephant in the room is that it's the very definiion of "Jack of all trades master of none." But if that's all you need, more power to ya'.
 
bdizzle said:
how did the iphone thread turn into fanboy wars? i thought this is where the love is...

People suddenly coming in saying it's "kiddy" whatever the hell that means. I have my own issues with the phone but it's clearly targeted at a mainstream user with its feature set and is now attempting to also expand into a business context. There is nothing wrong with deciding on another phone or deciding that the iphone isn't for you, but the "cool kids" always have to take it into negative territory.
 
xsarien said:
The allure of the iPhone is something to behold, don't get me wrong. But the elephant in the room is that it's the very definiion of "Jack of all trades master of none." But if that's all you need, more power to ya'.

As a regular user of the phone for a variety of functions, I find this to be flat out false. As do many of the people who have them.

To each his own. I just don't understand why the people who don't want the phone try to downplay its significance/usefulness to those who do. 'But if that's all you need' indeed.
 
I don't want 3G in the iPhone unless they can do it without decreasing the battery life, which is pretty much perfect right now.

I remember Howard Forum threads when the BlackJack came out(I bought one at launch like an idiot), where people were discussing how to disable 3G and revert back to EDGE to help the piss poor battery life.
 
Vyer said:
As a regular user of the phone for a variety of functions, I find this to be flat out false. As do many of the people who have them.

To each his own. I just don't understand why the people who don't want the phone try to downplay its significance/usefulness to those who do. 'But if that's all you need' indeed.

I agree, I use my iPhone FAR more than I've ever used any other portable device. While there are certainly things I'd like to see improved (most of which can be corrected by software & new apps), there isn't another device out there that does everything the iPhone does in as slick, accessible and easy-to-use fashion as the iPhone does.

It is the device of the decade.
 
Hooker said:
It's still Summer '08 in some parts of Europe.



Those '09 reports from last couple of weeks were debunked


Wow, ok lucky. But my contract runs out in November so I will still need to wait for a new phone. Plus SE's bumming with o2 might make me want to switch to O2 in the winter if I am still in the UK

I think I will get the iPhone until the X1 comes out, and depending on how good it actually is
 
Vyer said:
As a regular user of the phone for a variety of functions, I find this to be flat out false. As do many of the people who have them.

To each his own. I just don't understand why the people who don't want the phone try to downplay its significance/usefulness to those who do. 'But if that's all you need' indeed.

I'd agree with this.

The jack of all trades thing is the other way round for me. My previous phones had terrible mp3 players, things like the calendar were such a pain in the arse to use I never bothered with, poor email clients, and rubbish to the point of unusable web browsers. All the non-phone functions, with the exception of the camera on my K800, were useless. And I used them basically soley as a phone.

The iPhone is the first device I've owned to combine all the things I want and not compromise on ease-of-use or functionality. The best convergence device bar none, and the only one for me that has truly lived up to it's potential.
 
Vyer said:
As a regular user of the phone for a variety of functions, I find this to be flat out false. As do many of the people who have them.

To each his own. I just don't understand why the people who don't want the phone try to downplay its significance/usefulness to those who do. 'But if that's all you need' indeed.

id have to agree. the iphone does everything i want and does it well. its not perfect, but it's the best phone out imo. i love mine and cant wait til the official apps start to be released.
 
Further investigation and building apps with the iPhone SDK reveals that this device is GODLY! I knew that there was a good bit of horsepower under the hood, but damn - this device far exceeds my expectations. I keep saying, "okay I'll push it a little more" and the damn thing accomplishes the task without seemingly breaking a sweat (according to the profiler).

I'm sure I'll start getting to the point where I start thinking the platform is crap as always happens with every platform that I've written code for - but this one right now is overachieving in a way that no mobile device has EVER done. As I was chatting with SteveMeister a while back - this SDK is a death shot. Palm can wrap their shit up, they are done. Once ActiveSync and CiscoVPN are there - RIM is also within shot of having serious competition.


Even knowing what I did about the SDK, it seems that these guys STILL went above and beyond in what they've actually opened up and give you access to on the phone. I mean a competent OpenGL ES implementation that displays non-shit quality assets at over 30Hz? Wow.
 
eXxy said:
Me hopes Apple will drop some apps before June to get people crazed.


Well Spore and Monkeyball already got people crazed. Apple can't drop anything else until June because until firmware 2.0 comes out, there is no point in releasing anything since the apps won't run on anything but firmware 2.0.
 
One thing I would dearly love Apple to fix would be the damn mail bugs. Whenever I am deleting mail, either by swiping or using the trashcan option, the program will often freeze for anything up to 5-10 seconds. It's a pain in the ass, especially when working through a lot of emails.

On a connected note, is some kind of spam filtering possible on a mobile device? I have great spam blockers on both my desktop PC and MacBook, but whenever I check mail on my iPhone I am reminded of all the shit spam that usually gets blocked because everything gets sent through to me. Lame.

I guess at least part of this is getting fixed in the batch email delete option coming in June, but that and other mail fixes can't come soon enough for me.

PS this site's search feature sucks balls.
 
Gary Whitta said:
One thing I would dearly love Apple to fix would be the damn mail bugs. Whenever I am deleting mail, either by swiping or using the trashcan option, the program will often freeze for anything up to 5-10 seconds. It's a pain in the ass, especially when working through a lot of emails.



Never once happened to me...
 
I've had it happen, but really really rarely. And since G-mail is my primary personal e-mail, it has great anti-Spam filters already. None of it makes it to my inbox. Still, it wouldn't be bad to have it as an option for those who need it on the phone.

BTW, Sun has announced they're developing Java for the iPhone using the new SDK. "Available after June" is what they're saying so far. Considering they already have a java implementation for OS X I doubt it'll take long to port it. The question is, is this good news or not?
 
My only mail bug on the iPhone (I use .mac mail) is that my indicator always says that I have at least 50 new messages. If I have 2 new messages, it'll read 52, etc....
 
Ive been messing around with an app "icomic", comic / magna viewer for the iphone and I am in total love with the my iphone now. It reads all my scans in zip format and its super quick and i can listen to music. Life is good.......Until June and Apple forces me to go back.

Garry,

Is your iphone jail broken?
 
Cornballer said:
My only mail bug on the iPhone (I use .mac mail) is that my indicator always says that I have at least 50 new messages. If I have 2 new messages, it'll read 52, etc....

I use .Mac mail as well and I've never seen that. And the .Mac account is the only email account you have set up on the device? (The number on the Mail icon is just the total # of new messages you have across all accounts.)
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
I've had it happen, but really really rarely. And since G-mail is my primary personal e-mail, it has great anti-Spam filters already. None of it makes it to my inbox. Still, it wouldn't be bad to have it as an option for those who need it on the phone.

BTW, Sun has announced they're developing Java for the iPhone using the new SDK. "Available after June" is what they're saying so far. Considering they already have a java implementation for OS X I doubt it'll take long to port it. The question is, is this good news or not?

I would definitely say its good news. What could be bad about having Java on your iPhone.
 
sorryaboutdresden said:
I would definitely say its good news. What could be bad about having Java on your iPhone.

Java is, at times, less than stellar in it's performance. It can be slow and clunky. While in theory, I'm happy to see it's coming, as it'll make Safari even more Internet ready, but I'll want to see performance reports first.

Given the choice, I'd rather have flash, which has it's own set of issues at times too.
 
SuperPac said:
I use .Mac mail as well and I've never seen that. And the .Mac account is the only email account you have set up on the device? (The number on the Mail icon is just the total # of new messages you have across all accounts.)
Yup, that's the only account that I'm using. I don't check my work email from my iPhone. It's not a huge deal because I just subtract 50 and get on with my life, but it is an odd bug. I might try removing and adding the account tonight to see if that clears it up.
 
I was using an Ipod Touch Itunes app (which is the same as on Iphone) to buy a few Itunes Plus songs.

Now I've noticed that the app would randomly stop displaying songs as Itunes Plus while I browse the store.

For example, first time I visited the Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree album, it identified all the songs as Itunes Plus. Then I browsed the store some more, and when I got back to the same Goldfrapp's album page, there were no more identifications of songs being 'Plus'. I tried purchasing one of them, and lo and behold it identified it as a Plus song and displayed a confirmation of what I'm about to purchase.

This happened with a few more albums I browsed btw. and has been happening from the day one - the recent system updates haven't done a thing to change this problem. Now I'm never sure what I'm buying unless I buy it through the desktop Itunes store.

*edit* Here's someone who has the same problem I do (3rd post down), with a picture of what the Plus album should look like (4th post):
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=391343
 
maynerd said:
I get a lot of 'youtube not available' messages on my iphone. Are not all youtube videos available through my iphone?
There are two error messages you might get:

"YouTube Not Available" means, I think, that the app can't communicate with YouTube.
"This video is not yet available on the iPhone" means it hasn't been converted to h.264 yet.

Not all have been converted to h.264 yet. There is a delay between when a video is posted and when it is playable on the iPhone/iPod Touch/Apple TV. I posted a video on YouTube on Friday and it only became available to play on my iPhone today; roughly 3 days later.
 
xsarien said:
It's two devices I use on a regular basis that share the same battery. Until Apple lets me carry a spare around (read: probably never), I could never trust myself to make sure to have enough juice left over in case of an emergency.

Last time I was at Fry's, I bought this little rechargeable brick thing (about the size of an iphone) for like 35 bucks that came with all kinds of connectors. You can charge it via USB or wall plug, take it with you, and then plug any USB-compatible device into it when you need extra power on the go. So that might be one solution. It came with a PSP plug adapter too, which came in handy on a trip.
 
Sorry I missed all the fireworks in this thread, but I do have a couple of questions that I haven't seen answered anywhere else:

1) Do the new Macs with multitouch support (MacBook Air, MacBook Pro) allow you to use multitouch gestures on the simulated iPhone for testing purposes? Or do you have to move the apps over to the actual hardware to simulate multitouch gestures/commands?

2) I understand how Sun can create a JVM on the iPhone, but given the "no applications running in the background" and "apps are restricted to their own file sandbox" SDK rules, how would you actually execute a Java program on the iPhone?

3) Given some of the limitations, does anyone else think that there will be two tiers of developers -- the "general" developer pool, and certain privileged ones which can have access to hidden APIs or which will be allowed to break certain rules? (In other words, will AOL get to write an "always on" AIM application because they are AOL?)
 
Four months is a long time to wait so I'm thinking of Jailbreaking my iPhone to install 3rd party apps. I have some questions.

1) Do I need to do a clean restore before I perform the Jailbreak using ZiPhone or can I just jailbreak it like it is? I've never jailbroken it before. Also, I'm not interested in unlocking. Just jailbreaking so I can install apps.

2) I already have 1.1.4 firmware installed. Can I use ZiPhone to break it?

3) Do I need to jailbreak it from my home computer or can I do it from any computer (work for example)? Will Jailbreaking the iPhone mean I need to resync all my settings/music?

4) Is all that's required to get the iPhone back to a factory state is to perform a restore in iTunes once June rolls around?

Thanks.
 
ckohler said:
Four months is a long time to wait so I'm thinking of Jailbreaking my iPhone to install 3rd party apps. I have some questions.

1) Do I need to do a clean restore before I perform the Jailbreak using ZiPhone or can I just jailbreak it like it is? I've never jailbroken it before. Also, I'm not interested in unlocking. Just jailbreaking so I can install apps.

2) I already have 1.1.4 firmware installed. Can I use ZiPhone to break it?

3) Do I need to jailbreak it from my home computer or can I do it from any computer (work for example)? Will Jailbreaking the iPhone mean I need to resync all my settings/music?

4) Is all that's required to get the iPhone back to a factory state is to perform a restore in iTunes once June rolls around?

Thanks.

check the Ziphone web pg, Im sure they have all the answers.

Questions 1, 3,& 4 I think the answer is no. Honestly you wont even notice a diff, until you start using the installer app.

If your search for my post in this thread, some one helped me get started like 4 pgs back.

Hope that helps.
 
ckohler said:
Four months is a long time to wait so I'm thinking of Jailbreaking my iPhone to install 3rd party apps. I have some questions.

1) Do I need to do a clean restore before I perform the Jailbreak using ZiPhone or can I just jailbreak it like it is? I've never jailbroken it before. Also, I'm not interested in unlocking. Just jailbreaking so I can install apps.

2) I already have 1.1.4 firmware installed. Can I use ZiPhone to break it?

3) Do I need to jailbreak it from my home computer or can I do it from any computer (work for example)? Will Jailbreaking the iPhone mean I need to resync all my settings/music?

4) Is all that's required to get the iPhone back to a factory state is to perform a restore in iTunes once June rolls around?

Thanks.
1) You only really need to restore if you have jailbroken your phone in the past.

2) Yes, just run ZiPhone.

3) You will not need to re-sync.

4) Every update has relocked and unjailbroken the phones.

Once you have the phone jailbroken, go to installer and install BSD Subsystems(you need this for a lot of the programs on installer). Install OpenSSH to access your phone's filesystem.
 
Been catching up on the tech podcasts of the past few days since the Apple event and I'm sorta surprised at how lukewarm the reaction to the SDK is. It's like some weird backlash at Apple for all the overhyping these tech outlets voluntarily worked themselves into over the iPhone in the first place. Now they go to the other extreme and barely cover it.
 
kaching said:
Been catching up on the tech podcasts of the past few days since the Apple event and I'm sorta surprised at how lukewarm the reaction to the SDK is. It's like some weird backlash at Apple for all the overhyping these tech outlets voluntarily worked themselves into over the iPhone in the first place. Now they go to the other extreme and barely cover it.

What is there to cover at this point? It's still months away before we see the fruits of their labor. I've been reading comments from Devs and finding them to be more interesting. The ones that I've read so far have been extremely positive.
 
I mean it's covered almost as an afterthought in a few cases, and covered rather superficially, considering that there was a lot more meat to this announcement than there is for a lot of other such announcements that get more attention.

Any newly announced tech initiative has a developing story angle to it, but that hasn't stopped the initial announcement from getting covered with more fanfare.

It's just a bizarrely unbalanced approach to this news. You either got a few declaring it a death blow to RIM and every other mobile heavyweight they can think of, or you've got people treating it mostly as non-news. Happy medium, guys, please.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Java is, at times, less than stellar in it's performance. It can be slow and clunky. While in theory, I'm happy to see it's coming, as it'll make Safari even more Internet ready, but I'll want to see performance reports first.

Given the choice, I'd rather have flash, which has it's own set of issues at times too.


Two entirely different worlds and normally two entirely different sets of developers. Java on the iPhone is good news, though it will be JavaME and not likely a full JVM implementation.

As for performance, it always bothers me that consumers are concerned with that. Performance is the developers problem - not yours. Its the difference between having an app or not having it at all because most people are NOT going to port Java apps over to Objective-C.
 
Phoenix said:
Two entirely different worlds and normally two entirely different sets of developers. Java on the iPhone is good news, though it will be JavaME and not likely a full JVM implementation.

As for performance, it always bothers me that consumers are concerned with that. Performance is the developers problem - not yours. Its the difference between having an app or not having it at all because most people are NOT going to port Java apps over to Objective-C.

Fair enough. But as someone who is far more of a techy than a typical consumer, and who understands these things more than most, I can't help but feel concerned about performance.

But I agree, it is nice to have the option. And I knew it wouldn't be a full fledged Java implementation.
 
-jinx- said:
Sorry I missed all the fireworks in this thread, but I do have a couple of questions that I haven't seen answered anywhere else:

1) Do the new Macs with multitouch support (MacBook Air, MacBook Pro) allow you to use multitouch gestures on the simulated iPhone for testing purposes? Or do you have to move the apps over to the actual hardware to simulate multitouch gestures/commands?

Aspen supports those gestures and they can be emulated through the simulator.


2) I understand how Sun can create a JVM on the iPhone, but given the "no applications running in the background" and "apps are restricted to their own file sandbox" SDK rules, how would you actually execute a Java program on the iPhone?

The JVM itself is a process just like Mail, Addressbook, etc. All iPhone applications have the ability to receive a openURL request so that they can be invoked much the same way you can invoke Google Maps and tell it to display data. I would suspect that the JVM will be an app on the device with its own custom URL that when a Java Launcher app hits some JVM call kicks off the regular JVM much like was done back on the Treo. Its not a big deal, there are MANY ways around what Apple said in the license.

3) Given some of the limitations, does anyone else think that there will be two tiers of developers -- the "general" developer pool, and certain privileged ones which can have access to hidden APIs or which will be allowed to break certain rules? (In other words, will AOL get to write an "always on" AIM application because they are AOL?)

If they give AOL the rights to make an always on application, everyone else will just look at the process and do the same. Since 3rd party applications have access to the underlying BSD subsystem, its highly likely that people will work around the issue by simply creating a process daemon that kicks off events and such. Apple will need to lock things down FAR more than they have to ensure that people can't make resident applications at all. It will be a pain in the ass, but its doable.

It will suck much ass for gaming applications though. Any event will basically kick them out of their session altogether. Apple could have more elegantly implemented this better by allowing applications to register themselves similar to the way they can with JavaME. The OS would receive the events and then dispatch them to the processes, but the processes wouldn't have to be resident. They'd simply get launched by the daemon that was receiving the event data.
 
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