iPhone: you are too old for all this shit

With the release of the iPhone, shocking details opened up. All those who have written have written: it is not customized, no programs are being installed, no files are attached in the mail, in short, compared to my N-brand smartphone, two generations are in minus. Many felt cheated. A well-known mobile portal explained its anal capitulation with “the revenge of stupid fans of a shitty device for our intelligence and audacity”. Fantastic rejection among professionals.

At the same time sales cover everything and everyone. Why? I tried to make an adequate assessment.

With sales, in fact, everything is clear. He is beautiful, unusual, bright. It causes emotions. You either love him or you think shit. No one is indifferent. Apparently, enough for almost record sales. And leave it.

What did steve say

I was more interested in Jobs' position on third-party development. I recall :

“It’s not a bad thing.” “Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s an innovative approach, it makes it possible to keep the iPhone secure and reliable.”

In a nutshell: there are your applications over there, this is our iPhone. Http request you hands and good luck.

The society was divided into two camps. More active climbed inside the box, and climbed. What to do after the autopsy is unclear. You can change the SIM. Some more surprisingly useful programs. Hooray.

People with a different mindset did what Jobs said. These people interested me a lot.

Programs for iPhone work outside of iPhone

The first time I was faced with the fact of writing an iPhone program in affectionately loved by many (and me) 37signals. They brought the ta-da list inside the device. Here is a fact with photos of the running program . Here are excerpts for a better understanding of the beauty of the situation from previous blog posts:

Design for iPhone is like a mix of web and paper design.

The web we know is full of uncertainty. We do not know the size of the screen, we don’t know the settings of the screen, we don’t know if it uses its fonts and / or how they are rendered in its browser, we don’t know what browser it is, etc.
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But paper, on the other hand, is completely controllable. A certain size, a certain structure, certain colors. What you see is what you get (I mean that you know how to prepare files for printing).

And the iPhone is a crazy mix. This is a web, and things can scroll, data is received from a remote server, but here is a constant width, a permanent browser, permanent fonts, etc. This is a very cool and very refreshing design experience.

Apparently, the guys liked it. This makes me happy.

Where does the hype come from?

In the comments, in the comments!

Many messages in the style: "Apple, where is our SDK?" And one very sensible:

... I know a lot of developers who are crazy about this [fact of a closed system], but I think that in general it means the impossibility of using their favorite Objective-C / Cocoa programming languages. So, guys, time to finally learn Html, CSS, and some web language like Python or Ruby.

That is the essence. There is a development area called “writing for Apple”. This, in general, needs to be devoted enough time. Now it turns out that it was better to learn Python.

What is really the iPhone?

We are dealing with a device that forcibly gives its functions to the side. Web based phone.

What it gives.

• Stability. Nothing can be put on the phone, so there are no problems with other people's programs. You can supplement the system without accidents.
• Less load on the device. For example, the mail program. Few functions. I do not like? Google mail at your service. Works. Also with all other questions.
• Compatibility. IPhone is compatible with any computer that has a browser and an internet connection. That is, there are no compatibility issues at all.
• Billions of developers. Now even children can program for the web. And it turns out that programs for iPhone are written, for example, by Google. Good such resource of programmers.
• Zero cost of basic programs. For example, a normal email program costs money. Small, but money. There are as many mail servers in the web as you can find. Is free. And so with most applications. Subject to the use of Wi-Fi, the cost of operation is also zero.
• Synchronization is no longer needed. Everything is stored on the net. The phone may die, the information will remain.

At the same time look - this is a very open system. You can at any time stop using it and climb onto any other device without losing time. It is enough to launch the browser. Everything.

Why is he ahead?

Because for people. Because there are chips that really help to live.

For example, support safari microformats. You can copy a business card from the site directly to your phone’s memory. Instantly.

For example, because it is, first of all, a wi-fi device. That is, without attempting to aspirate paid traffic, in most American cases, traffic is of minimal cost. That's what it says in the release: EDGE for cases where there is no wifi. And not vice versa.

Because there is no MMS. Send a photo by mail via wifi - cheaper. Needless to spend money.

And in it the iPod is hidden. What does “song for dollar” mean for an American person anywhere in his native country? Yes, they have almost set up a wifi for iTunes .

In general - for people. Very emotional.

Known contradictions between the right and left hemisphere

I'm talking about a map of the world. Weifai in Russia is not. He is in large cities. Increasingly, outside the Moscow Ring Road it is not. It makes us worry about MMS, consider traffic, i.e. the very meaning of architecture in Russia is lost.

On the other hand, Apple put it on Russia mightily from the very beginning, and it still does so with undoubted success. So only I worry and worry.

Known contradictions between the right and left hemisphere - 2

And now about the brain. On Habré there is a good post, which lists the shortcomings of the implementation . After changing the point of view on architecture - some questions are removed.

Part of the problem is solved - access to iTunes, ringtones have already been made. The messenger is suggested to use online (Apple position), the flash is not very clear.

A validly important question is ip telephony support, with such wifi capabilities. Perhaps this is a conscious step to obtain a contract with operators, I do not know. Perhaps a couple of years will appear.

File manager. And why should he, if everything is stored on the web? With only pictures and music. So romantic...

Ladle of tar

Same ta-da list discussion.

I would also like some Ajax animations [like in iPhoneDigg].

The chip in the iPhone is rather weak for full use of Javascript. Therefore, we removed the animation.

What can be said. Ahead of us are iPhones either with a more powerful processor or with an optimized Safari engine. Because the declared Ajax - slows down.

This is a serious flaw. The real problem. It needs to be addressed.

Global conclusions

The first. Soon we should expect the emergence of the service "adaptation of sites to the iPhone." It will take some knowledge.

Second. There will be a localized - buy, bitch.

Read on

• Apple developer connection - iPhone
• Conference about programming iPhone in Google.
• iPhoney - iPhone emulator for Macs, discussion on Habré .
• Pure, Immaculate Joy 37signals .
• Article on the layout for the iPhone on AListApart.