snctlnSoftware

iPhone 4.0

This isn’t really a post about Android, it is really just a mini rant about some of my opinions on a few of Apples announcements yesterday.

So the majority of people that might actually read this blog posting already know this, but yesterday Apple held a press conference announcing some of the upcoming features offered in their iPhone 4.0 OS.  Overall I think they did a good job, they brought out their own style of multitasking, and ummm some other stuff too.

I think it is great that they brought multitasking to the iPhone OS.  This is something that they should have figured out before ever releasing a phone in my opinion.  I do have some problem with it though.  Their multitasking is essentially 7 approved services that you can hook up.  I feel as though most people are saying “Wow this is great, 7 approved ways to multitask in my applications.  I will never need more than 7 ways to multitask and I am so happy that Apple came up with this innovative concept that will enrich my life forever…“, my take is this, if you want developers to innovate don’t give them such harsh restrictions.  Truthfully I can only think of one thing at the moment beyond the blessed 7 but that doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds more.  My thought is accelerometer readings.  A few examples would be a pedometer app, or a car performance app such as Dynolicious, I am sure the devs of these types of apps could find many things to do with streaming accelerometer data going on in the background when their app isn’t the one showing.

Sure all application frameworks give you restrictions, on any given framework there will almost always be private apis that 3rd party developers shouldn’t use.  Hopefully framework designers are smart enough to realize that they do not know everything and will leave room for innovation.

I don’t dislike Apple, my wife uses an iPhone 3G and it is a great phone, I use a Nexus One and it is a great phone too.  I am eventually planning on buying a mac and trying my hand at some iPhone development, but for now I am enjoying tinkering with the possibilities and openness of Android.

Oh and one last thing “Folders” on the iPhone is a feature?  I was all like “ZOMG I CAN HAZ FULDRZ?”  Not only has Android had it since at least 1.5 (I don’t have a 1.0 or 1.1 device handy to check if they have them) it is a very generic computing concept in my opinion, beyond the commodore 64 and DOS the first GUI desktop system I used was windows 3.1 and I sure remember the whole drag and drop of folders.  This is another feature that should have been in iPhone 1.0.