I just lost a brilliant diatribe on Copy and Paste on the iPhone, thanks to the network authentication at the National Library, which is a load of crap. Auto save said it had saved the drafts, but apparently it didn’t.
In any case, my point was that Copy and Paste, and also background applications, were difficult due to Apple’s attempts to prevent memory overflows or protection faults from being a vector for viruses or other nefarious purposes. This seems to have eluded most people, who have been complaining about how they “need” these things.
Be that as it may, I am more interested in the potential for tethering that the new iPhone OS provides. I am constantly frustrated that I am not able to make the most effective use of my 3G data allowance because of what seem to be QoS restrictions put in place by AT&T. Very few podcasts, for example, are less than 10MB, so this limit makes the ability to download them directly to the iPhone less than useful. (Being able to “Refresh” a podcast feed from the iPod application would be even better, but one step at a time.) It is possible that my local carrier has placed similar restrictions on the network, but I’ve not heard anything from them about it.
In any case, I look forward to being able to use the tethering feature, unless of course my provider doesn’t let me. While Virgin Mobile is a wholly owned subsidiary of Optus (itself owned by SingTel), there is a warning that such use of a mobile phone may violate the Fair Use Policy (under the clause that prohibits using the service with a device that automatically retrieves data or something, it’s not entirely clear). Plus, Virgin Mobile have not yet updated their website with any information about the iPhone 3G S (I’m also interested in what they might say about upgrades, although I’m still not sure if I want to bother; I’m sure I could use 32GB, and the new camera sounds good, but I could just wait to upgrade at the end of my current contract instead). Of course, if they do allow it, there’s the matter of whether it will be an additional cost, or whether I will be able to just use my existing data allowance with it.
In closing, I’ll just quickly go back over the comments I made about the Pre before they were lost. I don’t want the Pre to fail, unlike some people. Although I don’t expect to ever use one, myself, I do see a place for it. Then again, I think there’s still a place for a normal “phone” phone, which doesn’t have a camera, or play media, or do any of the ridiculous number of things that the iPhone, the Pre, Android, or Windows Mobile allow you to do. Conversely, I also see a place for a device that does all of that, but doesn’t necessarily make phone calls. I hardly ever call anyone on my phone, but I’d be lost without SMS, e-mail, web browsing, and an IRC client.
This was a lot better when it had my 600 word diatribe about memory protection and security in it. Damn you WordPress! Damn you to Hell!
Distinguishable From Magic 
Monday, June 15 2009 at 09:15 |
I’m not sure I don’t want the Palm Pre to fail — I’m just a malicious kind of guy I guess. It seems like the Pre is, in essence, a better Android than Android (part of Android’s problem is that Google seems to have pulled a bit of an Apple-circa-John-Sculley and overthought it — we *don’t* need a cleaner Java implementation on a cell phone, we don’t need any kind of Java on a cellphone. The Newton didn’t need Newtonscript and a new OS — a cut down Mac OS running HyperCard would have actually resulted a far more useful, functional, and versatile device — and it could have been quicker to market too).
The problem with the Pre is that it’s a good architecture for a free open source product but it’s proprietary. It seems to me that the ideal outcome would be for Google or someone to steal all the good ideas from the Pre and make them available to every handset manufacturer for nothing — this would give us a nice target for third party developers. Instead Pre is fragmenting an already messed up market.