iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks When announcing iPhone OS 4.0, Steve Jobs said that Apple has "no plans to become a worldwide ad agency" - but it appears that he's planning to do just that. Jobs' goal: to get one billion ad impressions per day by the end of the year. Among the 100 new features that Jobs promised for iPhone OS 4.0 is iAd, a service that will …
So Apple are looking at popular app's in the app store (kindle for instance) as well as the advertising methods used by app's in the app store, and adding them to the OS itself rendering the app's (kindle) and advertising methods, useless pretty much?
What the hell kind of competition is that?
The lack of support for Multitasking on the 3G iPhone is irritating. I read the live blog from Endgadget and the quote from someone on stage was that "the hardware will not support it". I'm sorry, but I've had Palm Pre style multitasking in the form of the ProSwitcher app from Cydia for ages. It doesnt slow the performance of the phone (any more then 3.0 did anyway) and the battery impact is negligible.
nice way to force us fanboys to upgrade, Jobs, nice
I was surprised by the multitasking announcement. So many iPologists have claimed that the iPhone doesn't need to multitask on the grounds that it copied Palm (pre-Pre) in a magical and revolutionary (yet, apparently, irritating) way.
"Folders for grouping similar apps" sounds a lot like Palm too. I'm glad I didn't "upgrade" my Treo.
/rant
Just when you thought they could iCreate anything else...ugh.
I know the comments in these articles tend to turn into a complete bash-the-fuck-out-of-Apple fest, but it's these sorts of insipid "features" that just make me want to puke. Why would anyone want to upgrade to 4.0? Because it now has ads?
Any fanbois who can defend the Devil's spawn, please present your arguments in light of this next round of iShit.
/endrant
What's even worse is the way that Steve Jobs will actually force you to buy one of his products. Thanks to one of the newest apps, called iwishyoudallgoaway, every single citizen will be compelled to buy a new iPhone.
There is an alternative, of course: if you don't want one, don't bitch about it and don't feckn well buy one.
There, I think that's sorted for ya.
The purpose of iAds is to keep free apps free. iAds is just an Apple alternative to the other mobile ad networks that developers of free apps ALREADY use. There are ALREADY ads in apps. iAd won't change that, but it will make the experience better for the user as clicking an ad won't quit the app.
Further, Jobs did NOT say he aimed for 1 billion impressions per day. He said,
"The average user spends over 30 minutes every day using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that's 10 ads per device per day. That would be 1b ad opportunities per day"
Note the use of the word, "if". He was just playing with numbers to give an example of where iAd might go. Apple aren't going to be using iAd to force you to watch ads every opportunity they get. The world is not coming to and end. Chill out.
My only request would be that in addition to the O/S supporting an ads capability can it also support an ads off switch so that I can make the 'choice' as to if I want ads or not.
As for making applications cheap, your statement is correct it normally also means that the worst type of rubbish gets the most advertising as a result pushing out the high investment, no patch, got it right first time products. Thats why we are in a continuous patch cycle for nearly all our products nowadays, but call it market competitional advantage in terms of releasing unfinished products into the marketplace.
What I dont see is the 'Choice' being provided to the consumer in terms of enabling or disabling a feature or product when the purchase channel is singular such as the itunes store.
As a matter of fact in terms of choice despite my reservations of Google effectively prying the same practices, this is the one saving grace of Android, that at least if I really wanted to I can develop and install my own products without having to be pipelined through a potential exclusion zone.
I think its a shame that Apple although the manufacturers of good products feel that they have to take an dictatorial line when dealing with the customer. My observation is that this has excluded both great minds and good customers, because the approach is one of marketing not development.
I recently noted a person who had to have an iphone not because of the features but because is was a social inclusion. When you looked into the eyes of said individual you could see the breezey landscape in the distance, there was no understanding of the tech nor the capability and for that social inclusion it cost £700, it may as well have been a block of cheese.
At the same time I note a form of social exclusion occuring as Banks and others pedal 'iphone' clients to their services so that they can tap into this mindless set of individuals. I say exclusion because the same services have not been developed for other platforms. So to get the services you have to have an iphone. What next exclusion from the human race perhaps.
Big brother we are watching you very closely.
What we want are ad free free apps! Just like free tech news website The Reg is ad free, don't see adverts all over these pages ... oh wait!
I hate adverts as much as the next person, but I am quite happy with the idea of free = you get adverts and paid = no adverts; what I object to is paid content plus adverts.
"The Reg is ad free, don't see adverts all over these pages ... oh wait!"
I don't see ads all over these pages either. I expect that's because they are fairly discretely placed to one side of the screen. The trouble is, on a device the size of the iPhone there's no such place as the side of the screen. There's only "in the way" and "IN YER FACE!!".
Then again, I'm presumably not part of iSteve's target market, since I don't see myself as an opportunity for monetization. Maybe this is all for the best. A world where Apple have a monopoly on advertising strikes me as a brilliant idea, since I don't own any Apple hardware.
So the only apps I can put on my iphone 3G will be spammed with ads, and I can't write and load my own apps without a several month approval process. And many App developers like Google can't get half their apps on the phone either.
Brilliant. Thanks Steve. I've got eight months left on my contract too. Think I'll buy the Nexus One anyway.
More Apple-hater ignorance...yawn.
The only apps that will have ads in them are free apps. You either pay for an ad-free app or get a free app with ads in it. Or did you expect developers to provide you with great free apps out of the goodness of their hearts?
Also, I love how you start buy slagging off ads and then praise the NUMBER ONE ADVERTISING COMPANY IN THE WORLD, and that you'll buy their phone instead. Warped thinking indeed.
Got that in writing, signed in blood from St Steve have we? No? Then don't be surprised if paid-for apps also start getting adverts. That's a bit like saying "I paid for access to the Times Online so I don't expect to see any adverts at all" - Naiive at best. Yes, many paid apps will stay advert free. I bet games get adverts very quickly - I'm sure the likes of EA would like to cross-sell their latest releases when you fire up one of their games that you paid £5 for.
"Then don't be surprised if paid-for apps also start getting adverts"
And what's to stop this from happening already? What's to stop a developer putting ads in their paid for apps now using AdMob or another service? Nothing, that's what.
So why aren't we already seeing hundreds of ads in paid for apps? Because devs know that it would be commercial suicide to annoy their users with an ad in an app they've paid good money for. People would just buy something else. Devs won't start plastering ads all over their paid apps simply because Apple has become an ad broker. And if you think Apple will start putting ads in the main phone apps (mail, messages etc.) you need to up your dose. All they would do with a move like this is hand sales to their competitors.
All iAds is is another ad service for app devs to choose from. Like a website owner can select to display ads from Google, DoubleClick, FastClick etc, an app dev can now choose from iAds or AdMob etc. Apple just want a piece of the mobile ad market and they're persuading people to use their ad system by improving the user experience and not dumping users out of an app when they accidentally tap an advert (let's face it, no one taps on purpose!). When and where devs choose to show the ads won't change. It's not up to Apple where a dev positions an ad now, and using iAds won't change that.
Seriously, calm down.
Indeed! I mean, I paid for that damn magazine I was reading last night, and most of it is ads. I pay for the damn cable TV, but of every 10 laps of an F1 race, I don't see 2 or 3 because they cut to stupid (and repetitive) ads (that's Speed TV for you).
So yeah, pay for the apps and keep hoping you won't see ads forever... It has been like that so far in desktops, as far as I know. But it's not guaranteed at all that it will be the same in these "new and marvelous new paradigms".
You realise that nothing will actually change from the user's perspective here... many free apps (whether they be iPhone, Android or whoever) already serve ads from AdMob or other services. The only thing that might change is that you won't get booted out of the app by clicking on the ad (if you happen to be the sort of weirdo who clicks on ads).
Gotta be the worst product name Apple has come up with yet. Especially when people mis-capitalize it as Iad or iad. It looks more or less like a random character string at that point. Or "Lad" if you're using a sans font.
Yeah this does look pretty much like Apple just measured up the ways other people were making money on it's devices and decided to go ahead and keep that money for themselves. Honestly nobody can even sort of compete with this Lad nonsense since it has native OS access, so they're entirely locking out everyone else.
One day I hope this sort of behavior comes back around to them, but I have a sinking feeling that they'll get away with whatever they want, pretty much until the world ends...
Multitasking in Windows before 95 was released? You are making me laugh! All Windows could do was task switch which was painfully obvious when I switched from the Amiga to a Windows 3 PC in 1994. Whereas my Amiga has true pre-emptive multitasking which worked pretty much as we expect today, the multitasking in Windows 3 was just meant you could have several apps loaded at once. Switch something to the background and it pretty much stopped.
Windows 3.0 didn't just switch tasks, if you opened 2 apps they both worked.
Multitasking has been around for ever, and think about it. On a single core processor how exactly can you multi task with out 'switching'? I think you'll find that back in the day, all multi tasking was done the same way.
Oh, and lets not forget that in 94, surely that was windows 3.11?
"I think you'll find that back in the day, all multi tasking was done the same way."
I think you'll find that back in the day, VAXes and other unix-type boxes had proper pre-emptive multitasking. The poster above just chose a bad example in Windows. The distinction being that the old Windows versions essentially 'hibernated' the background taks until they were switched to, whereas other systems employed 'time-slicing' to allow the background tasks to actually get a share of the processor time too.
If we're talking about other things that the iPhone is bringing to the party late, then why not focus on the idea of a hierarchical file system? I mean, it's not like that was invented some time in the 1970s is it?
Incorrect. Windows 3 had co-operative multi-tasking, and task switches were performed when you relinquished control by polling the message queue for your application - as long as your application was processing messages, tasks would be switched correctly. If you decided to sit in a loop and not poll the Windows message queue, you would lock up the system.
People were bitching that the iPhone OS didn't have multitasking, and now that it does, the bitching hasn't stopped - just changed. I fear the OS will never make you happy. Best go back to your Windows 1.0 and Palm Pre.
Someone said this re the iAds feature:
"I think he just sold a million more Androids with that line."
How naive can you get. Android is produced by the biggest advertiser in the world (that would be Google). Why do you think Google did it? Fun? (Pssst, it's advertising stupid).
<quote>
Someone said this re the iAds feature:
"I think he just sold a million more Androids with that line."
</quote>
I think you'll find that the comment was made regarding the android porn store, a la iPorn
Makes more sense... sending people to a platform that natively supports porn rather than driving them from a platform that natively supports ads.
"Background location uses cell-tower triangulation rather than a power-hungry GPS circuitry to supply location info to apps that don't need, for example, the highly accurate location information used by turn-by-turn navigation"
This isn't quite true. What was announced was that for backgrounded GPS apps, the GPS hardware will only be fired up when the user changes cell. It's an alternative to constantly polling for a location (i.e. when the phone knows that its location has changed), and still gives GPS-level accuracy.
Well I'm using a 1st Generation iPod Touch and it's triangulated positioning is rarely out by more than the width of a street - sometimes it's no more than about 10 feet out .
I can walk down some streets in London and it watches me change from one side of the road to the other.
The down side is that the map vanishes when I lose wifi connection.
Apple have been playing Android catchup for some time now. Android is a more featured OS/Framework, with better development tools, a much faster growing userbase, and available on so many more handsets from many manufacturers. I laugh when I see people with the prized iPhones, without basics like multitasking and flash, when Android has both of these.
Why on earth would anyone JUST limit themselves to Apples hardware, when Android opens up so much more customers?
Sadly it's exactly that Android is spread over more handsets and manufacturers that puts me off!
I'd love an Android phone, but it's like going back five years to the days of standing in Phones4U trying to choose between the best looking, the best features, the best interface, the best camera, and then treading through a minefield of tariffs (which were always obsfuscated to hell).
iPhone's easy because I know there's just the one product line (and that'll be the latest if I want the best model). I don't care about camera etc... I'm happy that I didn't have to waste energy choosing, only to see a better android phone come out the next DAY, nevermind in 12 months time.
...putting you off?
So you'd rather spend money on apps, that only work with one particular company's offering?
Windows may be a bunch of shite, all the best bits copied from *nixland, dumbed-down to the point of uselessness and offered by a psychopath.. however the one thing it has going for it is that you don't need to buy a Microsoft PC (yet) in order to use Windows applications.
Compare and contrast that with Apple. Sorry Steve-fans, but since that fateful year of 1984, your favourite fruit company has become as the Borg in a way Microsoft can only dream about.
Also, WTF am I doing saying something nice about Windows? Must stop smoking that plant fertilizer..
This is something I dislike about the iPhone. I don't really need multitasking (the ability to run a task in the background). What I would like is task switching (suspend an app when putting it into the background). It's a lot easier to suspend a task in the background, it doesn't use battery and the only cost is memory so I am often mystified as to why the iPhone doesn't allow this. As it is, I am constantly amazed that i have to shut down my email client when I click a link in the email
The 3g "doesn't support" multitasking - I think not as previously pointed out.
But lets look at why you might not want to put the latest greatest features on it.... It will have been on the market for some 2 years when OS4.0 ships... just the right time for giving an extra nudge to upgrade and replace a perfectly functional handset to the latest and greatest model. I think it's actually quite clever - you put this extra little bit of pressure on those who can upgrade, but the 3gs users will only have had theirs for 12 months - which is halfway through a contract for most, and stiffing them would be bad news as they're still tied in.
The pattern seems to be set - the two year contract, the mid-life software upgrade that will give you a device "nearly" as good as the new hardware that's now out so you don't get too cheesed off, and once your 24months is up? Please bin your perfectly servicable phone and buy a new one to get the shiny new apple goodness.
I wonder how much this is influenced by the increasing number of "SIM-only-for-iphone" offerings available, as I don't see how Jobs' Mob can get a slice of that money.
They'll compete by offering a better all-round experience for people who don't care about phone operating systems, but just want something that works and integrates with their home media setup.
Personally I have no real use for live desktop widgets on any device I use, so it's not something I will be considering when I come to upgrade.
You may as well say "They don't make a blue one, how do they expect to compete with Android?" because that's just as relevant to a lot of people.
"...for people who don't care about phone operating systems, but just want something that works and integrates with their home media setup."
Usually these sort of people have no idea of what a home media setup is either, their requirements usually stop at "can I go on the internet with it?".
Strange little people. I don't particularly like Nokia products, but I wouldn't waste my time and effort making comments on every article related to them. Do you see Dell stories flooded with comments from Apple lovers criticising their every decision?
There is definitely some sort of gay denial thing going on here.
Whereas the likes of Nokia, Dell etc. just go about the business of releasing new products every so often without much kerfuffle, Apple make each release into A Big Thing, hyping up their latest and greatest as if it's the best thing since someone thought about taking a knife to a lump of baked dough.
That alone would be sufficient reason to take pot-shots at them, but combined with this is their attitude towards implementing new things - they start off by saying they won't do it because it isn't necessary or because no-one else has done it right, then after everyone and their canine friends have complained about the lack of said thing, they then do a complete u-turn and decide that, after all, they think this thing is utterly wonderful, but only in the exact way that they themselves have implemented it, and continuing to deride all the other implementations of said thing.
And if this self-inflated sense of importance and technological brilliance isn't enough, they continue to impose pretty significant limitations on their end users use of the devices they've paid good money for.
I'll happily admit to owning (and being married to someone who owns) several Apple products, and I've got enough experience of using the iPhone to realise that in many respects it IS a bloody good device, so Apple really don't need to adopt this smugger-than-thou attitude all the time - the iPhone would still sell in the bazillions just on its own strengths, without any need for Apple to overdo the hype machine. But every time Steve Jobs or one of his loyal acolytes opens their mouth and spews forth the latest "we're right, everyone else is wrong" sermon, it makes me want to spew forth something of my own. That simply isn't the sort of reaction I get from the product releases of any other tech company.
That's an interesting point.
I'm a long standing Apple hater who has taken more of an aversion to the smug, arty / designer / thick idiots brandishing Apple gear with an air of superiority rather than Apple themselves. They are, after all, just trying to flog their gear in whatever way works, and there's no denying, it DOES work.
However, with the recent Google privacy antics and a slow but subtley increasing level of concern with Google having so many fingers in so many pies, I've suddenly started to realise that I prefer Apple's transparency on certain things.
Yes, they charge more. Yes, they market themselves as a lifestyle choice. Yes, they lock you in to their way of doing things. Frankly, though, a meagre amount of research and you can't help but conclude that all Apple want to do is bend you over, pull your pants down and take you up the wrongun whilst rifling through your wallet.
To be honest I'm more up for that approach than Google's holier than though approach to seeping their tendrils into just about every aspect of the modern internet and the absorbtion of all your data. Even the Borg would shit themselves looking at the way Google is operating at the moment, and the amazing thing is that so people seem to see it.
Trust me, all you Android advocates are going to realise sooner or later just what you're contributing to. At least Apple are quite open about what they want from you and how much it's going to cost. You've no idea how much you're all about to pay for trusting Google.
"People were bitching that the iPhone OS didn't have multitasking, and now that it does, the bitching hasn't stopped - just changed. I fear the OS will never make you happy. Best go back to your Windows 1.0 and Palm Pre."
Of course it's changed - multitasking is only for the latest models. And the reason given for this was that the hardware didn't support it.
Which makes you wonder what exactly about the hardware in pre-3.0 models means that they can't support multitasking, considering that other smartphones have supported it for years.
The most likely reason is that this is a cynical attempt by Apple to get everyone to upgrade to the latest model. There's nothing wrong with that, but it would be nice for them to either admit that this is the real reason or tell us why exactly pre-3.0 models can't support their multitasking solution.
Anyway, I guess it leaves people with older models waiting for custom firmware that enables this on older models.
... the older devices have less RAM and a much slower SSD, which would likely make anything they may have done with virtual memory unusable (or, at least, within their own criteria of not slowing the device down substantially and not killing the battery). The devices themselves have a virtual memory system but no swap file — so you generally have to write your program to fit in the available memory, but can memory map large files that are already on the SSD.
At least, that's my charitable interpretation.
"The most likely reason is that this is a cynical attempt by Apple to get everyone to upgrade to the latest model"
Absolutely. Which is also why the iPad has been designed to accept a front-facing camera that isn't in the current model - come product refresh time hey presto, a camera appears and the cost is minimal as the tooling for the case (and probably the hardware and software development) has already been done. Hey presto, a reason for existing users to upgrade a perfectly good machine that should have had a camera from day one. Remember also that the iPod Touch also has room for a camera but none fitted...
Love my OSX machines, really going off the whole mobile range because of the cynical marketing to and manipulation of Joe Public, and the extreme efforts that Apple are going to to force people to learn Objective C++ to write for the iPhone (on OSX only, of course).
Are all new games and utilities from the App Store going to require OS 4.0 and the more advanced hardware ? How long before owners of 'limited' machines (e.g. 8GB iPod Touch) are left behind with a static catalogue ?
Or will developers of backwards-compatible apps reap the rewards of being loyal to their existing user-base ?
Will Jobs try to find a way to...ahem...disuade development of backwards-compatible apps ?
On the plus-side, Spotify running in the background sounds like a win to me.
Yay! I'm going to be forced to pay £5 to upgrade my original iPod Touch to 4.0 when all the existing apps start insisting that they need the OS, just so they can push advertising at me, while I lose out on multitasking which is about the only enhancement that would actually have benefitted me. (Remember, the addition of advertising is a producer benefit, not a consumer benefit, no matter how "targetted" they might claim it to be.)
Finally the Iphone OS is actualy doing stuff people want - multitasking may be late to the table, but at least it's not going to be a battery drainer.
My Android often mysteriously runs out of juice - only for me to find that there are dozens of apps slowing the thing down and polling GPS all the time (Hello Google Maps!!
Folders is also a massive win - the main hate I have for iphone OS is the reams of icons that just seem to randomly place themselves. This means I can have everything easily placed on one screen.
The next thing I want to see is Widgets and notifications in a sensible place rather than right on top of what you are doing!
Simon, I would agree with some of your points:
"Folders is also a massive win - the main hate I have for iPhone OS is the reams of icons that just seem to randomly place themselves. This means I can have everything easily placed on one screen."
I have 3 screens setup on mine, one with my most used Apps, one with games, one with the shite that came with the iPhone I never use but Apple won’t let me uninstall! You do know you can move those "randomly placed" icons around don't you?
As for Multi-Tasking, I have long held the view that if you are doing stuff that needs true, pre-emptive multi tasking then a phone (no matter who makes it) is not the right device for you (Likewise if you need High quality video or pictures)
Advertising : Most of the free games I download to try have Ad's built in, mainly unobtrusive but some are placed so that you can click them quite by accident. If there is going to be advertising then I can see why Apple would want to be the provider of those adverts and generate (more) revenue from them
Some other commenter’s crow about Porn on other phones, no problems on the iPhone, there is this new invention called "the Internet" you can use a "browser" (Bolt, available from the App Store, is a fast, compact, history free alternative to Safari) to search for things on "the Internet" (try putting iPhone Porn into your favourite search engine (pornhub is the best, so I’m told)) and watch porn on your iPhone if you really want (so my "friend" tells me)
Cue all the screams of Shill, Fanboi etc but the only apple device I own is a 1st gen iPhone, it does what I want it to do (even after having been dropped onto hard floors and in the sink while I was shaving) and i like it, if you dont like the iPhone, don't buy one - Simples
I hate adverts in any form, they are at best an unwanted distraction. Despite being an Apple fan, I have nothing but contempt for iAds. Still, before I hyperventilate to collapse like many on this site, I will at least wait to see how it is implemented before I smash my iPhone to pieces.
I was attacked as an Apple-hater by some AC the last time iPhone multi-tasking was discussed because I dared to suggest the 3G and other older models wouldn't have the horse power or RAM to run multiple apps. It's not surprising to me at all that iPhone OS 4.0 will only work on newer models.
I just hope there's a new model announced in the summer as I'm due for an upgrade from my 3G!
Could it be that Apple have been so silly as to use ARMv7 instructions to implement some of the features related to multitasking? Both the iPad and the 3GS have Cortex-A8 processors which support this architecture, whereas the 3G has an ARM11 with the ARMv6 instruction set.
May be naive, but it could be a reason...
Pay for a software upgrade to multitask, which every other smartphone could do long before, so you can have the joy of the "emotion" (read: gagging reflex) of TV-style i-nAds thrust down your throat.
I'd rather pay a fiver at Heathrow Airport's seafood bar to have an oyster*. Same reflex, so same 'user experience' but bit more value. Least they're supposedly nutritious**.
Call me simple (many do) but I just don't get it.
Oh, while you're having a superbly-crafted i-nad 'experience', who pays for the fuc*king bandwidth. Er...
* Oysers, reportedly, are about 90% 'nads, IIRC.
**http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/08/11/1173883.htm
It's free on the phones because they're a service-based product and it's in the service contract.
It's paid for on the iPod Touch because of a slight weird side-effect of Sarbanes-Oxley in the US.
It's something to do with not declaring revenue for products that have only partially shipped, meaning that if a company ships a product, but then adds functionality through a software update that they had not previously declared then the new "upgraded" product is seen as the full product and the earlier version's revenues have been illegally declared.
So, for example, if you shipped a Wi-fi card without 802.11n ability in Q1 and then released a driver update to allow it to do 802.11n in Q2 you would have to charge for the driver *unless* you said that the Q1 version of the product did support 802.11n, but that it would be enabled later through a driver update.
Of course, if you do that then the interwebs will be full of people asking you when the updated driver will be available as soon as you launch the product and if you then found out that the Q1 product couldn't do 802.11n for some reason you would be legally bound to replace all of them with a fixed Q2 version.
It because of this that Apple have said that the iPad will get V4 for free, but you will have to pay for V5 - because they have no idea what extra functionality they may add or if the hardware will support it.
Some interesting ideas in this although nothing I'd call a game changer or killer feature. Apple playing catch-up. If anything, coupled with the apparent attempt to block cross-compiled applications (get a life, Steve) I'm actually less likely to upgrade from my 3G to the new hardware due in the summer, and start spending money on Android apps instead.
There may be a crumb of comfort to those of us with a 3G - if it won't support multi-taskling then it might not run iAd at all? Perhaps Steve sees two phones - a cheaper one which constantly interrupts you with adverts you can't turn off or quickly dismiss, and a more expensive one with no adverts outside of iAd enabled applications.
I will never, ever pay for an application that includes adverts that can't be turned off. Similarly I'll never buy a phone that pushes adverts to me when I'm using built-in features. Apple has to tread very carefully here, get this wrong and they could quickly alienate a significant percentage of users.
In short, I'll stick with my 3G and Nexus One until I've seen how the whole thing pans out. Definitely not a day one adopter of a new iPhone.
My O2 contract runs out in a few months and I am thinking of binning the 3G I have and going back to a normal type phone... One that doesnt have all sorts of ads appearing when all I want to do is check a location on a map
And when the contract for my N97 runs out... that one is not getting renewed.
...the whiff of a company running out of ideas? Ipod - great product when it first came out, revolutionary in fact. Iphone - likewise.
But now the Ipad - meh, woulda been better to sell the embiggening machine they used to make it from a stock iphone - and this. Jobs's reliance on having a big 'STORY' to tell every year means they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel
"Multitasking is de rigueur in other devices such as the Palm Prē and phones based on Google's Android"
Let's not forget Symbian which has always been a proper OS based on multitasking, long before these kids came along. Though multitasking is perhaps the flaw of Symbian also. Too much stuff going on in the background.
"Background location uses cell-tower triangulation rather than a power-hungry GPS circuitry"
How about fixing the iPhone so it's not power hungry. Comparing my Nokia with friend's iPhones I was surprised they complain so much about leaving the GPS on. No problem on Nokia's. Can leave the GPS active all day without much drain (essential for apps like Sports Tracker).
Ok people calm down and read the article:
1) Adverts exist in current free iPhone apps
2) Accessing these typically drops you out to Safari, loads up a URL and there's your advert
3) This ruins the seamlessness of the app & advert and means the user has to reload their app
So onto iAds...
1) Free apps now supported with iAds
2) Accessing iAd keeps you in the app. Shows you a whizzy HTML5 iAd. You interact/observe/ignore iAd and once you are done with it you close it and return to the app you were in previously.
3) iAds is not going to spam you with adverts everytime you phone your missus or read an email. Sending an SMS will not generate an iAd from the Royal Mail asking next time you need to write a message why not consider sending a letter.
Bottom line is nothing has really changed. The ads get to be a bit prettier and Apple get to take a percentage cut.
Adverts don't excite me but I understand the need for them. People have such a massive kneejerk response when they see the word "ad" that the ability to be reasonable seems to go out te window. The ability to read the article fully and comprehend what it is telling you also seems to disappear.
"An iAd will be able to take advantage of all of iPhone 4.0's APIs" .... and Apple are going to be taking a "light" approach to approving the ads.
So how long before some miscreant manages to get ads approved that compromise the security of the iPhone user?
As for the ads already existing in Applications, the fact they terminate the application means there is a disincentive for the app developers to do them. With Apple making it easier and more "integrated" (meaning the app doesn't have to close), the chances of paid apps getting ads is greatly increased.
"As for the ads already existing in Applications, the fact they terminate the application means there is a disincentive for the app developers to do them. With Apple making it easier and more "integrated" (meaning the app doesn't have to close), the chances of paid apps getting ads is greatly increased."
They exist in free apps so that developers can make some money from developing free apps. Sure they would prefer you to buy the paid ones but generally they know people tend to download the free app and if they like it buy the paid one. It is accepted that free apps are ad supported, in the same way we in the UK accept that TV on ITV/Channel 4&5 are also [mostly*] free but supported by ads.
I look at the reviews before purchasing apps, and if a paid for app was reported to punt ads then I would not purchase it - I expect that (1) I am not alone in this and (2) developers know this.
OK, I accept it is possible for an app update to start punting ads, but that would be suicide for the app developer that did that - no-one would buy anything from them again.
*some portion of the license fee is paid to these channels under the public service broadcaster system, however this certainly doesn't mean you are paying for both Ant&Dec and teh adverts in the middle of their programme. And the rip-off phone in of course....
I have a Nokia smartphone, and I know that in two or three years time I'll have a wide range of new phones to choose from as a replacement. As so many phones run Symbian, most of them will run the apps I've gotten used to on my Nokia... or I might go with Android to see what that's like. I may decide to go for a phone with a physical querty keyboard, or a phone with a high-end camera. However, I know I won't be buying an iPhone because as far as I can tell, the iPhone of three years will be pretty much identical to the iPhone of today.
I guess that's the point. If you decide to go down the Apple route, you'll get a high-end, reliable device that does lots of things well and is easy to use. However, it's very likely that you'll be doing pretty much the same thing you do now in the same way you do it now for the next ten years. Look at the last 10 years of changes in the non-Apple PC market: we've had Windows 98 > XP > Vista > Windows 7. We've had dual core PCs, quad core PCs, netbook laptops, netbook PCs and tablet PCs. We've had at least two major browser wars, Office ribbons, Facebook etc eBay, Amazon, Alta-vista vs Yahoo vs Google vs Bing etc. The only notable innovations Apple has done in the traditional computer market since the iMac back in 1998 is the poorly recieved Macbook Air, the Napster rip-off called iTunes and, several years after the competition, a tablet PC.
I think I've finally, finally got down to what really bothers me about Apple. For all the fanfare and hype and the mainstream media love-ins, once they become established Apple products are pretty dull. iPhone v3 is pretty much the same as iPhone v1 & v2, whilst iPad v2 & v3 will be pretty much the same as iPad v1. I like the up-and-down choppy waters of getting to grips with a new Windows OS. I like to chose from wide range of mp3 or mobile phone products, switch systems occasionally and try out new ways of doing things on the devices I already have. I want to buy cheap when I have no money, and expensive when I do have money. I want to encourage loads of different companies to exploit common technologies to a purpose they are specialists in. I don't want to be tied down to universal familiarity, and I certainly don't want a monochromatic technological environment where everything works in exactly the same way.
Apple's existence is fine by me - I may even buy an Apple product one day. However, the Utopian Jobsian world where Apple is the only technology company that anyone ever needs fills me with dread. Kinda reminds me a little of Communist Russia.
Its qwerty! After that Faux Pas I lost all respect for your post, and I hadn't even finished one rambling paragraph.
As for your iPhone review, I take it you've never tried one? Or for that matter any Apple product?
I'm not an Apple fanboi, although I do have an old 60gb ipod vid, a 32gb touch and now a 3GS iphone. I only have them because they always seem to work, never give my any bother, simple to use and look quite nice.
I work in IT, so when it comes to doing basic tasks I like them to work straight out the box, none of the pfaffing about that I have trying to get video's working on my Archos.
Small quibble with the write up; local notifications allow apps to schedule alerts/notifications even when the app isn't running, so for example a tv guide app could remind you that a show is about to start. Also task completion allows an app to continue running in the background (yes, actual multitasking!) so that a task can complete, for example a flickr type app could allow you to upload photos, even if the user switches to another app.
... I suspect that folders will have a maximum of nine items. Obviously one cannot be sure, but the keynote said there was a new maximum of sixteen hundred and something apps, up from one hundred eighty which is =/= 9 items per icon. Also it looks like as the icon fills up, it will eventually have nine spots.
>> I guess that's the point. If you decide to go down the Apple route, you'll get a high-end, reliable device that does lots of things well and is easy to use. However, it's very likely that you'll be doing pretty much the same thing you do now in the same way you do it now for the next ten years.
Yes, and Symbian phones are so horrible to use, that you will be doing the same thing 10 years from now - i.e. nothing, scratching your eyes out and/or wishing your phone contract would hurry up and expire.
>> Look at the last 10 years of changes in the non-Apple PC market: we've had Windows 98 > XP > Vista > Windows 7. We've had dual core PCs, quad core PCs, netbook laptops, netbook PCs and tablet PCs.
Yes and Apple have had multicore processors, they have also had a shift from PowerPC to Intel architecture and a shift to a Unix like operating system.
>> We've had at least two major browser wars,
and all the major browsers run on Mac
>> Office ribbons, Facebook etc eBay, Amazon,
Again, the Mac has these two
>> Alta-vista vs Yahoo vs Google vs Bing etc.
Yes these search engines work with browsers on the Mac too.
>> The only notable innovations Apple has done in the traditional computer market since the iMac back in 1998
How the feck, was the iMac innovative? Many early computers were built into the monitor housing - or are you referring to translucent plastic in a range of colours ? I think Tupperware may have been first with that.
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