It's all AT&T's fault
Christian Gloddy thinks he knows why Apple won’t be releasing an iPhone SDK — AT&T doesn’t want VoIP apps on the iPhone because it doesn’t want users to have an alternative to buying its overpriced talk minutes.
Could be, and it clearly does work to their advantage, but then why would they allow the 802.11 connectivity at all? Wouldn’t they also want people using their overpriced data minutes?
For what it’s worth, the Macalope still thinks it’s mostly Apple. So far no one has used an iPhone. It’s a whole new interface and Apple wants to tightly control that experience because that is what makes the iPhone different from other phones. It’s not Edge. It’s not the camera. There is no other feature you can’t get elsewhere either better or cheaper.
Despite yesterday’s eye-roll-inspiring “announcement” that developers can develop for this thing called “the Internets”, this isn’t necessarily over. All All Things Digital, Jobs alluded to more than what he delivered yesterday.
Although, he also said Apple would deliver a replacement “in a year” when he canceled the Newton.
So…
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[…] was reading the latest post for the Macalope when it suddenly occurred to me why Apple is not allowing third party developers to develop […]
I agree that it’s not AT&T’s fault that there’s no 3rd party development. AT&T rips you off far more with their data plans than they do with their voice plans (five phones on our plan, with about 400 minutes, and we’ve never gone over thanks to Roll Over). But this leaves one lingering question: why hasn’t anyone else included WiFi on their devices? I mean, if I found a Palm Treo with Palm OS (Mac user, so no WinMo for me, besides, I hear it’s so unstable it’ll lock up DURING phone calls) with WiFi (especially if it’d access WPA Enterprise), I’d jump on it like a Macalope on a long lost Jerry Lewis script. 😉
I wouldn’t be too terribly worried about the lack of proper 3rd party stuff. iPhone runs OS X, right? It took, what, 17 minutes for somebody to make tv their biatch?
“Here is iPhone. Lookee lookee… You cannot do nothing to it, mister programmy-type person. No, not nothing. So do not even try to try, you silly hackyboy with so very much time for such things. Look over there at something somewhere else, but not here at this lovely little shiny thing, so much like a red flag waving in front of your busy-busy eyes.”
Silly hackyboy.
Monkyhead, the AppleTV may not be impenetrable, but for the average user? There’s no good way to get software on to it yet, short of cracking the whole thing wide open. Further, holes can be patched. Hacking your way in is far from ideal.
January 15, 1990.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
If you spend too much time in the blogosphere you run the risk of thinking that it in any way resembles the real world. To hear some people moan about not being able to have skype on the iphone you would think that it’s a real hot button issue. But lets step into the real world for a minute.. I would be that if you asked 100 ordinary consumers if they care that skype was not available on the iPhone 99 of them would probably say “what’s skype?”
And after you explained it to them, they would probably then ask you if you were crazy for wanting to install a phone on your phone. At the end of the day it’s the whole user experience, and I don’t think it’s such a crazy notion that Apple would prevent 3rd party development if it means that the majority of iPhone users will have a better end user experience.
The Voip factor is interesting, but I think ATT wouldn’t be the party making the decision about that. As pointed out, the existance of WiFi on the iPhone shows that ATT isn’t making all of the decisions here.
But apple did have an issue with another company who might have an opinion about the iPhone doing voip. Remember that Cisco was claiming the trademark on their voip phone. The settlement, as I remember, allowed each to use the trademark, while exploring “interoperability” between their products, but no further details were given. Possibly could one of the points of the setttlement be that apple leaves the voip products named iphone to cisco? I think its possible apple would have ceded that in order to resolve the despute and clear the way for a smooth launch.
Anyway, I don’t guess I really believe this either, as I think an SDK is coming eventually, and the keynote announcement was just spin to quiet the endless questioning about it for a while. But I think if an outside party is to blame at all, I think Cisco is a more likely candidate than AT&T.
I agree it is not at&t, it is apple. But about the question of data plans:
Cingular’s smartphone data plan is $20 all you can eat. This means that if you use wifi, it is better for at&t. You are still paying them, and they aren’t doing any lifting.
There are other phones that allow 3rd party applications that AT&T allow on their network. It’s clearly not AT&T and anyone who thinks so is clearly just looking for the easy answer, You hear that Marc! I’m talking to you! Sorry, wrong forum. It has to be an Apple restriction, and I have a feeling that it has more to do with this so called full version of OS X.
Apple has hacked away at this version so much that its really a different OS at this point, Its possible that it’s closer to the iPod OS than the one on my MacBook Pro, and if they let developers get a look at it, they may have a new problem with hacks suddenly appearing for the iPod it self… and they can’t mess with their bread and butter, product like that.