[Geowanking] Bad news for those who wanted to see location-based apps on the iPhone...

[Jim Youll]

Sorry, but I can't agree that paying more money to make something  
work that should already work doesn't make the point "moot"

That WiFi you want to use costs money, too.

You want to make stuff that normal people can use, it can't have all  
these strings tied to it.

Also, neither WiFi nor cellular signals are ubiquitous.

It seems absurd that people keep making excuses for a $500 device  
that only works when it can be used as a dumb terminal.

And I predict you will not be able to tie into any local features of  
this thing or any other until the climate of carriers and phone  
manufacturers changes to some state that it has never occupied in  
since the dawn of the wireless-for-everyone era. There's too much  
money to be made charging incremental fees for things that shouldn't  
actually cost money to provide or consume.

On Jan 25, 2007, at 3:54 PM, Andrew Turner wrote:

> On 1/25/07, Jim Youll <jim at media.mit.edu> wrote:
>> On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:07 PM, Mike Liebhold wrote:
>>
>> > This is not good news, but not a total disaster, although
>> > developers will be denied access to the client hardware platform,
>> > there is no reason why anyone can't develop amazing web-based
>> > services accessible from  the iphone's built-in safari browser.
>>
>> ... provided your users are happy to pay data and other message-unit
>> charges for applications that could run happily off-network.
>
> I pay a flat-rate data charge for my data. I believe Cingular has the
> same, so that's kind of a moot point. It also has WiFi, so as long as
> it's a free access-point, that provides high-speed free access.
>
> The problem is, will it be possible to tie into other pieces of the
> device through the web browser? Opera Platform was a Symbian app and
> web-browser that let your 'web apps' (like widgets) access buttons,
> call the camera, address book, etc.
>
> My guess is this won't be possible w/ v1 of 'Safari Mobile'.
>
> But still being able to access: GMail, Backpack, Wikipedia, my web-RSS
> reader, etc. will be great. That's mostly what I do now with my mobile
> that I *can* install/buy/develop apps for.
>
> Andrew
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