KEY POINTS:
So how's the iPhone 3G faring after a few months? Not bad. Apart from being an attractive and easy-to-use device, its real strength is the fact that the App Store in iTunes has driven so much development.
I don't want to get into a discussion of just how good the iPhone is. I have already conceded there are better phones - just not for me. It's the overall device characteristics that make the iPhone a winner, even for PC users (and Arhu, I couldn't care less that 'PC' means Personal Computer and Apple makes 'personal computers'. It was PC users who started saying "PC or Mac?", not Mac users, so that's how I'm using it. Actually, to be fair, those other machines should be called 'ICs' anyway - Impersonal Computers).
If you're a Mac user, an iPhone is a terrific adjunct to your Apple system. That said, it's all the Apps that keep appearing that keep us going back to it, wondering what surprise is in store - actually, what surprise is in App Store?
I've bought a few apps and they're usually really cheap, like $14 or under. Cheaper still, of course, are all the free ones. If you press on the App Store icon on an iPhone (which looks pretty much like a white anarchy symbol on a blue background) you can click on Top 25, then choose to list either the top 25 paid apps or the top 25 free ones, so you can see what's new or popular in pretty much any idle moment. When you get to the bottom of the list, you can expand it out to the top 50.
You can download apps if you have enough data left on your plan (I've never gone over my cheapest-plan 250MB limit), or wait till your plan period ticks over and get them then. Or you can just use your iPhone to check them out then download them on your computer, transferring them to your iPhone when you connect it via the USB cable for a recharge and sync.
And if this all sounds a bit pie in the sky, that's just the user side of the coin. The App Store has pushed developers all over the world into making apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, and not just localised services like weather and wireless-zone apps, either, although these are all well and good in their own right.
New Zealand and Australian programmers and designers are well represented - you can get NZ-built apps like Tomizone's wireless hotspot finder. WeatherNZ by Oresome taps and displays MetService data for any area in GodZone, and What Bird NZ? is free, and quite a big download since it holds audio data. What Bird lists 12 native birds and displays data on them, and lets you play good quality sound bytes of each creature's song to help you figure out just what that avian hanging out in your Pukapuka is.
Among the more famous Australian-developed Apps is the music game Tap Tap Revenge, which is one of the top three free apps for iPhone/touch ever, so far. But if you're heading to an Australian city, check out the various metro and other transport-related apps you can get for your electrical, touch-screen pocket guide.
The iPhone App store was only launched in July but it's available in 60 countries and the number of apps available is still rising, jumping 45 per cent just in the last month. In the first 100 days, according to Yahoo Business, users downloaded 200 million applications. That's a lot of fascinated punters.
Because the App Store has been so successful at moving applications, some developers have been making buckets of cash out of it. As a result, it appears they are so focused on Apple's platform, they're not developing for any others, meaning new (and perfectly good) new ventures like Google's Android device OS may be missing out.
The Yahoo story says this may partly be due to the economic downturn. If you have a successful model, why risk resources on another?
Criticism from the business sector seems to focus on the lack of 'true enterprise tools' for the iPhone, whatever that means. Despite that, the device is popular with business folk. Some covet it because they think it has cachet, but most because it's so useful.
Apple hasn't done much to sate business demand for iPhone directly, until now: the Californian firm has just released an iPhone configuration tool. The free download for Windows or Mac iPhone Configuration Utility (v1.1) lets you create, maintain, and sign configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorised applications, and capture device information including console logs. Great, huh? Well, some IT types may be salivating at those words, even if you're not. There's even an Enterprise Deployment Guide pdf available for download (its link is by the picture of the iPhone; the utility is linked below in the text list).
Like I said, 'go configure'.
- Mark Webster mac.nz
