Tag iphone

iPhoneOS 3.0

Ανακοινώθηκε αργά μέσ’την ημέρα (ώρα Ελλάδος) προχθές, γρήγορα έφτασε στα χέρια χιλιάδων εγγεγραμμένων προγραμματιστών για iPhone. Το νεο λειτουργικό προσφέρει πολλά, τόσο σε χρήστες όσο και στους ανθρώπους που σχεδιάζουν και αναπτύσσουν εφαρμογές για τη συσκευή. Για τη χώρα μας ιδιαίτερου ενδιαφέροντος φυσικά αποτελεί το ελληνικό πληκτρολόγιο, το οποίο περιλαμβάνει την ίδια τεχνολογία αυτόματης διόρθωσης […]

Service Unavailable.

Service Unavailable More or less what happens when you've got the hottest device around, you just announced a major OS upgrade and you decide to not use a CDN =)

The AthensBook.

The AthensBook — Commemorative 1.0.0 Poster
Μετά από μερικούς μήνες part-time δουλειάς, αρκετό ψάξιμο, πολύ coding, ακόμη περισσότερο design, άπειρο data acquisition, data mining, quality assurance και δοκιμών αλλά προ πάντων με πολύ μεράκι, το AthensBook σήμερα βγήκε από το καβούκι του και περνά από τα χέρια δυο ανθρώπων στα χέρια όλων σας. Τα πολλά λόγια είναι φτώχεια --- αν έχετε iPhone μπορείτε να το εγκαταστήσετε άμεσα από το AppStore. Εαν όχι, και μένετε στην Αθήνα, μάλλον θα θέλετε να αποκτήσετε ένα iPhone (ακόμη περισσότερο απ'ότι θέλατε πριν). Ή όχι. Όπως και να έχει: Enjoy! Αυτό είναι μόνον η αρχή! =)

N97: a mediocre stop-gap solution or has Nokia lost it?

Nokia just announced the N97, its first flagship touch phone. The device is evolutionary, or if you prefer ‘marginally improved’ in some areas, compared to, its predecessors, the N95 and N96, while it includes a touch-screen and the new Symbian S60 5th Edition. The new phone seems largely irrelevant in the post-iPhone world and it […]

'Sparse' in all ways.

Yep, the iPhone SDK does not support dynamically linked libraries. And that’s truly fantastic news for all iPhone developers wishing to leverage existing code out there. You can, of course, use a statically linked library in your code, or — if you have the code for the third-party libraries you’re going to be using — […]

iΠακέτα ηλιθιότητας

Η Vodafone Ελλάς ανακοίνωσε τη διαθεσιμότητα του iPhone 3G της Apple στην χώρα μας. Πέραν τις ιδιαίτερα ακριβής τιμής απόκτησης του τηλεφώνου (ιδιαίτερα για τα ελληνικά δεδομένα), η Vodafone κατάφερε να δημιουργήσει κάποια από τα αθλιότερα πακέτα που έχω αντικρύσει διεθνώς, σε βαθμό που ακυρώνουν πολλά από τα χαρακτηριστικά του iPhone (250MB μηνιαίως;), τόσο σε απόλυτη τιμή όσο και αν λάβει κανείς το πραγματικό εισόδημα του μέσου έλληνα. [Γράφει σχετικά και ο Γιώργος στο Reality-Tape]

Marginally better than expected.

But certainly worse than what I hoped for. The iPhone 3G is a marginally improved device that builds upon the very solid foundations of the first iPhone by adding 3G connectivity (though without the video conferencing part) and version 2.0 of the software and does this at a significantly reduced price --- which is probably the highlight of the keynote. It's also available in many more countries, including Hellas. While I may get my hands on one pretty soon, I still think that the Nokia N95 is a superior device in many ways, and one that's mostly hurt by the vastly inferior (from a usability point of view) application software stack. The new iPhone seems like a buffer solution to the consumerism that brands the original as 'old' and whose price and attractive featureset, augmented by a software ecosystem, wider availability and faster network performance are certainly going to serve as catalysts while it becomes a(n even more) mainstream product and expand Apple's market share in this difficult market. That is, until a much evolved model appears in 12-18 months from today. Update: I've already read several comments about the contract prices in various countries; it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in Europe and especially in Hellas, a country where mobile internet access costs about 70% more than the US. If 3G access is forced onto consumers buying the iPhone (which it will), the adjusted $199-$299 price points won't make a difference to people --- especially if the contract means a monthly cost higher than €30. Update 2: It is now blatantly clear that the price reduction, even in the US, is marginal at best; the new contract coupled with higher prices for data connectivity make the new iPhone cheap to buy, but expensive to maintain.

French law required Orange to offer an unlocked version [of the iPhone]

Not exactly news, but it merits some comments. It's interesting how proper regulation can help turn corporate strategy into consumer power. Surprisingly, even with purely free-market criteria, in 'over-regulated' France, Apple's toyphone is better value, more competitive and a better product offering as it costs €749 if bought unlocked, and €399 if bought locked to Orange --- although according to French Law, the carrier will have to unlock it, on request, after 6 months for free. Similarly, for the brief period of time it was sold unlocked in Germany, it cost €999. Naturally, in the US, there is no regulation and Apple can go ahead and set the terms of sale without any restrictions: that's probably why there is no unlocked iPhone on sale at all.

FakeStevey got it…wrong.

Check this post by Fake Steve Jobs. It's hilarious and not just because it nails what the real Steve Jobs probably thinks of Openness, but also because it highlights what was always wrong with his approach: whenever his companies were weak (NeXT in the late 80s and early 90s, Apple in the late 90s and early 2000s) he touted Openness, standards and formed alliances with other companies. Take Adobe's Display PostScript in NeXTSTEP, Darwin, Display PDF, OpenGL, OpenAL, CUPS, UNIX certification, gcc and a number of other standards, APIs, libraries and applications between 2001 and today in OS X or his 'agreement' with Microsoft in 1997. But just when things do well, he tries to usurp the dominant position, showing complete disregard to their partners, development community, users and sometimes even employees. In my discussions about Android with friends over the past day I compared Google with Microsoft in the 80s. Many have done the same. This comment by 'chickenface' in the linked article is, I believe, representative of how I see Android evolving and eventually dominating the market:
This is 1984, the iphone is the 128K Mac, and GPhone is the PC. Look, there's no actual consortium; there's Google and its customers. Kinda like Apple and AT&T, but they've got so many customers we're calling it a consortium. When're you gonna get this straight: Microsoft were like the Klingons - we made a sort of peace with them and held our nose. Google, they're way worse -- they're the Borg.

iPhone iNsecurities…

When Steve Jobs claimed that there would not be an iPhone SDK in early 2007, citing security as the main reason behind Apple's decision, a considerable part of the IT press, bloggers, and engineers dismissed his claims as ludicrous. After all, this was 2007, and Apple had Mac OS X, a relatively secure OS and had demonstrated a policy of aggressively fixing bugs in its operating system and application software in recent years. Then it became known that the iPhone software was running with superuser privileges on the device, the iPhone was very quickly hacked into and Jobs announced an upcoming SDK for February 2008. With 1.2 million iPhones sold in three months, and about 250,000 of them already 'unlocked', this is starting to look like a security nightmare. One would think that Apple knew better...