Hamm On Wry

Ok, let’s be quite clear: First, I’m a Mac User, and as my career is based on using the various Pro Applications that Apple produces for those Macs, I’m already in deep. Second, I use T-mobile for my phone service. Why? Because I actually like them. Which is perhaps the weirdest thing in a long, LONG list of weird personal issues traits. Oh, and I’m a fan of the Macalope and Daring Fireball. Go figure.

However, I’m reading the bit where El Macalopo praises the idiot heaping non-shinola about the new fancy-pants activation that Apple developed for the iPhone by using iTunes. Um, WTF?!?!

No, for real. W. T. F!??!!

Look, let me outline what I did when I went from using the RAZR to the RIZR on T-mobile. I called, got my upgrade, had it delivered, and you want to know what I did to activate this fancy new phone? I put in my damn SIM card, the same card that is used in ALL GSM PHONES, and turned the damn thing on. That’s it. And then, to get my contacts onto this phone, i connected via bluetooth and launched iSync, and BAMMO, all my contacts were loaded to the phone.

So, to the asshats at C|Net, how do I get a job blogging for you? The Macalope blogs about Apple, which is fine, but this other twit blogs about things he doesn’t understand and apparently gets paid for it. I think it’s great that for the iPhone you have a bit of software that does the whole syncing thing for you in a clean and obvious way. I think it’s great that Apple cleaned up the syncing process that they developed with iSync 4 years ago, but I find the fact that you have to ‘activate’ a phone that uses a GSM Sim card to be a step that shows that, yes, AT&T was really involved in the iPhone development process after all. And I guess it was a given that Apple would have to give in some way for AT&T to suck it. But having someone at a ‘news organization’ report that this is somehow an improvement just goes to show how horribly bad mobile service in the U.S. really is.

And Don Reisinger can suck it, too.

Ok, so this is another thing that’s been mulling about in the back of my head: What happens to those who piss off Steve Jobs?

I know that if they work for him, they get fired, unless the reason they are pissing him off is, well, completely unreasonable and they have the strength of self to stand up to him and argue back. I can see that as also being a nightmare, but some have to have visions that differ from his and are still good, maybe even great. I don’t think he’d want to lose those people.

If they are from another company, tho, like say Motorola or BMW and they create something that barely works and looks like crap, he can’t fire them. So what’s a guy like Jobs to do? Exactly what he’s done to Moto - kill their business by building the best-of-breed device. And now he’s rumored to do the same, sort of, to BMW’s kit for the iPod by partnering with Mercedes on an Apple developed GPS system. What are the chances that this system won’t link via bluetooth to the iPhone, won’t have iPod connection cables and won’t have a navigation system screen that *magically* switches to the CoverFlow view of whatever is on the iPhone or iPod? And why wouldn’t BMW jump at this, given that Jobs is a Massive Beemer Fanboy - unless they weren’t asked because of what they did before.

I was reminded of this posted by John Gruber:

Remember his on-stage demo last year of the Motorola Rokr iTunes-compatible phone? His contempt for the device was palpable; when he failed to successfully switch from song playback to accept a call, he seemed poised to just toss the thing off-stage and cry out that it was a piece of garbage.

And then realizing that he wasn’t all that impressed by the Beemer announcement either. He just didn’t hate it as much as he did the ROKR. I feel much the same way, actually.

Many people are complaining about the SDK for iPhone, or the “insulting” lack thereof. I’m sure some others will have opinions on this for years to come, however I’d like to point out that some of the functionality of the iPhone hasn’t been clearly described for all the programmers and developers out there.

But I have a guess, and it leads to a functional problem of how the phone works and what has to be happening in the background.

First off, let’s all agree that the core apps of the iphone, which would be the 11 apps shown as icons on the front, are running all the time, every time the phone is running. After all, the time it takes to load Address Book, or Google Maps, or Safari on the desktop version of the Mac OS would be beyond annoying on the iPhone. So already the functionality is booted and just waiting to be called up by pressing one of the Top 11 App buttons.

And if you’re in one of those apps, to get back to the main screen, you press The One Physical Button on the iPhone and it takes you back to the main screen. Or does it?

What if TOPB is actually taking you to the iPhone Mac OS Dashboard? And then, what if those “buttons” that we see are actually just Alias’-as-Widgets to get to the basic functionality?

It seems reasonable to me. After viewing the demos (over and over) and the commercials (over and over) it suddenly hit me (while driving) that TOPB created a visual suspiciously like F12 does by default in Mac OS 10.4 Tiger. How could so many others have missed this? And why does it matter?

With this scenario, it’s possible that Webkit, if not the full Safari, is running and being used to render many things for all the apps. GoogleMaps is supported already by Webkit’s rendering, so why not reuse it? And we know that Dashboard widgets also use Webkit. If the home-screen of the iPhone is really just another form of the Dashboard, as the use of one button to activate it implies, Webkit probably handles it.

And didn’t Apple release a devkit for Dashboard? Huh.

Ok, so I get to play Proud Uncle Auntie Kev as my niece, the Ever Adorable One, sings her first solo in a concert. I must say, she’s damn good. Enjoy!