Lately I’ve been reading an increasing number of reports on the web and also in the newspapers about how Apple’s recent product introductions have been plagued with bugs, crashes and a not-so-stellar user experience. First there was the activation problem the day the iPhone 2.0 came out. Then, issues with the iPhone 2.0 software. And yesterday, Mossberg described Apple’s new MobileMe sync service as “too flawed” in his widely read review.
I am pretty happy with my iPhone so far, although I have to say I haven’t pushed its limits too much yet. Yes, there’s been a few glitches here and there. For example, I had my iPhone happily plugged into my MacBook yesterday when all of a sudden an error dialog pops out:
The first thought I had when I saw the dialog was how ridiculous it was. Very similar to the strange and obscure Windows error dialogs I usually make fun of (you can sometimes see them all over the place).
Designing a new phone and mobile OS from scratch is a major undertaking and Apple did an admirable job with the iPhone 1.0. It’s obvious that the need to keep pushing the iPhone at full speed ahead has put a major burden on the company.
It’s nearly impossible to match the expectation of Apple devotees. Apple should just take a deep breath, focus on execution and perhaps lower the pace of innovation for a quarter or two, in order to put the house in order. In a way, it’s already doing that with the Mac OS X.
Ok, I got an iPhone 3G. But I had to work for it more than any other product I’ve ever bought. True, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was for some people, but it’s still a bit silly to wait in line to spend some serious money for a product the day it comes out. That just goes to show how anxious we were to get away from Verizon and their Razrs.
Long story short, Andrea and I went to the Apple Store around 7:30AM the day the new iPhone came out. There was a huge line and it wasn’t moving. We checked two AT&T stores in the surrounding area and those weren’t much better either. We decided to go home and try some other time. We came to find out later that it was taking about 8 hours to get to the front of the line. But, with $200, you could buy a place from someone and wait in line for about an hour. Talk about a just-in-time market.
Thanks to our dog barking at squirrels, we woke up at 6:45AM on Saturday July 12th and decided to give the iPhone another try. We went back to the Apple Store and the line was smaller, but still not moving. I walked over to the AT&T store in the same mall as the Apple Store and there was just one guy in line! Before 10AM, the AT&T store opened and we got our iPhones.
This being my first iPhone, I am still learning how to get the most out of it. But the user experience is great. I thought the whole set up experience in particular was incredibly well done. I downloaded apps from the App Store without a hitch.
Two days after buying the iPhone, I took a quick trip to NYC. I was really hoping to use the iPhone to get situated in Manhattan, but it could never find my location. Blame it on the tall buildings. Somewhat expected. Being able to check email and browse the web on the road anytime has been terrific.
I’ve been having a few issues sending email from the iPhone, but other than that, things are good. I am still hoping I will be able to share the iPhone’s 3G data connection with my MacBook some day. That would be the icing on the cake for me. Looks like you can do that with some Blackberries and the Nokia N95.
(Image courtesy from http://theiphoneblog.com)
A few years ago, while working at France Telecom R&D, I was tasked with the development of an audio streaming plugin for the Opera browser in the Nokia 6600 phone.
I really enjoyed working with the 6600, which is a fairly open and ‘hackable’ phone. However, writing software on top of the Symbian operating system was worse than going to the dentist. I hated it. As a development platform, I think Symbian is awful.
So a couple of weeks ago, I was quite surprised when Nokia decided to acquire the rest of Symbian it didn’t already own. Supposedly, they want to challenge the iPhone and the upcoming Android platforms with Symbian. The mobile OS market is hot, everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Nokia, however, is going to have a lot of trouble wooing developers to Symbian. The moment developers jump in the water they will realize how unfriendly the mobile OS is. And most likely, they will switch to something else instead of sticking around.
Unless Nokia goes through the effort of modernizing Symbian, they might as well write off this $410 million and come up with a different strategy to stay in the game.
The last few weeks have been busy, but Slife 2.0 is now done. It feels great to push a new software release out of the door. The part I like the most is the interaction with users who are checking the app for the first time. Lots of great ideas and feedback.
A big part of this new release was the introduction of Slife Teams, which I like to describe as Slife for teams and businesses. It’s still in beta and requires an invitation to use, but it will be available more widely very soon.