Vox populi have their own thoughts on iPhone improvements
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Who knew so many iPhone fans had so many opinions on what's missing from the first-generation version of the popular Apple Inc. phone? Ryan Faas weighed in; Now, Computerworld readers do, too.
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With the iPhone on deck, it's finally time to see if Apple's vaunted designers have come up with another winner. But first: A pause to focus on developers.
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Survey underscores the demand for Apple's debut cell phone.
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Hackers claimed significant progress Monday in the race to unlock the iPhone, but some say that some egos in the scene are getting in the way of getting the work done.
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âSteve Jobs has said, repeatedly, that this is the best iPod that Apple has ever made, and it is. Itâs also the best phone that anybody has ever made,â says Lev Gossman. âThe user interface,â Grossman marvels, âis crammed with smart little touches â every moment of user interaction has been quietly stage-managed and orchestrated, with such overwhelming attention to detail that when the history of digital interface design is written, whoever managed this project at Apple will be hailed as a Michelangelo, and the iPhone his or her Sistine Chapel.â
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Enough already! Comments It's been a particularly iPhone-strewn week, now that the Yanks have got their hands on the precious device, and the lovers and haters have come right out of the woodwork.â¦
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Blog: The iPhone's camera in action, shots of life in San Francisco and some thoughts
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The cellphone industry went to Barcelona to âshow off the latest and greatest phonesâ and, once again, hardware took center stage. But, Victoria Shannon (New York Times) points out, âsoftware is growing in importance as smartphones, capable of accessing the Web, become more popular.â So, Shannon continues, âit was no surprise that many of the phones were iPhone clones â with touch screens, sleek flat shapes and spare software interfaces. Apple was able to make a phone that paid equal attention to the software and the hardware. And the rest of the industry was following suit here.â
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Note: There was no permalink for the story on Apple's news website, here's the full text, with permalink. DW Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers&#185; hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers. It will take until February to release an SDK because we&#185;re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once&#139;provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones&#139;this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target. Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than &#179;totally open,&#178; we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone&#185;s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs. We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones. Steve P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]
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'What a bunch of f***ing morons' FoTW Well, it's been quite a week. The release of Apple's long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated and much-hyped iPhone saw a level of fanboy hysteria matched only by the 1632 demonic possession of the Ursuline convent in Loudun - a sorry affair later attributed to a nasty case of mass hysteria.â¦
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Does Apple's latest innovation match the hype?
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There's more to gain than lose from the upcoming iPhone.
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Shortly after activating his new iPhone, Michael DeAgonia  received his â first phone call. A few moments after that, I got another. I was able to swap between calls, merge them, put them on hold, and separate them without hassle. Other phones, of course, do that as well. Whatâs the difference here? The multitouch screen and interface. I can confirm what early reviewers have already pointed out: it works like magic.â The iPhone, DeAgonia indicates, â isnât a collection of features, itâs a well-thought-out multi-function device with functions bound together by a drop-dead simple, drop-dead gorgeous interface. The sum is more than the parts.â
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According to Saul Hansell at the NY Times, Apple intends to break phones that have been unlocked.  But Francine Hardaway and Patrick Scoble both updated this afternoon, and bad things happened. Hardaway's phone was "fried," she needed a new phone, and Scoble lost all his data. Hardaway: "Trust me, I didn't hack it." Jeff Clavier: "This effing piece of s..t is bricked." Robert Scoble, Patrick's dad, updated successfully, and got the new features. Spaley's iPhone is "a useless piece of crap." Looks like Josh Bancroft's iPhone was hosed too. I would hold off on the update until we find out what's going wrong.  Sugar Attack: "It wasn't until I saw a friend tweet about the new iPhone firmware upgrade that I realized I could now access the iTunes WiFi store."
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Calling its user interface âsimplicity itself,â Bob LeVitus (Houston Chronicle) praises iPhone. âItâs easier to use than any phone before it, and it introduces a fantastic new feature known as âVisual Voicemail,â which lets you browse through all of your voice messages on screen and listen to them in any order.â As an iPod, LeVitus adds, iPhone offers âthe best video functionality ever in an iPod. Everything â movies, TV shows, photos, video podcasts, and album art â looks absolutely fantastic on the high-res display.â And âspeaking of screens, iPhoneâs is huge, gorgeous, and touch-sensitive,â providing ârich, deeply saturated colors at an ultra-high resolution which adds up to a sharp picture.â
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(InfoWorld) - What a world. We have to fight off viruses, zombies, bots, phishing, and on and on. Can you believe how many just plain evil people there are in the world? And what is their point? Simple thievery? To prove they are smarter than the rest of us? And think of all the money that's spent on defending, as best we can, against these miscreants or in cleaning up the mess when they get the better of us? Indeed, what a waste. While viruses have appeared on mobile devices, they are, thankfully, few and far between. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of standardization of software environments on handsets, and part is due to the minimal functionality that is typical on these products. It's hard for the socially challenged to overwrite boot sectors, corrupt data, or otherwise run amok on most cell phones today. Apple's decision to limit local software execution on the iPhone is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to a fundamental fear of hackers. While the Macintosh hasn't been much of a target for the hacker community, the iPhone could be a lot more tempting. There will be far more iPhones than Macs in the world in just a few years. Plus, Apple partner AT&T doesn't need the support headaches that come with having a large number of users jamming its 800 numbers with reports of bizarre symptoms on their iPhones. Regardless, being a Web services guy, I absolutely applaud Apple for moving the Web services art forward a notch or two with a very capable platform that might indeed replace PCs for many of us over the next decade or so. We don't need to run a lot of local code to have a meaningful IT experience while on the go. Of course, the iPhone will be hacked over time, requiring updates and fixes, just as is the case with the PC. There are already reports of hackers working diligently to unlock the phone so that non-AT&T SIM cards can be used, and to avoid cellular activation so that the device would be used only Wi-Fi networks -- with VoFi services, of course. Any programmable device runs this kind of risk, and defending against unauthorized code will remain a challenge for some time to come. Which brings me to a really obscure but very important, shall we say, "opportunity" for hackers. Last year, I wrote about one of the most exciting technology developments in wireless, software-defined radio (SDR). Basically, SDR simplifies radio hardware design by replacing specialized circuitry with software. Among the many benefits of SDR are over-the-air bug fixes, the ability to add new features on demand, and dynamic reprogrammability -- turning, for example, a GSM phone into a CDMA phone or even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or UWB or whatever on the fly. With so much software at play here, the question has to be asked: Could an SDR get hacked? Suppose someone figures out how to build a virus that quickly spreads to SDR-based handsets, disabling them or using them as jammers or worse? What if those handsets are being used for public-safety applications? This is not to say that hacking is the only vector for wireless disruptions. After all, anyone can use a jammer to disable communications in a local area, and any moron with a reasonable shortwave transmitter can pretend to be an air traffic controller. That fact that we still use an unencrypted, unauthenticated communications protocol for such a critical service boggles my mind. The FCC is rightfully concerned about SDR hacking and has issued new regulations for SDRs that mostly attempt to deal with open source software in SDR applications. There is significant concern that open source software creates specific vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. I don't think this is very likely for two reasons. First, open source isn't the same as open architectures. Each product vendor would of necessity keep certain elements of their implementation secret, locking out all but the most determined hackers. But secondly, and more importantly, the real issue is how to protect individual phones from ever loading harmful software. We already have pretty good techniques for this from the PC world, and there are many effective approaches to solving this particular security concern. It could even be argued that the technical scrutiny that comes with open source actually enhances security and integrity; the real issue is controlling what software, open source or not, gets onto the mobile device. As I noted in my last column, the big issue with SDR isn't hackers or security: It is the need to lower the power demands of SDR implementations so that they have a prayer of running on batteries. The road to SDR-based handsets isn't at all paved yet, but open source is a relatively minor concern.
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Does anyone have the young nympho's number? Comments The iPhone continues to dominate this week, with many comments telling us or fellow readers to shut up. Nobody seems to have any intention of doing so, which is as it should be.â¦