Josh Ferguson

Why I'm Disappointed By The iPhone

I think what you're saying here is that it's not open to other carriers. I think that's an issue for some reasons but I think It will be resolved by late 2008 early 2009. I don't know what deal they have with Cingular but I hope it goes away fast. The nice thing about it from a marketing perspective is the rapid exposure and national sales channels a partner like Cingular can provide.

As far as opened in other ways though I think that's wrong. I develop web applications and also Mac applications on OS X. I can tell you the developer community is buzzing about the fact that this runs OS X as a platform. That means all of the experience that will be available from developing on TIger (10.4) and the upcoming Leopard (10.5), which Jobs said the phone will be running, will already be available. The fact that I can start coding something once they release the developer kit using my previous knowledge, and build it for the iPhone when it's available is not just a plus, it's a deal maker. This will attract a huge number of developers who can whip up good applications in a matter of a month or two. I'd look for the number of apps for this to explode through the rest of this year.

As far as Symbian, MS's Mobile OS, and all of those other crippled useless platforms, they will begin to lose even more traction with the development community. The stagnation in the market that these companies have caused is something they will have to figure out how to deal with as they begin to build competing products to slow down Apple's growth in market share, which admittedly will initially be small and not much of a worry for them for the first few years.