Tuesday, March 17, 2009

iPhone 3.0 - how many of my wishes were granted?

Here's how my personal wish list of last week played out. The Good stuff is in purple, Bad news in Red...

Gordon's Notes: Dreaming of iPhone 3.0 - my wishes

  1. External keyboard support like the folding keyboards that were once sold with Palm. Maybe, since 3rd parties can now use the connector.
  2. A standard way for 3rd party applications to synchronize with the desktop (maybe through the heretofore off-limits dock connector). No, this was not included (my first impression was wrong).
  3. Something that lets me do instant messaging without paying SMS fees. Yes.
  4. A Calendar API so 3rd party apps can get at Calendar data and manipulate it. No, this was not included.
  5. Filemaker for the iPhone (not Apple so doesn't count)
  6. Fix the weird scrolling and text limit problems with long contact and calendar notes (unknown)
  7. Make the Calendar app more real. Better control of alerts, ability to do invitations, etc. (unknown)
  8. Tethering. Widely expected, but not included. Of course there is the open connector. Either AT&T's network isn't ready or Apple and AT&T couldn't agree on revenue sharing and price. (Update: in the Q&A Apple confirmed the phone is ready, it's now all about the operators.)
  9. Support multi-account synchronization: Additional calendar types sounds like it does at least part of what I want.
  10. Cut, Copy, Paste: I assumed that was a done deal so I didn't bother to list it. They did this one very well.

Against this list there are former "Demands" that I've now given up on ...

  1. Tasks and Notes: They did Note Sync after all, no tasks though. I don't care since Google is going to do Tasks.
  2. Search: I gave up on this one, but Apple did it anyway. Yay!

Since there's an API for iPod.app I assume Clock.app will finally be able set music alarms. I'm perfectly happy with using Spotlight to find apps.

Overall, very good news for me. Sometime this summer (September?) I'm going to get somewhere between 50% and 80% of what I hoped for. I liked Apple's hardware announcements last month so that's twice in a row Apple has done good things for me.

Update: Tidbits claimed that VOIP is among the API services. Huh?! That can't be right.

Update 2: Ars Techica says the same thing. iPhone 3.0 will offer VOIP? Am I confused? Between Google Voice and iPhone VOIP why do I need all those AT&T minutes and long distance services?

Update 3/18/09: More like 50% of what I'd asked for. Unfortunately two of my key requests, Calendar access and a standard sync infrastructure were not included. I've revised my original post. So for me it's only a good announcement, not a great announcement.

2 comments:

Charlie Stross said...

I should note that Dataviz have been talking openly about porting Documents-to-Go to the iPhone for a few months now, and leaked some progress reports; QuickOffice is also being ported.

I'd be astonished if the arrival of proper word processing/spreadsheet/presentation apps wasn't followed rapidly by (a) keyboards and (b) pocket projectors. Especially as bluetooth keyboards have been demo'd already by the jailbreak hacker community.

At which point, the iPhone is getting close to replacing my old palm ...

JGF said...

The original Palm was a work of genius. I wish I'd kept my Palm III, we do have a pile of older models in the closet.

With the external keyboards and the various productivity apps (spreadsheet, database, word, etc) the Palm could serve as a laptop alternative for some people.

As you point out the iPhone still can't do that ...

PS. I'm a reader and fan of a Charles Stross. Just in case you're related.