Only a few days after the release of the Apple iPhone, I’m already tired of hearing about it. Every news program felt the need to dedicate large portions of their coverage to people purchasing these things and asking them their thoughts on it…or asking others if they plan to buy one. Like uninformed lemmings, people stood in line for hours to get one of these things.
Listen…
- There were Internet Phones before the iPhone
- There were MP3 players before iPod
- There was online music before iTunes
My 2-year old Treo 700w gets email, surfs the web, takes calls and integrates seamlessly with Outlook/Exchange on my desktop. If I add a contact to Outlook at my desk, it shows up in the Treo. Vice versa. Same with appointments or anything else. Furthmore, I don’t NEED to store music on my Treo. If I want, I can stream my entire music library (sitting on my media server at home) to my Treo using a free media server like TVersity. Because the Treo is based on Windows Mobile, I can add just about any feature or application to the phone that I want. And if the feature doesn’t exist, there are development tools available for download so I can write it myself. Does my Treo have its problems? Yes it does. It can be downright frustrating at times. Is the iPhone “slicker” than my Treo? Absolutely! The iPhone is a work of art. Would I trade my Treo for the iPhone? Not on your life.
I will hand it to Apple…they have a way of taking an EXISTING product, making it work better for the masses, giving it a cool package, a cool name, and somehow making us think they were the first to come out with it. Further (and what really irritates me) Apple has found a way to make their “i” Device synonymous with all devices of the breed. “iPod” or “like an iPod” is now synonymous with all MP3 players, even though MP3 players have been around since the mid-90′s. “iTunes” is now becoming synonymous with all online media stores, even though Napster, Yahoo, and Rhapsody have very large, very flexible services.
Some may say this is just simply good business, but I feel that in doing so Apple is doing a disservice to the eventual progression of these technologies. If you buy an iDevice, you are buying into the “Apple Way” and limiting yourself from ever expanding or enhancing your capabilities in the future. You send a message (with your purchasing dollars) that directly discourages the adoption of open standards. Furthermore, other companies (ones who make more universal devices) are now forced by market pressure to make their devices look and work more like the industry leading “iDevices”. Take a look at every MP3 player. What do they all look like? They look like iPods.
Let’s take a look at the iPod. First off, you don’t have the flexibility you have with a “generic” MP3 player. Take the task of loading music onto it. Most of the generic MP3 players simply plug in and become a drive letter on your PC. You then copy files to it. YOU are in control of how you get the files to the device…whether it be the Vendor-provided software, some other third-party Media Player, or you can write your OWN script or software to perform the task. Sure, you can use the handy wizard-based software to do it, but the key is that you don’t HAVE to.
This is not the case with Apple. iPod REQUIRES use of its software suite to use the player. This is a double-whammy of disservice to the technical community. First, it creates a community of ignorant users who don’t know how to do it any other way. Second, it locks these users into a proprietary way of doing things. It converts their files to a proprietary “Apple” format such that if an iPod user ever DOES buy a Creative Zen player (which is a MUCH better choice, by the way) they will pretty much be starting over. Apple’s methods discourage innovation and independent community development of the technology.
And by the way….ever wonder why MP3 became a popular technology in the first place? Community development. If it weren’t for WinAmp, Napster, and LAME alone (all community-developed technologies) I doubt MP3 or PC-based music would be where it is today.
So back to the iPhone. You might be wondering “Why is the iPhone bad, yet the Treo, which is based on Microsoft’s Windows OS, good?”. That is a perfectly legitimate question. And while I would rather that there was an open-source alternative OS for phones (we’ll see if Google can do anything with Android), the Windows mobile phones are currently the lesser of the two evils.
Support technologies that follow open standards, do not lock users into a single method, and that allow for community development.
March 9th, 2010 
Virtualization
