No, It Doesn’t Play Pong
Steve Jobs says
that he wants to keep third-party applications off of the
Apple iPhone:
Mr. Jobs also appears to be restricting the potential for third-party software developers to write applications for the new handset — from ringtones to word processors.
…“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”
If he wants to keep third-party apps off of the iPhone, I suppose that’s his prerogative, but it seems like a mistake: the marketing page shows the phone doing all sorts of nifty things, and even though it never says the iPhone is a PDA,
the implication is there:
All the power and sophistication of the world’s most advanced operating system — OS X — is now available on a small, handheld device that gives you access to true desktop-class applications and software
Let’s face it: this is another instance of trying to
.
The thing’s got a processor, a Unixy OS, a browser, a network connection, a keyboard. It’s only a matter of time before someone figures out how to install new apps and/or make it use Skype instead of Cingular. So why fight it?
(HT Ron Gilbert.)