Tuesday August 19, 2008 iPhone is like Guess Jeans from the 1980s
The iPhone in many ways reminds me of the Guess brand of jeans of the late 1980s: all flash, no substance. Back in those days (in the 1980s), I wore Levi's jeans because they did their job which was to (oddly enough) be a pair of durable blue jeans, fit well, and cost a fair price. But, there was another brand of jeans at the time called Guess jeans, about twice the price of Levi's and didn't last as long and weren't as comfortable. Well, people loooooved Guess jeans, wanted to be seen wearing Guess jeans, wore them with the label proudly displayed, and didn't really care that they weren't a good pair of jeans. My college roommate called up his parents and whined at them to buy him new pairs of Guess jeans, because everybody wore them. "But, dad, I need to have Guess jeans! You don't get it! All the popular people wear them!" See: Dr. Mac: iPhone not really a good phone Here's a quote: That all changed Saturday afternoon when my 1-day old iPhone 3G had a catastrophic failure and froze at the Apple startup screen. I tried every trick in the book to no avail before swallowing my pride and heading to my local Apple Store at The Domain in Austin, TX. And, see: BusinessWeek: iPhone not really a good phone Here's another quote: Complaints over dropped calls and choppy Web connections on Apple's iPhone 3G have sparked a wave of debate in the blogosphere over the root cause of the problems. Two well-placed sources tell BusinessWeek.com the glitches are related to a chip inside Apple's music-playing cell phone.So, the iPhone doesn't have Java ME technology, but I've come to realize from the latest reports that is only one of the many major faults of the iPhone. It's really a mobile phone for the vapid and the vain who want to be seen with a designer label, not have a phone that works. Just like Guess jeans in the 1980s. "Yeah, it can't play any of the cool Java ME games nor run any of the important enterprise Java ME apps, no it's not reliable enough to trust having as your mobile phone when your wife's pregnant, yes it drops a lot of calls much of the time, and yes it crashes and hangs a lot." "But, it's an iPhone! Everybody's got one! I look soooo coooool because I have one." Gag me with a spoon (popular quote from the 1980s). I'll just keep wearing my Levi's jeans and use my Java ME cell phone (which works, by the way). I'll leave the iPhone for the tragically hip and the hopelessly carrier-signal-less people of the world. :-) |
Hinkmond
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Aren't you kind of conflating things that are unrelated? The iPhone's connection problems are almost certainly at the level of the hardware or the OS, and have absolutely nothing to do with the languages you can use to write programs for it. Ditto with the startup problems -- in fact, Apple's decision not to allow VMs to run in the background on the iPhone was probably driven to try to avoid this sort of problem (without total success, obviously).
You have to understand that the vast majority of cell phone customers don't care what language the apps they use are written in. The marketing appeal of the iPhone to its customers is that its user interface is very intuitive and well designed, that it integrates very well with the PIM and media apps on their PCs, and that applications for it are very simple to buy and install. If it flops, it will flop because it fails to meet those expectations, which have exactly nothing to do with allowing Java on the phone (except in the sense that having Java on the phone complicates the purchase and installation of applications). You basically seem to be saying that "The iPhone doesn't have Java and it sucks, ha ha ha", when the reasons it sucks -- or at least the reasons you give here -- have nothing to do with Java. It comes across as mere schadenfruede, and doesn't really explain why Java ME would make the iPhone better.
Posted by jfruh on August 19, 2008 at 05:12 PM PDT #
Hi jfruh,
Thanks for the comment.
No, in this post I never said that because the iPhone doesn't have Java it sucks. (I might have said "ha ha ha" though :-)).
In this blog post I tried to convey that the iPhone is becoming more apparent as cell phone bought because of designer appeal (Hey, look at me, I'm cool! I have an iPhone!), not because of good functionality (crashes, hangs, dropped calls, etc.).
Hinkmond
Posted by Hinkmond Wong on August 19, 2008 at 05:32 PM PDT #
I have owned most of the major smartphone platforms over the users. I had the original Compaq iPaq, next generation Windows Mobile 4 iPaq, a Symbian UIQ Sony device and now the iPhone.
And I can quite conclusively say that the iPhone is far and a way the best designed, most complete device I've used. I have the 3G model at the moment and it hasn't given me any trouble whatsoever.
That is not to say there aren't users who are having trouble, or those who find some of the limitations (no MMS, no video etc.) unappealing, but in terms of my needs it is an outstanding device and has nothing to do with image.
All the previous devices I have used attempted to offer a mobile internet experience, but none ever succeeded. The iPhone is the first device where I actually often choose to use it for browsing or email over getting out my laptop.
In terms of its stability, my experience with the 3G has been that it is infinitely more stable than any windows or symbian device I've tried. It has crashed once on me sure, but I've had it since day one. The windows mobile devices I owned crashed on a daily basis.
It works because Apple have very successfully integrated the entire life cycle by integrating great desktop apps with a very good phone. Like you I'm a Java developer first, but as the previous poster said it really doesn't matter that there isn't Java to anyone but Sun.
Posted by Graeme on August 20, 2008 at 07:47 AM PDT #
Hi Graeme,
Thanks for the comment. Nice summary of your experiences so far.
I've seen comparisons of iPhone to the RIM Blackberry that put the RIM device ahead of the iPhone in terms of stability, ease-of-use, and functionality especially to do e-mail and Web browsing.
However, the cachet of owning the iPhone seems in many cases to put the iPhone ahead, not because the functionality is much better than certain devices like the RIM Blackberry, but more because of the intangible "designer lock-in" mentality that Steve Jobs does oh so well. :-)
Yes, the iPhone does beat WinMobile and Symbian devices for certain things, but the ironic part is that there are some iPhone owners like Dr. Mac and the guy in the BusinessWeek article (see links above), who overlook that they get shafted by Apple ProCare, have a phone that crashes at times, or need to also use another "backup" phone because their iPhone doesn't work reliably, however they still love their iPhone. Go figure! As my two links (in the blog post above) show, brand loyalty sometimes clouds the mind and dulls the senses.
As for mentioning Java ME technology, you have to always take that with a grain of salt in my blog posts (see the sub-title in my banner above). I try to stay "on topic" since I do work for Sun and I do work on Java ME. ;-) So sometimes I stretch a bit, with tongue in cheek. :-)
Hinkmond
Posted by Hinkmond Wong on August 20, 2008 at 10:43 AM PDT #