Jobs announces a third party SDK for the world’s most closed phone

I always thought that Apple got a pass from dazzled media over the closed nature of the iPhone. For all of Apple’s talk of being consumer-centric and user-friendly, the basic design of the iPhone made it by far the most closed mobile environment of all. You couldn’t even get a ringtone download until last month, and the selection of those tones on iTunes is truly pathetic. Steve Jobs trotted out a laundry list of excuses for the lack of third-party inclusion (viruses, bringing down the AT&T network, etc.) but none of it really explained why I could’t download a decent game or ringtone.

Apple apparently is moving toward a greater spirit of inclusion and true user-friendliness today. Not only did the company announce that it was lowering the price of its DRM-free iTunes Plus tracks, but it also said that an SDK would be available to third party developers for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

According to Jobs, the kit will be available in February because Apple is trying to ensure two things at once. First, it wants a development kit that gives third parties a good experience and access to as much of the multi-touch interface as possible. Second, they are working to ensure that these third-party apps do not comprimise the security of the phone. Jobs seems a little touchy on this matter, as he goes out of his way to rationalize his rationalizations for keeping such a tight leash on his coveted new tech hit.

Sayeth the great and powerful Jobs: "Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target."

What does this mean for develoeprs and the mobile eco-system? Well, it is very good news for the two million or so of us who do own the phone, but I am not sure it has that big an immediate impact on the rest of the mobile world. As has often been the case with the iPhone, its infleunce seems indirect. By giving users and developers a lush and flexible interface and palette, the iPhone obliquely pressures the rest of the mobile community to follow suit.

Posted under Michael's Blog

The long-awaited Wi-Fi iTunes Store opens for business

Apple takes aim at yet another longstanding bug in the mobile content eco-system with the release Friday of its Wi-Fi iTunes Store. Owners of the iPhone and new touch iPod were treated to a firmware upgrade that adds an icon to the interface for iTunes. When within Wi-Fi range, you can access the iTunes catalog and buy and download a tune directly to the devices.

Posted under Michael's Blog

Ringtones Have a Mixed Week

Industry analysts have predicted for years that the mobile ringotne fad had to ebb sometime. While there have been signs that European taste for tones has come to a bit of a plateau, the latest M:Metric figues suggest that the U.S. still has a hearty taste for the custom ring-a-dings. About 9.4% of U.S. mobile subscribers, more than 20%, still download a ringtone in a given month, while about half as many do so throughout Europe.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the mobile press has made a very big deal over Verizon pulling then restoring the Bob Marley ringtone catalog to its phones this week. Sure this involved a rights issue with the Marley family, but was it really worth all the ink I have seen?

Similarly the silly "ringles" story  seems even more emtpy than the Marley saga. That music publishers want to add a ringtone to CD singles as a way to revive that market just seems like a desperate attempt at packaging novelty.

Lost in the shuffle of less important stories is the actual launch of Apple iTunes ringtones. You can right click on a song you have purchased and make a ringtone within iTunes that will pass on to your iPhone. The tool is very clever and easy to use. You get up to a 30-second clip, and you can drag the ringer window across the length of the audio timeline interface to make a ringtone of any piece of the song you want. This move toward true customization of ringtones in such an easy interface should be bigger news. Alas, Apple does not seem to have secured many labels in this deal, and the iTunes store makes it very difficult to find songs that are enabled for ringtones. This is one of Apple’s few missteps recently, but it certainly suggests the kind of tension that exists between the media industries and Apple’s iTunes model.

See Also

• Apple

Posted under Michael's Blog

The Apple iPhone rebate keeps the pressure on the wireless industry

Why did Steve Jobs really reduce the iPhone price a whopping $200 only 90 days after its release? Business 2.0’s blog reels off ten possible reasons. Did Apple just pass along reduced costs? Were they detecting slowing sales they needed to tweak. Or was it just simple price gouging of early adopters like me?

But when Steve Jobs responded to iPhoner complaints about having paid $499 and $599 in the past month and a half, the Web exploded in feint praise. Jobs will be giving me, an early buyer, $100 in credit to buy more from him. I am good with that. I had my eye on the iTouch anyway. Om Malik argues that the rebate move demonstrated the power of social networking online and the people’s new ability to wage a class action protest in a number of hours.

Well, yes. But the real message behind Apple’s move is that customer service is worth more to this brand than a $100 or so in lost revenue. When was the last time a major cell phone OEM or a carrier made a similar gesture? From day one, the unheralded lesson of the iPhone was the power of positive conumer experience. I personally went to both AT&T and an Apple store in search of my iPhone, and the difference between the two experiences made me feel embarrassed of the traditional wireless industry. Apple knew how to sell these things, explain these things, and service anyone walking through that door. It is not suprising to me that Piper Jaffray analysts showed how Apple stores were outselling AT&T outlets by 7-to-1.

It is wrong to believe that Apple gains user loyalty from sexy gadgetry alone. The real impact of the iPhone is how frowsy it makes other wireless technology look in its design and its relationship to consumers.

Posted under Michael's Blog

Some developers are up to the iPhone challenge but others? Not so much

There is a tendency for the Apple-istas to praise any new application made expressly for the iPhone. There is the excellent Plusmo widget portal, the very usable Digg for iPhone, and the truly exceptional new Facebook for iPhone. The iPhone and gadget blogosphere are deservedly abuzz over this one. Mashable called it "stunning," while TechCrunch called it the best iPhone app ever. I think the Facebook app is wonderful, but it does lack the ability to upload new material easily.

Meanwhile there really are some mediocre attempts at riding the iPhone wave. Texterity, the digital magazine supplier has an interesting demo that puts full versions of magazines onto the iPhone screen, although I am still wondering why. I think the technology is impressive. I imagine there might be some use for it in digital cataloging, but it still looks like something that was done for the sake of doing it. Speaking of which, there is the Harper Collins and their preview site for new books. The iPhone version does so little to format the pages properly for the phone, one wonders why they bothered except to appear cutting edge.

One of the great things about the iPhone is low barrier to entry for deveopment. One of the bad things about the iPhone may also be this low barrier to entry. The best apps are following Apple’s lead in identifying the things that people most want to do while mobile and focusing solely on those elements. The less impressive ones leave you wondering "what for?"

Posted under Michael's Blog

Bejeweled, DailyMotion, Digg all want a bite from that Apple mojo

With only a fraction of the audience of any other mobile platform the iPhone is attracting dedicated development the way a chic new mall with little traffic sucks in upscale retailers. Everyone wants a piece of the hype, and so branded media and many marquee Web sites are pouring iPhone Web apps into the mix just this past week. The most visible, PopCap Games’s signature game Bejeweled, rolled out yesterday and in recent days DailyMotion opened a section of its streaming video portal formatted for the mobile Safari browser. Both releases are some of the best examples of what is possible under the iPhone’s Web-only platform for third party digital media developers.

As a Sci-Tech Today piece announcing Bejeweled points out, it is challenging to develop games for a mobile platform as Web-only apps. The Bejeweled game for the iPhone is free, but other PopCap games either come with ad support or as for-pay downloads. Making a subscription gateway for a game that players can’t even keep locally on their phone could be a tough model to sell, even to those Bejeweled-addled soccer moms.

Web-based games like Bejeweled also suffer on this platform from a lack of audio. Even via its modest speaker, the iPhone has good sound, so current third party apps miss an entire, vital dimension of game design.

See Also

• Digg

Posted under Michael's Blog

Mobile video aggregator brings iTunes-like functionality to phones

One of the most interesting mobile video plays and technologies I have seen recently is from MyWaves.com, primarily an off-deck video aggregator that brings iTunes-like functionality to phones. Getting content providers in the mobile arena to provide hard subscription numbers is tough enough, so MyWaves’ announcement yesterday that it had signed its one millionth subscriber is notable. According to CEO Rajeev Raman, the service is signing people up at a rate of 25,00 to 35,000 a day and serving one to two million video views a day as well. 

MyWaves only launched in December, and its marketing profile has been slight, but its exponential growth is a testament to how quickly mobile content can scale. While the initial model for MyWaves.com has been free, ad-supported, off-deck distribution, the company also announced yesterday it was launching a BREW version of its Java client on Alltel, where it would run as a $3.99 service. There is more on the Alltel deal at FierceMobileContent.

The most remarkable aspect of MyWaves is how fluidly it brings existing video material from the Web to the phone. Most of the branded video podcasts from CNN, ABC, RocketBoom, Ask a Ninja, etc. can be added to your customized video list online or on the phone deck itself, and the two stay in synch, much like an iPod and iTunes. Raman tells me that he is hoping to bring the ad model to many of the video podcasts already on the Web because he believes mobile distribution of this scale offers better CPMs than they might get. At the same time, MyWaves lets user create channels of content from video and even make them private for sharing among a select group. Part of the MyWaves model also involves giving any brand or content provider online the ability to mobilize their Web video with a single SND2MBL button that pushes a Web-based video through the MyWaves system and out to any designated cell phone number. The MyWaves staff has experience at Yahoo, Tivo, CBS, and PayPal. The experience shows in the product, which is among the smoothest implementations of mobile video I have seen. MyWaves is also among the first video services to offer an iPhones version.

See Also

• MyWaves
• Alltel

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