srhawk

Impact of 3.0

Posted on April 20, 2009 by srhawk in iPhone

In the announcement of iPhone OS 3.0 from March, one particular feature stands out as perhaps the most important long-term. And that is the opening up to developers of the ability to access and use external I/O devices via the dock connector and/or Bluetooth.

While many of the other features are certainly welcome and important, including Bluetooth A2DP support, cut-and-paste, universal Spotlight search, and push notifications, none has quite the level of the potential impact on the iPhone OS as a computing platform as the addition of access to external devices. Adding access to external devices brings the iPhone into the world of true multi-purpose computing platforms, like the Mac, the Windows PC, and more.

With this feature enabled, the iPhone can become the core CPU, if you will, of a full computing platform, if so desired. Now one can add such things as external keyboards, external displays, other input and output devices like scanners, bar code readers, and even printers. Heck a full “docking station” akin to those for laptops may even be possible.

Imagine bringing your iPhone home or to work and docking it. This new iPhone dock is connected to a flat-panel LCD on which you can now view the iPhone OS, or at least output from specific applications like the iPod, Mail, Safari, and certain enabled 3rd-party apps including an office application suite. Imagine that your iPhone in the dock is linked to a full keyboard by wire or by Bluetooth and also to a local printer for printer-enabled apps. The possibilities are tremendous.

Through this addition and through further extension of the OS and hardware, the iPhone and the iPhone OS could easily become a complete portable computing platform. Such a platform could indeed change the way we use and think about our “personal” computers in the future. Now perhaps we can see why Apple does not seem to care much for making a netbook. The iPhone as a platform could end up supplanting most of what notebooks and laptop computers do in our lives! And an iPhone or iPod touch with a larger 5″, 7″ or even 10″ screen could easily make a netbook seem far outdated and limiting.

Something to think about….

App Submitted

Posted on April 13, 2009July 2, 2009 by srhawk in iPhone

Well, the plunge has been taken. I’ve submitted an iPhone app to the Apple iTunes App Store! Keeping fingers crossed that it makes it through the review process okay. If it does, it will be available free on the App Store for a limited time.

I’ll post a link here when it’s available. And you can check out www.srhawk.com for more info as it becomes available.

March Musings – Part 2 (iPhone OS 3.0)

Posted on March 17, 2009March 17, 2009 by srhawk in iPhone

Briefly, I’ve decided to NOT try to predict what Apple is going to announce later today for iPhone OS 3.0. I felt that there would not be much point to speculating so close to the event. And I don’t want to contribute to the raising of unrealistic expectations.

I had been planning to post something yesterday, but I was too busy trying to actually write an iPhone app. For now, I hope for cool new things but refuse to expect too much.

And we’ll all know more at 10:00 am PDT (1:00 pm EDT).

Not a Mac Cultist Yet

Posted on March 13, 2009March 13, 2009 by srhawk in Uncategorized

Let me clarify something: I am not “one of those Mac people.” I have been a user and owner of a Microsoft/Intel-based PC since 1984, when they were called “IBM-compatibles”. And, truth be told, I do not yet personally own a Mac myself unless you count the iPhone (although I use a couple of Macs that are owned by my roommate on an almost daily basis now).

The first computer I owned was (and is… it still works) an IBM PCjr. Yes, that’s right, the much maligned “failure” that was the PCjr, IBM’s first attempt at a true “home” computer. And I learned a lot from that computer, using and relying on it for longer than any other computer I have owned. I even upgraded its memory by soldering new memory chips onto a memory card’s board! I learned to look for details on system requirements and what programs really did in order to be sure they’d run on the not-quite-100-percent-IBM-compatible PCjr.

And I actually worked as a cooperative education engineering student for IBM from 1984 to 1986. As an IBM employee, I used to bristle at Steve Jobs public comments about IBM as “the enemy” and “Big Brother.” I knew IBM to be just like any other company: a collection of people, bad and good – but mostly good, just trying to make a living. I thought Jobs was an arrogant a$$.

But throughout that time, I recognized the Macintosh as a very nice little machine. It just didn’t make sense for me to own one at the time. The incompatibilities between the Mac OS of the 80s and 90s and DOS/Windows of the same timeframe were much greater than they are now. Heck, the two systems couldn’t even read each other’s floppy diskettes. Now there is no need or use for floppy diskettes. They have been replaced by CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-Rs, DVD-RWs, and flash drives and flash cards, all of which use fairly universal file systems (ironically based on FAT32, an extension of the old MS-DOS FAT structure). So it is now much easier to go back and forth between Macs and PCs.

And that’s what I do. I use my PCs for some things (at work and for games) and Macs for others (video, iTunes, and development).

Steve Jobs may still be arrogant, but I also recognize that he is just a person, mostly good, much like those at IBM, who is trying to make a living and do something he finds meaningful. And he has become something of a visionary at Apple in the last decade or so. Apple’s products seem to stand apart because of it. As Steve Jobs and Apple like to say, “They just work.”