Gerd's Blog

I have my iPhone for several months now and have to say that the hardware and parts of the software are really grate. Never the less several issues came up while I was using it and some of them are crucial for me.

1. I want to decide what application to install
The current situation how Apple is handling the app store an treating it’s customers is not acceptable any more. I have bought a phone and own the hardware so I decide what kind of applications are on my device. If apple want to protect their users it’s ok for me but they have to find a possibility to support my need too. Just watch Json’s comment on this issue in his This week in Startups.

2. Download my pod casts directly on my iPhone
This is really what I was missing until the beginning. Where is the refresh button like in the iTunes to update all pod casts with the new content. I don’t understand why I have to go to the app store to click on the new episode by hand and get an message afterwards that says “Sorry file is too big and can’t be loaded over the 3G network”. What is the issue with big files? I have a 3Gb all inclusive package it’s no big deal to download 20Mb.

3. Mark positions in a pod cast
While listening to pod casts or books on your iPhone, and I am listening to much of them, there is no possibility to mark positions for later research. I am really missing that. While listening to something interesting there is often no time to write it down or search the web for further information. I don’ want to search several minutes in the audio file to find the correct position to get the information I was looking for.

4. Us it as a USB Storage device
What have I bought here? – was the first reaction when i tried to store files on the iPhone. I had an old iPod and never thought that using it as a USB storage device wouldn’t be possible. The WebDav applications are no real replacement because there is sometimes no open WI-FI network available to transfer the data.

5. Bluetooth Profiles
Ok, I really don’t get this – why transferring pictures or vCards form a other phone to the iPhone via Bluetooth is not supported? MMS was/is not available so how can data be transferd from a phone that does not have a mail client? In general there is no reason why they support so view profiles.

6. Customizable Tones
The notification from the calendar that reminds me of a new appointment is not even hearable in room where nobody speaks, not to mention to sit in a open space. I am not fan of the typical Nokia notification tone for an appointment but at least you can hear it.

7. Better Gmail Application
The current mail application on the phone is one of the best of mobile systems I have ever seen but for a Gmail user I really missing the possibility to assign several different labels to a message and the powerful Android client and the web client is not a real alternative.

8. Better Calendar
At leas for me the G1 calendar was really grate to work with. It would be so nice to have a week view like in Outlook or calendar in a wide screen view to see the my appointments of the whole week.

I know that most of the features are available in a jailbroken iPhone but why is Apple treating it’s customers to do that? Just see the phone as a platform and not as a device you have to protect.

I am one of the luck people who has an Google wave account for some time now. At the moment, as nearly none of my friends has an account on the sandbox. Currently I am playing around with the system and following the developer discussions. It is really interesting how much work is already done by developers to extend the system.

I am really impressed by the functionality the system provides and how you can extend it. At the beginning I focused on the integration of third party systems like the publishing of photos and content to your blog and the communication back of the comments into your wave. I thought this may be also useful for our current issues with Social Networks to aggregate the content in one place but I have to admit that this may not be the best way to see wave and aggregate Social Networks.

When Google presented the system on the Google I/O conference they introduced it as “The new mail system” which was a really good teaser to get people excited about it, but it is not what I think wave really is. I wouldn’t see it as a protocol that finally supports the collaboration on content between people over organization and provider boarders. For Google, who treats mail with GMail and the Google Docs integration already as some kind of collaboration platform it may make sense to call it is as the new mail system but for others it may not. Wiki systems (e.g. Confluence) already tried to provide such platforms but the protocol to exchange the content between organizations to share just certain stuff and bring in information from other systems was still missing. This may really be a revolution within this area but may not be as easy as the introduction of SMTP back in the days of RFC’s because there are hundreds of companies and thousands of people who have their own products and opinions that need to come together to agree on such a new collaboration protocol as a standard for the industry.

I am really excited about the wave system and hope that I can play around with some of my friends in the near future to try out how this real time experience changes the way we collaborate in the future.