The View from the Spaghetti Factory (proper redesign coming soon!)

In the long, speculative build-up to the announcement of the iPhone, my attitude varied between mild intrigue and real excitement. As the sort of mobile phone user for whom being able to talk to people is one of the least important functions, I knew that the right mix of features could easily put me in the market for yet another Apple toy.

In this particular case, though, they just haven’t hit the mark for me. First of all, the cut-down version of OSX used on the iPhone doesn’t allow for the use of third-party applications. That’s a bad limitation, and Steve Jobs’s explanation doesn’t really wash with me. I don’t recall hearing of Sony Ericsson’s being criticised because of their smartphones bringing down mobile networks.

There certainly quite a tasty selection of software already on the iPhone, but the internet features seem to be geared towards access to Wi-Fi or, at the very least, EDGE networks. Free public Wi-Fi is still a rarity here in the UK; the rip-off wireless services offered by cafés and certain rail companies are more common, but still not sufficient for widespread mobile phone use. As for EDGE, Orange’s UK network was only launched last year and still seems quite limited.

No, if I’m going to be making the best of the ridiculously expensive mobile internet facilities offered by UK service providers, I want to use WAP sites for the basic information services (train timetables, football scores) and a browser (such as Opera Mobile for cut-down, bandwidth-saving versions of regular websites. See? That’s why I want to use third-party apps, iSteve.

Finally, although the interface looks absolutely beautiful (in true Apple style), I wonder how effective the touch-screen system will be when you want to start sending emails or writing documents. For that sort of task, I would have thought that handwriting recognition (with a stylus) or a physical QWERTY keyboard would be minimum requirements. With that in mind, I think I’ll be sticking with my P900 for a while yet…

From Gizmodo… Apple Lossless on the Way to iTunes?

Having whined at length about the service offered by Apple’s iTunes Music Store, I certainly hope so. Tracks encoded at 128kbps are fine for quick’n'easy download purposes, but pretty pathetic when you’re paying for them, especially when you can often get actual CDs from Amazon for only a little more. I know the price issue is largely due to extreme money-grabbing by the record industry, but still… Apple knew all of that before they set up the store. Thanks to this unfavourable combination of quality and price, I’ve bought maybe nine or ten tracks from the iTMS, certainly no more.

I would have been happy with a two-tier mp3/AAC service (128kbps and 320kbps, for example) but lossless compression would be fantastic, bringing us one large step closer to the “music on demand” ideal. Of course, this could all be just another frothy internet rumour, but if not, the next question is: how much will the lossless downloads cost? If Apple don’t compete with Amazon’s prices, the whole thing could die a very early death, but if they can absorb the extra storage/bandwidth costs, I’ll be a very happy punter.