Who cares about Copy/Paste? You’ve got YouTube and the AppStore!
Another gratuitous link of interest over to All About Symbian, one of my other stomping grounds, in which (I love advocacy and comparison pieces) I’ve been seeing if S60 phones can match some of the Apple iPhone’s ‘party tricks’.
Hopefully you’ll find it an interesting little read, although the main thing to take out of it from the iPhone’s point of view is that in several cases I found it necessary to have third party software on the Nokia N95 in order to get close to the iPhone. And, in the case, of the AppStore bit at the end, S60 phones simply had no answer.
An even more interesting list would be ‘What’s needed to bring the iPhone up to S60 phone-like specifications?’. Apple’s got a great set of built-in apps and a superb UI, but I’d argue that, to achieve real mainstream must-have status, top priorities should be:
- A decent camera. 2 megapixels with no flash just doesn’t cut it when Nokia has been making 5 megapixel, auto-focus camera phones for over two years, some with Xenon flash, and with most phone makers having also now introduced 8 megapixel cameras. Yes, people don’t really need 8mp, but 5mp is a definite ‘sweet spot’.
- Doing a deal to get real time navigation on the iPhone. Google Maps is great, but it doesn’t go the extra mile when you’re using it to navigate while driving.
- As previously mentioned, add Copy/Paste and a common file store to the iPhone’s OS. This is an utter show stopper for many professionals.
Carnival of the Mobilists #146
A quick heads up: the latest Carnival has been published at London Calling. Some excellent posts as ever, especially some technical notes on mobile video call quality. And the Post of the Week? Look no further than All About iPhone’s thoughts on the Nokia 5800 
Many thanks Andrew.
James’ App Store Pick of The Week!
I had not heard of the Tower Defence game genre until I came across Fieldrunners by Subatomic Studios. In short, the aim of any TD game is to stop wave after wave of advancing enemy troops by placing defensive towers across the play area.
Why the Nokia 5800 is good news for the iPhone
Nokia recently announced their first S60 5th edition touchscreen phone – the 5800 XpressMusic, Frankly, it looks superb. I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow comparison – ShinyShiny already has that covered – but the entrance of the world’s dominant phone manufacturer into the space carved out by Apple demands a closer look. What will be the knock on effect for the iPhone?
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For whom the App Store bell tolls
Thanks to Daring Fireball for the heads up on the iPhone Application Graveyard, which lists all the apps that Apple has removed or not approved. It’s not quite comprehensive – there are a few more mentioned over at iPhonefootprint.
Looking through the apps that didn’t make it, I saw one I hadn’t heard of before – Freedom Time by Juggleware. This app counted down the last days of George W. Bush in the Oval Office. But it never made it to the store.
Copy and Paste and the iPhone
Right from the very start (July 2007), the voices clamouring for Copy and Paste functionality on the Apple iPhone have been growing stronger and stronger. Is this really big deal? Why have Apple not already implemented this in the operating system? How could they include it without complicating the UI too much? What other implications might this have? And is it likely to happen? What about workarounds in the meantime?
Yes, Copy and Paste IS a big deal. Ask anyone who’s tried doing actual work on an iPhone and they’ll tell you. Better still, try it yourself. Admittedly, the lack of a basic Office suite restricts the scope of Copy and Paste slightly, but the flexibility of being able to selectively lift bits out of an email or text for inclusion in another communication is significant. And I’m one of several million iPhone users who are rather keen to see it in place.
TV on the iPhone – two different approaches
Two interesting announcements have come my way today – one concerning BBC iPlayer, and the other concerning Youtube. What’s interesting about them is the way in which they treat the video that they offer, and what that means for watching TV on your iPhone.
AroundMe in the Vicinity of Google Maps
The sheer usefulness of finding ‘stuff around you’ has meant the emergence of several pretenders, despite the ubiquitous presence of Google Maps itself. AroundMe (at first commercial, but now free) and Vicinity (always free) are also well established now, but in the interests of keeping things simple (and reducing the clutter slightly on your application screens), the question remains ‘Is it worth looking things up in these ‘extra’ solutions?’
With this in mind, I put all three to the same tests. Read on.
James’ App Store Pick of The Week!
Welcome to this new weekly feature. Even at this early stage the App Store is changing the way we think about mobile phone applications and in many respects the way we think about all applications. Apple have created a farmers market, a place where even an indivdual developer can make a living from Apple’s pocket computer platform.
With the recent 2.1 upgrade bringing faster and more reliable application installations, I figured it was time to take a closer look at some of the very best iPhone applications available.
X-Plane’s mere existence validates iPhone
I have a confession to make.
I’m quite old. Mid-40s, at least. Old enough to remember the earliest days of home computing. Dragon, PET, Sinclair ZX81, then Amiga and the earliest IBM PCs and the RM 380z, in my case. Then on through the PC’s AT and then Pentium series and through to the Celerons and Centrinos of today. And, on the Mac front, similar progress through to today’s iMacs and MacBook Pros.
And throughout it all, there was one application which validated the platform as a serious computer. And, you know what, the Apple iPhone shares this application. (more…)