Why iPhone should remain closed
Recently when driving with a friend in the backseat I heard his Treo startup chime no less than a dozen times. His Treo was caught in a "boot loop" familiar to anyone with the device and copiously documented in Palm's knowledge base article on Resetting Your Device.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming my Treo. I couldn't live without it, I'm just starting to doubt the wisdom of device as important as a mobile phone that's totally open to third parties. My Treo 700p gets finicky sometimes and likes to reboot itself spontaneously. Other times it just needs a good reboot to keep it happy.
Granted, I could strip off all the third party software that's installed on it, but what good what that do me? Sure, I'd have the bare minimums, contacts, calendar, email and Web. But what about my RSS client, password vault and IM applications? And No Limit Texas Hold'Em and my ringtone player? Ok the last two are frivolous, but I'd be handicapped without the others.
Which gets me to Apple. I've been a vocal critic of the iPhone's missing features (Part 1, Part 2) and one of the major things that I've complained about is Apple's closed API and lack of support for third-party applications. But the more I think about it, maybe Apple is doing the right thing here. I mean, do you really want to have your iPhone rebooting every six seconds so that you can have a wacky Scoobie Doo ringtone?
Apple can pull this off if they provide a few more iPhone applications that what they've demo'd at Macworld SF 2007. I really want to have a VOIP client like Skype or perhaps iChatOut on iPhone but fear that the suits at Cingular/AT&T vetoed that as part of Apple's contract. (Steve: Please say it ain't so!) At minimum I need iPhone to have an IM (iChat?) and RSS client and a strong crypto password vault (Keychain mobile?), but they'd really make me happy if they also built-in MP3 ringtones and ported that great Hold'Em game from the iPod.
What are your core applications that you need on iPhone if you were to purchased a US$600 closed phone? Chime in in the TalkBack below.