Zeichick's Take: The week that everything changed
Stories Columns Opinions Resources
Preflight builds spread wings for smoother projects
Developers are increasingly turning to preflight builds, allowing them to experiment with ...
|
Coverity creates program to enforce code adherence
The Architecture Analyzer uses mapping technology from the company's Software DNA static a...
|
QCon 2008 features domain-driven development
This year's QCon invites speakers like Eric Evans and Dan North to talk about domain-drive...
|
.NET similarities prove golden for Silverlight
Microsoft has focused on making Silverlight 2 symmetric with the .NET platform, and that h...
|
SOA Watch: New economic realities
In the current economic downturn, agile programming and SOA are attractive options that bu...
|
Integration Watch: A new twist on threads
The key to raising the efficiency of multiprocessors is to shrink the overall workload by ...
|
Integration Watch: The Return of NetRexx?
Java scripting languages are seeing a surge in popularity, with NetRexx looking particular...
|
Windows & .NET Watch: Transaction crowd gets a boost
With multicore chips becoming the standard for processors, the need for a flexible, usable...
|
From the Editors: Election should shake up JCP
Rod Johnson has the right ideas for opening up the Java Community Process, and he may be a...
|
Letters to the Editor: Sun gives REST, SOAP choice
A reader takes issue with a headline on our story about Sun working with REST along with S...
|
Guest View: Be smart and lazy
The optimal solution for problems is the simplest one, so always aim to streamline your ap...
|
Zeichick's Take: From EXEC to EXEC 2 to REXX to NetRexx
Andrew Binstock's column last week, "The Return of NetRexx," brought back some fond memori...
|
Advanced Corda CenterView™ Data Visualization for the BusinessObjects™ Intelligence Platform
Corda Technologies presents a white paper on pervasive BI. The BusinessObjects business in...
|
From Mobile to SOA: A Guide for Optimized Application Deployment
Customer need has driven the emergence of multiple computing tiers. Today’s application d...
|
e-Kit: Web Application Security
Is your network secure? What about your web applications.
If IT security is your top p...
|
Practical tips for saving money on code maintenance
If software design is expensive, well, code maintenance is even more so. When you look...
|
By Alan Zeichick
July 10, 2008 —
I can't think of a technology company that so fervently inspires consumer anticipation more than Apple, save for that one time when people queued up at midnight for their copies of Microsoft's Windows 95. Tomorrow’s eagerly awaited launch of the second-generation Apple mobile telephone proves that Steve Jobs is still at the top of his game.
As Apple gets ready to begin selling phones at 8 a.m. on Friday, July 11, it’s important to realize what the new iPhone 3G is. It’s not just a combination mobile phone, music player and Web browser. It’s equally an application platform. The ability to build custom native applications for the phone is what’s truly novel.
Indeed, it’s hard to fine anyone who is particularly excited about the “3G” aspect of the new iPhone; while the 3G network is indeed faster than the EDGE network used by the original iPhone, the difference will be barely perceptible most of the time.
What strikes me as funny is that existing iPhone customers can upgrade their handsets to the same software as the iPhone for a nominal cost. That leaves very few real differences between the original iPhone and its replacement. There’s the faster 3G mobile network. There’s an embedded “assisted” global positioning system, which can use the location of cellular base stations as a boost to find your position quickly. That’s about it.
Equally striking is that nobody has launched a credible competitor to the iPhone since its launch. Yes, other mobile devices are programmable and include cameras, browsers and so on. However, not a single model, from Motorola, Nokia, RIM, Samsung or anyone else, has come close to offering the same range of functionality as the iPhone. Apple’s online store for applications, built around it’s successful iTunes Store, takes the platform a step farther, making it easier to manage and provision.
When you break the iPhone down to its component parts, each component is impressive: the hardware, the software, the service. When you put it all together, this week may be the week that everything changed. Finally, we have a mobile device that’s worthy of enterprise support.
Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.
Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/32519