The iPhone is out-selling the Blackberry. Apple is now ahead of RIM in the smart phone arena. I suspect flight from the Blackberry would be stronger except there is a great deal of back-end infrastructure in many companies supporting the Blackberry such as the RIM servers that integrate the phone with Outlook. The Blackberry is way behind the iPhone in the UI department, so is Android for that matter. I don't see that changing quickly. (reply)
Neil McAllister argues that Software Developer Kits [SDK] are not the be all and end all of smart devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and Android. The Microsoft side of this style of argument is the boorish, "Developers, developers, developers" and that you do not have a viable platform unless developers have bought into your SDK. But as McAllister notes both the iPhone and Android come with WebKit - an HTML rendering engine based upon Konquerer's kHTML engine. The universal device in the smart phones is the web browser.

That means Web applications designed for one will render almost identically on the other, provided their developers adhere to published standards.

Those same applications will also render on WebKit-based desktop browsers, such as Safari and Google Chrome, and on any other browsers that implement the standards correctly.

Based on that, all this talk of SDKs seems almost foolish.

The iPhone applications store opened to massive fanfare but I have only downloaded one application. That is the remote so I can operate my iTunes library remotely through my phone. I use the browser on the iPhone every day and I am extremely thankful that it renders web pages without any loss of the original formatting.

Many, many years ago I did a smart device project to collect facility data. We tried an iPag which at the time was Compaq's smart device. It came with a windows operating system of some kind, I cannot recall which. It didn't work and wasnt popular. We then tried phones and the horrendous WAP toolkits. Then we tried blackberries.

The main benefit of the Blackberry was the RIM browser (as opposed to the WAP AT&T; browser which was crap). It would render a page honestly even though it was on a small screen. I made up a version of the website so that it could be used on the Blackberry but most technicians used the main website which was intended for desktops and laptop style resolutions anyway.

The browser that could render the web on a mobile device became the solution. In my opinion McAllister is right. The web is going to continue being the web and SDK's are anachronisms to get people to that level of universal browsing. (reply)
Macbook touch rumor.

Supposedly with the same scratch resistant glass that the iPhone has. I hooked up my iTunes library to the big stereo system via Airport Express and am now using the iPhone as the remote control for it. Very cool. I expect that a Macbook Touch, or some variant, would find its way as a permanent artifact of the kitchen and main living area. (reply)
Mercedes has announced it has integrated the iPhone into its range of cars and SUVs. Which is interesting as the Blackbery still outsells the iPhone though Apple is going after the Blackberry market by lowering the price of the starting iPhone to $200.

I am really disappointed with the integration of modern tech tools into my car. While my car has a heads up display, a navigation screen and a DVD that flips up and out when I press a button; it does not integrate with the iPod, let alone the iPhone. Since I have bought the iPhone it has replaced my nanoPod, though I still have a large iPod which holds my entire music collection and is hooked into a Bose player in the house.

I pretty much consider the need to hook a car up to an iPod, Zune, Blackberry, whatever as essential these days. People use and rely on these devices constantly; whether it is power, music, txt or voice communication. The old car stereo is an anachronism, unfortunately, the car industry runs at a snails pace due to the long lead times on platforms. (more)
I bought my iPhone only recently, I was a slow adopter and despite the rumors of the next-gen iPhone I didn't think the hardware changes would be significant enough. I was right, what it is now is enough for me.

I was wrong about the price drop though, I did not see that coming. I payed $500 USD for mine and the next generation ones start at $200 USD. Quite a significant change in price and one which will probably put Apple into direct competition with RIM's Blackberry range. However, the devil is in the details, and the US telecoms are almost 'Telstra rapine' in their appetities. As Johnathon LaClour writes:

Over the course of the two year contract, an iPhone 3G will cost you a full $360 more than a first-generation iPhone would. This means that with the same ATT service plans, the $199 8GB iPhone 3G will actually end up costing you $559, where an 8 GB iPhone 1.0 will cost you only $399, representing a savings of $160! The iPhone 3G isn't cheaper at all, it is in fact far more expensive.

I feel the same. I am content with my current purchase and can do without the extra charges. Ironically I bought the iPhone for the hardware. I will pay good dollars for it, but I consider the cellphone and data service a commodity, which should be cheap considering the number of service providers. ATT obviously disagrees with me though and sees their service as a luxury that people will pay through the nose for. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market. (more)
Included in the blurb for the google reader making its way to the iphone is:

... iPhone and iPod Touch owners know how powerful having a full-featured browser is.

The iphone's Safari browser is not to be under-estimated. Many, many years ago the company I was with was looking for some mobile solution to update tickets from the field. We tried laptops, but back then they were too expensive for everyone to have one. We tried a proprietary application running on an iPaq; but there was too much data. We tried the ATT browser on the blackberries too; but it was WML and really stunk up the joint.

In the end the version of the Blackberry with the RIM browser came out and a special version of the website was made for it. The curious thing was very few people used the special mobile website, they used the normal website and put up with the display inefficiencies. (more)
I used to have a Blackberry and found it extremely useful. Last year and the early part of this year I made do with a normal phone as I wasn't ever too far from an internet connection. Amongst other things my circumstances have changed recently. Discovering that Verizon was ripping me blind and that the iPhone plan gave me more for less, I bit.

Image from Information Architects

Probably a bad time to purchase as the iphone 2.0 is due out soon, but whatever; either way I have found it useful already. (more)
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.