It's been three months, time for a new iPhone/iPod

It wasn't that long ago that 1,000 songs in the first 5Gb iPod was a revolution. Now my 16Gb iPhone carries a bazillion times more songs, and plays them with cover art, as well as videos, TV shows, even full-length movies. Oh, it has a great web browser, an email client and makes phone calls.

My iPhone is actually my second (I had the 8Gb first) but even my 16Gb is about to be superseded by a new 3G version in the next couple of months, according to Walt Mossberg. 3G will make a huge difference to using an iPhone, so of course I'll have to get one, even though I'm not very keen on the unsubtle Apple logo and the shiny plastic look of the 3G iPhone in this photo from Ben Barren...

Updated: OK, no flaws in Apple's iPhone SDK after all!

Update: I stand corrected, and so should Pete Yandell, my original source for this story. Thanks to the diligence of readers like you, I've now learned everything I missed while I ducked out to put the kettle on while the iPhone SDK videoconference was playing: there absolutely is a way for a small business to test an iPhone app without offering it over iTunes Store, and developers who only want to release products to their own staff are able to pay a little more for the ability to do that privately via iTunes Store.

However, it still seems a strategic mistake to open the SDK to US developers only initially. Software development quality does not respect geographical boundaries, and the largest and most experienced mobile software development communities are all outside the US.

Anyway, read on, see where I was wrong, and please join in the very healthy discussion in the comments for this post!


It's been a couple of weeks since the launch of Apple's iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) and it's taken me that long to find a serious flaw worth noting in what has been an otherwise enthusiastically-received program.

But while considering Rails Camp 08 I found a stunning flaw unearthed by developer Pete Yandell - he says the iPhone SDK program is only available to US-resident developers.

Until now my only concern was that third-party iPhone apps could only be sold on iTunes Store, which seemed a needless constraint for Apple. I think consumers and carriers could understand the risk in downloading iPhone apps from other sources, all it needs is a disclaimer pop-up from Apple before you wander out of the walled garden, not a blanket ban.

But limiting iPhone developers to US residents is seriously nuts, since almost without exception, the best mobile developers, designers, usability and product management people are outside the US. 

In terms of strategic mistakes, it's akin to launching a program to promote, say, professional surfing and then requiring all competitors to be residents of Tajikistan (Tajiki don't surf!)

It's most likely a measure designed to put some limits to the growth of the SDK program - Apple reports they received a bazillion SDK applications in the first nanoseconds following the launch and it has been reported that there's already a waitlist to have SDK paperwork considered.

If there's already a waitlist, it's safe to assume someone at Apple is manually reviewing every SDK application submitted. So why not bust open the US-only restriction and allow that reviewer to consider any new developer - from any country - solely on the basis of the quality of their proposal and track record in mobile development?

Apple wants the best possible iPhone apps, right? It has to cast the net further than the mobile equivalent of Tajikistan...

Amazon's international billing problem

Met Mike Culver, web services evangelist for Amazon's S3 cloud services today on his first trip downunder. All this cool stuff about how we can base an entire startup on a pay-as-you-go storage and computing model with the same reliability and speed as Amazon itself.

Mainly technical discussion, so a lot of it way over my head but one of my questions hit home: 

If Amazon's charging me in USD and only accepts credit card payment, the foreign currency exchange fee my bank is going to charge me is a big hit. My bank's 3.3% for Mastercard and 3.4% for Visa foreign currency transactions is probably standardish.

Mike hadn't come across that before but seemed serious about taking that issue back to the US to get solved.

Not as big an issue for me personally as having no amazon.com.au, but prolly enough to make such a variable cost unaffordable here.

US companies still aren't great at the whole international product strategy.

(btw, no links or image with this post because iPhone STILL doesn't support copy & paste grrr)

[Sent from my iPhone, still unable to copy and paste and it's 2008]

Activating an iPhone in Australia, and first impressions

Can't believe it's taken me so long to commit this to the blog, but here's my iPhone story...

Good friend Ben Keighran very kindly stood in line several times at Apple Stores across the Bay Area to finally snag me an 8Gb iPhone at the end of July. For the man in the midst of securing a Series A finance round from a big Valley VC firm, setting up offices in the US for the first time and recruiting an exec team, this was no small time penalty for him, and I thank you again, Ben!

Then Wyatt Zoi, a relative of a Bluepulse staffer, very kindly agreed to schlep the iPhone home to Sydney for me a week later. Wyatt and I had never met before, so we agreed that I'd meet him at the arrivals gate with a sign with an iPhone on it, so he could recognise me.

So there I was, at 8am on a Sunday morning, only one day back in Sydney myself after trekking in the Himalayas, and half-dead from the 'flu. But I had a big colour laminated sign with an iPhone on it, and for every arriving traveller who assumed I was insane, there were two who looked at me and grinned, figuring out for themselves why I was there and what the sign was about.


Waiting at the airport with my custom iPhone sign so Wyatt could recognise me.

Wyatt, bearer of the iPreciousss, grinning at my lunacy.

Transferring the iPreciousss from Wyatt to me. Fortunately, he was immune to its power, and I didn't have to gnaw it from his cold, dead fingers like you'd have to do to take it off me at this point.


I have the iPreciousss! See how its magical powers are making the reflective panels on my backpack glow with a spectral silver light? (OK, that could be the flash I guess).



At home at last. The box is so small! How does Steve cram so much geeky goodness into such a tiny box?


The unpack experience is a whole new level of geeky deliciousness. It looks so fantastic in the box it's a shame to take it out. I felt like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

Sadly, I had heaps to do when I got home - friends coming around for a party, food to prepare, garden to prep, beer to chill - so I really didn't get to play with the iPhone until 48 hours later, which nearly killed me.


It already had some charge when unpacked, but I had to leave it here for the rest of the day while I entertained friends. Curse them!

Getting the iPhone activated in Australia wasn't too bad, once I found iActivator, a gui app that puts it all together and even gives you an interface so you don't need to use command line. Step-by-step instructions and a download here.

However, I found I kept getting an error message on the final activation step. So if you try this at home kids, make sure you (1) use Activity Monitor to quit iTunes Helper as well as iTunes before you begin; and (2) make sure you launch iTunes again before doing the activation step in iActivator. Then it should work like a charm.


Update: thanks to Steve Fenech over at the Daily Telegraph for the heads-up on iNdependence, another new GUI activator app. Haven't tried it yet, but worth a try.


iPhone? Nah, but awesome as the first PDA/Video iPod
It's an extraordinary device. The presentation when I took it out of the box made me feel like I was stealing something from the cold, dead hands of an alien astronaut from the remains of his ship, or removing the sword from the stone that would make me King of all England!

So many things have been well thought through in the industrial design. I love the resolution and brightness of the screen most of all, and the way the necessary external buttons are tactile, but really low profile so they don't distract from the beautiful shape at all. I love that there's absolutely no gap or difference in height between the chrome metal casing and the glass, god knows what the failure rate must be at that point of assembly.

The touch interface and supplied apps obviously have some more evolution to do but hell, this is version 1.0 people! I can't believe how polished it all is for version 1.0.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if I can get this iPhone to work with my .au SIM card at some stage, but if I can't, I'll be happy to have this as my main iPod until the .au iPhone is released.

Since it's not 3G and I can't run my own Java apps on it, use a cut-down fast mobile-specific browser like Opera Mini or even install a custom ringtone, it's not much of a phone, and so I've decided I don't actually miss that functionality a whole lot. And the camera in my SE K800i phone craps all over the iPhone's camera.

But as an iPod, I'm totally comfortable with what it cost to buy - it pwns the rest of the iPod family. I can't believe Apple wouldn't make this the interface for all future video iPods.

If I was Apple was rebrand and restructure iTunes. It's way more "iSync" now than "iSync" is, and obviously "Tunes" doesn't really reflect everything it now manages. The interface stiller flects playlist management, and that's only part of it now.

I'd rebuild iTunes from scratch, since some of the core may still be third-party stuff they acquired to get iTunes built in a hurry. It's still mentioned in the copyright notices for the product so I'm guessing it's still in there.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if I can get this iPhone to work with my .au SIM card at some stage, but if I can't, I'll be happy to have this as my main iPod until the .au iPhone is released.

Tell me, have you played with any third-party apps yet? Has anyone you know tried to reskin theirs? (like, why? but still, some people have!)