iPhone as it is now

Not good.

I saw an iPhone yesterday in person. I was not looking for it on purpose. I was waiting for a taxi and a couple a few metres from me said, "It is already connected to the Internet." Looking at the voice's direction, I saw something shiny, prestige maybe. Nevertheless a women held the little baby and she looked clueless. Moron.

Speaking of which the taxi never came, I took the light bus.

Maybe it is because of Ming Pao's coverage of the phone and the SimLock hack, people start noticing the phone and flock to Mong Kok and buy one. Anyway the iPhone is a great device, and no device on the market packed so much technologies in one thing. (except for N90, but it doesn't look gorgeous and it doesn't have the touch screen)

But there are something I do not like about the iPhone as it is now. It is too popular. Using something so popular is not consistent with my style.

Secondly and more importantly, it is a close system. It looks like Apple is not trying to build a platform, they just want to build a device. iPhone is not like a Mac that everyone is free to build software and even install another operating systems on it. One cannot install anything on the iPhone though. Apple dictated what you can do with it. I still don't get comfortable with the idea that I can only do what some people allowed me to do, especially as the device is a piece of hardware I paid for. I can do whatever I wanted with it. This is worse than Windows Mobile - they have a platform and people can develop things around it. With iPhone, Apple ditched the long supporting Mac developers and destoryed the trust that Mac developers can build good software. (iPhone runs on Mac OS X with its ARM processor.)

And this is just the beginning. If you looked closely, Apple put so much restrictions on the device and it is even more restrictive than other mobile phones on the market. You cannot put your ringtones on it. (Officially, I mean, Hong Kong doesn't have her on iTunes store.) You cannot connect the device to the computer and expect the file system to be accessible from the computer. And finally, you cannot use it with the carrier of your choosing.

Bundling the phone with the carrier is the stupidity that Americans get used to. People in other parts of the world don't do it the same way. If the phone is bundled with 3 Hong Kong, I won't even think about buying it, unless there is still a way to unlock the phone by then and it won't void the warranty. Speaking of carrier choices in Hong Kong, Apple should choose China Mobile Peoples - because they are the only carrier in Hong Kong that still lives in the Jurassic era and operates EDGE.

The idea that Apple is starting to rot is circulating on the blogosphere. I worried this might just be the case.