A major security breach, all shields falling down and now this: a picture of the iPhone in single-user mode after a big crash, right in an AppleStore. Is this the last sign of a pending disaster or just another hint for Apple to change things?
What is happening is more or less normal for a 1.0 product. I wish that Apple spent some more time and money to heavily test their JesusPhone, but the market pressure was too big. The company did a good job, but being a 1.0, with all the hype surrounding it and all the fans eager to push the limits, the assaults were bound to happen.
The fact is that without Apple's help, brilliant programmers are doing an outstanding job at opening the iPhone for great possibilities but also showing its imperfections and problems. These revelations have only started and they are really serious. We know Apple is working against the clock to fix them, but unfortunately they are probably working to close the other holes, too—the ones that will eventually allow people to do even-more-amazing stuff with the iPhones, no matter what Cupertino tries to do.
All this late ruckus got me thinking again about Steve Jobs' announcement at the last WWDC. Do you remember his arguments about not releasing (yet) a complete SDK for the iPhone? Let's review them again:
Argument 1: Apple doesn't want third-party apps because they can break the iPhone. The company wants stability.
Reality: See picture above. It's bound to happen in any complex system, with or without third-party applications—just like with a desktop Mac OS X system.
Argument 2: To avoid the problems and allow you to do things, you can build great Web 2.0 apps. They are as good as Apple's native iPhone apps and they are sandboxed in Safari, so you can't harm the iPhone or access its data and hardware.
Reality: The "sandboxed" Safari gets completely busted with a single web page, allowing hackers to take total control over data and calls.
Argument 3: Besides security and stability, Apple wants to provide a seamless, coherent user experience, rather than the mess that is happening in the Windows Mobile phone world.
Reality: Hackers crack open the iPhone file system and then create the first "Hello World" app. Changes are happening and they are going to keep happening.
Source: gizmodo.com (click link to read the full article)
Still it remains a very good user experience and the current handset vendors are really challenged. Especially Nokia, that was a disbeliever of the touchscreen and their vision to stick to the one hand usage concept of a phone.