thomas fitzgerald.net

Despite all the hype surrounding apples recent iPhone 3g announcement many are still confused by the lack of some of the basic features still not included in apples handset. Certainly the iPhone 2.0 software offers some great new features and with third party apps soon to be available, the iPhone will be even greater placed to revolutionise the mobile phone market. Needless to say some analysts still aren’t happy. The iPhone still appears to be missing features that almost all modern handsets feature, and while at the end of the day its not that big a deal, it is strange that after a year of development apple hasn’t implemented them.

What I’m referring to of course is the lack of ability to send and receive MMS messages and the lack of video recording. There are other things too that don’t seem to be in the 2.0 update too such as Bluetooth support for anything other than headsets, the seeming inability to send contacts to another phone and the inability to use your iPhone as a modem. To me personally none of these things are a big issue but for some people they are. Not only that but many normal non technical people just assume that these features are in the iPhone and can’t understand why they’re no when they can’t find them. The default apple fanboy response is “if you don’t like it don’t buy it” which I suppose is fair enough but it is strange that at least some of these didn’t make it to iPhone 2.0

When the phone first shipped it was assumed that what many would consider pretty standard features were just left out because of time constraints, but since then you would have imagined at least some would make it into the next version. Take MMS for example. There is the argument is that email is a better way to send pictures anyway, which is all well and good, but many phones don’t have email and many people still send pictures straight from their phone which the iPhone can’t receive leading you to have to go through a complicated retrieval process on your carriers website. The jailbreak hacking community managed to create an MMS application fairly early in the iPhones life so why can’t Apple? The question is has the company simply not gotten around to it yet or are they making a point? Either way it’s strange.

Of course the final version of the iPhone 2.0 software won’t be known until it hits the streets as it were, so it’s possible some of these things might still make it into the final release. It’s also possible that third parties may be able to address some of these things but it would be nice if they were part of the phone as standard. Of course criticizing Apple decisions on the web is a risky proposition at the best of times but before you get your virtual pitchforks out I’m not complaining, I’m just curious to know what their reasoning is for leaving out features that would seem, given the numerous demos of how quick it is to write software for the iPhone, to be easy enough to implement.

Incidentally I wrote this while post on my iPhone in the notes app.