ilLegalBeagle
06-12-2007, 08:53 AM
Alright, up front I will confess that I am not a phone geek, nor am I an Apple geek. I worked for 10 years in IT on Windows and Linux network resources.
Having said that, I might want to buy this stupid phone, but I want to know a few basic things about it that aren't directly addressed in the hype materials out there.
First... What types of video codecs will it support? If I download something encoded in Divx or Xvid, can I move it to the iPhone and view it? Or will it require me to re-encode it using another codec?
Second, after Steve Jobs basically killed 3rd party widget development yesterday (for the foreseeable future, anyway), what can we expect for application options? Is there something available to show us the kinds of applications (not scripts or webapps) that Apple would make available? For example, with other PDA-capable devices, I need only go to a couple of websites to find a particular scientific calculator program. Or more common in my case, if I want to read a particular legal article or court case, I just download it onto my PDA and read it with the appropriate application. How do I do that with the iPhone? Do I get the choice of what type of app to use for the document reader? Is there a list somewhere of the things available?
Finally, how open will the platform be? With PocketPCs, we could easily get to the first level of OS settings (network settings, performance settings, etc.), and with some technical knowledge, we could get into the second level of settings (RAM optimization, bus/processor speed settings), but we could never get to the core OS functions. I get the impression with the iPhone that we will likely be VERY limited (meaning locked down) with regard to the operating system and settings. Any word on this?
ilLegalBeagle
Having said that, I might want to buy this stupid phone, but I want to know a few basic things about it that aren't directly addressed in the hype materials out there.
First... What types of video codecs will it support? If I download something encoded in Divx or Xvid, can I move it to the iPhone and view it? Or will it require me to re-encode it using another codec?
Second, after Steve Jobs basically killed 3rd party widget development yesterday (for the foreseeable future, anyway), what can we expect for application options? Is there something available to show us the kinds of applications (not scripts or webapps) that Apple would make available? For example, with other PDA-capable devices, I need only go to a couple of websites to find a particular scientific calculator program. Or more common in my case, if I want to read a particular legal article or court case, I just download it onto my PDA and read it with the appropriate application. How do I do that with the iPhone? Do I get the choice of what type of app to use for the document reader? Is there a list somewhere of the things available?
Finally, how open will the platform be? With PocketPCs, we could easily get to the first level of OS settings (network settings, performance settings, etc.), and with some technical knowledge, we could get into the second level of settings (RAM optimization, bus/processor speed settings), but we could never get to the core OS functions. I get the impression with the iPhone that we will likely be VERY limited (meaning locked down) with regard to the operating system and settings. Any word on this?
ilLegalBeagle