@Steve: ringtones

Apple restrict ringtones to be less than 40 seconds for some reason. But it's nowhere near as difficult as you make out to have your own custom ringtones.

http://www.audiko.net - that makes it really easy.

MMS on O2

"Also MMS isnt included in the O2 bundle so I wonder how the propose to include it"

I've never had a tariff that included MMS messages. They are normally charged individually at about 30p a shot.

All a matter of perspective

Tethering: is a network issue. Apple insists on carriers giving unlimited data contracts. With tethering they can't do an acceptable contract price, and with 20 million iPhones, a tethering free-for-all would have serious service quality implications as well.

Catching up with other phones: iPhone never was a phone - voice is such a small part of the service offering - surely you geeks knew that - it's an internet device with a small but important legacy voice feature. Apple didn't arrogantly refuse to implement MMS etc and then get forced by the market; they rationally decided not to include features at the outset (such as MMS) which are the legacy voice network's half baked alternative to the internet.

@Steve "closed, profiteering Apple": If you knew what you were talking about, you'd understand that Apple doesn't care in the least about your ring tones and simply sacrificed them for the greater good. Apple vigourously defends its own IP and the profits made from it, but also vigourously fights for the individual customer's best interests, fully supporting open content formats, and freedom from DRM where the content owner allows it. In the context of ring tones, it's the carriers who wanted to carry on profiteering from ring tones, and Apple successfully won the big issues for the user (unlimited data contracts, no carrier walled garden) at the cost of leaving alone the carriers fat fees for ring tones. I'm grateful for what they've done, but of course one must be ever vigilant that Apple doesn't ever turn into the kind of company that despises and exploits its customers (dare I say Sky, Virgin, BT, Microsoft, cellphone carriers?). The fact is that Apple have forced the carriers to offer better terms to all smartphone users by being strong.

Consider what Apple has achieved since issuing their "change the world" manifesto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USn5t5nQWU8

@Closed, Profiteering and Anti-Competitive

Wrong!

I have loads of ringtones gleaned from my own collection. I just use Apple's Garageband where I can sample, trim and save as ringtones.

Some contributors will NEVER be satisfied with the iPhone because it doesn't have some feature or other that their preferred phone has. So what? Don't buy one! Leave the iPhone to (fill in pejorative) people like me who just LOVE the way it works and take great pleasure in watching the other manufacturers try to emulate it. As for Apple, some wouldn't buy anything from that brand because they don't like the company. So what? It's a giant corporation, FFS. They want your money and mine just like every other giant corporation. So some people go along with the hype ... so what? Some people believe Steve Ballmer/Jobs! So what?

If for no other reason, the naysayers should be grateful the iPhone has woken up an industry which disregarded customers and treated them as morons. Personally, I welcome 'me too' phones from RIM, Nokia, LG et al. – WE are the beneficiaries, and it has taken the iPhone to bring them about, to drag others out of their torpor.

Oh, by the way, the iPhone 3.0 STILL doesn't help you get a girl/boy friend!

O2 SMS

O2 don't charge 30p for MMS in bundles. It's usually four SMS credits off your tariff.

Think about it.

@mike

Read the comments and you'll find the answer. It sucks, but blame those responsible.

@all the whiners

As someone else said, if the iPhone came with money, you'd hate it. We get it. You don't like Apple. Now, fuck off. You are all really dull. If you dislike something so much, why waste energy expressing and persuing it? I don't like using Microsoft products, and avoid them where I can, I don't go up to people that use Microsoft products and tell the that they are stupid as a result. That would be rude.

All in all it appears Apple have listened to critism and acted upon it. I don't think we will see true multitasking until the battery life is improved significantly. Those of you that suggest that Windows Mobile does this well have had a better experience than me. Several resets a day AND battery life that makes the iPhone apper as if it has it's own built in generator made my experience with Windows Mobile a miserable one, not to forget the poor build quality of the HTC handset. Finally for those of you that wanted mms on the iPhone in the UK, 30p per message versus free per email, I know what I'll continue to use.

iPod Touch is crap, too!

My nephew has an iPhone Touch. He left it on a seat and then sat on it. The glass screen cracked.

This shows the iPod Touch is rubbish. Where's the self-repairing screen I had on my N956S? Where's the automatic arse detector we were promised in the Steve Jobs keynote? Where's the voice alert "Warning, you are about to crack the screen"?

I despair. Windows Mobile for me every time.

What is Apple coming to?

We're all gonna die ...

and on, and on, and on ....

Federal law...

...does not explain why UK users should need to pay !!!

Although it may not look like it... it's jurisdiction is restricted to the USA.

Actually the whole legal argument doesn't make sense... loads of things get increased functionality from software updates for free...sounds like bollocks.

New hardware soon?

I expect Apple to make a new versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch hardware sometime this summer, and at the same time add new models, such as the speculated large-screen iPod/iBook. The hardware upgrade will probably fix some of the issues such as camera resolution, video etc. that people have been complaining about and probably feature faster processor and graphics chips. I expect them to be thinner too. Some of the OS upgrades may be in preparation for these new models.

Re: Federal law

Interesting point whether Sarbanes-Oxley means Apple have to charge for the iPhone Touch update over here. I suspect it probably does. The legislation is nothing to do with consumers, in the USA or anywhere else, but is there (at least in theory) to protect Apple's shareholders.

If Apple account for revenue on iPod Touches as having been "earned" in one year but then provide free feature enhancements the next year then (so the argument goes) they were fraudulently claiming income they haven't yet earned. So yes, they do need to charge for upgrades anywhere in the world (at least, without lots of complicated special case accounting in their annual tax filings).

I'd get one, but

I'd get an iPhone, but it still has one significant flaw. My girlfriend/treasurer doesn't approve.

@Dave Cumming

"iPhone users are already paying for it with their higher purchase prices and line rentals."

A quick browse of the O2 site says that I can get an 8GB iPhone with 75 minutes, 125 texts and unlimited web access for £29.38/month and £96.89 upfront for the iPhone. The equivalent non-iPhone contract is £2.46 less per month. So, the iPhone user here is effectively paying (over the 18 month contract) a total of £141.17 for the iPhone. Which is pretty much the same as the cheapest online prices for an 8GB iPod Touch, and about 20 quid less than most places (Apple included) expect you to pay for one. And if our iPhone user is a particularly heavy phone user, and could justify spending more each month on their contract, they'd be paying even less (nothing at all with some contracts) for the hardware...

Now sure, the overall price they're paying is higher, but if they weren't paying for the iPhone contract they'd be paying for some other mobile contract anyway (I can't imagine why anyone would fork out for an iPhone+contract if they weren't interested in having a mobile contract and just wanted the hardware...), so it seems fair to separate the contract costs and hardware costs for this comparison.

No background apps then

So still stuck in the 80s where operating systems just ran one program at a time then.

"extra strain on the processor would cut down battery life" so they say. My arse. Process and thread switching algorithms won't necessarily stress the CPU and battery any more if done right, and especially if background tasks are throttled. They might slow down the foreground app as both contend for the same resource. However a lot of background apps, if well designed, don't need to be thrashing the CPU all the time anyway, they can just chip in during idle time if they're not doing anything urgent.

Besides S60 and Windows Mobile seem to do okay with it (biggest problem for them is memory, not battery life when it comes to background apps. The real killer for the battery is comms). Though of course those phones have the luxury of being able to swap the battery should it die on you and you're not near a power supply! ;)

It's not even that it's not a multitasking capable OS. It is (or the kernel is). It's just that as usual, Apple dictate what users and developers can and can't do with their products. That's what makes them so different from the likes of MS, Nokia or maybe even Google. Apple's products are a bit like buying a show home where the developer insists you can't make any changes to the interior of the house. You just have to live with their design.

Really I think Apple just fear letting developers do what they like because suddenly their products won't perform as amazingly well as they'd like. Then people start realising just why Apple kit looks so great. Smoke and mirrors.

Upping the ante

"Apple upped the ante when it came to mobile phones, which other manufacturer made a phone that was completely touch screen, which company made it so easy to install and uninstall applications on your phone and which company made it so easy to use your music library, that did not need you to scroll though thousands of tracks, instead you could just flick through your cover art and select the track! Which phone allows you to resize photos just using two fingers!"

Other manufacturers were too busy concentrating on making phones do what phones do best. Making calls! ;)

What Apple provided was a very sexy sleek UI which beat the crap out of all other manufacturers. It is very nice I will admit. But it's just the same as everything else with Apple. It's like Safari 4. It is now (after much complaint about earlier Safari versions) Google Chrome but with shiny fluff you don't need. Looks nice, but that's about it.

For all the sexy UI, the iPhone won't give me a GPS mapping application that caches entire continents worth of preloaded maps so I don't have to use an Internet connection to look at maps, provide navigation, and won't let me jump out to fire up the browser, read a Word document and/or do GPS sports tracking at the same time the map app is running with GPS active. Sports tracker mulit-tasking in particular on Nokia devices is great. Have it stay in the background tracking whilst you do other things on the phone, even listen to music, make calls & surf the web.

In fact Google Latitude is noticeably still absent from the iPhone. Why? Key to Latitude on a phone is multitasking, so it can update your location regardless of what you are doing on the phone and even if it's sat in your pocket sleeping. Even my 3 year old S60 based Nokia can do this with a fraction of the price and power.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343380,00.asp

Re: No 3rd party background app

"The "NO 2 APPS RUNNING" screamers should know the catch here is that 3rd party applications cannot run in the background, which is fine, as the only application most would want running at the same time would be music playing while they browsed the web or something."

Wouldn't work in the Nokia Sports Tracker scenario then. The beauty of this kind of app is you can have it sat in the background tracking your every movement via GPS, and yet can work on other foreground apps at the same time.

Okay, Nokia provided this one, but by the sounds of it such a similar app on the iPhone will come from a 3rd party. So means foreground only.

As an example, when I go skiing, I use Nokia Sports Tracker, launch it, put it in the background, and go off down the slopes leaving it running most of the day. It's constantly tracking and whenever I stop I can dive in to other apps (e.g. I might want to browse the web in the restaurant, or I could be stopped on the slope and want to view a PDF piste map). Similar is when doing walks or cycling, having a document with a route plan or guide open, whilst tracking at the same time. There's a mashup kind of potential too where you could have independent tracking apps feeding data somewhere. e.g. Google Lattitude and Sports Tracker, or either of those plus a navigation app (in Nokia's world, e.g. Nokia Maps), whilst driving to combine nagivation and tracking.

These are just a tiny example, but there are hundreds of other potential cases where you want a 3rd party app in the background (Google Lattitude being a prime example and the reason why Google has not offered it for the iPhone yet).

Until you've had the ability though you probably won't realise just why you need it. If you're coming from another phone platform it becomes an obvious omission. It doesn't exactly encourage migration to Apple (but then competitors aren't Apple's potential customers. Apple devotees are).