The MON Blogs

I’ve already posted the pros of the iPhone (as I very quickly perceived them in relation to our project). But I have the feeling that this post may well end up being rather long as I update it over time to outline things the iPhone can’t do.

To get going:

• You can’t install software natively on the iPhone (unless you are Apple), everything (as far as I can tell thus far) is a Web 2.0 application. Whether there will be any offline support for when your iPhone is out of an area with data coverage is something I need to find out.
• The iPhone doesn’t support file uploads so I’m wondering if there is any way to upload photos made using the iPhones camera (I have to investigate if you can send them as e-mail attachments). If it doesn’t it becomes seriously limited…
• No multimedia messages (MMS). Again, for a camera equipped smartphone it seems like a pretty huge omission.
• It’s extensibility is possibly pretty limited by the fact you can only create applications through Javascript/XHTML (JS is powerful, but it works within the limitations of the browser)
• Will 3rd party addons become available for the iPhone given the limitions on appl9ication development.
• Apple decided to have no support for Adobe Flash – given that most other devices have a Flash client available.
• No Java – although I don’t think this is much of a problem, but given the ubiquity of mobile Java applications (i.e. cellphone games, Opera Mini and such) it seems a little strange. Then again, Apple and Sun don’t seem to have a particularly cozy relationship [actually Sun doesn't seem to like anyone...]).

But as Rob has said, given the rumours that Apple will eventually release an iPhone SDK it’s possible to justify our applications as running natively on the iPhone.