Tomorrow morning the sun will rise, and tech writers from near and far will descend upon Cupertino. The steady rattle of fingers flying across laptop keys will sound like rain on a windshield, drowned out only by the endless assault of cameras firing at the stage. All that typing, all those photos, all with just one subject: the 3rd iteration of the iPhone OS. Guys in button up shirts and blue jeans will talk, slides will slide – and in the end, the masses will turn to their Twitter accounts with 140-characters of pure adoration or utter abhorrence. It’s just the way Apple events tend to go; for those who care enough to pay attention, there isn’t often much of a middle ground.
But what if, rather than attempting to gobble up all of the information and form an opinion on the raw, we were to go about it with predetermined and set-in-stone criteria in mind? What if we ignored Apple’s flashy presentation and entrancing ways, instead looking solely at the fruits of their labor and comparing it to what users have been clamoring for for over 2 years? For that purpose, we present: the iPhone OS 3.0 Announcement Scorecard.
The idea is simple: We’ve assembled a list of the most common complaints we’ve seen that we feel have even a remote chance of seeing a resolution tomorrow, and assigned each a value. This value was derived from how frequently the complaint arises online and in personal discussion. Some items may seem low to some, while others seem too high – every item’s worth is relative to the person keeping score, so feel free to shuffle points around if the values don’t seem appropriate.
Print it out and play along!
The Criteria:
- Background Applications: This one’s a bit confusing, as many folks don’t understand that there are two possible interpretations of “Background Applications”. Last June, Apple announced that the iPhone would be getting “Background Notifications” by September of that year. Background Notifications allow for developers to send alerts to the handset, even when an application is closed – but data from the handset (such as its current location) could not be sent back unless the App was opened. A one way street, so to speak. September came and went, and Background Notifications were no where to be seen, leading many to hope that Apple had ditched Background Notifications for a more two-way solution, be it full background processing or something else. If Apple clears the air about Background Applications, they get 20 points – but if it’s still push only, they only get 10. Consider it a penalty for missing their own deadline by half a year.
- Copy and Paste: You know it, and you’re probably sick of hearing people whine about it. Some don’t care at all – for others, it’s the deal breaker that keeps them away from the phone. Kevin Rose says its a sure thing, and he’s always right. Sort of. 20 points.
- MMS: Picture messaging. The go-to item for highlighting the iPhone’s shortcomings. How it has yet to make its way into an update still bewilders us. 15 points.
- Video Recording: 10 points? What!? It loses a few points in our books (well, our list) for not being quite as useful as everyone pretends it is. Outside of the few high-end cameraphones where the camera bit is a major selling point, cell phone video tends to be absolute garbage that clogs up the (You)tubes. Jailbreak-only apps have already demonstrated the video quality as being rather meh. Apple might be able to do it better on the software end, but there’s really not that much you can do to a crummy camera sensor. It’s nice for catching that awkward moment at the bar, but it tends to devolve into a toy for many users.
- Bluetooth Profile Upgrades: It’s a three-fer! There are a number of Bluetooth profiles that may be useful, but these are the three that seem to be on everyone’s mind. The Bluetooth Human Input Device profie, or HID, would allow for Bluetooth keyboards and mice (though the latter would almost assuredly be a no go on the iPhone) to be hooked up. This would be tough for Apple to pull off elegantly, as all of the Apps in the App Store are written for the on-screen keyboard. Wireless Sync would allow for the wireless transfer of data to-and-from a Bluetooth-enabled computer, though what sort of data that includes would be at Apple’s discretion. Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) would allow people to enjoy the media through stereo Bluetooth headsets. 5 points for each Bluetooth enhancement.
- Flash in Safari: With the iPhone having one of the best mobile implementations of Youtube, we’re not 100% sure why the clamor for this is so strong – but it’s pretty deafening. Banner ads may be a nuisance and most games would work a bit strangely (if at all) due to screen size and input methods, but Flash has intertwined its way into the web in an almost unavoidable way. 15 points.
- Landscape Keyboard in all default apps: Go start a new SMS. Turn the iPhone on its side to try to bring up the landscape keyboard. Won’t work. Try it in notes. Same deal. Email? Same. Apple may not be able to force every developer in the App Store to enable the landscape keyboard in their applications, but they can do it in their own apps. 10 points.
- Tethering: We know it’s coming at some point – we just don’t know the nitty gritty details. Getting this to work in an officially endorsed and carrier-manageable way would presumably take a good amount of tweaking on the software end, so there’s no better time than now. 15 points.
- Any of the 8 things we can’t stand: Last month, we wrote an article on 8 Little Things We Still Can’t Stand About The iPhone. As the title of the story implies, these things are quite little. Though trivial, they allow us to measure something we otherwise couldn’t: attention to detail. If Apple resolves any of our nit-pick issues, we can assume they’ve fixed plenty of other little things that don’t justify time during the presentation. Cumulatively, these little things matter to the experience just as much as some of the big ones. Chances are these things wont be touched on during the presentation – but if they are, that’s 5 bonus points for Apple for each one.
The Score:
120+: The perfect announcement. The untouchable debut. Apples will rain from the sky, the energy crisis will be solved, and cats will stop being jerks.
90-119: Not technically perfect, but we’re still mighty impressed. No more Copy and Paste jokes! Hurray!
70-89: If Apple manages to squeak into this range, there probably won’t be much naysaying around the internet. (Just kidding. Everyone will still complain, because that’s what people on the internet do.)
45-69:: If we were the bettin’ type, we’d put our money on Apple landing somewhere in this range tomorrow. Of course, this would also require a mystical gambling hall where they bet on Apple events. Most will walk away satisfied, others will feel burned that their must-have feature is still not at hand.
20-44:: Meh. One or two significant features, but is that enough to warrant the big jump from 2.2 all the way up to 3.0?
0-19: Event got canceled.
All that said, there’s one item that no scorecard could ever take in to consideration: the good ol’ “One more thing..” If Apple comes out and blows our minds with some feature we never knew we wanted considered (”By the way, your iPhone? It’s now also a love-powered jet pack. Enjoy.”), there’s no way for us to assign it a value. If something mindbogglingly amazing happens, consider the scorecard nullified – or just give the new goods a value and pretend it was on the scorecard the whole time.
As an iPhone application developer I am forced to ask if there will be an SDK release with this release?
There is suppose to be a SDK announcement tomorrow. Wasn’t that part of Apple’s invitation to the media?
This may be a dumb question but will something be announced for the ipod touch tomorrow aswell or will it only be for the iphone?
this is so great.
Very nice game.
where’s video ichat?
That would require a front facing camera. This is just an operating system update, not a whole new iPhone.
Forget the front facing camera… just put a periscope like reflecting mirror attachment… hey, everyone’s gonna want one!
Really hope at least half of this happens!
Why do these Apple product announcements from within the shining cube always remind me of Slurm?
and nobody asked whether or not Steve Jobs was going to do the presentation? I am totally blown away. Because I hear he’s coming back tomorrow morning and Apple Stock will hit $355/share by close of market.
But that’s just me thinking outloud.
:)
I truly hope that Flash doesn’t wipe out Safari on a daily basis on my phone as well as my computer! Albeit, Safari 4 is better. I don’t get this one at all…
What about e-mail search???
More than 148 apps at a time… Folders to organize them…
Whoa, seriously? Do you use them all?
I have 330 so far, 200 of which I feel are very good. It is mostly a matter of choice depending on the mood, especially with games, like having more music to choose from on an iPod.
This is exactly what I’m hoping for… so way to organize your apps in iTunes would be great.
Cats are not jerks.
Nonsense.
no one likes cats.
actually, you should have made this a bingo game :-)
What I really miss is being able to use my iphone on multiple computers. i.e add tracks/video/apps or even listen to tracks on other computers.
50 points for charging iPhone like Palm Pre
Put me on the list for wanting to play flash files on my iPhone!
@DonRoberts
I never understood why anyone would want MMS if you can send emails with images and more then 160 characters, oh and it is free (mostly).
Maybe because most recipients don’t have email on their mobile yet? (I’m not dying for MMS myself, but here the other day I found myself missing it).
I too do not understand the desperate desire of some people for MMS feature to be available on the iPhone.
Like most carriers, my mobile carrier charges for MMS sent and received, and includes only a few free MMS messages with my plan per month.
So sending MMS to someone does not always means the recipient will receive it. As they may have ran out of free MMS in their monthly plan or find MMS too expensive to receive.
The not including MMS is just kind of ridiculous at this point, since every other phone in the world does it, and the iPhone is clearly capable of it. Why it’s been left out so long is a mystery to me.
I am guessing this all applies to the iPod Touch as well? Will we have to cough up another $10 to get the update when it comes out?
Nope, we’re only stuck paying an additional $9.95
WTF cares. I’ll get a Palm Prē.
There’s no way they’ll release tethering. I will eat my hat if they do. Apple wants to sell millions of phones. Tethering is something a few advanced users want to do. Not something the mainstream millions need to do. And it would create load for the carrier. So sorry. It’s not going to happen. Think like a global corporation for 5 seconds and you’ll realize it too.
MMS is the only thing I see in this list that could help sell millions of phones. And that’s because it’s so essential to have in Japan.
The rest, I’m sorry to say, are advanced user gripes. Not game changers for Apple’s shareholders.
Please explain how a few users would create load for the carrier.
Also, explain how many millions of users would create more than the current load, since the hardware is not capable of pumping more bytes just because a PC is tethered to the other end.
As features go, cut-and-paste does not pose any load issues for the carrier. But tethering… I bet AT&T hears that word and they freak out. They don’t want their (ridiculously profitable) cell phone data plan to suddenly become peoples’ dirt cheap mobile ISP plan. Ever see what other carriers charge for this?
I think the number of people who would use tethering would be enough to create some headaches for AT&T (not only because they’d create real load, but because AT&T would have to be ready to commit to supporting it for everyone, which they’re not). But the number of people who’d buy an iPhone instead of something else solely because of tethering is not significant at all. I myself would love the feature, I just recognize that I’m not the mainstream joe every giant company wants in droves.
I disagree with you, Andy. I think Apple’s intent is to bring everyone into the realm of the “advanced user”. They want everyone to experience the “joy” of having your email, your web browser, your synced contacts, all that stuff, right in your pocket, on a phone that, unlike Blackberry’s, are “cool” and stylish enough that everyone and their mother would want to use. In my mind the iPhone is about bringing the “smartphone” to the masses.
Yes, having MMS will allow people who are comfortable with the old “featurephone” paradigm to embrace this new and (to them) strange device, but I don’t think it serves Apple’s purposes of getting people out of that paradigm.
You rate copy-and-paste as more important than MMS or tethering, and equal to background apps? I really don’t get the big deal over copy-and-paste.
Nice list. But, this makes me wonder. How many points the Palm Pre would score?
I’ll just get the palm pre.. perfect score. thanks :)
just being able to farward an SMS would be handy and i agree with video, mms and sms clipping being massive issues.
Follow all the iPhone on Twitter via tweetzi!
http://tweetzi.com/q.php?q=iphone 3.0
I don’t care for Flash on the iPhone, it’s mostly junk I reserve for the laptop. But supporting video codecs like FLV and WMV, now, that I’d like to see.
I’d also like to see all the new CSS3/HTML5 goodies that landed recently in Webkit in MobileSafari.
SMS: I want to know when a text I’m typing goes above 140 characters.
I would add:
- 5 points for OBEX Bluetooth profile (used on Europe phones)
- 5 points for battery optimizations
- 5 points for native integration with gmail, facebook, etc accounts (same palm pre: calendars, contacts, etc)
- 5 points for todo app (integrated with calendar)
- I will change the points of MMS for the video rec ones and reduced flash to 5 points.
The only reason MMS is interesting to me is that I don’t have to tell my friends “Hey, don’t send picture messages to my phone, send them to my email instead”. Because every phone that has MMS can send that same message to an email address. And then I can reply through email back to the phone. And you *can* send MMS’s through the email application. But yes, yes, I admit that it’s dumb that it can’t be in the SMS app, and it’s kludgy at best. But honestly, do we want the Pre-style unified-everything inbox? When I had a Blackberry Pearl it drove me absolutely nucking futs that the SMS’s were in the same “inbox” as the emails. I can’t imagine what it would be like if IM’s and facebook messages, etc. were all in there, too, unless they come up with some pretty amazing layout and UI, or it will quickly become a mess.
A comment on the “flash” madness. First of all, YouTube is not enough. Not when each different blog site that I track in Google Reader uses a different video service, sometimes multiple ones, from YouTube to Vimeo, to whatever else is out there. But the *main* reason I want Flash isn’t for Flash Video. It’s for every dumb-ass website out there that I would love to use in the almost-awesome Safari Mobile, but I can’t because it uses a Flash interface without an HTML backup, so all I get is a little blue square with no recourse. Honestly, I would much rather these site developers not be dumbasses and provide some alternative to the Flash-only layout, but in this day and age (and let’s face it, the iPhone started it all), we’re headed toward mobile devices with desktop-level web capabilities, so there must be a middle-ground between every site having a “mobile” version and every mobile device being able to accurately render the “desktop” version.
How about shared calendars and being able to invite someone to an appointment? That’s a *very* important feature if you’re going to be able to use this phone for business purposes. It’s also deadly simple to implement.
I would look to have
*Video recording
*Copy paset
*First screen should also be scrollable left and right so that I can choose the screen that I want as my homepage
And it should support all the apps developmed in earlier versions.
The launch has always been like that. The events remind one of the same dull routine which is associated with the launches
What did you use to make this? The kerning on the type is so bad it hurts my eyes.
the score is 67.5 which does not fit in any range above, that will probbaly mean it’s in twilight zone!
I score it as 70 points on this card. 10 for push only, 20 for copy/paste, 15 for MMS, 10 for bluetooth peer-to-peer and stereo, 10 for landscape keyboard in default apps and 5 for search. Although frankly, I’d like to DEDUCT points for in-app purchasing, but I think opening the dock connector to peripherals offsets it.
As an iPod Touch owner (not phone) I don’t really see $10 worth of stuff for me. Maybe after I see what they actually do with it.
They’ve hinted at the fact that Bluetooth functionality will be unlocked in the 2G Touch with 3.0 . Is that worth anything to you?
Actually, in the Q&A they mention that Tethering is supported, but they don’t have the deals with the mobile providers so didn’t announce it.
+15 !
From the gdgt live feed:
11:39AM – Q: Where do you stand on data tethering?
A: There are two pieces needed: client-side, where the client needs that support; and carrier-support. We’re supporting tethering in 3.0 — and we’re working with carriers around the world. We don’t have announcements on the when and where, but we’re building it into 3.0.
Tethering was “supported” already, as the highly-publicized app that already did it (and was removed) proves.
Oh yeah, and nothing new as far as the iPod function goes except that apps now have access to the iPod library, so I guess that means someone can make a better player than Apple has already installed. Maybe the search works on songs too?
A2DP, but what about SOUNDabout Lossless A2DP http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2164573,00.asp
Having watched a liveblog of the event, I score it a 65 based on your scorecard. I give them the points for:
background apps, push only: 10
Copy and paste: 20
MMS: 15
Bluetooth, stereo only: 5
Landscape keyboard: 10
8 things, pics in e-mail only: 5
Total: 65
I don’t give them points for:
Tethering – Even though its supported in the 3.0 OS, that’s the easy part. Arranging support from the carriers has always been the hard part. 0 points
Search Mail – its limited to header info, not message content. 0 points
I scored it as a 70 as well.
I totaled 65 just above your post. What did you give them points for that I didn’t?
I count 85 pts. Not bad at all!
Do you give them credit for tethering and searching mail to get that total? I don’t give them credit for tethering because they haven’t arranged it with the carrier, which is the bigger problem. I don’t give them credit for searching mail because it only searches the header fields. Most e-mail I get doesn’t have a very descriptive or useful subject line. I was hoping for full text search of the message content.
what about being able to add/invite people to a calendar appt??
I didn’t hear that feature mentioned. It sounds like a pretty necessary feature, however, if you’re going to claim MS Exchange integration.
If you configure active-sync, add/invite and multiple calendars fires right up – that worked even on the 2.X software.
I recall an ad for iPhone that said, “it’s not kinda, sorta the internet. It is the internet in your pocket.” Au contraire, mon frère. With out flash… it is only “kinda, sorta the internet.” Don’t get me wrong I had the first generation iPhone and I bumped up to iPhone 3G. But Apple’s planned obsolescence bothers me. They are worse than Microsoft on this issue. About a year later a new phone? I fully expect a new model once again in 12 – 18 months.