the Onda

So everyone is on fire about the fact that Apple seems to be bricking cracked iPhones with the new 1.1.1 software upgrade, which is a bit surprising to me. Did people not expect one of the most proprietary companies in the industry to take this path when its walled garden is under attack?

In fact, I think that the Apple of today— which is to say the Apple that launched OSX— is actually much more clue-full about how to enable something which is critical for companies in their position: key axes of user/developer participation that enrich the platform without threatening the very aspects that gives it its edge (stability and perception of control for partners). Which is why I'm left wondering why this is such a big deal, and why we can't just all focus our energy on getting Apple to support the right vector of participation for the rest of us, by which I mean enhancing their web appplication platform to the point where developers won't really care about the fact that they can't install binaries to run on the iPhone.

Below are the three things I think Apple could do to cut this gordian knot of control versus user-led innovation. In providing an "SDK" that allowed web developers access to these 3 APIs I think Apple would (as they did with the "open for business" OSX strategy) unleash a torrent of creativity while keeping the relevant bits of their platform closed for the sake of their small-minded (but critical) partners, the phone companies and the content holders.

1. Access to the camera's current "roll:" though it would be ideal to be able to control the camera itself, a great start is being able to take pictures off of the current set via Javascript/DOM scripting. For instance, I would love to be able to write:

var img = document.camera.roll[0].images[0]['thumbnail'];

for manipulating images inside of the browser for say posting as a file upload to a server. One of the coolest things about mobile imaging is the ability to completely bypass the PC; Shozu on Series 60 showed us this in a big way. I'd like to be able to send photos up not only to Flickr but also to all sorts of other cool web applications that could take advantage of basic image recognition to provide all sorts of new functionality.

2. Growl-like notification hooks, preferably tied to the SMS pipeline: this one is hard to describe for people that haven't used the fabulous Growl OSX service, but I'll try anyway. A portable computer like the iPhone (more on this below) needs to be really good at messaging which means that it needs to support as a core capability the ability to have messages "pushed" to the end device. Currently on the iPhone this comes as either phone calls or SMS messages. Why not let developers of web applications register "listeners" for particular SMSes that can the point mobile Safari to specific pages, or, at the very least, get the user's attention. When we look at mobile Meebo or mobile Facebook on the iPhone, the biggest limitation is their inability to push notifications up to the user that is not currently on their respective pages. Sure, each of these apps can send generic SMS messages to a particular phone number, but wouldn't it be so much easier on the user if these SMSes could drive specific behaviors on the phones? The idea of copying a system-wide notification like Growl goes all the way back to the Cocoa framework, so I'm sure Apple would have no problem doing it.

3. Minimal control of the local radio-based networking: Apple is already heading in this direction by giving us Bonjour (local multicast) support inside of mobile Safari in 1.1.1. Taking this further would allow application developers to find out more about the local networking environment, and where appropriate, to make connections with locally available devices for sharing information that do not require connecting to the greater Internet.

Notice that none of the three vectors of functionality I describe above touch either of the two sacred-cow business models that Apple is trying to protect: the carrier lock for using cellular networks, or the content providers' lock on the music they push to the device.

I often tell new iPhone users that the best way to always be happy with their new toy is to not think of the iPhone as cellphone-on-steroids, but to think of it as a laptop in your pocket. When looked at from this perspective features like a battery that lasts all day and a form factor that lets you surf the web in a device that weighs less than 6lbs and doesn't require a keyboard seem more like magic than say the touch screen replacing the number pad, or the constant limitations of the AT&T network. As they build out vectors for extensibility, it would behoove Apple to remember the fact that they are indeed seeding portable computers and not locked phones.

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