Posts categorized in Tech

iPhone 3G: Unanswered Questions

2008 June 10

I’m sure everyone and their mothers have already blogged this, but here are the lingering questions I have following today’s WWDC keynote:

  • A new remote “erase” feature was alluded to during the enterprise portion of the presentation. How will this work, and who controls it? If I’m late paying my AT&T bill, try to break my contract, or try to unlock the phone for use with another carrier, will the phone self-destruct?

  • Apple announced a new push notification service for developer use, but I’m guessing it ain’t free. How much will it cost, and who can use it? Will small, independent developers be priced out of the picture? And is it part of the new Mobile Me service, or can it operate on its own, serving users who don’t have $99/year Mobile Me accounts?

  • How much will my monthly 3G phone bill cost? (More, presumably.)

  • Is 3G service even available in my area? How can I find out before purchasing a new phone?

  • Will Mobile Me’s push email service work only with me.com email accounts? (I’m guessing yes, which means I wouldn’t be able to use it with alignedleft.com.)

  • How does the new Mail app’s UI for multiple-message delete/move work? This is new functionality for iPhone, but it won’t be useful unless it’s also usable.

  • Same question for the multiple language support: How does the UI work for switching languages/keyboards? And can the handwriting recognition used for Chinese character input be expanded for use with other alphabets?

Also, Jobs mentioned that the audio quality had been improved significantly. It will be interesting to hear if that’s really the case.

Update: I also want to add one observation that I haven’t seen made elsewhere yet:

  • It looks like iPhone 2.0 supports multiple iCal calendars, which was not mentioned in the keynote (nor on Apple’s site). This will be great, as it brings my iPhone calendar more in line, visually, with my desktop iCal calendar. (I hope this also eliminates the bug/feature of having new events entered on the phone sync unpredictably into the last calendar in iCal’s list.)

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