Apple iPhone 3.0: third time's the charm?

A year ago, I said I would buy an Apple iPhone when it became available from a Hong Kong telco carrier. It did, and I did.

 

It always takes time to get used to any powerful new mobile device, but within weeks I was up-to-speed on the iPhone. The 2.0 software was slightly buggy (the old maxim: "never use version 'point-zero' of any software" came to mind), but 2.1 was released quickly, quashing bugs and dissent among the iPhone faithful. And version 3.0 is now out, incorporating some features (like copy-and-paste) which should have been included from the outset. But it also provides some needed patches and useful tweaks.

 

Part of the original selling point for me was the software developer kit (SDK) from Apple which allowed developers to write apps for the device and, if Apple-approved, sell or give them away on Apple's iTunes store. Some of the resultant apps were and are absurd, overpriced and/or tasteless. Others are useful, and some invaluable.

 

Take, for example, the Hong Kong weather apps that pull info from the HK Observatory and present it in real-time. Or the Wikipedia-based apps that allow immediate Wiki searches of whatever you type into the search-field, presented in easy-to-read-on-the-MTR newsreader-format. Bloomberg, AP, New York Times: all free newsreader apps, customizable to your specs.

 

There's all the usual web/email apps, but there are a few iPhone facets that especially appeal to me. As it also has an "iPod" mode for video/audio playback, I can use the open source software program Handbrake to make iPhone-optimized versions of movies I own on DVD. I torture-tested this function by ripping a few Hong Kong movies with English subtitles—the subtitles were entirely readable, on a device the size of a cake-slice. The main problem I had was optimally balancing the iPhone for an extended viewing session!

 

But the cornucopia of custom apps is what continues to impress. One example: the Beijing-based electronic band FM3 released an album as a standalone battery-powered box-player a couple of years ago (instead of releasing a CD or mp3s, they burned their music onto a chip and installed it in a box). With the SDK, they were able to re-engineer it into an app and sell it via iTunes for four dollars (search the store for "Buddha Machine" for more info).

 

More recently, British electronic-music pioneer Brian Eno collaborated with musician and software designer Peter Chilvers to create Bloom: a "generative music" app which leverages Eno's experiments in ambient music dating back to the 1970s (serene suspended tones best exemplified by albums like "Music for Airports") but allows either user-control, or machine-generation. Like the FM3 app, it sells for four bucks, and is unique.

 

All this consumer stuff is useful and entertaining, but what we're waiting for is a Hong Kong enterprise to combine some of the iPhone's built-in capabilities (GPS, Google Maps, etc) with their own data and deploy it in the field. The possibilities seem abundant, but first someone will have to do it, then be willing to contact us and let us write about it.

 

Of course, the same thing (mashup with a CRM database? Inventory at disparate locations?) could be done with mobile devices from RIM or Nokia. But if any Hong Kong enterprise is doing it, we're not getting your case studies. We'd be interested.