…relief could be coming soon, via an improved operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Apple is already making the 2.1 version available to registered developers. Meanwhile some devs say the real action is still in jailbreaking.
Related: Android for the masses, iPhone for the rich, in Read/Write Web—as well as gPhone? Just a rumor: The real story is the Android developer revolt.
Dont forget j2me, who runs on around half a billion phones if not more, and since i dont think the famous iphone is actually outselling any of the other big manufactures yet, or is projected to do so in the neer future j2me will most likely remain the majority platform for mobile aplications.
Thanks, Daniel. What kinds of copyrighted books, including best-sellers, are available that way? Just Creative Commons titles? Or others? Thanks. David
Yeah, Java (j2me) with its fugly apps will save the world. Keep dreaming.
Apple has all hands on deck writing software. They’ve gone from being a one-OS company to a two-OS company (OS X and iPhone OS).
(What irks me is that the first App Store app they did for pay was a game. Hello! With everyone dying for a photo editing tool?!!?)
They not only have to finish/extend iPhone OS, but makes sure everything is coherent between the two OSes now. And port those apps they intend the iPod Air to have (keeping mocking, unbelievers!).
A plausible hypothesis for the 3G reception problems is they wrote a whole new phone stack for the 3G phone. Not a trivial thing!
Amazon kindle probably runs j2me but their software isnt released to public(sun brags about it),a beta of mobipocket have been released but it’s not finished.
If you can get mobipocket to run properly your able to read commersial books(i still personally prefer a proper laptop) Otherwise you stuck with what can be saved as txt or viewed in a web browser(operamini is far from ugly) and theres no good reason why any web based reader should not work flawless in the operamini browser.
The problem with focusing solely on the iphone is that beside the success tales it remains at something less then 10% market share.
Less than 10% marketshare of what? j2me may be on more phones but that means nothing if it isn’t used. And guess what? It’s not used! If it was, we’d be hearing tale after tale of how people were making tons of money being devs for it. The rest of you can continue your non-iPhone fantasies. Meanwhile, Sony-Ericsson has cut jobs. Nokia will be next. The only other platform that has a chance is Android. That’s reality, period.
Less then 10% of just about any digital product from laptops to cell phones, and of touch screen phones at the same size your still not seing a 50% market share.(symbian and windowsmobile does ebooks as good as the palm)
With kindle sales being a complete secret(probably aroind 5% of dells monthly laptop sales so far) your kind of forcing ebooks to remain a fringe product for the stubborn if you dont try and market it to existing platforms.
Whith the iphone being as most 3G phones meant for video consumption(iphone dont really do tv or youtube yet because it’s lacks flash) and the numbers shown so far dont speak of millions of new daily ebook downloads it’s not that clear that reading ebooks is the main usage for a iphone, like with the regular phones picking up a paperback is more pleasant then being forced to read all of it on a iphone. were talking 10% of a 10% market 3% of the full market would means more ebooks sold.
ohh and i forgot to mention the amazon kindle is a java(j2me) based cell phone with a special display. Most others does either montavista linux(sony) who can run j2me apps or symbian/windowsmobile