Magnus Blog

There’s been a lot of buzz around the iPhone, and while some people (idiots mostly) adamantly assert that the iPhone is crappy, because it doesn’t have thousands of features. I don’t care how many features it has, as long as it has the ones I want, and while the iPhone isn’t feature complete for me yet, I trust that Apple will bring us the features that I’m missing.

However, there is one feature that the anti-iPhonists seem to underestimate, and that is the power of the App Store. iPhone really is the first truly mobile platform. Sure, there’s been apps for other phones, but never with a support from as many companies and with an average quality as high as the ones for the iPhone. To me, as a developer, the iPhone is really exciting for several reasons.

• It really is a location agnostic platform. People bring it with them everywhere. This opens up tons of possibilities for apps that help with everyday life.
• While it is somewhat of a commodity, it certainly isn’t just for the techies or businessmen, like so many smartphones before it.
• The API and the developer tools are great. On other smartphones you have you use either craptastic Java or something like Symbian or Windows Mobile. Most apps are made in Java, which makes them horrible, and both Symbian and Windows Mobile are horribly bad API-wise (and otherwise too).
• The App Store makes selling your apps really easy. The 30% cut Apple takes is a very low price, and because it is the only channel for apps, good apps will get proper exposure.

Thanks to the App Store, the iPhone really will be the iPod of the phone world.