How many Treos, Windows smartphones, Palms, and other PDA-esque devices exist happily on modern cellular networks these days? How many of those users do you think have installed third-party applications on those devices? Probably a number in the thousands, if not millions. How many times have we heard about those devices completely obliterating a cell tower? A network's regional network? How about going so far as to completely disable cell phone service for an entire coast? If you've heard of an instance of any of those, I'd like to know about it. Jobs is convinced that an ill-designed iPhone app could wreak havoc on Cingular's network:
"You don’t want your phone to be an open platform," meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. "You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."
I worked for T-Mobile as an RF and GSM engineer for several years. I've taken classes on these subjects and I know the standards and signaling of GSM, GPRS, and EDGE down to the 1s and 0s. I know how the timers, protocols, and messages get passed through the various layers. I dealt with thousands of situations dealing with mobile handsets, towers, and a menagerie of arcane cellular hardware you'll never see in your life. There is no way that a single app on a single phone (or installed on thousands of phones) could accidentally destroy a network.
Even if there was some sort of malicious, network-melting application making the rounds and that application somehow got installed on many thousands of phones, you would've thought that this would've happened already in the millions and millions of other smart phones already on the market. Furthermore, I've owned Nokia "smart phones" and I've installed plenty of applications, janky and otherwise. I've never run into the instance where running these hindered my ability to send and receive calls. If this is the case with the iPhone, I'm truly disappointed in the engineering team behind it.
What Jobs is doing here is spreading FUD for FUD's sake. I would have understood, but not agreed with Jobs' desire to keep unchecked installation of third-party apps on the iPhone to keep the integreity of the experience intact. He's even alluded to that elsewhere, but to go around and pontificate on topics he obviously doesn't understand is just low. I hope that somehow, someway this message will get relayed to Jobs or PR department at Apple but I'm not keeping my hopes held very high.
reader comments
1