Apple Says More iPhone Features Coming Soon

In an interview with Pocket-lint, an Apple spokesman said, "All the complaints and feature requests we've had can be fixed and added by software upgrades."

Though I'm not sure how 3G access is going to be enabled with a software upgrade, it's nice to know that more features are coming.

Though I doubt they're breathing hard quite yet...

Find out why.

As everyone knows, part of the delay in releasing Leopard had to do with Apple needing a significant number of its developers to polish the iPhone's software prior to release.

But while polished on the outside, many hackers intent on "jailbreaking" the iPhone have commented on the rather "crufty" quality of the code contained in the first version of the iPhone, and had indicated that by the 1.1.1 update had rolled around that Apple had "cleaned things up considerably."

Apple had initially promised a steady stream of improvements and upgrades for the phone. In fact, it's built-in "non-obsolescence" was one of its major selling points when introduced. Since release, however, those updates have been few and far between, and concentrated primarily on those features that could extract more money from the iPhone customer base in the form of ringtones and downloadable music.

Of course, once all of those developers had pushed the iPhone out the door, Apple had a major OS release to worry about, and pretty much everyone who'd moved onto the iPhone project was now needed to ensure that Apple could meet its October release date for Leopard. They did... barely.

In fact, several of the issues and bugs that have appeared since then tend to indicate that Apple rushed Leopard out the door a bit faster than they might have otherwise done so. This is reinforced by comments from third parties like Adobe, who've stated that even they didn't receive the final version of Leopard for testing prior to its release to the public.

A few people have given various reasons, some a bit nefarious, for Apple to not to have included all of the "obvious" missing features in the iPhone in the first place, or for those features not to have been added shortly after the iPhone was released, or even for Apple not to have released an iPhone SDK for developers.

Personally, I think the real reason is pretty straightforward: They simply didn't have time.

And given the resources I expect that Apple's expending to fix some of the critical problems in Leopard and to get the 10.5.1 update out the door, I doubt that they've had much leisure time in the last month or so either.

Which is why I don't think we'll see anything significant added to the iPhone in the near future. Actually, given the timing, I expect that Apple may even hold off until MacWorld Expo in January.

[via Pocket-lint]

Comments

[James R. Taylor]

Love the "coming/breathing hard" intro. Real Genuis, right?