You’re right — and as I mentioned in my letter to Steve I’m very happy with my iPhone (and my wife is also). However, I think it’s a mistake not to embrace third party apps just because you don’t think other developers can make software as usable.

And if we don’t voice our opinions, how would they know how their customers feel?

That’s what I will never accept.

I’d pay a premium for an unlocked iPhone.

Lock the phone free the touch!

Seriously, a real letter has a lot more impact than a mail - maybe send through the feedback form.

Apple has, for example, a policy to answer every letter they receive. Not so with email.

Would everybody write a letter because of the iPhone, they would certainly hve a lot more work and this means some impact … more than email …

This letter should accompany a petition for all iphone owner who want Apple to release the SDK for 3rd party developers to create native applications.

I dont think it should change, i think they should at least allow users to add a a link to the menu and customise the menu as they see fit, to give it more of an application feel. There are heaps of issues in opening up 3rd party dev to the iPhone, stuff that apple are not interested in dealing with right now (although they are dealing with the hacking issues). Security is the concern, and apple cannot guarantee the user experience if others are putting applications on their platform. Its about the user experience. Things wont “just work” as they will want them to, at least till they can guarantee that then it wont change, and ppl will keep whinging.

Awesome letter though, very well worded! As I am from UK ( scotland) I have no idea what the iPhone is like, but tomorrow I will have the iPod Touch (closest to it )

Thanks,

WizzKid

And enough with the “cry me a river” replies. You’re right, of course, that Apple is in no way obligated to listen to their customers. They can lock it down, close out developers, brick the innovators’ devices, whatever they want.

And we can decide not to buy it.

But as a lifetime Apple customer, and a stockholder, I think they’re making a huge mistake, one that absolutely will cost them significant marketshare in the next few years if they don’t turn around. Their technology will be copied, poorly, but well enough that most consumers will happily trade the loss of elegance for increased access to software and better economics. And if this scenario sounds familiar, talk to anyone who, like me, marveled at the Mac in 1984 then turned around and bought a lot of DOS/Windows boxes for the following 15 years.

BTW, Nokia just got $400 from me for a very nice unlocked phone. I do love the iPhone interface, but I _want_ access to 3rd party apps and _need_ to travel without paying international roaming rates.

@nfoo - I intend to. I am taking a three-prong approach… email (to every address I could find for Steve), snail mail and here on TAB

In my opinion god bless the hackers that kicked ATT and Apple where it hurts. Maybe next time they won’t try to dumb down features for their own money grubbing purposes.

Also, why would you voluntarily sell your information to the NSA? ATT just hands them your phone records and addresses incase your a terrorist(s). Hope you don’t have an Arabic name. Thank the President for your invasion of Constitutional rights.

Believe me, I’m not hating on Apple itself, just some of its business pursuits in the past years. I just happen to be a very disappointed Mac user distressed that Apple is following everything but what everyone loves about them, at least the ones who will STILL use their products if there not shiny and some sort of fashion trend for rich teenagers.

Also, Europeans do not ‘expect’ unlocked phones. Every service provider issues locked phones with their own SIM card, and there is a fee to unlock - just like in the US.
Please get your facts straight…

The day I can connect a portable full-sized keyboard to it, type up TextEdit docs, then upload them with a few pics to dotMac, from anywhere in the world, this journalist will be in heaven.

I would be totally satisfied and technology could finally stop its inexorable advance.

I doubt sales have declined since Apple started playing hardball. I would say 90% of iPhone users either don’t care or don’t know how to mod their iPhone because they are general users and not power users. Sales of the device won’t decrease because of the locking of the iPhone most potiential users either care about the price or being let out of their current contract with their service provider. With the holiday season coming up expect sales to be through the roof

Tom

have you ever used a treo after installing a few 3rd party apps?

i for one am HAPPY its a closed platform as it ultimately leads to a better user experience

I wouldn’t be surprised if they take this route. The ability to run third-party software is a big selling point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple has seen sales decline since they started playing hardball. I, for one, was on the verge of buying, but I am no longer interested.

but what about the waste generate when they toss out the letter? Plus its almost free to send an email, mailing a letter cots 39 cents

But consider sending it as a real letter.
In my experience this has a much bigger impact.

All of you should do that. There’s no better effect than a pile of letters. You can’t just click “delete” …

Also about notes and a todo list. In leopard mail has both these options to create notes and have a todo list. While not available to sync I believe that when Leopard ships it will be possible to sync both notes and a todo list that will integrate with the iCal todo list, so I wouldn’t worry about those features too much right now.

Finally, I’ll say this, wait until leopard comes out. The iPhone and leopard were supposed to debut at the same time so some of the iPhone’s feature set may be incomplete due to the delayed release of Leopard. Just wait a few weeks and the cat will be out of the bag.