iphone blues
I've been working on a mobile site for my company, and that means lots of reading books and lots of testing the site in various mobile browsers. Of course, I own a little pay-as-you-go phone that I don't connect to the internet with, so testing has been difficult. Especially for the iphone.
The only iphone emulator that actually works and is fairly accurate only works on Macs, and I don't have one. So I am reduced to poking at site's through devices I borrow from my coworkers. That's not really developer-friendly.
So I considered that maybe I should by one for development and educational purposes. I looked at what Joe and I pay every month and I did the figures... On a shared plan with me owning an iphone and him on just any old thing (an extra iphone means an additional $30 a month in data plans), it would be $90 a month, which for a couple who spend maybe $50 on their phones each month, it does seem a tad steep. That's an additional $30 a month plus the cost of new devices and connection fees, something an already strained budget no likey. Tack on an extra $60 if he wants an iphone, too.
So a testing device is out of the picture for me, even though I feel I need to be scoping out the mobile web more than ever.
The part that kicks me in the shins the hardest is that in all the mobile books I read, as soon as the authors get to the iphone, they state that it is "revolutionary" and then wax rhapsodic about how Apple revolutionized computers ten years ago and what will Apple revolutionize next... Once they are done licking Steve Jobs's face, they get back to the original aim of that chapter.
But it's not going to be revolutionary if only well-to-do people can afford it. It was only when computers became cheap enough that everyone could own one that things started changing. So I think it's inaccurate to say such things. The concept might be a good one, but it takes mass implementation to be revolutionary.
Edit: Upon writing this, it occurred to me that we could further reduce the household phoen bill to $32 a month by switching Joe to pay-as-you-go. Hot damn!
The only iphone emulator that actually works and is fairly accurate only works on Macs, and I don't have one. So I am reduced to poking at site's through devices I borrow from my coworkers. That's not really developer-friendly.
So I considered that maybe I should by one for development and educational purposes. I looked at what Joe and I pay every month and I did the figures... On a shared plan with me owning an iphone and him on just any old thing (an extra iphone means an additional $30 a month in data plans), it would be $90 a month, which for a couple who spend maybe $50 on their phones each month, it does seem a tad steep. That's an additional $30 a month plus the cost of new devices and connection fees, something an already strained budget no likey. Tack on an extra $60 if he wants an iphone, too.
So a testing device is out of the picture for me, even though I feel I need to be scoping out the mobile web more than ever.
The part that kicks me in the shins the hardest is that in all the mobile books I read, as soon as the authors get to the iphone, they state that it is "revolutionary" and then wax rhapsodic about how Apple revolutionized computers ten years ago and what will Apple revolutionize next... Once they are done licking Steve Jobs's face, they get back to the original aim of that chapter.
But it's not going to be revolutionary if only well-to-do people can afford it. It was only when computers became cheap enough that everyone could own one that things started changing. So I think it's inaccurate to say such things. The concept might be a good one, but it takes mass implementation to be revolutionary.
Edit: Upon writing this, it occurred to me that we could further reduce the household phoen bill to $32 a month by switching Joe to pay-as-you-go. Hot damn!