OK, before I start let me explain my position. I don’t currently own an iPhone (the black 16GB are illusive little buggers in O2 stores) but I’ve had an iPod touch for several months. I think it’s the best handheld device out there and has one of the best development environments available. It really is Apple’s crowning achievement. I have some iPhone applications planned. I’ve also spent way more money than I should have on the AppStore. But I have some niggles.

For me the iPhone/iPod touch platform (I’ll just say iPhone from now on) isn’t a very appealing platform for an app developer. I mean, there are some apps that are ideal for it but most of these already seem to have been done, there is only so much you can do with photos, so many ways of making a ToDo app etc. Maybe I’m just lacking imagination but I can’t really think of that many applications that could go on the iPhone. Sure, I can think of all sorts of custom stuff for businesses, but that’s boring work. In terms of stuff you make, pack up and sell to customers the idea pool is very limited.

But why? One answer is the hardware. Multi touch is great but requires large target areas. This limits what you can show on a single screen, limiting the complexity of an application. Yes you can have sub categories and stuff hidden away, but while that works fine on the Mac and is actually the recommended way of doing things, there is only so much stuff you can hide before it pisses off users.

The other part of this equation is that while multi touch controls require quite a bit of screen space, the screen space is limited on the iPhone. Even if you could use a keyboard an mouse, there is only so much you can do on such a tiny screen.

Does this mean that the iPhone sucks for applications? Not at all, in fact it is ideal for some sorts of applications, it is just pants for others. It doesn’t give you the flexibility to build as wide a range of applications as the Mac and it doesn’t let you make an application as feature filled as on the Mac, but this is also an advantage, because it means developers can focus on making what they can do with the device the best user experience out there.

But it’s not all doom and gloom about what you can develop for the iPhone, because I’ve only been talking about applications up until now. Where the iPhone will excel is gaming. It is an almost perfect hand held gaming device. In gaming terms, it is like if the PS3 and Wii has a lovechild which was also genetically modified with DNA from the GameBoy. It is the most powerful in it’s class with a unique selection of input devices and is incredibly portable (I’ve had my iPod touch for over 9 months now and I still can’t get over how bloody thin it is).

The iPhone is brilliant because it forces developers to be innovative and try to get around the fact that there’s no D-Pad. The iPhone is unique in this regard, even the Wii has a D-Pad. Of course, developers won’t get this right the first time but innovation isn’t always a nice process to watch. I’m going to be spending half of my last year of University looking into the various ways you can control games trying to find out what works best in what situation, but even then there won’t be one set of controls that work best in one situation.

So what about the economy part of things? Well some people seem to think that the iPhone will be a bigger platform than the Mac in a few years. I tend to agree with them, but it will be an entirely different platform. The Mac’s bread and butter is content creation and content creation requires some degree of accuracy and a decent amount of screen space. The iPhone will consist more at applications you just want to pull out and look at briefly while you’re on the go, but it will shine most as a gaming device. And while the Mac commands an average price of around $25-30, the iPhone will be more around $8-10.

It isn’t really right to compare the Mac to the iPhone, they are designed for two completely different scenarios. It would be like comparing Stickies.app to Word. One is designed for quick and simple stuff, the other is designed to sit down and immerse yourself in work. Yes, the iPhone will be a bigger platform in terms of unit sales, revenue, profit and everything that matters to anyone trying to make money. But don’t think that you can just transfer straight straight from the desktop and expect it to be the same sort of market. It’s a different class of applications, aimed at a different type of user in a different type of situation.

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