There is another side effect of this that isn’t immediately obvious. Existing open source applications that are licensed under the GPL, and other similar licenses, can not be legally ported to the iPhone. If you make modifications to a program under the GPL, you must open source your derivative code. The Apple agreement prevents you from doing this. Therefore, you can’t port emacs to the iPhone without violating either the GPL or the agreement with Apple.

In the wake of the recent court ruling upholding the Artistic License, we are more sure than ever that open source licenses are enforceable. Thus, the only chance we have of seeing many open source apps ported to the iPhone is if Apple makes a change, because the GPL isn’t going anywhere.

Luckily many open source projects are licensed under the BSD, MIT, or other similar licenses. Projects under these licenses can be ported to the iPhone because the derivative code does not need to be open sourced. This is why we are seeing iPhone applications that contain code from PuTTY, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, etc.

The thing is that Google Calendar provides iCal files and such. It is a very open system that just begs the rest of the calendar world to sync with it. There is no technological reason that the iPhone can’t synchronize with my Google Calendar directly on its own. The fact that it does not is an example of the kind of thing that only happens on closed platforms. This kind of feature would never be missing from an open platform. I can almost guarantee Android phones will do this. The iPhone needs to do it as well. I can understand it not working well with Google Apps, but not working with it at all is unacceptable.

For now, I need to find a practical solution to this problem. The first thing you might suggest to me is that I should visit my Google Calendar in the mobile Safari browser. This does indeed work, but not well. The user interface of the native iPhone calendar application is far superior to the mobile web interface of Google Calendar. Also, the web interface lacks a lot of functionality, namely the ability to set the phone to alert me about events. If the user interface isn’t good, it’s effectively no different than if the functionality did not exist in the first place.

Your next suggestion might be to get a Mobile Me account. Hah! Listen, I’m a Google Apps user. I’m already fully invested in it. I’m not about to pay for Mobile Me, which seems to not be doing so well. Even if Mobile Me worked, Google Apps is free and better. I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect me to pay that kind of money just to synchronize my calendar. In fact, I think it is pretty unreasonable to expect me to pay any amount of money for this one feature. Any non-free solution is right out the door. Well, maybe I’ll pay a one-time fee of $5, but that’s it.

The restriction on spending money includes purchasing Microsoft Office or Outlook. If I had a copy of Outlook, I could syncrhonize it with my Google Calendar using any of a myriad of apps like this official one. Then iTunes would act as a go-between Outlook and the iPhone. It’s a chain with five pieces (Google, Calendar Sync, Outlook, iTunes, iPhone) for a process that really only requires two pieces (Google, iPhone), but it will work. The problem is that I don’t own Outlook or Office. Sure, I could pirate them or whatever, but that’s not going to happen. I need a legitimate and reliable solution, not some hack.

In the same vein as the Outlook solution, there are also programs out there like Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync takes Google Calendar and synchronizes it with iCal. iCal then works with iTunes, and then to the phone. It’s a little bit smoother operation than some others because Spanning Sync actually appears to be a really polished application. The problem is that it is Mac only. It would be cheaper to buy Outlook than for me to buy a Mac.

Jailbreaking the iPhone would probably solve the problem, but that’s not going to happen either. I pay a lot of money for this phone, and other than this one issue, I’m almost entirely satisified with it. I’m not going to risk screwing it all up. You can jailbreak at your own risk. I’m staying on the straight and narrow.

This morning I finally came across something that might be a possible solution. It’s called NuevaSync. What NuevaSync does is pretty clever. They have what I must believe to be a Microsoft Exchange server. They allow you to get a account on the server. They will then automatically synchronize your Google Calendar with their Exchange Server. You then connect to their Exchange server directly from the iPhone, and now you will have push synchronization with your calendar. This is even better than solutions like spanning sync, as updates will be pushed, rather than manually synchronized through iTunes. So why not use NuevaSync?

The first reason not to use NuevaSync is that it doesn’t appear to support Google Apps, only regular Google accounts. Too many people who try to integrate with Google, including Google themselves, forget about Google Apps users. Google Apps users are the hardcore Googlers. They should more features and functionality, and they should get it before non-apps Google users. It’s really a shame that so often everything is the other way around.

The second reason is that an iPhone can only connect to one Exchange account at a time. I’m already using my one account to synchronize with the Exchange server at work. Why not also use the work calendar you say? Because I don’t want my personal calendar on my employer’s server, that’s why. I think that’s a reasonable expectation, don’t you? Actually my company was recently acquired. My boss who used to be a partner is now an employee. He was using the work server for his personal calendar, but now he’s trying to get everything off of there. He has a Mac, though, so maybe Spanning Sync will work for him.

In the meantime, here I am with a Google Calendar and an iPhone 3g, and never the twain shall meet. This is a serious situation that needs to be rectified.

When you want to understand why I’m buying the iPhone, you have to understand my past phone experience. I’ve got the LG VX8600 from Verizon right now. My parents pay for it on a family plan. It’s the third phone I’ve owned, and the two phones I had before it were only really capable of making calls. This phone can actually do quite a bit, especially when it comes to playing music. However, it does all those things poorly. When I first got the phone, I played with all of the features extensively. After a few days, I went back to just using it to make calls, and not much else. I even had a Blackberry at my last job. I installed a bunch of fancy apps on it, but the only thing I ever really used was the company e-mail. Even an old Treo is better than any device I have ever had.

Since I’m a software engineer by profession, it’s really pretty sad that I have been completely out of the loop when it comes to mobile computing. The reason is that every device I have had has a crappy user interface. You could have a phone with all the features in the universe, completely open source, but if the UI sucks, it is useless. This is why mobile Safari has so much market share compared to the market share of the iPhone. Even though plenty of phones have browsers, people actually use the one on the iPhone. Many people have phones with music players built in, but they use a separate iPod. The bad user interface makes the feature worthless. I would argue that the iPhone actually has more features than any other phone based on the fact that other devices with more features have bad interfaces that make those features effectively nonexistent.

The biggest reason to get the iPhone is because it will reduce the number of devices I carry every day. Right now I carry a separate phone and iPod. I also don’t have a GPS. Now I can have all three of those, and more, in a single package. This is such an unbelievably huge benefit to the iPhone that is not emphasized nearly enough. Sure, there are other devices that encompass all these features, but like I said, if the UI is bad, the feature effectively doesn’t exist. The iPhone is a usable phone, usable portable media player, and usable GPS in one single device. Only having to carry one thing, instead of three, that alone is worth a lot more money than Apple is charging.

There is some competition for the iPhone that has good arguments going for it, but none of them win. The Nokia N95 is great, but it really can’t compete with the iPhone when it comes to media playing. I would still need an iPod if I got an N95. The Nokia N810 would be almost perfect, but it isn’t a phone. Put a 3G radio in it, and I’m sold. Android is looking like it might be the best for me, as I am a heavy user of Google Apps. However, that also doesn’t look like it will have adequate media playing capabilities. The Android phones have perfect Google integration, but nothing else. The iPhone wins on all other fronts, except it has relatively poor, but satisfactory, interaction with Google’s apps.

There is an issue with the providers. I really would much rather have Verizon than AT&T. But does it really matter that much? We’re complaining that we don’t have our choice of which of the evil carriers to go with. If there were a good carrier, I could see complaining, but there is not. Every carrier sucks. No matter what you do, you have to suffer with one of them. If it’s AT&T instead of Verizon getting your money, does it really mean anything? I live in NY, so I have decent coverage at my house and job. That’s really all that matters.

Lastly, the iPhone is the most popular platform. The most popular platform gets all the goodies. The app store will be loaded with everything we want that Apple allows. There will be a lot more software for iPhone than for any other mobile platform, I guarantee it. There will also be more accessories made for the iPhone, more web sites specifically designed to look good on iPhone, and the list goes on. The world will bend itself to accomodate iPhone users. Being an iPhone user will be a lot easier and lot more convenient than using anything else.

The iPhone isn’t perfect by any means, but what device is? Sure, we would all love it if it had a bigger removable battery, physical keyboard, wifi podcatcher, turn by turn GPS, etc. They are all valid criticisms, but on the same token, many people have unrealistically high expectations. If you only ever bought electronic devices when they were absolutely perfect in every way, people would mistake you for a Luddite.

The reason I’m buying the iPhone is that it has enough features that it crosses the line. Those features have a decent enough interface that I will actually use them, instead of just paying extra money for a device I only use to make calls. The popularity of the iPhone will gaurantee that there is a large amount of support for the device. It’s a huge step up from where I am now. It may not be perfect, but it’s the best I can get right now, and it will definitely be able to hold me over for two years. At that point in time, there will definitely be a far superior device to switch to. For now, the iPhone is the winner.