Instead of happily tapping their touch screens, many iPhone users are using their fingers to point accusingly at Apple -- and the developers of iPhone applications.
That's because of widespread reliability and operating issues associated with the multimedia device's hardware and software upgrades last week.
Since Apple’s combined iPhone 3G/2.0 launch July 11, some users have reported frequent application crashes, inadvertent reboots or overall lag. It's not clear what's causing the problems: A poorly debugged operating system, or poorly-written apps.
That's to be expected with a major new upgrade, said Raven Zachary, founder of iPhoneDevCamp, who said the fault should be shared between Apple and the independent developers who create iPhone apps.
"The hope is most people understand we’re dealing with new technology and there are going to be kinks along the way,” Zachary said. “We’re all in this together, whether we’re developers, Apple, or consumers, and these issues will pass.”
Many users have reported that restoring their iPhones has fixed most issues related to application crashes. It’s clear in some cases, however, that application crashes are solely due to developers rushing their software to be released in concurrence with the launch of the App Store.
In some cases, developers are laudably up-front about the problems. For example, the description for Fit, a $15 application that tracks your calorie intake, reads “ * THIS VERSION OF FIT HAS SHIPPED WITH A CRASHING BUG…. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We love this app ourselves and are excited to make the intended user experience available to people.”
In addition to operating issues, users have reported other minor complaints, such as the lengthy amount of time it takes to sync iPhone applications with iTunes.
Zachary said he expected a bug-fixing iPhone software update from Apple as well as improvements in developers’ applications over the next month or two.
“I think we’re going to see some very great stuff very soon—more accelerometer usage, more location usage,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff out there that hasn’t even begun pushing the limits.”
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