Cashflow? If Apple disables bluetooth file transferring but makes MobileMe available, maybe people will buy the service because they want the functionality. If people buy the service, why would Apple want to make available a competitive solution such as BT file transfer.

A good, corporate player? When it comes to sharing files via bluetooth with friends, I’m sure Apple, at some level, wants to make all of the other corporations out there with stolen intellectual property (i.e. movies, music, etc.) at least feel like Apple won’t add to the theft. But I hardly doubt this has a bearing on Apple’s decision to disable bluetooth file transfer functionality – I’m thinking their own bottom line and profitability (MobileMe) was the biggest factor.

It will be interesting to see if MobileMe will last or if a horde of angry customers who want full capabilities on their iphones will be able to convince Apple to stop playing the technological gatekeeper. Then again, maybe a hacking keymaster may come along…

Jet: I don’t actually mind iTunes personally, after using the software that comes with Creative MP3 players iTunes is a big improvement. That said, I agree that we shouldn’t HAVE to use iTunes. Would be nice to have the choice!

AG: Thanks for the comment, all good points which I probably should have added at the end of my post as ‘extras’.

iBlog: To be fair to o2, I don’t have anything bad to say about them after 3 weeks use. My problem was mainly with Apple for forcing me to move to o2. I was happy with my previous network and had to pay a lot of money to get out of it early.

Regarding the camera, yes I do take photos with my phone. I use an expensive and large Canon DSLR camera for serious shots but that is far too big to carry around all the time and I wouldn’t want to either. There are loads of times I want to take photos and don’t have a camera. Almost every decent phone out there has a better camera than the iPhone which is a shame.

Emailing is not faster than bluetooth transfer, it’s a slower speed and also a longer process. The main problem that I stated though is that most people I would be sending files to don’t have email. Again almost every phone has bluetooth so I can’t understand why Apple don’t allow us to use it.

And in the UK at least, the iPhone is the ONLY major phone (afaik) that is network restrictive, so it is a bit weird.

Thanks for your comments though, it’s always good to hear different opinions!

2) you wrote ‘FAIL’ instead of ‘yet’… Leaving it out might be a way to force other manufacturers to support proper email functionality on their phones. I don’t know. Thing is, I never missed it. Whenever I received one, I got a text message telling me to go to a website to view it even though my phone was perfectly capable of showing it itself. Inferior technology and expensive too.

3) are you serious about this? you take photo’s with a CAMERA, not with an iPhone. Check out Flickr though and you see that there wasn’t really any need to upgrade it as it takes pretty decent pictures for a phone.

4) I have no real opinion on this, my old Treo failed to save and open files via Bluetooth when it didn’t know how to open them. I’d have to wait till the file was received and then got a message it didn’t know how to open it and the file was simply discarded. Also it was slooooooow… Come to think of it, emailing it would probably be faster.

5) Don’t know O2 as I live in the Netherlands and we have to put up with T-Mobile (you won’t believe how clueless the act when it comes to the iPhone… underestimation of the year). On the other hand it’s not weird for a manufacturer to go with just 1 provider. It might be because AT&T had a bad name that it was hung out so broadly but it’s nothing special. T-Mobile have done it for years with MDAs before HTC decided to release phones under the HTC brandname.