The inevitability of the iPhone
(Credit:
Apple)
I walked into my local AT&T Wireless store on Saturday fully expecting and prepared to get a Blackberry 8820. My Blackberry 8800 died while I was in London last week, and both Visa and American Express tried to protect me from fraud by disallowing my attempts to order a new phone over the web. Hence, my face-to-face visit with AT&T.
Unfortunately for Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, the in-store price for the 8820 was the same as the iPhone. I deliberated for all of three seconds and walked out with the iPhone.
My reason was simple: I needed something that would sync consistently with my Mac. My Blackberry-to-Mac sync has been hit or miss for the past year (though I've been testing a beta of the new PocketMac and it is quite good) and I'm fed up. I just want something that works.
The iPhone "just works," and then some.
I thought I wouldn't be able to type on the iPhone without tactile feedback. I was wrong. I'm actually faster on the iPhone than I ever was on the Blackberry, and that's with only an hour of "training."
I thought I would miss a host of things with my Blackberry, but I haven't. Instead, I've been blown away by the innovative use of gestures and the user interface. I resisted the iPhone for a year or so, but looking back it was inevitable that I'd end here.
It is the best-designed phone that I've ever seen or used. It's not perfect: It aggravates me that I can't create SMS groups so that I can blast groups of friends (the Blackberry also lacked this), though I can simply save a "conversation" with a group and use it to send out group texts. I also could do without the clever (but time-consuming) graphics that accompany the deletion of an email, for example. Plus, the lack of Flash makes the full-blown browser a bit less "full-blown" (though I hear Flash is on its way).
But all its good points make up for these negatives. The iPhone is an amazing device. It was inevitable that I'd find my way to it, just as it's inevitable that it will continue to take more and more market share, eventually breeding lower-end devices that will change the way we use mobile "phones."
The iPhone is designed too well to be anything less than inevitable.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
However there are a few things that really annoy me about the iPhone:
- Can't view movies in Portrait orientation
- There isn't an adapter which allows you to dock the iPhone in Landscape orientation
(Both of these combined mean that my sound dock thing is useless with the iPhone.)
- No OTA syncing. This one is baffles me. My AppleTV can sync OTA. My wife's laptop & iPhone are on the same wireless network - so why can't it sync OTA? Also why can't it sync contacts, calendar, etc. OTA with .Mac?
It's still a very new product so these aren't showstoppers and hopefully Apple addresses them soon, Apple has a good opportunity to dominate the mobile space but it will come down to what developers are able to build with the SDK. For my wife (and much of the medical industry) having an iPhone is just a toy until Epocrates runs on the iPhone (and not just in the browser because many medical centers don't have Wifi and have terrible cell coverage). For me and many in the corporate world the iPhone is just a toy until it syncs email, contacts, calender, etc OTA with Exchange. There are many other segments of people who are just waiting for the software they use everyday to work on the iPhone. But for millions who just want a sexy phone it's good enough today - and certainly better than the others.
-James
Cameron
You should definitely have tried MarkSpace's Missing Sync for Blackberry. It runs circles around PocketMac (that is to say, it actually works, reliably.)
But yah, native iPhone synchronization is better.
I have to see this to believe it. You should post a video of your typing on the iPhone and then put that link here so we can see for ourselves how fast you can really type. I can type fast (have a WM device) and am having a hard time typing on the iTouch.
-D
http://www.mobow.com
By contrast, on my iPod touch (basically the iPhone without the phone part), it is functional as email but the virtual keyboard will never be equal to tactile real keys on my BB.
In other words, it all depends on what "job" you are hiring your mobile device for. For phone and email (my primary jobs), BB is cat's meow. For internet, media and entertainment, my iPod touch is it.
A side note. Readers that haven't been tracking the hullabaloo around the iPhone SDK should, as that is a big deal, and promises to grow iPhone and iPod touch into bonafide platform status (think: developer ecosystem vortex, big enterprise wins, etc.).
Have blogged on that topic, if interested (iPhone SDK: mobile reasons for optimism): http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/03/mobile-reasons.html
p.s., on BB-to-Mac syncing would echo comments on Missing Sync. It mostly works and PocketMac is pathetic.
Cheers.
Mark
& for what its worth, I can't use Amazon MP3/Unbox on my Windows PC anyway - because it only works in the USA.
And they work great with my Mac.
Avoid Vista--Microsoft is the one making people "start over." If you really think XP will be well supported through 2013, I have some Windows 95 users you should talk to...
I'd be interested in those "thousands of things" you use in the 7-year-old XP, that a Mac can't use. VERY curious, considering my Mac can run XP, Vista, Linux, AND Mac stuff.
I believe people stopped getting graded on how fast they typed somewhere around 1981.
and dude...XP won't exist in a couple years and Vista is a joke.
I couldn't agree more
Who can beat iPhone 2.0?
http://counternotions.com/2008/03/10/iphone2-competitors/
And considering many Macs more than six years old are still supported, AppleSuxLeo is proven to be just another sad little troll.
- by mattjumbo March 25, 2008 8:05 AM PDT
- Diito, ewelch.
- Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (36 Comments)It is a little bit crazy how often this point is completely ignored. Are there still people out there who are unaware that you can install Windows right alongside OS X on Mac and boot right into Windows whenever you want?
Of course if that is too clunky, you can install Parallels (or others) and run Windows right alongside OS X simultaneously. The tech media needs to do a better job making sure people know and understand: a Mac can run Windows and OS X. Legally. A PC oem can only run Windows.
So anytime you get the urge to say "I can do blah blah blah on Windows", try to control yourself because it ia meaningless statement. If you can do it on Windows, you can do it on a Mac.