[Sigia-l] Decent exposure

[tOM Trottier]

On Friday, January 12, 2007 at 17:52,
Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote

> > Good imagination, but if the iPhone is to succeed, they'd better open up v1.0
> > to 3rd party s/w producers.
> 
> Well, Apple's betting that they can sell 10M units in 18 months without
> that. Who am I to argue? :-)
> 
> > Current Treos can do almost all of what the iPhone does
> 
> I hope you revisit that statement after watching the videos at apple.com.
> The sum is MUCH bigger than the parts.

I just watched Jobs' intro at CES. He's full of hype, touting old things as "breakthru", and quite 
wrong at times. 

He says the other smartphone can't change their buttons, but in fact, the Treo (I dunno about the 
others) is operable by fingers on the screen on dynamic buttons in many applications. These are 
in addition to the very useful keyboard controls.

He says the touch screen display is way more accurate than using a stylus, way more accurate 
than anything before. I'd like to see that. How do you edit anything? Correct mistakes? Point with 
your finger obscuring the screen to choose your edit point? Then type with the keyboard 
obscuring 2/3 of the screen? It seems to be a "write-only" device, not a good tool for editing or 
correcting mistaeks.

He says that it is based on OS-X with all the AV support (and more) OS-X has. I'd like to see you 
edit a video on the iPhone.

He says you can move your entire email setup over to the iPhone. I very much doubt that he 
could move my Pegasus Mail setup over. Or hotmail. Or MS Outlook. Or Eudora.

He claims it is the "thinnest phone" at 11.6mm. The Samsung X828 is just 6.9mm while the KTF 
EV-K100 is 7.9mm.  Maybe "thinnest smartphone"?

The scrolling is cool. Except when you want to find Trevor Witham, who comes after 3,000 other 
contacts in your phone book. Patience, patience. Much faster to type WIT.

The iphone i/f is slick and smooth, but that virtual keyboard looks very painful to use. I noticed 
Jobs was a very slow typist compared to most thumbers or even graffiti. No tactile or audible 
feedback.

It seems you have to rotate the iPhone back and forth all the time between portrait and landscape 
just to see some menus, eg, all the album covers.

I notice Jobs did not go into the Calendar. Is it just a display of the current month?

Jobs says the iPhone has "random access email for the first time". Huh? All the smartphones 
allow you to read an email by choosing the one you want. Blackberry has had push email for 
many years. The "Q" has MS push mail.

He says the battery life is "tremendously" better than any smartphone, but the Treo 650 battery 
life is longer (5h33 talk time), and you can get a bigger battery for it to last 11 hours..

It also looks slippery. Heaven help you if your hand is sweaty...

It seems to lack any IR i/f - so no controlling TVs or beaming info/apps with others.

The HTML browser looks good, and if google maps works, it must support ajax. I wonder about 
PDFs and java.

The seamless wifi/edge switch is nice. I wonder what wifi speed is supported - Jobs' demo 
seemed pretty slow, less than 1 MB/sec..

There is no provision for adding memory or devices like an SD slot. I suppose a sled could be 
made.

The iPhone seems to be largely a gee-whiz music and video display, not a work tool, and Jobs is 
a untrustworthy salesman.

> > and have tens of thousands of applications available
> 
> The vast majority of these are really very low quality apps, which
> incidentally you need to install because the basic phone is missing  the
> features. Apple is providing a solid base of apps in a very attractive
> package that should satisfy the majority of needs. Remember, this is not a
> business or vertical niche phone, at least not yet.

We all live in a bunch of niches. A PDA is most convenient for a household inventory, for storing 
info like shortwave schedules, usable shopping lists (Handyshopper), voice notes for dragon 
dictate,  MS documents(XL,DOC, ...) for display and edit, specialist calculators, configurable 
databases, games, diet records/calculator, bible concordance, ...

If the iPhone doesn't support these and more, they give up a lot of market share. I suppose some 
people might prefer high heels to adidas, but the adidas are far more comfortable and useful.

Then again, they probably are planning v2 to do this. Gotta keep something back to sell in the 
future.
  
> > Ten thousand imaginations are better than one.
> 
> Perhaps, but in reality the collective imagination of the entire PC and CE
> industries haven't even caught up with various Macs and iPod yet.

They've gone down different branches of the tree. Who buys a mac for heavy duty gaming? Or 
calculations? Or convenience? Whe you buy a Mac, you settle into a small cosy realm while 
ignoring the big wide world.

Heck, Jobs took credit for the mouse - which Xerox invented!

tOM

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