What type of self respecting technology blogger wouldn’t take yesterday/today to post about Steve Jobs’ new wunderkind product? Well, I’m here baby! As I watched yesterday’s MacWorld keynote, and each new feature was enumerated in all its shiny Apple polish glory, I realized that I’d be buying one shortly.
Not for myself, mind you. No, per my comments in my previous review of the Motorola Q, I expect my next phone to be Blackberry parity. What that means to me is over-the-air sync with my Exchange system, tight reliable push email, and a hardware keyboard that I can scream with my two thumbs on. I find the soft keyboard that the iPhone has to be cool, but also find it hard to believe it’d be useful for more than text messages and very simple email compositions. Further, all those spiffy keyboard (never move your thumbs/fingers from the ready position) shortcuts for mail triage, etc. that a BB has are sure to be absent in the iPhone (I mean, Apple doesn’t even like those in their desktop OS). Per the demos, it’ll all be point-n-tap.
So, why will I be buying it? One word: Ann. As I watched the features, saw the form factor, and then heard the pitch of push email for Yahoo webmail users I knew – my wife, Ann, would want one. Nay, demand one!
She’s been looking about for a replacement to her Moto Razr for a bit now, and is interested in something that syncs (desktop OK) to her calendar, contacts, and has a better interface for text messaging. Follow this up with the form factor (especially the thickness) being very important to her and I knew she’d be sold (she used to be an industrial designer and this type of gadget has her praise written all over it). The new iPod functionality, email, and the trademark Apple polish1 is just icing on the cake.
One thing I find amusing about the “post-game” chatter about the iPhone is that as the keynote was going, much of the criticisms that are being levied are ones that I though “oh they’ll get dinged in press for that one”. However, being dinged in the press and by the analysts (and by bloggers) is very different than the end users giving a damn. A recent post by Engadget is a prime example of the criticisms I expected.
No expandable memory, no removable battery and cost were all criticisims that were aimed at the iPods upon their unveiling too. Especially on cost, I think that the iPod showed that if it works amazingly well and is kick ass sexy (aka a fashion statement), while doing it, people will pay a serious premium2.
Some other criticisms I find amusing:
- The lack of 3G. This is no surprise at all. The hard truth is that GSM’s 3G (UMTS) is not ready for primetime yet. The battery life of any device that uses it is just godawful. This is why many assume that BB has avoided it too, battery life is more important to users than speedy net connections3.
- Lack of Exchange integration is a big deal to me, but I don’t see lawyers, stock brokers, and folks like me being the target for this phone anyway. I’m not sure that BB has anything to worry about. However, while other phones (Treo, Windows Smartphones) offer Exch integration, it’s not what I’ve seen mainstream people buying them for. They seem to be more interested in the feature set that my wife is.
- No 3rd party applications4. I’m totally not surprised here and I cannot imagine anyone other than a nerd objecting to this. Most people don’t know how and have absolutely no interest in loading additional software on their phone (even if it can do it). Hell, I’m a nerd and I don’t want to do it. The only reason I do is when the native support on the device for given behavior is either absent or poor (ex: I loaded MS Office Communicator on my Q because the default Windows Live client is awful).
One thing I was surprised was missing was an IM client. Not sure why this is missing. Perhaps the belief is that good SMS is the right analogy for mobile users, but I’m not convinced.
Anyway, as I said, I’m sure I’ll be picking one up upon launch. I am indeed curious to see how well it syncs with windows for things like contacts (I’ve never really played with the calendar/contacts sync on Windows iTunes for an iPod, but you better believe I’m going to now). Also, Omar makes a very valid (albeit cynical, hardened and bitter by years of disappointment in the tech industry) assessment of V1′s and how the buyer should beware. I guess I’m just a sucker looking for punishment.
1 A classic example of which is the fade in/fade out of the music you’re listening to when you get a call. Plenty of devices that are players/phones will pause on phone call, but usually it’s an abrupt stop of the music.
2 On the premium front, one of my buddies postulated that he’d “just wait” for the price to come down just like it does on all phones eventually. I’m not sure we’ll see the kind of crater in pricing that you’ve seen in things like the Moto Q. Because of Apple’s decision to lock to one carrier, and of course Apple being the only vendor, the pressure from the carrier to push the unit price down will probably be low. I’m betting that the appeal of offering the Apple phone will make it immune from market pressure. Contrast this with the Q and the Windows smartphone market. Every carrier has one or more offering (with new ones coming out each quarter), so there is constant pressure to push prices down.
3 Now I do find myself wondering how well the battery runs on the iPhone with WiFi use. And the whole “it just connects” and seamlessly swaps between WiFi and WWAN seems hard to believe – but I’m anxious to see if Apple can succeed where so many others have failed.
Also, all those shiny internet device applications (Google Maps with sat images or full web browsing are prime examples) will be dog slow on EDGE. So, it remains to be seen how nice those things work in WWAN mode.
4 I did find the use of the “widget” branding for the connected applets that Jobs showed off to be interesting. Does the use of this name imply that there will be support for a mobile version of the OS X widget platform? Is there, in fact, an opening here for 3rd party software development?
