Will iPhone Still Dazzle at Release Time?
iPhone was only a demo, and as several observant folks here have pointed out, AppleTV was dumbed down from the demo model upon final release (lower rez streamed video...just regular old 640x480, fer cryin' out loud).
How many features can we expect to lose on release of iPhone (perhaps soon to be renamed ApplePhone)? We may even gain some features, such as larger flash memory... 16GB anyone?
How many features can we expect to lose on release of iPhone (perhaps soon to be renamed ApplePhone)? We may even gain some features, such as larger flash memory... 16GB anyone?
Comments
How about, er, Vibrate? AIM? 5x the battery? And yes more storage would be nice. At half the price. This thing has no market and it sucks! I really want to like it. I'm sure I'll buy version 2 or 3 when they get it right.
AppleTV is about as innovative as...the HiFi. I bet it will sell about as well, too. Oh, no recording? Well, say good bye to 99% of potential customers.
(lower rez streamed video...just regular old 640x480, fer cryin' out loud).
Where exactly did you read that?
There could be additional features announced before June but until we know what is half baked and what is not we simply don't know what needs immediate improvement.
AppleTV is about as innovative as...the HiFi. I bet it will sell about as well, too. Oh, no recording? Well, say good bye to 99% of potential customers.
Yea.. seems that since Steve is in bed with Disney and Cingular he's now working for them - NOT for us! Steve now more than ever has an interest in making sure content is DRM-ed and locked down, etc. It's quite a shame. I hate to see Apple go in this direction.
As long as the iPhone is "locked down" it will not shine AFAIK.
Also weird to me that folks on these boards, analysts, and Apple employees are staying away from likening it to a "PDA". It makes sense to me from a messaging perspective. The weirdness is that no one's saying - it's a calendar, it's e-mail, it's contacts, it's a web browser, it's a PDA!
Weird that little or no mention has been made of games. Not that it's a primary function or selling point, but it would be A selling point.
Anyway...
Because 16GB will help you make calls..
How about, er, Vibrate?
so your saying that it wont have vibrate? that should be a standard feature
so your saying that it wont have vibrate? that should be a standard feature
I foresee good vibrations in the future of iPhone...
http://www.cellphonebeat.com/entry/l...screen-mobile/
The mobile phone industry moves fast and as we can see from Apple's other products, fast they ain't. Still no 12" MBP, still no Conroes, still no news on Leopard, still no new ipods. If they do that with their phone, their presence in that market will be very short lived indeed.
The iPhone will find its market and will sell well, but it is not "break-through" like the original Mac was or the iPod.
And not allowing third party apps is of course extremely stupid, and his argument bogus. I don't think a Tetris game will sink Cingular's network...
If you guys remember all of the user interface patents Apple applied for over the last two years, Apple's gone through virtually every UI idea related to input for tablets, phones and PDAs that they could conceive of and patented it.
We saw the multi-touch patent. They thought about the virtual scroll wheel, but went with gestures instead. There were 2 patents like this I remember seeing.
We saw the soft-touch patent that controlled a device by touching the sides instead of the screen. Glad that one went unimplemented.
We saw the mechanical overlay over touchscreens/touch pads patent. I'm still curious about this one. They could put a thumb-board over the bottom of the iPhone and voila, a thumb-board input device with no electrical connection necessary, just snap it on and the touchscreen software does the rest. Same thing with a game controller snap on!
The WiFi networking between iPods, phones and computers patent was so long ago, I don't even remember.
The breakthrough with Apple's iPhone is the multi-touch gesture user interface which we all hope will make using such a wireless handheld device much more usable for disparate usages such as playing music and movies, making phone calls, writing emails/SMS/IM, Internet browsing, games, etc. We'll see.
I've tried with my Treo 650. It sucks for everything. Virtually all the apps on the thing is mediocre at best.
It won't dazzle this crowd, which seems to be driven by feature lists only!!! The inital iPod didn't dazzle this crowd. The only comparison that people seem to make is feature lists. This is the same mistake that was made (and still is) when discussion of the iPod took place - FM radio; without it it will die - voice recording; without it it will be overtaken, etc., etc., etc.
But the people that I see use the current SMART(??) phones effectively are primarily geeks, or they have one application they need (like the PDR on the Treo for physicians). Most of the effective users can also make linux servers stand on their head if they want to.
The problem is that the normal user can access, reliably and on a day-to-day basis, these 'SMART' features. This is where the iPhone (and it will be iPhone) shines and will dominate. Just like the iPod put the data management tasks on the computer (iTunes) and leave the data access tasks to the most elegant (years ahead of the other) UI seen on any hand portable device.
Compare the introduction of the iPhone and the Zune for illumination. Both are devices 'late' to the party - supposedly being introduced to a mature market. How does the Zune address this to differentiate itself? Add one 'new' feature (WiFi) while bunging up the rest (draconian DRM). How does the iPhone - re-examine the entire USER experience and figure how to do it more simply and, in my opinion, infinitely more effectively. Does it have every feature everyone want right now???? No, of course not its revision 1. It is 'better' that whats out there??? For the non-geek user - YES!!!!! Will it evolve, quickly, with user and market feedback - YES!!!!.
It was stated earlier in this thread that the 'mobile handset market moves quickly' (paraphrased). I would argue that with regard to features - possibly. With regard to usability - more like glacially. I recently bought a new phone and it took me almost 1 hour to find how to set some of the features, they were so obscure. Yes, I could have read the manual, espcially the electronic version that I could search, but why should have to do that??
Most people on these boards, and most tech companies look at the value of a device as a feature list. Apple is one of the few current companies that look at the value of a device as its user experience. This is where the iPhone will shine - and win.
[Edit} Agree with THT above
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