Garmin's iPhone rival; MacBook Air's CPU non-exclusive; more

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MsNly View Post


    Oo



    Now that makes more sense



    yes,
  • Reply 22 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by satchmo View Post


    Competition is always good.



    But me thinks Apple will never be the most feature rich product around. They never were with the iPod and they won't be with the iPhone. It'll boil down to ease of use and software. Sure you don't get a true GPS, but can you run the thousands of iPhone apps coming down the pipe?

    However, the battery thing is a plus for the nuviPhone.



    As both an AAPL and GRMN shareholder I think this will be good.



    As you stated, Apple has never offered the most feature rich products, but they get the UI and integration RIGHT. Ease of use and elegance are their killer differentiators. With the SDK coming soon, and it being based on Cocoa (If the current hacked APIs are any indication), there should be a lot of gorgeous - both in look and ease of use - apps coming out soon.



    But, the AT&T exclusivity and feature poorness (MMS, GPS, 3G, etc.) will always have whiners. Garmin makes great GPSes and their UI, while not as great as Apple, is pretty good. If Garmin can pull some decent battery life, and have good web app & GPS integration - and maybe their own SDK, they should be able to attract a good chunk of customers. I just hope they can deal with the carriers like Apple. I'd hate to see a Verizon nuviPhone that charges to enable the GPS, and charges for every picture you take, and charges..., and charges.



    Unfortunately, Garmin has a very poor history of Mac support. So I wouldn't be surprised if whatever support software they provide only works on Windows.



    - Jasen.
  • Reply 23 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    Well at least this give's Apple some incentive to get iPhone MkII out with all the weaknesses cleared up and the time frame may be long enough for that to be out by Garmin's release date.



    Exactly !

    I'm so happy with this announcement. It's a very promising concept that finally puts all of those appliances (that I'm interested in) into one single package.



    Great! Let see how Garmin will execute it, and more importantly let's hope that it will put enough pressure on Apple to respond with the iPhone of my dreams.

    Exciting!
  • Reply 24 of 31
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    I think it will great if Garmin makes a nice phone, I just have never understood enthusiasm for an unreleased product based on bullet point feature lists.



    If "OMG!!! it can do everything I ever wanted a thing to do!" actually meant "great product" then there would a lot more great products out in the world, wouldn't there?



    Size constrained consumer electronic devices are always, always, always about trade-offs. There's no trick to extending that list of features as long as you like-- you just make it have 20 minute battery life or be 4 inches thick or bury things in the interface structure or constrain the horsepower of the processor or any number of other choices that the designer must make to put it all together.



    The trick is to combine those features in a way that makes them genuinely useful-- that is, easy to access and use, reliable, integrated, and in a form factor that lends itself to carrying everywhere.



    Apple, in the iPhone, has made a number of significant choices, in order to to create the user experience they have.



    We have no idea whatsoever what choices Garmin has made, and can't, until we see the thing in action or play with it ourselves. IMO, cries of "at last, the GPS, 3G, touch screen, media playing, video recording MMS phone of my dreams!", at this point, make no sense at all.
  • Reply 25 of 31
    nofeernofeer Posts: 2,427member
    i think this may bode well for us, this industry reads tealeaves better than we do, rumors have said for some time that gps companies were looking into making a phone. so maybe apple has this in development tealeaves here. so i think maybe the 3g phone may have this option, makes sense since SJ is pretty tuned into this market.
  • Reply 26 of 31
    jasenj1jasenj1 Posts: 923member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NOFEER View Post


    i think this may bode well for us, this industry reads tealeaves better than we do, rumors have said for some time that gps companies were looking into making a phone. so maybe apple has this in development tealeaves here. so i think maybe the 3g phone may have this option, makes sense since SJ is pretty tuned into this market.



    But what does Apple know about GPS software? Route-finding, route management, digital map products, that sort of thing. I'm sure Apple could do a nice partnership with Google, and get nice integration with Google Maps, but I wouldn't expect them to offer a "full-feature" GPS solution like I expect Garmin to do.



    - Jasen.
  • Reply 27 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jasenj1 View Post


    But what does Apple know about GPS software? Route-finding, route management, digital map products, that sort of thing. I'm sure Apple could do a nice partnership with Google, and get nice integration with Google Maps, but I wouldn't expect them to offer a "full-feature" GPS solution like I expect Garmin to do.



    - Jasen.



    You know....there was a time when people said, "But what does Apple know about making Phones?". Look where that got us...
  • Reply 28 of 31
    I'm betting Garmin won't try to dictate what phone company a person uses.
  • Reply 29 of 31
    jasenj1jasenj1 Posts: 923member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tuneman07 View Post


    I'm betting Garmin won't try to dictate what phone company a person uses.



    But will they be able to dictate that the phone remain unlocked? And what features the phone must have? i.e. Will they maintain the "Garmin" feature set or allow the carriers to provide their own? Will there be a Sprint nuvifone and a T-Mobile nuvifone, etc.?



    Apple did two important things:

    1) Visual voice mail. This required the carrier to modify their cell system. Thus the exclusive agreement.

    2) Dictate the Apple branding and features. I'm not aware of any phones that maintain the manufacturer's branding anywhere nearly as strong as the iPhone - but then I'm not a cell phone junkie.



    - Jasen.
  • Reply 30 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    I think it will great if Garmin makes a nice phone, I just have never understood enthusiasm for an unreleased product based on bullet point feature lists.



    If "OMG!!! it can do everything I ever wanted a thing to do!" actually meant "great product" then there would a lot more great products out in the world, wouldn't there?



    Size constrained consumer electronic devices are always, always, always about trade-offs. There's no trick to extending that list of features as long as you like-- you just make it have 20 minute battery life or be 4 inches thick or bury things in the interface structure or constrain the horsepower of the processor or any number of other choices that the designer must make to put it all together.



    The trick is to combine those features in a way that makes them genuinely useful-- that is, easy to access and use, reliable, integrated, and in a form factor that lends itself to carrying everywhere.



    Apple, in the iPhone, has made a number of significant choices, in order to to create the user experience they have.



    We have no idea whatsoever what choices Garmin has made, and can't, until we see the thing in action or play with it ourselves. IMO, cries of "at last, the GPS, 3G, touch screen, media playing, video recording MMS phone of my dreams!", at this point, make no sense at all.



    Absolutely agree with you on the fact that there is no point in extending the list of features, as it doesn't mean it will create a better device. But that's not what i was talking about.

    To be honest I find few features on the iPhone to be absolutely useless and just being there for the very sake of extending the feature list, while lack of other features like voice or video recording seems very surprising - of course one looks at the functionality, from the perspective of their own needs.

    I personally have absolutely no interest or use for the visual voicemail - maybe if i would receive 150 messages a day then i would. On the other hand, I use navigation system every day and so I use my iPod and my GSM, so when i hear of the company that want's to put all of those into one, I think it's great.

    And that brings me to the conclusion = There is a reason to be excited about this announcement, cause it presents a concept that includes features that are useful and let's hope Apple will get inspired but that trend.



    PS

    And lets be objective here, how many of us got madly excited about the iPhone, six months before we could even see it in action or play with it.

    Cheers,
  • Reply 31 of 31
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by j.max View Post


    Absolutely agree with you on the fact that there is no point in extending the list of features, as it doesn't mean it will create a better device. But that's not what i was talking about.

    To be honest I find few features on the iPhone to be absolutely useless and just being there for the very sake of extending the feature list, while lack of other features like voice or video recording seems very surprising - of course one looks at the functionality, from the perspective of their own needs.

    I personally have absolutely no interest or use for the visual voicemail - maybe if i would receive 150 messages a day then i would. On the other hand, I use navigation system every day and so I use my iPod and my GSM, so when i hear of the company that want's to put all of those into one, I think it's great.

    And that brings me to the conclusion = There is a reason to be excited about this announcement, cause it presents a concept that includes features that are useful and let's hope Apple will get inspired but that trend.



    Sure, and no given feature set is going to do it for every user. But Apple is one of the few companies that actually leave out "features" in pursuit of an all over idea of how they want a device to work. Arguably, this is exactly what is wrong with most of the phones on the market now-- they compete on number of features first, and on ease of use, stability and integration second.



    In other words, Apple appears to define usability goals first, and then build out to meet those criteria, even when it means forgoing a given feature. Most other CE manufacturers appear to define a feature list first, then build them all in without a great deal of concern for how they work together, how easy they are to access, etc.



    Quote:

    PS

    And lets be objective here, how many of us got madly excited about the iPhone, six months before we could even see it in action or play with it. Cheers,



    Sure. But we had seen an actual demonstration of the UI in action, and shortly thereafter started getting real info on exactly how the iPhone went about doing what it does.



    If you recall, not that many people were getting excited about all the "features" the iPhone was slated to include, they were getting excited about the UI and its multi-touch input scheme.



    That right there puts the iPhone in a class by itself-- can you name another phone that drove consumer interest by initially talking about its UI? Phone makers do exactly what Garmin has done: release a long list of features that they intend to include, with maybe a few glamor stills of a few mocked up screens. That, or they just show pictures of the phone itself, if they feel the industrial design is sexy enough be a selling point. That's all the Razr was, for instance, and it's largely what such "iPhone killers" such as LG's Voyager are about--case elaborations with the same old clunky, difficult to use UI.



    Features mean nothing if they're too hard to use or get at. Does the Garmin address that issue elegantly? We don't know, but for my money it's really the only question worth asking.
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