It would be an effective tool for office memo delivery anyway. Apple should start an SMS service online (for free, or maybe unlimited texts for subscription fee).
The boss speaks his memo(s) to his Mac in his office, its converted to text, which he then sends to the appropriate employees simultaneously via internal email, iChat, and SMS to their phones (which they probably shouldn't have on them anyway, depending on the office) or iPods. You could have all three on one mailing list.
I thought about this the other day, I would love to see them come out with phones simply because I know it would look great.
I think Apple would be a not so expensive VERTU. Great looking phones that would definitely turn heads.
I think they should develop a line of phones; flip phones, candy bar phones...
Then hopefully Apple could work itself back into the PDA market with a smartphone and then they could really market themselves as taking care of one's entire digital lifestyle. My mobile phone is one of the most important things to me, besides having my music with me.
For Apple to start from scratch and design a phone would be almost idiotic. It would be almost as idiotic as tryig to design all the components that go into their computers. There is little reason why Apple should go into making a phone. They would bring too little value to the phone at a very high cost to them (FCC crap, service provider greasing, testing...) There are at least 4 platforms smart phones use today: PalmOS, MS, Symbian and Linux. The best thing Apple could do, if they wanted to go into phone market, is to partner with an accepted maker ala Moto, Nokia, SE and use their hardware in an Ives designed case. Apple can make an OSX lite which should include iTunes lite and with the increasing use of expansion card slots in almost all phones you can have a good mp3 player to boot.
Apple can make an OSX lite which should include iTunes lite and with the increasing use of expansion card slots in almost all phones you can have a good mp3 player to boot.
Or, they could just write an iTunes and iPhoto Lite for Symbian, and bundle them with a MicroDrive-equipped SE P900 (like Harald said). Especially with Palm abandoning the Mac version of Palm Desktop, the built-in Symbian support in iSync makes this the easiest path.
Sony Ericsson already has such good design sense that Apple might not be able to offer much more than a better software package. The partnership already exists, so the Apple Stores could potentially become SE resellers, and offer bundling discounts like they do for HP printers all the time...
One worry: does a MicroDrive/iTunes smartphone take the place of an iPod with a whole bunch of consumers? It would with me.
One worry: does a MicroDrive/iTunes smartphone take the place of an iPod with a whole bunch of consumers? It would with me.
Yes.
And these devices are coming from Sony Ericsson / Nokia / Samsung and the rest of the bunch ... so Apple *must* be working on a response; I'd be amazed if not.
What did Safari really bring to the browser market? Nothing truly revolutionary. It was created, presumably, because Microsoft was so lax in IE updates.
Phone companies and PDA OS's are not really built for or made compatible with the Mac OS. They are dropping support left and right. We are dependent on a million and one third party plug ins and solutions, many of which cost money. Syncing is buggy at best.
It is not unreasonable for Apple to say "OK, we may not have a REVOLUTIONARY phone, but man we can sure make one that will be a truly satisfying user experience for the Mac users."
The funny thing is, we have to wonder where the iPod is going. The mini is clearly the future for music... but imagine a $499 Ink-enabled, redesigned iPod smartphone. That WOULD be a bit of a revolution... a hard drive based phone/PDA/AAC player, with true Mac syncing. Doesn't have to be wicked fancy... doesn't need to be a mini computer like Palm and PocketPC are trying to be. Just music, photos, contact management, calendars, alarms, SMS, email, maybe a basic web browser. OK maybe $599
Comments
Originally posted by Harald
What a fine idea. I wonder if the iPod has enough juice for voice recognition.
Although you'd feel like a bit of a tube dictating naughty text messages to your girlfriend in the library...
The boss speaks his memo(s) to his Mac in his office, its converted to text, which he then sends to the appropriate employees simultaneously via internal email, iChat, and SMS to their phones (which they probably shouldn't have on them anyway, depending on the office) or iPods. You could have all three on one mailing list.
The message would get through fast.
I think Apple would be a not so expensive VERTU. Great looking phones that would definitely turn heads.
I think they should develop a line of phones; flip phones, candy bar phones...
Then hopefully Apple could work itself back into the PDA market with a smartphone and then they could really market themselves as taking care of one's entire digital lifestyle. My mobile phone is one of the most important things to me, besides having my music with me.
Originally posted by TAZ
Apple can make an OSX lite which should include iTunes lite and with the increasing use of expansion card slots in almost all phones you can have a good mp3 player to boot.
Or, they could just write an iTunes and iPhoto Lite for Symbian, and bundle them with a MicroDrive-equipped SE P900 (like Harald said). Especially with Palm abandoning the Mac version of Palm Desktop, the built-in Symbian support in iSync makes this the easiest path.
Sony Ericsson already has such good design sense that Apple might not be able to offer much more than a better software package. The partnership already exists, so the Apple Stores could potentially become SE resellers, and offer bundling discounts like they do for HP printers all the time...
One worry: does a MicroDrive/iTunes smartphone take the place of an iPod with a whole bunch of consumers? It would with me.
Originally posted by Reid
One worry: does a MicroDrive/iTunes smartphone take the place of an iPod with a whole bunch of consumers? It would with me.
Yes.
And these devices are coming from Sony Ericsson / Nokia / Samsung and the rest of the bunch ... so Apple *must* be working on a response; I'd be amazed if not.
Phone companies and PDA OS's are not really built for or made compatible with the Mac OS. They are dropping support left and right. We are dependent on a million and one third party plug ins and solutions, many of which cost money. Syncing is buggy at best.
It is not unreasonable for Apple to say "OK, we may not have a REVOLUTIONARY phone, but man we can sure make one that will be a truly satisfying user experience for the Mac users."
The funny thing is, we have to wonder where the iPod is going. The mini is clearly the future for music... but imagine a $499 Ink-enabled, redesigned iPod smartphone. That WOULD be a bit of a revolution... a hard drive based phone/PDA/AAC player, with true Mac syncing. Doesn't have to be wicked fancy... doesn't need to be a mini computer like Palm and PocketPC are trying to be. Just music, photos, contact management, calendars, alarms, SMS, email, maybe a basic web browser. OK maybe $599