Some thoughts on the iPhone
Jan 12th, 2007 by Karen
Over at One Big Library Dan Chudnov has a good post entitled “What iPhone is telling us” that talks about why the iPhone has the potential to reshape the landscape of user interfaces and devices. In particular when it comes to visual and tactile ways of navigating. Probably the part of this post that I was most intrigued by is Dan’s discussion of the idea of Apple making a tablet. When I purchased my Powerbook almost 3 years ago I looked at tablets. For me, the problem was that I hate the XP interface. Just playing around with Mac I realized that OS X had way more to offer in my opinion. Plus my 12″ powerbook was almost the same weight as the tablets of the time. So in the end, the only thing a tablet had to offer was the fact that it was a tablet.
Ironically, the iPhone has created the same dilemma for me. I’ve been talking to work about getting me a PDA phone thing for a little bit. The problem is I have a Mac in my office and at home and I haven’t thus far been able to get PDAs to play nice with my Mac. Add to that an intense dislike for Windows CE, and the iPhone is looking pretty tempting. Why, let’s see: wi-fi, wireless phone, bluetooth, OS X on a handheld, music, videos … need I say more. So I’m holding patterning the desire for new phone for at least a 10 months and will revisit then.
Same problem for me. Worked with all that Windows stuff for years and still hate it. A far too complex UI can’t get better by just adding a tablet to it. Still too many dialogue boxes, too many nonsense questions for simple tasks. But widely adopted.
My old white iBook covered all my mobile computing needs for years now and was the result of trying a Palm III for a few weeks with non-satisfying results. Win CE looks like Windows, it behaves like Windows and feels sluggish on a small device so this is no alternative to the Palms out there.
And there comes the iPhone. Watched the keynote two times (stream and Podcast) and was really impressed how easy and good loking the UI was. Most of my mobile dreams would come true if this little thing will hit the German market. And for the first time a real sync with my Mac will be possible which would give my a far better feeling than being a second class citizen in the sync market like now.
I’m drooling as heavily over the iPhone as anyone else but I do have my practical moments (few and far between…)
The Missing Sync (http://www.markspace.com/missingsync_palmos.php) is relatively expensive ($40) but completely worth the money. It makes pdas work beautifully with macs.
If you decide the iPhone isn’t quite up to speed yet, Missing Sync might fill in the holes.
I don’t think it will be so successful in Europe as the iPhone is a 2.5G phone, slow data connection speeds whereas here we are using 3G phones. I currently have a 3G phone which I could watch Mobile TV on etc. The iPhone is old tech in this respect.