The market for the iPhone is the early adopters. The guys that bought HDTVs when they first came out, bought PS3s and 360s on launch day, the guys that have iPod-ready car radios, etc. The difference in the iPhone to me is the fact that it does offer some cool applications and functions, literally at your finger tips. Early adpoters usually do get the buggy devices, before versions 1.5 and 2.0 fix all the problems. They also usually pay a premium for the devices. I just got a Motorola Q, I love the phone and will be holding on to it for a couple of years, until my contract is up again. By that time Sprint should have a good iPhone copycat out. One thing I do know for sure is that other companies will copy features of the iPhone and make their own.
Yeah, comon codell. You know max has a better phone than that: "younguns' with their new-fangles phones. They don't value money like we did back in my day. hrumph."
I'd get one if I weren't contracted to Verizon. But I guess I'll let the first generation experiences the early bugs first for now.
not knowing this is worse than asking me if i'm buying a $500 phone or putting a tip jar out at a starbuck's.
Please take a picture of it while you're on Clutchfans.net's bbs using it... make sure we can see your hottie girlfriend/spouse on the background, please... I kid!
I would LOVE an iPhone... but to get one, I'd have to switch to AT&T/Cingular. Um, no thank you. You think AT&T is bad now? Wait until everyone and their mother buys an iPhone and ports over. AT&T's network will be overtaxed and overloaded. Get ready for a boatload of "Your call can not be completed as dialed" messages (at least initially). I'll stick to Verizon, thank you. Unlike most morons in this country, I actually chose my wireless carrier FIRST based on which company had the best call reception, service, and quality... and THEN I chose a phone. (Verizon happened to be the best for me.) After all, you're gonna pay MUCH MORE money for the network than for the stupid phone during the life of your contract. Make it count. Still, I hope Apple does well, because it'll hopefully cause the other manufacturers and carriers to revamp their outdated and crappy phone interfaces. I want visual voicemail on my phone, damnit! Although I will say that touchscreen is not really the direction I want to see phones go in. I owned a Philips Pronto remote (first gen) for a year, and the all-touchscreen interface became annoying pretty quickly, leading me to eventually chunk it for a normal remote. I gotsta have my hard buttons, yo.
This argument greatly understates the importance of a well designed and implemented user interface. I had a Treo 650 for a while and now use a Tmobile Dash (upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.) There really is no excuse for how hard these things are to use. Palm is straightforward and beats the hell out of WM for intuitive design. But there is no way I could hand one of these to my mom or (heaven forbid) grandmom and let them figure it out. I could do that with an iphone. Geeks think it's all about features- wifi, touchscreen, etc... but geeks make up a small niche of the market. You can't underestimate how great it is to use something elegant, simple, intuitive, easy to use. I bet if I give an iphone to my grandmom she will just tap on the screen and do exactly what she wants to do with it without ever asking for help from me. If I hand her the latest HTC (great company, great devices, don't get me wrong) with all the "features" and a slide out keyboard running Windows Mobile... it would be hopeless. (Quick rant- it takes me 7 *****ng clicks to get started sending a frikkin text message on my Dash! Seven!! And that's using the dedicated 'text' button on the keyboard and that's before I have to tell it who to send it to! It won't take text input- no, I actually have to do two more clicks to let it know I want to dig up someone from contacts? How asinine is this? This just makes me even more pissed off at Microsoft than I was already. How can you take pride in your product, and make the simplest function such a chore for your customer? Grrrrrrrrr...) Apple does take pride in creating the best possible user experience and that is why they dominate and will continue to. And thank god for that! We can only hope that the iphone is extremely successful, so that other companies will feel the pressure to make a smartphone that is easy to use. --No, I'm not buying one. I don't want to be locked into itunes and I think it is completely utterly lame that they've closed the platform to 3rd party development but make out as if doing web 2.0 apps "opens" the phone up. Big thumbs down to closed platforms.
C'mon, it's Apple and a phonemaker... I'm sure they'll be willing to sell you an iCaseForYouriPhone for $39.99.
Most moms, dads, and grandmas that don't use Apple stuff would think you're nuts buying a $500 cell phone - they usually use them to talk, not text, play games, etc. Treos and Blackberries are for geeks... that's why they dominate the business market (odd how non-geek moms, dads, and older people in business somehow magically learn how to use them, though, huh? ). I find my Blackberry easy to use, and I'm not talking about anything complex. Actually there is one thing I do think is great for this phone... that's having a true browser as its browser. I'd kill to have that screen with a true/good browser. The rest of that stuff is just about something you can get on any other phone. The lack of the tactile feedback while typing would annoy the hell out fo me, though.
One more thing - I absolutely have nothing against people making lifestyle choices or buying something for pure aesthetics. More power to ya... we all do that in one form or another. I just hate it when people act like these things are somehow technologically revolutionary - for the most part, they're not. Apple got into mp3 players when there were companies you hardly ever heard of in them. In the cell phone business, they're taking on some really innovative big boys. The customer may end up winning out. Right now I'm wondering if there's about to be a sell-off of Apple stock in the next few days...
Agreed. IMO the price won't stay there. This will be the first in many generations. I forgot about Blackberry- of course. They have also reached market dominance (imo) with a good UI and easy to use push-email. I don't think I could go without a real keyboard either. I'll be curious to see how it works. I'm also hoping the full html browser works well, and that the processor can handle it. I wonder if it can handle Flash 9? That would be sweet.
http://www.techspot.com/news/25791-apple-tv-iphone-to-play-youtube-clips.html Apple adds Youtube application to Iphone. I think in a large respect, it is quite revolutionary. Has the technolgoy been available? Sure. But no one has been able to package a multimedia device as completely as apple.They are able to use there stranglehold on mp3 and video downloads in iTunes and seamlessly incorporate that into the iphone. These things are designed to work with each other. That's the problem with other phones: things are possible but there are only round about ways to get the media on the devices. In addition to a partnership with Google, the Iphone will feature a GoogleMap link as well as a YouTube application. The keyboard simulation should be as helpful as the balckberry interface. And the Screen is bigger than anything you can fine elsewhere. At the end of the day, Apple takes the best elements out there and packages them together in one device and brings the 3rd party partnerships that only they can provide.
I agree that it's incorrect to push the iphone as revolutionary in it's feature set. But designing a truly groundbreaking UI that 'feels' great to use is a big deal. It's the little things that count, and unfortunately most companies ignore that. If a different company, say HTC or Samsung, came out with a similar phone four months ago (before the iphone hype, whenever that was) that had a full face screen on an 11 milimeter thick device with wifi, 4-8GB flash, full html browser, the tech blogs would be all over it like crazy. If it had a UI that was at all as flashy and intuitive as the iphone appears to be the bloggers would be slathering. Heck, the tech/phone blogs are all talking about the HTC touch (it does look nice) and that UI doesn't even approach what I've seen on the iphone. The framerate is awful. Me, personally, I'm dying for Linux to catch on in the smartphone world. I'm really hoping that Palm/Access comes out with a great device in the next year that has that "zen of Palm" simplicity to it but a linux kernel that the open source community can feast on.
Oh, no doubt. Apple is flat-out genius at eye-candy. And it's the eye-candy that gets you first. Other companies need to figure this out. For example, the link above that brando posted about AppleTV playing YouTube videos. I sit back and think "whooptie doo"... there are non-Apple models out there that already do this and aren't tied to one format - they play multiple formats including AVI, ISO, AAC, FLAC, XVID, MPEG2, WMV, MPEG4, etc. - welcome to the club Apple. Of course, they'll be "revolutionary" and "innovative" in doing this, now. Assuming Palm is even around in the next couple of years... hehe.
im NOT getting one even though im a cingular customer.. The reason being there is no medical software available (yet). (2nd year med student) im looking into WM6 phones maybe palm if they figure out how to make phones that arent ginormous IF they do have support for most of the medical software available then i would get it..
