Apple iPhone
The rumours were there, we all new that there would be an Apple Phone released sometime soon and the MacWorld expo sems the obvious place for the announcement. We also had ideas about a touch screen full screen video iPod. So the full screen video iPod phone (or iPhone as it is called) wasn’t that much of a surprise. Once you see it in action though it IS something to get a little excited about. Or, if you are a mobile phone company, something to get a little worried about!
I’m not one for expensive, flashy phones as long as I can make a receive calls that is all I need from a phone and much of that stems from the fact that the more complex functions of many phones are difficult to access and of course expensive to use. The iPhone does however seem to have many things going for it. The full, touch-sensitive screen looks amazing and the features such as ‘pinching’ to zoom in and out are great. The User Interface looks, as is normal for Apple products, easy to use but fully featured. The Visual Voicemail which allows you to select which voicemail message you want to listen to is something that would be useful. I’m often annoyed by having to listen through a whole reel of voicemail messages to find the one I want, and this feature addresses that. The ease of use as far as setting up conference calls, putting people on hold etc are great and do look useful, but in reality it would be very rare that I personally would use such features. On the whole, as phones go the iPhone looks great and would enhance my phone use, but not much and my standard, basic phone will suffice for now.
The iPod side of things is great, a new (and very nice) user interface, the full screen is lovely and cover flow on your iPod is a nice touch. No doubt the next generation iPods will have all this built in without the ‘phone bits’ of the iPhone.
The internet connectivity side of things is great as well. A proper desktop internet browser (Safari) on your mobile can only be a good thing for web designers and web browsers alike. Surely it will spell the end of WAP? Similarly having a desktop grade email client on your mobile phone is a leap in the right direction. But once again, I’d be unlikely to use these features simply due to the cost of conecting to the internet through a mobile network.
I can’t fault the iPhone as far as technological advances and ideas go and I’m sure it will do well, but will it be the next great thing for Apple following on from the iMac and the iPod? Not for me (yet) I’m afraid. Of course I’d love one, but the cost of mobile internet conectivity would prevent me from making the most of many of its features. It is however, I’m sure the shape of things to come.
Marketing it as a phone doesn’t do much for me either. As far as I am concerned it is more powerful as a step towards a truly mobile ‘pocket PC’. OK, it doesn’t allow you to use creative apps such as Office apps or Photoshop, but most Personal ‘Home’ Computers are used mainly for storing music, videos and other media, accessing the interent and reading/writing e-mails…. You can do all of this from the iPhone and carry it around in your pocket. It really is a ‘Personal’ computer and once Hard Drive versions with large amounts of storage space are released it will become the perfect way to back-up and carry your personal data with you and interact with that data.
It does of course make my new 30Gb video iPod almost obsolete!
There are loads more features built into the iPhone, with a proximity detector and accelerometer being just two cool examples. For more info take a look at the Apple iPhone pages or watch the presentation about it from Steve Jobs’ keynote address.
