Since getting his hands on an iPhone, Michael of Apple Gazette has been running a column entitled “30 Days of iPhone,” wherein he chronicles his daily use through 30 separate entries. The idea holds merit, but on Day Eight of his venture, Michael began smoking crack.
It seems that Michael is so blown away by his iPhone purchase, that his need to justify his 600-dollar expenditure has leaked onto his daily column, wherein he declares that the iPhone is not a smartphone, nor a cellphone, and implies that it is a completely different beast than other offerings.
Apparently, Michael has never used a modern smartphone, which has all of the iPhone’s features, plus a few more thrown in. Just because Apple managed to polish a couple of the features, throw in an easy touch-screen interface, and integrate an iPod, does not make the iPhone revolutionary, In fact, about the only “killer apps” the iPhone has is the iPod integration and its polished web browser, and I’ll immediately discount the former because almost everyone I know who owns an iPhone already owns at least one iPod already.
Considering that the iPhone doesn’t run third-party applications that aren’t weblets, it’s much less of a computer than any Windows Mobile phone, Danger’s Sidekick, or even Blackberry devices. And, in most all cases, these offerings are much cheaper than Apple’s, and may even include features that the iPhone sorely lacks, such as the ability to surf the web while making a phone call, integrated GPS, and removable memory.
No one’s saying that the iPhone isn’t a beautiful piece of hardware, but let’s not ignore what’s already out there, and what’s been> on the market for years before the iPhone materialized. For those people who never had the chance to surf the web from other mobile devices, or check e-mail on the go, it’s nice to see that the iPhone introduced you to technology already years old, but let’s not distort reality and propose that Apple invented these abilities with their latest toy. And, more importantly, let’s not claim that $600 is cheap, considering other devices have the same core functionality for half that.
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For those interested, it looks like Michael responded to the above post, but never linked back to mendax.org.
I’m not sure where Michael’s coming from when he says that all other smartphones sucked at bringing the iPhone’s core functionality to their respective users. In fact, I don’t recall nearly as many complaints about mobile e-mail from the Blackberry and Sidekick crowd as I did from early iPhone adopters. As I said before, Apple’s polish is what makes the iPhone stand out, but for a $600 gadget, half that cost is for the polish alone. I maintain that this relegates the iPhone to expensive status.
I would hardly consider the adoption of the Sidekick a minority phenomenon. Before the iPhone, the Sidekick III’s release was probably the highest-in-demand “smartphone” roll-out, with every celebrity-wannabe toting one around. The Sidekick III, I would argue, is every bit as easy to use as the iPhone. In fact, since Paris Hilton uses one, it’s already passed the retard-test, which is way more impressive than the YouTube videos floating around of infants navigating the iPhone’s UI.
Maybe because the current standard for sending media is via MMS, and not e-mail. Maybe because sending isn’t the issue, but rather receiving MMS from the 99% of people who don’t have e-mail on their phones. Maybe both.
As a long-time Apple fan, it’s painful to see the iPhone cause the same level of zealotry that turned many would-be Apple adopters away from early versions of OS X. Being a fan of a product or company, should not translate into blindly following them. However one cuts it, the iPhone is an awesome product that remains overpriced, especially given the lack of price break given the accompanying two-year, carrier-locked contract.
A little bit of Michael’s credibility is ruined given his reaction to my dismissal that his new toy is cheap. No hard feelings for Michael – it’s not personal. I’m still reading his “30 days of iPhone” column, after all. I understand that his stance is in great part a result of the fact that the iPhone is his first phone that handles e-mail and the web, which caused him great joy upon realizing that these things were possible and convenient. It seems a little odd for him to diss the iPhone’s predecessors/competition given this lack of experience with mobile data, though.