iPhone Hypesteria

On 6/26/07 2:42 PM, "Mike Millard" <mike.millardshaw.ca> wrote:
> I mean, you can't make coffee with it.

Can you do that with *any* phone? :)

> If you try to Text on it while
> you handle a Snickers bar on a hot, sticky day, you'll just end up
> with a garbled message and icky chocolate marks all over its shiny
> glassy face.

That's a pretty unfair criticism of the iPhone. After all, the above is true
for *any* device you use.

The iPhone is *not* the "Perfect Device". But it is a darn cool piece of
technology that will do a lot of things surprisingly well.

--
Shawn King (sent from my iPhone!)
Host/Executive Producer
Your Mac Life
http://www.yourmaclifeshow.com

On 6/26/07, Mike Millard <mike.millardshaw.ca> wrote:

On Jun 26, 2007, at 11:42 AM, Mike Millard wrote:

> I know it
> will be something wondrous - and lovely to have - but is the event
> deserving of quite the level of anticipation?

No.

But by now, you must be used to this sort of foolishness out of your
neighbors to the South (or North, if you're in Windsor, of course).

   --John (Port Ludlow, WA*, USA)

* A chance to point out the oddity that for one of the brands of GPS,
if one selects the Australian voice for the voice output, Washington
State highway numbers are read as "Western Australia". (Per TWiT)

Headline in June/26th edition of the Weekly World Globe Enquirer:

Larry King Exclusive! Interview iPhone! Paris Hilton bumped!

Mike Millard, West Vancouver BC

On Jun 26, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Mike Millard wrote:

> From up here in the Great White North - for those outside North
> America, that's "Canada"! - the hypesteria about the imminent Coming
> of the Messiah? Armageddon? - er, sorry, the iPhone's going on sale
> on June/29th at 18:00 - in the U.S. is almost deafening. I know it
> will be something wondrous - and lovely to have - but is the event
> deserving of quite the level of anticipation?
>
> I mean, you can't make coffee with it. If you try to Text on it while
> you handle a Snickers bar on a hot, sticky day, you'll just end up
> with a garbled message and icky chocolate marks all over its shiny
> glassy face. Sure, if you do finally manage to dial, you'll still
> have at least one Chocenstein fingermark on the front, and your
> callee will find you unintelligible as you try to converse with your
> mouth full of Snickers bar.

Consider how far cell phones have advanced, and how quickly the
technology has been adopted over the last few years, especially in
light of how it took well over a decade for TV and personal computers
achieve "necessity" status. Though you can not yet make coffee with
it, mobile phones have evolved from just being something you talked
in to to someone who also was available in an area with cellular
service, to also being still and motion picture cameras, text
messaging and music devices, now with rudimentary web capabilities
and a very few with wi-fi.

iPhone pushes the limits of these existing technologies to the max
and improves on existing features (messaging, etc.), offers new and
extremely useful built in services, integrates them in a user
friendly manner with a beautiful small screen, and offers the
opportunity for third party extensions. And you can listen to music
or podcasts while you type a text or email message - mobile
multitasking. iPhone can radically change the way, the how, the where
and when people communicate, research, shop, consume media, play
games, etc.

Walter Mossberg elaborated on iPod's features in a review the Wall
St. Journal yesterday, much more eloquently than I ever could:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118289311361649057.html?
mod=hpp_us_editors_picks

And David Pogue in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html?
em&ex=1183089600&en=39abca6879bfb8e0&ei=5087%0A

(These reviews will go behind walled gardens soon)

But what's particularly intriguing to me personally is that iPhone
throws down the gauntlet to content developers as well as to
competing hardware, software and service providers. It opens the
possibilities up for mobile video, film, games and other
communications services that were still the stuff of science fiction.
The place based search featured in the TV commercials is something
that's now easy for Joe Blow non-tecchie who's just been talking and
maybe text messaging. Though it might be something that an uber nerd
can do with many multiple actions and manipulations (time consuming
and annoying) on a Blackberry device, it isn't something that I would
try even at home.

If good mobile film and video content is available at reasonable
prices or for free, people will now want it on the bigger iPhone
screen. There isn't much available now because there isn't much
demand. Though a significant % of phones being sold in the past two
years have video and/or web capabilities, people aren't using them
yet (although ESPN is reporting great success with sports oriented
mobile content). iPhone can change this if it's successful by rapidly
pushing the user base, even though the small number of units
initially available for sale won't push the install base by huge
numbers in the next year or so.

Marilyn

On 6/26/07 13:42 PM, "Mike Millard" <mike.millardshaw.ca> wrote:

> I mean, you can't make coffee with it. If you try to Text on it while
> you handle a Snickers bar on a hot, sticky day, you'll just end up
> with a garbled message and icky chocolate marks all over its shiny
> glassy face. Sure, if you do finally manage to dial, you'll still
> have at least one Chocenstein fingermark on the front, and your
> callee will find you unintelligible as you try to converse with your
> mouth full of Snickers bar.

That's right up there with "Are you still beating your wife". The conditions
you list are going to be hell on any cell phone. What are you going to do
when your "standard" cell has every button sticking from all that chocolate
down in the keys. You gonna take that bad boy apart to clean it, 'cause
unlike the iPhone, there's no "damp cloth to clean" for you.

Here's a tip...eat without being the youngest child on "The Family Circus",
and many problems will go away.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

Shawn King, I have seen enough of your utterances to know they
deserve respect. But you did not - obviously could not :-) - see my
forked tongue planted firmly in both my cheeks as I wrote ...

Thank you, Michael Kryzek, for the frightening experience with
Verizon's Chocolate phone. <Shudder!>

John Baxter mentions how the Australian voice for one brand of GPS
will read Washington State highway numbers as "Western Australia".
(Chuckled, as I'm originally an Aussie.) I heard from a Kiwi friend
here in Vancouver they experienced this personally when they went
touring around the Evergreen State in their RV.

On a more serious note, I have been impressed immensely for years
with the high level of design which Apple has achievd and the
attention to function that it pays. I just cannot believe the lousy
functionality some devices demonstrate. I mean, based on the old joke
about "going broke because they lost the recipe", Apple's "recipe" is
Jobs AND Ive.

Mike Millard,
(Sent from my iMac while gazing out my front window at the garden)
West Vancouver BC