Archive for January, 2007

Reinventing the phone

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

iPhoneBold words indeed! This iPhone does look rather spiffy though. Nice to see Apple have really taken their time with this one and thought about the mobile phone from the ground up, rather than just chucking out a phone with an iPod strapped on.

I don’t tend to use my current mobile much, but I’d still buy one of these, because here, finally, is a mobile device that does everything I want to do in one box, and more importantly, appears to do a decent job of it:

  • Music and video player
  • PDA functionality (with decent Mac syncing no doubt)
  • Proper mobile internet and email
  • Oh, and it can make phone calls. Which is nice.

Apple seem to have really thought this through, and delivered the best of all worlds. Even the phone part seems better than a regular phone. And the screen looks gorgeous for watching videos on. Good effort. Wonderful that it runs OS X (or a variant thereof) too. Presumably third-party developers will be able to write apps for it?

The only omission (to my mind) is a camera on the screen side of the phone, which would enable video conferencing (mobile iChat?). Maybe they’ll chuck one in later. And the idea of scrolling through a list by dragging with your finger doesn’t seem that innovative to me (though obviously I haven’t actually seen it in action). The “finger gestures” idea is great though (pinch to zoom, etc).

It’s not cheap either – you just know $499 US (for the 4GB model) is going to translate into GBP 499 and probably well over AUD $1000 when it finally hits the UK and Aus – and that’s with a 2-year contract (which I’m not remotely interested in).

This is a highly competitive market Apple’s entering into, and many other smartphones offer similar functionality. The question is, will customers value ease-of-use and a decent UI over price? If the iPod is anything to go by then the answer is yes – however the iPod had a lot less serious competition when it was launched.

Looks like Cisco may have a thing or two to say about the name, too. Should be interesting…

A New Direction

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

Happy New Year to you! Yes I’ve been bad – I haven’t updated this blog in months. The reason? Well, the theme of the blog was “switching from Linux to Mac”. And I’ve switched now. It was easy, and I prefer the Mac. That’s it. So there hasn’t been much to write about really. 😉

Therefore I’ve decided to repurpose this blog into a more general one about Macs and Apple. This means I can cover more topics than just “what’s it like switching from Linux to Mac”. Which hopefully means I can update more often, and give you something interesting to read more than once every three months!

I’ll be talking about my experiences of using my iMac both at work and at play; talking about and reviewing any cool new Mac software I’ve discovered; commenting on up-and-coming Apple news – that sort of stuff. It could all be frightfully dull, or it could be the most exciting Apple blog ever. Who the hell knows. We’ll find out soon enough.

Whatever happens, thanks for tagging along for the ride – it’s good to know ya. 🙂