I'm not a big Apple fan myself, nor was Steve Jobs ever able to pull me under his spell with his marketing promises. I know the Mac and find the user interface of the computers from Cupertino, California extremely appealing and the operating system functional and innovative. But the Mac is a PC like any other, with their own advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of whether Windows, Ubuntu (to name just one of the many Linux distributions) or Mac OS X, they all have their strengths and weaknesses, it is exactly the same with MP3 players and, recently, cell phones from various manufacturers, because with all Apple successfully mixes these products with innovative operating concepts, or should I rather speak of the hype surrounding the iPod and the current iPhone that Apple is shaking up the market? Anyway ...
Last Thursday I was allowed to hold one of the highly acclaimed iPhones in my hands for the first time and play around with it a little. My conclusion: WOW! This part is convincing, although in my eyes everything is far from perfect. But I've never seen a touchscreen that can be operated so flawlessly, smoothly and flawlessly. Everything reacts immediately and you have to consciously and with a lot of effort be really stupid that the surface doesn't behave as you expect it to. Even the virtual keyboard can be used without any problems and the text can be entered more easily than with some "normal" mobile phones thanks to all the characters available. Even sausage fingers should not leave any errors on the display, apart from larger fingerprints. Switching between the different programs happens very quickly and without any delays that can be mentioned. The entire user interface shines with very fast response times, brilliantly fast behavior and the display is clear, sharp and well illuminated, as well as the entire external workmanship looks solid, stable and yet delicate, simply beautiful from a single source, all in all as you would expect it to be a simple user of a mobile phone would actually expect, let alone from a device in this price range.
Unfortunately, no traditional manufacturer has really been able to shine convincingly with these banal requirements, neither Nokia, which appears on the market with a good, but sluggish OS, but obviously basically build weak CPUs and too little memory, nor Sony Ericsson, which is good Well thought-out and functional cell phones, which also have some hardware-related shortcomings. I myself am very satisfied with my current cell phone, the K800i, but I still miss a few minor things. Or Motorola, mobile telephones, which - from my personal point of view - display absolutely terrible, not very intuitive user guidance and which I have never had and probably never will be able to convince in terms of CPU, memory and general processing. Or the HTC Touch, which also has a touchscreen that is surprisingly easy to use, but unfortunately never as quick and intuitive as the device from Cupertino. The touch is based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile and this reacts a little sluggishly, as is usual with these mobile phone OS, and programs do not start quite as quickly and smoothly.
Regardless of whether it is the N95, P1, Razr, Touch or iPhone, the technically perfect mobile phone is not (yet) available in my opinion, because each one has its own way of missing things. The iPhone is pretty damn close, although UMTS and many other things are missing from my point of view.
But I will definitely not get an iPhone for a long time, as I will be happy to wait for the 2nd or 3rd generation. But the iPhone has finally shaken up the previously dozed and now little innovative cell phone manufacturer and here, too, a lot can be expected in the near future. Competition is stimulating business, the Koreans are big on the way and seem to have huge potential. Let's see what the future brings.
But the iPhone is convincing, astonishingly, that Apple first needed to show the established producers how business can be done technically and in terms of contract management (think of the provider connection and Apple's contribution to connection costs). Years ago, Apple demonstrated to the music industry how to innovate and do profitable business with good hardware and software. Steve Jobs now seems to be doing the same in the mobile phone market. It's getting interesting
Incidentally, I wrote this post with my K800
@ Tom: My N95 is my business mobile phone and I can still do that, or I don't want to give it away, otherwise I only have a model from HTC as an alternative * brrrrrrrrr * But I don't want HTC. Never! They can give me a: frog:
And with the iPhone, I have to wait at least until January because my contract could only then be extended. But be fond of another combination, WLAN hotspot cell phone and Archos player
How are things looking, almost a year later? PS I have in the
Meanwhile, my trusty N95 against a first generation iPhone
exchanged and am more than happy with it
The API / SDK should be drilled out at the beginning of next year and that sounds very promising, especially since the whole thing - as far as I know - is based on a stripped-down FreeBSD, some interesting applications should be possible very quickly.
And the laptop market cannot quite be compared with that of mobile phones, since with the tow tops everyone can sizzle their own soup and there are not so obvious "novelties" there, these are more hidden, but are certainly no less innovative, but for the "normal" user it's more in the "background" and doesn't jump in your face like the iPhone.
And to name the Redmond company and innovation in one sentence is one of the seven deadly sins anyway because what ever came from MS and was really something new, unprecedented? You can't remember anything and have been in the IT business for years ...
You speak from my soul =) I've had an iPhone myself for a few weeks and I'm just happy with it. Sure as you said there are still some problems. I would have liked to have UMTS in it, or a clever API / SDK so that other manufacturers could also install their tools, because the iPhone certainly has a lot more options.
What you are addressing with the shaking up, mhh, of course you are right, but does that make others think so? Let's take a look at the MacBooks. For several versions, Apple has been adding really cool things (backlighting, slim design, LED lighting, to name but a few), but have the others really changed anything in their products? Or if you look at the software, a small example shows the graphics card's support for the GUI and Exposé. Apple has been building this into their software for years, of course Linux came with it quickly or was even earlier. But it took Microsoft months, if not years, to implement something similar inovative at all.
Well, time will tell what the other manufacturers are doing. In any case, the Chinese enjoyed the iPhone to copy it as quickly as possible. Competition is always good, and so are innovative things.
Good night
Michael
http://x-foto.ch