Just yesterday I was outside a Dunkin Donuts in Lake Worth Florida with my kids and laughed when I saw the newspaper headline about Twitter’s impact on the current unrest in Iran.
World hangs on every tweet - front page headline Palm Beach Post June 16, 2009
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a derisive Internet cool kid laugh about old media, or a Twitter early adopter sneer. I was reacting as both participant and observer to the democratizing power of online publishing tools like blogs and Twitter. I was seeing popular culture change before my eyes.
Fast forward to this coming Friday when the iPhone 3G S arrives
The iPhone 3G S with its high quality video recording and editing could eventually have the same kind of impact on news and communications as Twitter.
Click photo above to see Apple's Demo of iPhone 3G S video recording and editing.
Millions of people around the world will buy the iPhone 3G S and it’s succesor due out next year. Many people will buy the new iPhone with little to no interest in the video capture feature. Millions more will buy yet-to-be-released successors to the iPhone 3G S from competitors like BlackBerry, Google, Nokia, Palm and Microsoft that have the same or better video capture, editing features and ease of use. OK, maybe not Microsoft. You get the point, the iPhone 3G S will be the catalyst. It is not as much the innovator as the fast follower that breaks through to the masses. If today’s mobile video capture was a Van, the iPhone 3G S is the Minivan.
In 24 months millions of people will be carrying around high quality movie making equipment in their pockets. The number of these high quality video phones will continue to grow at an exponential speed as the gee whiz technology of today is pushed down to less expensive devices. Like next summer when a newer iPhone with dual core processors is unleashed and today’s $199 iPhone 3G S becomes the $99 entry level offering.
Along with this more capable mobile hardware we’ll use high speed wireless infrastructure to upload and share those movies in just a few minutes. In the States we’ll even see the end of AT&T’s exclusive iPhone agreement and even greater iPhone penetration as networks like Verizon pick up the iPhone. Similar stories will play out everywhere.
Not only will be able to quickly record and upload video, we’ll also be able to livestream our video. We’ve already been doing that, it’s just that geeks were the only ones who knew how to and the phones that had the capability were few and far between. This will change because of Apple’s worldwide sales volumes and impact on smartphone competition. This will change because of the iPhone’s ease-of-use and the third party iPhone applications that developers will make in the coming months (not years).
This will create a new critical mass of mobile videographers and that in turn will create big change in our media and communications.
For the first year I think this change will sneak up on us. For starters, the verdict on predicted sales of the iPhone 3G S is still out. Many people feel the 3G S won’t be as big a seller as the 3G because many of the features are small incremental improvements. For ninety percent of the upgrades, they’d be right. Some prognosticate that next year’s iPhone model will see larger sales based on likely enhancements and upgrades.
But it won’t be the specification sheets that will change things - people with access will.
Access and lots of people with access. That’s the change we mark with a this is where it all began on Friday with the release of high quality video capture and editing on the iPhone 3G S. When enough people have the right tools and access we’ve shown that we can unleash amazing amounts of rich and compelling content. The kind of content that TV producers, journalists and Hollywood movie makers only dream about. The kind of content that makes CNN’s news ratings spike. We’ll be capturing this on our video recordings and mobile livestream video.
It’s already been brewing for a while now. Internet types, video bloggers and journo’s have been showing us the way with mobile vlogging. As we’ve seen, the video will range from the interesting and sublime and highly entertaining to the stuff we should have left in the editing trash can. Just like Twitter or blogs but with video.
Things won’t really start to change though until surprisingly crisp video and sound clips start showing up all over the Internet. Uploaded and livestreamed by people who aren’t even a little geeky and don’t know the word videographer or vlogger. We’ll see video in real time of rock concerts, along with video of interesting and shocking events from all over the world. We’ll see interesting locally relevant content that we can use to shop, pick a restaurant or find a home. Good content, relevant content, in ‘good enough’ quality.
Not the junk quality that’s common on mobile video recording today. The increased quality, access, ease-of-use and bevy of sharing tools will allow business users to shoot snippets of keynote speeches at meetings and publish them for niche audiences of hundreds or thousands, connecting peers and friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Babies first cry will get chronicled in real time with family members in different states or countries watching raptly and feeling every moment like CNN’s trucks have rolled up outside with Wolf Blitzer in tow. News will get recorded, uploaded and livestreamed of just crashed airplanes and street riots. This video content will make news and rich connections. This video will help people learn, communicate, laugh and connect. We will see and experience the kind of visceral, immersive connection with this video content that we first saw with Television.
In two years this will be reality TV…but real life in real time.
That’s my prediction. What’s your take?
Here’s an excerpt of engadget’s iPhone 3G S review talking about the video feature along with a video sample.
engadget review
Okay — you got us. Video recording on the iPhone 3G S is really quite impressive, and there are two reasons why. For starters, the phone handles pretty fantastic looking VGA video at 30 FPS, which makes for not just passable mobile video, but usable mobile video. The size, clarity, and smoothness of the sequences we shot looked tremendous to our eyes — certainly on par if not outclassing many of the contenders in this space. In our opinion, the 3G S video quality is high enough that we’d consider this a viable stand-in for lower end camcorders or flip cams — if you want to capture your kids at the park but don’t want to come packing a ton of gear, this produces totally reasonable results. – full engadget review here
Doors opened today at 8AM all across the U.S. at both Apple and AT&T Stores. Doors opened ALL around the world in fact. I’ve followed the iPhone 3G launch right down to the very last RSS feed on sites like iPhoneAlley, Boy Genius Report and Engadget Mobile – just to name 3 of my dozen or so mobile phone RSS feeds. I was planning on getting my own iPhone 3G (in white) today but a quick scan of my mental budget says that would be quite a bad idea.
So, hopefully very soon. My gadget addiction is mostly in check these days but my financial management skills remain somewhat dismal so this beaut cartoon below from The Joy of Tech made my day.
And a ‘thank you’ Hat tip to Get Rich Slowly for their article today iPhone or Millionaire that pointed me to this cartoon and also reminded me of the great benefit of NOT spending money on toys.
I’m addicted to GrandCentral, the one-number service that rings all your phone numbers at once plus a whole lot more. I’ve got a bug to share with my fellow GrandCentral users and a few points that you might find helpful in using the service.
Don’t miss my GrandCentral call recording hack at the end of this post – you can use it to keep your service providers honest when you cancel their service and they later magically deny having heard from you.
First the bug
The problem comes if you disconnect one of your phone lines and forget to update GrandCentral. Like a lot of other GrandCentral users I typically have 3 to 4 phone lines hooked up to my GrandCentral line:
1) home
2) office
3) primary mobile
4) secondary mobile
No ringy dingy on any phone even though ALL my other lines were operational. If my friend and I hadn’t been IM’ing I would never have known. GrandCentral, please fix this. I recognize that people don’t all carry second cell phones and change them all the time but your GrandCentral users DO change their numbers – it’s a primary reason people want a SMART number platform like GrandCentral in the first place.
I’ve used one-numbers or SMART numbers for a long time. I still use Accessline as my drop-dead-reliable-one-number and so does IBM. Er, I guess that means I have two one-numbers which is kind of sad. But I’ll keep Accessline for the $20 a month I pay for it until GrandCentral is completely out of beta and 100% bug free. Then there’s the question of what Google will do to GC. Hmmmm, let me guess – text link ads everywhere on the web site and voice over ads when you call in to check messages. That will drive us to pay money for their service just to shut the ads off. No problem, I’m in!
And here’s why I’ll pay.
Three things I love that are unique about GrandCentral
Lets you transfer live calls to your other phones. You need to walk out the door to a meeting or to get your kids and you’re no longer chained to your office phone. Never be late again.
Let’s you record in-bound phone calls for podcasting or the ultimate in note taking (don’t worry it tells your callers even if you forget to, saving you from an embarrassing trip to jail). I have a hack for this for outbound calls (see below)
Listen in to callers leaving you a voicemail with the ability to pick up and take the call at anytime. It’s like your ol’ mechanical answering machine from 1982 but without the fake wood grain and all the vagaries of microcasette tapes.
The outbound call recording hack for GrandCentral
aka AT&T/Sprint/Verizon/Comcast/Adelphia/Time Warner/DirecTV
YOU’VE BEEN P0wned
Now on to that hack for recording outbound calls. These instructions sound convoluted but they’re really not. If you can handle using two phones and a web browser then you can do this. The only requirement is that you have two phones and since you’re interested in GrandCentral this should be a no-brainer. These instructions assume you’ll make the outbound call from a land line at your home or office but it works with any combo.
Login to GC web site and head over to settings
Uncheck your land line phone from the list of active phones (you don’t need to delete it – just uncheck it so it won’t ring when someone calls your GC line)
Now call your own GC number from the landline phone you just unchecked in your GC settings
Your cell phone rings. (power user tip: put it on vibrate for a cheap thrill)
Answer your cell phone, it is YOU after all. Now mute your cell phone.
Now from your land line place a three-way call to the person/company you want to record. Don’t forget to join the calls – usually by hitting the TALK or CALL key again on your phone keypad.
When you get your party on the line explain that you want to record the call. Then hit the 4 key on your cell phone (hitting 4 on an inbound GC call turns call recording on).
Record away
When you’re done you can simply hang up both of your phones or you can hit 4 again to turn call recording off. If you want to turn call recording on/off during the call just use 4 to toggle. Great when your client wants to trash their boss!
Since Google purchased GrandCentral they’ve demanded that GC avtivate an automated greeting when you turn call recording on to prevent untold litigation against the Googleplex. Smart move since call recording is illegal in some states when you don’t tell the other party you’re recording them.
about that jail thing…
Now, I’m not suggesting that you do this, but for those of you in states where IT IS legal to record conversations WITHOUT telling the other party you can always turn call recording ON at your cell phone BEFORE you make your three-way call. The message about call recording will come on but since you haven’t dialed your other party they’ll never know. Now you three-way the person you want to call and record. Again, user-beware, check your own local, state and federal laws before considering this.
Keep in mind that the power in call recording really serves you BEST when everyone knows. It’s not just a question of staying on the right side of the law. For example when you turn on voice recording for note taking purposes both you and your other party relax. You both know that you won’t miss something important. I use this all the time with web site design so I can make sure I’ve nailed down all my action items. And if you’re podcasting it’s really easy to download the file from GrandCentral and then edit it in your favorite recorder.
Second, when you’re calling someone like a service provider to get help or cancel your service you WANT them to put their best foot forward. Call recording DOES that. If you cancel, you can rest assured that the customer service rep who has just heard a message saying that they’re being recorded WON’T “forget” to cancel your service. And if they’re bold enough to do so, or if they make an honest mistake, you have a record of your conversation.
No other smart number service has ever had this much power. It’s no surprise that Google bought them. Keep up the good work GrandCentral.
I purchased the Cingular BlackJack (aka Samsung i-607) from Cingular on the day it was released. Why? It was one of their very first 3G phones and it looked gorgeous! A Windows SMARTphone that is thin and light – it packs a ton of features into a small, good looking package. Watch my video below to learn about this SMARTphone’s pitfalls and why I still love it for all its warts. Would I buy it again? Yes, it’s still the best overall multifunction PDA on the market from my perspective.
[tags]vlog, vlogging, Cell phone review, Mobile Phone review, tethered, phone modem, modem, high speed, 3G, Cingular, Cingular 3G, HSDPA[/tags]
If you don’t already know, Nintendo released their latest game console late last year and despite its lack of graphics capability and sophistication (as compared to the Microsoft Xbox and new Sony Playstation 3) the console has taken off in sales. Most attribute its success to good value, FUN games and a new interface that lets users move their hands and arms about to control games. I haven’t tried out the Wii yet but I’ve heard of sword fighting and boxing as examples of using the new controls.
“Six weeks ago, a Philadelphia man decided to see what types of physical gains he can make by playing Wii sports for 30 minutes a day. Today he published his results and pictures. He was able to drop 9lbs, 2% body fat, and 3.5” in his waistline. Does Nintendo have the next Jared?
I was looking at a cool laptop site made by a guy who’s well known in in Internet space that I first began reading back ‘in the day.’ In any event, his laptop site featured a post on backup storage solutions. Most interesting of all is a solid state 32GB drive. That’s solid state as in no moving parts that can break. On top of that, the Sandisk SSD UATA 5000 features a “sustained read rate of 62MBps, 100x faster than most hard disks.” No moving parts to effect reliability and no moving parts to…move, making the drive a hell of a lot faster. At $600 these are far from a viable mainstream solution for backups but with expected price deflation and storage size inflation it won’t be too long until these devices are viable and powering everything from mobile devices like the Apple iPhone to some laptops to fast backup devices.
Steve Jobs is amazing. Years ago, long before Apple and Steve let me down (I’ll call them the Pepsi years) I was a real student of Apple products and the Apple company. That adoration stemmed from a trip with my Father to the Perth Convention Center (god knows what year) when the Apple Lisa was making its first tour around the world. Dad had read somewhere about the Lisa, and the revolutionary new user interface that Apple had made and was using for the Lisa. My father saw this as the true breakthrough it was in personal computing, enough to go see one in the flesh the first opportunity that he could. One Apple Lisa test drive later we were both stunned and hooked. Apple went on to make some wonderful little Mac’s using the mouse and UI that we saw that day with Lisa but until yesterday, Steve and Co. haven’t wowed me to that degree. Although I am am Apple and Steve Jobs fan, I am far from an Apple groupie. Their various blunders over the years left me out in the cold and I abandoned Apple and their elitist attitudes for over a decade. Two years ago, with one good design move after the other, they had resold me on their PC’s and OS. I haven’t regretted my move back and it is now hard to imagine going back to a PC. Mac’s are far from perfect but they are far better than a PC.
With this in mind I’ve eagerly awaiting the Apple iPhone. It has not disappointed and neither did Steve in his unveiling at MacWorld 2007. The keynote is worth watching, even if you’re not much into gadgets or computers you should watch the specific part of the keynote where the iPhone is unveiled. Why? Because it will impact your life if you use any kind of mobile phone or PDA. Why? Because Apple has hit a home run with their new phone user interface. It’s really brilliant in the same way that the mouse was. Many of the hardware functions of the new iPhone are amazing as well but it’s the UI that really stands out to me as revolutionary and enduring. It’s just that much better. Watch the keynote and judge for yourself.
I could write all day about how great this device is but I’ll stick to one of my key hopes that I’ve written about before. Namely, my hope that Apple would use an industry standard 3.5mm jack for the headphones. They have. They are the first SMARTphone manufacturer to do that. Congrats gang – awesome. It’s the attention to details like this that have put you back on top. Since I could go on and on about the superlatives I’ll end with a wish list and some comments.
Wishlist:
Sport or ruggedized version
Make a sport version (one that will keep rain and sweat out of the innards) and a ruggedized version that can handle the typical bumps and bruises that phones or pda’s take. This thing looks as delicate as…well a video iPod. And that’s pretty delicate. Gleaming chrome looks pretty but feels bad and looks far worse. You have no option but to either trash the looks (scratches and finger smudges) or put it in an ugly case. We don’t want ugly cases, we want good looking materials that can handle a drop and still look good. The Samsung BlackJack I have is significantly better in this regard, using that black hardened plastic that many phones use to ward off their bumps and bruises. The iPhone does not look like it will hold up to hard use like a good phone or BlackBerry will. They have to fix this, especially when these devices are running $499 and $599 a pop.
Must have 3G – EDGE won’t cut it
The phone was announced on Cingular. No worries. Why don’t we have the 3G HSDPA version instead of clunky old EDGE at launch? Cingular has already released 3G SMARTphones to their user base in the BlackJack and Cingular 8525 and Palm Treo 750. Why would we spend $500 for yesterday’s technology six months from now when the iPhone is released? Steve acknowledged that future versions will include 3G but I would hope that by their launch date of June that 3G is already included. Otherwise they could kill the impact of this device. When you think of the Mac is there any key area where the computer is significantly behind on technology? No, they’re either using leading edge stuff or at least the equivalent to what’s on the market, not something older.
iSmudge
My last wish is really a call for some better screen hardware and isn’t really something that Apple can overcome right away. I’m billing the iPhone the iSmudge. That 160ppi 3.5 inch screen is a beautiful display to be sure. Too bad it’s also one big finger grease and lint catching screen destined for immediate bad looks the minute we get our greasy little hands on it (literally). Although Steve and Apple are dead on that a touch screen is a good intuitive interface, they also look terrible and they get damaged very quickly. Steve mocked the use of a stylus and I agree with him on many levels but the stylus also saves the smudge factor and it’s far more precise than a thick manly finger! We will really have to wait and use this device to see how well the keyboard and other critical pieces of the screen work but there’s no getting aroung the glare we’ll all have to deal with once the grease hits to pod. It’s livable, but it’s not good. I’ve lived through it on a number of devices, the latest was my Cingular 8125 which always looked like Pig Pen from Snoopy.
Make no mistake. I’ll buy one. I won’t do so until they have a 3G version, but as soon as that happens, and the wad of money is in my bank account, it will be done. The benefits of the current iPhone far outweigh the negative and I have faith that Apple will continue to push for better iterations as they move forward. Oh, and work on that price as well. I have a hard time believing your market penetration will be iPod like at that price point. As a geek I’ll gladly figure out a way, but most people can’t stomach that kind of price tag.
Congrats Apple, congrats Steve!
[tags]iPhone, Apple iPhone, iSmudge, Apple iSmudge, Steve Jobs, Macworld Keynote, Macworld 2007[/tags]
I couldn’t help but watch the live blog of tuaw.com from Macworld in San Francisco. at 9:40AM PST the news that we’ve all been waiting for came through. The iPhone is real and it is here now. Wow. Cold sweat.
Here’s an excerpt from the live reporting:
“9:45 PT. Steve continues: “These phones all have keyboards that are there whether you need them or not. And they have buttons and controls that can’t change if you want to add an idea to the product six months down the road.” i.e. Touchscreen, kiddies.
9:40 PT. And they’re calling it? The iPhone. Yes! Most advanced phones are called “Smart Phones” but they’re not so smart, and not so easy to use. We leapfrog with a product that is way smarter and way easier to use with a revolutionary UI with years of research and development behind it. (David adds: “Man! Ryan of Engadget really hit this right on the head.”)
9:40 PT. And they’re all in ONE “We reinvent the phone”. (Then shows the pun of the iPod with the rotary dial.)
9:40 PT. #3: “Breakthrough Internet Communicator”
9:40 PT. #2: iPhone
9:40 PT. #1: Widescreen Video iPod. With touch controls.
9:40 PT. THE NEXT BIG THING. “This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for 2.5 years new “revolutionary” product that “changes everything”. The iCoaster. (Just kidding.) In 1984 there was the Mac. In 2001, the iPod. Today: 3 new products!”
[tags]iPhone, iPhone Confirmed, Apple TV, Apple, T.V., iTV, Macworld[/tags]
Not long ago I replaced my wireless Windows Mobile phone (a Cingular 8125) with the latest Windows SMARTphone offering from Cingular – the Samsung BlackJack. The Windows Mobile SMARTphone OS has faired pretty well for me in other phones I’ve owned like the Cingular SMT-5600 and the Cingular 8125 (both are manufactured by UTC). I’d recommend both of these devices but neither of them offered the thin and light form factor of the BlackJack, it’s great looks, or more importantly, it’s ability to connect to Cingular’s latest 3G high-speed wireless network – HSDPA.
Due to the high connection speeds offered by HSDPA, browsing the Internet on the BlackJack is now practical. With all my previous wireless devices using a browser was relegated to an act of desperation when NO internet connection was available and I needed some critical information off the net while on the road. Of course, given that I’m primarily a Mac user (coming up on 2 years with my PowerBook G4) you would question why I would invest in another Windows phone device. Especially with rumors of an Apple iPhone around the corner. The answer to that is that there are no other good options RIGHT NOW. Further, who is to say if Apple will 1) really release an iPhone soon and 2) if it will be on Cingular. The Palm Treo that does have good Mac connectivity is known as one of the worst phones for sound quality. It isn’t offered in a 3G HSDPA version on Cingular either. I have friends who own Treo’s and it is really hard to have a phone conversation with them due to the horrible RF reception that the Treo’s have.
The first thin and light 3G phone with Windows Mobile to come out on Cingular was the Samsung BlackJack. So far, with the exception of its poor battery life and the lack of an industry standard connection port for USB and audio, it is a great device. The other major shortcoming isn’t one that I can blame on Samsung. Which is to say that connecting any kind of windows device to a Mac is almost impossible. There are hacks, and there are hacks – no support is offered. While that hasn’t changed, I was very surprised to find a working hack to connect a BlackJack via the HSDPA network to my Mac. When I found the article over on tuaw.com with a link to detailed on instructions over on Mobility Today I didn’t expect them to actually work on a PowerPC based Mac G4. Background: There are lots of windows hacks that work perfectly on the new Intel Mac’s since they share the same processor as a regular PC, but not the old PowerPC based G4’s. I struggled for a few minutes with the instructions offered on both sites but both were very helpful overall. Mainly, I didn’t know how to install the phone scripts on my Mac and neither article mentioned how to do that. Fortunately, there were readme instructions that came with the phone scripts and that got me over the hump. It would have also been nice if either of the articles clarified that this hack works for PowerPC based G4’s which is one of the reasons I’m linking this post to the original articles.
Only my zeal for untethered high speed wireless access got me to invest the time to try it out. The whole process took me no more than 15 minutes. My first connection to the network didn’t work, but when I tried it again, it worked like a charm. I also experienced slow speeds when I first connected even though I’m sitting in the same spot right now. After a short time though, my pages started to pop with a speed that made me start to forget I wasn’t on my 6mbps cable connection. I fired up my favorite bandwidth speed tester on speakeasy.net and ran the test. The results are shown in all their glory below: 1154 kbps down and 308 kbps up. Pretty amazing. You could say that I’m hooked on wireless HSDPA, my BlackJack, and my Mac. I’ve used my ftp client on the connection to upload the photo in this article and I’m posting this on Wordpress all while using my connection. I’ve also had no problems with accessing e-mail or other web based applications. Now, when I’m on my long park visits with John and Julia and I’ve got something that I really have to do online I can whip my phone out along with my usb cable and get my work done. Soon, when Apple releases their next major OS, it should have the Bluetooth profiles needed to also connect my BlackJack via the built in Bluetooth so it will be a truly untethered experience. Until then, I can handle a small cable for the benefits that 3G wireless speeds offer me.
p.s. The best thing about the hack is that the modem scripts are made for a BlackBerry. BlackBerry is now suing Samsung for using the name BlackJack. Gotta love the irony.
If Apple unveils an iPhone at Macworld next week in San Francisco I hope for one thing more than any other. That Apple has the foresight to use a non-proprietary 3.5mm headphone jack so that all of us who have invested piles of money in nice headphones will be able to plug them into their iPhone without any silly and unreliable 3.5/2.5mm adapters. I’ve owned 4 or 5 similar adapters and they all fail. I suspect this is due to the harsh environment that includes sweat, rain, and the high, humid temperatures of South Florida. In any event they never last long.
It would be nice to have a 2.5mm jack for a hands-free corded phone headset (because they’re cheap and reliable). If you have to choose one over the other Apple should go with the 3.5mm for the hard wired jack. Why? Because cheap, effective Bluetooth headsets are ubiquitous already, just like corded handsfree headets. You can use a BT headset for handsfree phone calls and a wired 3.5mm for your music listening pleasure. Sure, there are a handful of BT stereo headsets available that use the A2DP music profile but at present they’re all huge, look ridiculous, and most important of all, they produce poor sound quality. I own one of the best BT stereo headsets available at present, a Plantronics Pulsar 590-A, and it’s no more than passable for casual listening. Someday, I’d predict in the next 24 months, we’ll see audiophile headphone companies like Sennheiser and Shure producing BT stereo headsets that would meet the needs of pre-audiophiles (like me). I think we’re a ways off from a manufacturer really nailing a BT stereo form factor with audiophile sound quality.
The mobile phone market is wide open for Apple to kill it with just a few touches like the 3.5mm jack. It’s the small stuff like this that makes the difference. Leaders like Samsung continue to make idiotic mistakes like delivering their ubercool BlackJack (available on Cingular) with nothing but BT (albeit with the useful A2DP profile) and a PROPRIETARY wired headphone adapter. Believe it or not, Samsung doesn’t even sell an adapter to convert their proprietary jack to a 3.5mm unit. In the meantime we’re stuck listening to tunes on the BlackJack with a pitiful BT stereo headset or you can shell out $40 to Samsung for their wired headset which is equivalent to the ones your receive for free from most phone manufacturers. They probably cost about ten cents U.S. to manufature in Taiwan. Pitiful, there’s jut no excuse in today’s world for rolling a product out like this. I guess I skipped over the part where I mentioned that the BlackJack runs Windows Mobile which as the more than capable Window Media player for playing music.
All in all, my experience with the BlackJack and other all-in-one phones like the Audiovox (UTC) SMT5600 and the Cingular 8125 (also made by UTC) has left me feeling pretty shorted. At least UTC had the decency to use a non-proprietary mini-USB adaptor to plug your audio headset into. It isn’t as good as a straight 3.5m jack but they at least allow the somewhat functional approach of using an adapter. The UTC phones also have a 2.5 jack for corded phone headsets. These two UTC devices could have really won me over if they’d just added that one additional 3.5m jack. If they’d done that I would have found very little to complain about with either device. It is absolutely wonderful to grab your phone, juice it up with 2GB of music and go for a run. No worries about missing calls and you’ve got your e-mail, calendar and everything else with you. I want Apple to deliver on this promise – the one that UTC has almost nailed, the one that Palm has almost nailed. My only hope is that the more music centric design of an Apple iPod phone (iPhone) will do the trick. We’ll see.
[tags]Apple iPhone, iPhone Macworld 2007[/tags]
You get the point, the iPhone 3G S will be the catalyst. It is not as much the innovator as the fast follower that breaks through to the masses. If today’s mobile video capture was a Van, the iPhone 3G S is the Minivan.
Steve Jobs is amazing. Years ago, long before Apple and Steve let me down (I’ll call them the Pepsi years) I was a real student of Apple products and the Apple company. That adoration stemmed from a trip with my Father to the Perth Convention Center (god knows what year) when the Apple Lisa was making its first tour around the world. Dad had read somewhere about the Lisa, and the revolutionary new user interface that Apple had made and was using for the Lisa. My father saw this as the true breakthrough it was in personal computing, enough to go see one in the flesh the first opportunity that he could. One Apple Lisa test drive later we were both stunned and hooked. Apple went on to make some wonderful little Mac’s using the mouse and UI that we saw that day with Lisa but until yesterday, Steve and Co. haven’t wowed me to that degree. Although I am am Apple and Steve Jobs fan, I am far from an Apple groupie. Their various blunders over the years left me out in the cold and I abandoned Apple and their elitist attitudes for over a decade. Two years ago, with one good design move after the other, they had resold me on their PC’s and OS. I haven’t regretted my move back and it is now hard to imagine going back to a PC. Mac’s are far from perfect but they are far better than a PC.
