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iPhone 3GS launch has app developers seeing gold - CNN.com: "Apple fans in the United States and seven other countries lined up Friday morning to be among the first to get their hands on the new iPhone 3GS, billed as the fastest, most feature-laden iPhone yet."
It must be June again, I can tell by the lines of people queuing up outside of Apple and AT&T stores to get the latest and greatest iPhones.
Note the above quote about the "most feature-laden iPhone yet."
Apple released the first iPhone in June of 2007. Just weeks later, Sprint and HTC released the Mogul. Apple got the press of course.
The two phones really couldn't have been more different. The iPhone was sleek and had a cool user interface, the Mogul was boxy and had state of the art features.
And there is the rub. In June of 2008, Apple upgraded the iPhone to third generation connectivity. (Mogul had it in 2007.) Apple also added a real GPS to the iPhone that June (Mogul had it in 2007.) Etc, Etc. Etc. The press went wild and again people lined up extend their contracts and get the "new and improved" iPhone. I.E. Apple was adding things that Windows Mobile phones had all along.
Now it is June of 2009. Apple has increased the speed and storage of the iPhone. Added in the basic feature of "cut and paste", upgraded the camera resolution (it still doesn't have a flash) and added a video recorder which, you guessed it, everyone else had two years or more ago. Oh yes, they added a compass but I don't think anyone ever considered adding that to phone before. And again, folks are lining up to yet again, trade in their year old iPhones for the latest and greatest.
Notice that I didn't use the new iPhone 3GS MultiMedia Messaging Service or Internet Tethering to your notebook as reasons... that's because AT&T doesn't support MMS and won't for months and because tethering is against AT&T's terms of service.
But perhaps not. This time, AT&T wants to charge them up to $400 for the upgrade in addition to the two year contract extension. The morons err I mean AT&T customers would be better off paying the $175 early termination fee and buying a new phone and new contract.
So what Apple has come out with for their third generation of iPhones is a phone that is finally on a feature parity to Windows Mobile and Rim Blackberry phones of two years ago.
The iPhone STILL doesn't have a replaceable battery. My boss had to buy a holster that's larger than the iPhone itself, as the holster contains a battery to recharge the iPhone. Why? Because even the new iPhone 3GS with its double-length battery life is still only good for five hours of talk or internet use.
Power users need more than that to get through a day. A friend of mine was a tour manager for a rock band (until an IED took out her HMMWV in Iraq) and her iPhone battery couldn't last until lunch. So whenever she'd stop for more than a few minutes, she had to plug in a wall adaptor to top off the battery.
So who is the iPhone marketed to? Not the true power users.
How about the really geeky? Nope. The fact that the iPhone still can't multitask, run flash, java or any of the other standard web technologies and all applications must be blessed by Apple and purchased from them means that the real geeks aren't interested.
Ahh... perhaps it is the light user Apple has targeted? People like my wife... err nope. She gets along just fine with her Motorola A900 (basic cell phone with minor PDA and some multimedia capability.)
It seems like the iPhone is attractive to basically two groups of people. Teens/young adults with money and us middle-aged to older folks who had never considered a PDA phone before.
If this was Apple's target market all along, then again they are marketing geniuses... sell to a niche market and offer them enough new (old) technology features every year to sell them a new phone every year.
Not to be totally negative about the iPhone, there is one place where it excels. Storage. Someone was recently deriding the iPhone because it doesn't take removable media cards. Well... my HTC only has 256MB of storage... so for loading up lots of apps, music files, videos, etc. removable flash storage is a must.
But when the smallest storage on an iPhone EVER was 4GB... lack of storage space is NOT a problem with an iPhone.
Apple is a good company with good products. We have six Macs and two iPods at home. We buy them because of the quality customer service, good industrial designs and higher-than average build quality. No one buys Apple for low prices and bleeding edge technology. Well, except for the Mac Pro perhaps.
Now, if someone wants to give me a 3GS iPhone AND pay the monthly fees, I'll use one. I DO however reserve the right to keep and use my current phone and service as AT&T has the worst coverage in Las Vegas. Over the 14 to 15 years that I've had cell phones, I can probably count my dropped calls from Verizon and Sprint on my fingers and have one or two to spare. My boss on the other hand is constantly dropping his calls to the office, no matter where in town he happens to be. (This was even with non-iPhone AT&T phones.)
What I'll probably end up doing is buying an iPod Touch. I already carry my iPod Classic 80GB on the Goldwing and trips... the Touch and my Mogul (or any cell phone) will pretty much give me an iPhone... without Apples limitations, AT&T's crappy service and without the hype.
So no... 3rd time isn't the charm, I'm still not buying an iPhone.
