iPhone? No thanks
Sunday, July 01, 2007
it might seem an unlikely thing for a devoted Apple fan like myself to say, but I really don’t want an iPhone. I’d take any number of products from Cupertino with no bother, but there are 2 main reasons I’m holding off indefinitely on the phone, cute and all as it is, and as impressive as the touch-based UI seems to be.
I don’t need one
This is the boring but true reason - I carry my laptop with me most of the time, when I’m largely at the office (within striking distance of several wi-fi enabled cafes if I want to wander), or at home. I don’t have a long commute, I don’t travel on business (except riding my bike to visit clients), and I often carry a real camera with me in addition to the computer.
There are lots of things it doesn’t do that well
Brett Arends has written an excellent breakdown of the iPhone’s failings, but the real kickers for me are:
- No VoIP: so no free calling using WiFi
- Tied to AT&T, and its slow EDGE data transfer - how can a device like this not support 3G?
- No media downloads on the road - want to pull down a podcast or listen to streaming media using your data connection, and you’re out of luck.
As a smartphone, it’s very smart in some ways, but pretty stupid in others. The interface and ease of use show Palm, Blackberry and Windows Mobile what user-centered design is really about. But the built-in limitations make it much less groundbreaking (and much more palatable to large telcos) than it should have been.
Version 2 might clear up some or all of my concerns, or my situation might change and I’d have a need for doing what the phone does well - playing music, surfing the net, making calls, catching up with the ‘Daily Show’. . .
But right now I’m just not feeling it.