Congratulations to Apple and at&t !!!
Regardless of the hiccups today on activation of the Apple iPhone 3G, you have to hand it to Apple and at&t on what appears to be a pretty decent product launch. I mean after all, how many people played “sick” or “hookie” today in order to stand in line all day and buy an iPhone?
Let’s see, what was the temperature at the Apple store today in Southlake, Texas where I live today? 101 degrees baby. What was the temperature of my home office today where I was at? 74-75. Ahhhhhh. Unless you’ve attended a Texas Jam in the summer here, you have no idea what 101 will do to your mind over the course of… wait for it… ALL DAY. Line waits were 5-6 hours all over the country. No thanks, I’m not into that kind of pain for any technology. Maybe in the winter, but not the summer.
Things I like about the iPhone 3G and I don’t even have one:
Better speed – duh. It’s about time. Shall we go back in the blog posts to show what cell phone speeds I was getting 3 years ago?- Touch interface – lets face it, Apple is doing a good job here and apparently the browser rocks. Yes, I’ve tested it briefly on friends devices and in the store.
- App Store – who cares about the 500 initial apps. It has the attention of people now. I can think of dozens of apps Microsoft should do. Will we?
- Exchange – the killer app is there and it’s THE corporate email system. Let’s hope Apple’s client is bug free. Software is hard and email is particularly picky. We’ll see how fast Apple squashes bugs.
- Good size screen – 3.5” is a good size. Great for watching movies when traveling and delayed in airports. Does that ever happen to you?
- Storage – at least it’s at 16GB now. You can get a few movies on the device now.
Things I hate about the iPhone 3G and I don’t even have one:
- Battery – Hello? Anyone home? Can we get a darn removable battery? This is a portable media player and phone for heavens sake. We need 9+ hours of juice man. Sure, go ahead and tease us with the big screen, phone and web browser.
- Price – did we just rewind 5 years? I don’t mind paying a little premium for a top shelf device, but is this it? Do I want to lock myself to it for 2 years? Hmmmmm… Is the no contract unit really worth 500-700 bucks?
I could probably nit pick on a few other things, but it looks like the unit covers my main two requirements. It is a phone and has a good screen for video. That’s attractive to me. Not enough to go buy one, but still interesting.
It’s always fun to see enthusiasm for a technology or device and Apple has it going on right now. Gotta give them credit. But we aren’t sitting still and there are some devices coming in the next few weeks and months I have my eye on. Let’s hope they are competitive.
Until then, rock on at&t and Apple.
