Charlie sorrel of wired news reports on nine different ways that you could pimp up your latest toy, the iPhone. I am sure there are many more, given the fact that people from all over the world are developing applications and products to work with iPhone.
Looks like iPhone just became the latest tool for magicians! Check out the video below
I stumbled upon a interesting article from BBC news website about a taiwanese company, HTC. It launched its touch screen phone a month before iPhone was launched with surprisingly similar features (please do play the video in the BBC page). It is only natural to wonder if some of the features were copied from the iPhone or if the iPhone's features were copied from the HTC. Readers might remember my previous post about apple's touch phone prototypes that go back as early as 1984. So, I feel that we should assume that both these developments happened independently.
Whatever be the case, it does seem that touchscreen smart phones and intelligent user interfaces is the direction in which future phones will move in. As Victor hugo put it, "No army on the face of the world can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come".
Joe Hudsco of MSNBC has posted a iphone feature wishlist. I hope he (we) gets it by christmas this year. I would also append the list with points from Tom Yager's list of iPhone flaws. I guess we might be a little too greedy here.
My guess is that Apple might provide some features as updates but is going to save most of it for the next version of iPhone. Apple, please prove me wrong!
When do you think the next version of iphone will be released? I am sure you will be surprised to know that it is going to be in September, hardly three months away from its first release. Though the news is still unsubstantiated, people from different sources are agreeing that iPhone 2.0 release is probably scheduled in september. The source of much of the speculation seems to come from a news article from Taiwan's Chinese-language Commercial Times magazine. It carried an article which said that Taiwan's Wintek had obtained the touch-screen panel orders for the second-gen iPhone. It is speculated that the second generation iphone will be priced between 249$ and 299$ and is probably meant for Non US markets.
The news item leaves several questions unanswered. Firstly, Will the next generation iphone be defeatured because of its substantially lower price? In case of a defeatured model, will it still be attractive enough to command a premium to make customers switch? Will it also be locked so that it can be used with only few networks? In case it is not locked and can be used as a normal GSM phone, does it not pose an oppurtunity for arbitrage in domestic market?
Would anybody in thier right mind put thier iphone in a blender and get it reduced to dust?. Looks like somebody has. Check this one out.
http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=iphone
It is amazing what people as marketing ideas. I am willing to bet that none of the company's other marketing ideas got so much attention as this one. This is what I call "oppurtunity obsession".
Sure, Iphone is one of the coolest devices around. What makes it so cool? what does iphone burn down to, really?
I have spent several years working on reverse engineering machine tools. However complicated it is, a machine or a gadget usually always burns down to a few simple features that can be reconstructed equally well by alternate means. Let me try an attempt at breaking down what an iphone really is:
An iphone is an interesting combination of:
If you think about it, all these elements exist individually. What Apple has really done is to put together all these interesting features into one single device. (Ofcourse, that is a little disparaging of Apple, considering that nobody has ever done it before.)
Microsoft has been working on an interesting project called "the surface". The surface is basically a interesting user interface. Does it measure upto iphone? Not only that it does - it goes two or three generations ahead. I encourage readers to check it out. However, there are no plans as of new to use those features in mobile phones. However, if history is any indicator, we can expect some elements of the surface UI to be incorporated into windows mobile devices.
What about the rest of the features? I hear you ask. Looks like a few experts out there have been reading your minds. see the interesting links below.
Edward C.Baig of USA today reports on a very interesting survey about apple iphone. A few points that jump out of the article.
So who is complaining? Except for the other network operators who lost thier customers, Looks like almost nobody is:
We all like win-win-win don't we?
There are several philosophical reasons for the existence of this blog (besides making money using google adsense. hee.. hee...). You see, In the last few days Mankind and Womenkind have embarked on a new quest for knowledge. There is something rather peculiar about this quest that makes it rather unique in the history of mankind. Suddenly, people from all over the world and from all walks of life seem to have caught up with a frenzy. A frenzy that fringes on madness. The unsatiable thirst for knowledge for everything iphone. Is there no hope for redemption?
Fear not dear friends... God, who is all knowing and ever present, was well aware that such a situation would arise and would threaten mankind's useful pursuits. One score and six years ago, he created a man who could save this world from the path of sure distruction. The man , my friends, is me and my answer to mankinds quest is this blog. (okay, okay.. I know this is a little too much but what the heck?)
