[haesslich]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

I understand what you're saying, and there may be truth in that.

On the other hand, I think for $500 or $600 and a two year contract with Cingular (and even more if Apple sells it unlocked), it's much too high of a price to not have the ability to load aftermarket apps and customize the device to suit your own needs. Besides, virtually all of the people who buy this thing will own a Mac or PC anyway (which will be necessary to take advantage of many of the iPhone's features), and they manage to load software onto those machines, so why would this be any harder?

This is a very expensive, high-end device, and I would tend to think many people who spend this kind of money on it are going to expect more.

I realize that we "Techies" have more knowledge than most, but sometimes I think we underestimate people.

Either way, we'll find out in about six+ months.

You know, the people who own RAZRs and other fashion phones don't seem to care much about installing extra software - either it's slow or else they dont' want to pay the phone company (who provides the software for most phones which aren't WM or Palm) an extra couple of dollars PLUS the data fees. Remember that most of the phones out there right now do NOT run Windows Mobile or Palm - they run Symbian 60 (Nokia) or else the customized Linux installs of Motorola and Sony-Ericsson; they're the majority of the market, and most of the programs available for them are usually available only through the marketplace that the phone company provides; things like Java-based games primarily, with the odd 3D title. \

Most people only download ringtones to their phones, or upload photos and videos from these things, and only now has music become fairly popular due to the arrival of relatively cheap external storage (the SD card family). Most of them do NOT install extra software - do not make the mistake that you, the PDA user or PDA-phone user, is 'the average Joe' that they're aiming this for; this is being aimed for your parents or for those teenagers or 20-somethings on the bus who use their phone as an MP3 player or as a camera, who want something pretty to look at and which can do a few other things.

Maybe 10-20% of people who get phones which can download programs really DO download any applications - and these are usually the games the cell phone company provides, unless the phone is a Nokia in which case it's easy to add new software (due to a fairly active S60 development community). If you've looked at the marketplace that cell companies provide, you'll notice that they dont' sell much in the way of games or applications - most phones include basic trackers, alarms, and so forth already. What they DO have in large quantities are the things that really sell; ringtones, MP3's, the odd wallpaper or theme. Thus, I can see Apple's position that a closed development system would be beneficial - a lot of people who program for phones usually create games, if anything. If you want a more complex application, you jump straight to Palm OS or Windows Mobile - and these are NOT the people who are being targeted by the iPhone's hype machine.

Between the iPod functionality of the iPhone and the novelty of the touch interface, we're seeing that Apple is going after the same people it always has - the fashionistas, the True Apple Believers, and the people who want a simple plug-and-play solution for music and video but who dont' need a lot of extras like additional applications... and who probably wouldn't use them anyways. For the rest of us, there's HTC and other PDA-phone companies... and man, has HTC stagnated over the years. Maybe this'll revive the HTC of old, which brought beautiful devices like the original h1900 to market, which were stylish and somewhat useful.

Originally Posted by WyattEarp

I like the lack of physical buttons, it's just something to get use to like the keyboard on anything smaller than a standard sized keyboard. Physical buttons seem so passe, for current devices, this is the 21st Century isn't. I thought techies I would love the idea, especially when that is next and logical step in the evolution of the keyboard.

From some of the reviews I've seen, there are complaints among some of the reviewers that it's hard to get used to the virtual keyboard and they've occasionally had issues with it detecting the key to the left or right of the one they're 'pushing' being entered instead, so I wonder whether the virtual keyboard that Apple's using is ready for prime time yet.

Physical keys have one advantage - you can see if they've been pushed in or not, which is good for 'touch-typing'; with the virtual keyboard, there's no feedback until you see it entered on the screen, by which time it may be too late to correct things (once you miskey 3-4 letters, according to one reviewer at PCWorld, it's pretty much impossible to correct the mistakes - you have to trash the whole word and start over).