Pluses and minuses for the iPhone
Ah, the morning after. After spending months dreaming about the long-rumored device, Apple fans finally got a glimpse of their dreamy future when Steve Jobs showed off the iPhone prototype at the Macworld show in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Now, having gotten a look at the no-longer-rumored device, analysts and bloggers began weighing in. Most reflections were glowing, particularly when discussing the look and feel of the device. One blog referred to the "lovely, lickable screen."
But if you put a statue on a pedestal, eventually you might discover it's got feet of clay, or at least a dislocated toe or two. The main concerns seemed to be lack of support for 3G technology, trouble with the onscreen keyboard, and a lack of support--so far--for third-party software.
Blog community response:
"CD players and iPods both play music. But elegant design at the fundamental level of how it plays tunes is what helped it transcend the category. From what I saw, first hand, I think the iPhone is going to do this for cellies. I have a bit of sympathy for our friends at RIM and Nokia."
--Gizmodo.com
"Bottom line: Heavy BlackBerry addicts may not want to jump ship just yet." --David Pogue
"iPhone is first party software ONLY -- i.e. not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed. That means hungry power-users -- you know, those people ready and willing to plunk down $600 for an 8GB musicphone -- won't be able to extend the functionality of their phone any more than Apple (but thankfully not Cingular) dictates."
--Engadget
"That's right...apparently the iPhone uses, and no I'm not joking...EDGE. That's right, your iPhone might as well be a dial-up modem. Not ~800kbps like I've been getting from EVDO for over a year and a half, or the faster EVDO Rev A stuff rolling out now. Definitely not the ~1mbps HSDPA / UMTS speed like all the fancy new Cingular smartphones. Just good old 80-110kbps EDGE, a worse connection than I had on my Treo 600 in 2003."
--Brandon Paddock