Paul Thurrott - "You need an iPhone"

At 25 Jun 2008 11:05:29 -0600 David Moyer wrote:

> > Kidding aside, the iPhone is an impressive device in a "savant" kind of
> > way. A great browser, e-mail client and media player powering a device
> > that's been crippled in the most ridiculous ways. A friend of mine
> > (who LOVES his iPhone) has to e-mail himself every document he thinks
> > he'll need before any overseas trip because you can't store them locally
> > on the phone- he has to open the documents as e-mail attachments to
> > view them (and still can't edit, annotate, or save them.) 16GB of
> > storage, and he can't put a spreadsheet or PDF on it without his
> > e-mail "trick." (Yet, as testimony to the device, he's willing and
> > happy to do that rather than use
> > his old Treo that could store such documents internally.)
>
>
> well, you can store any file on an iPhone with PhoneView.
>
> http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/instructions.html


Um, here's some info from their website:

"Note: Files stored on the iPhone using PhoneView cannot be viewed on the
iPhone screen."

My friend's intent is to use the iPhone _in lieu_ of dragging a laptop along.
It sounds like PhoneView just turns the iPhone into the world's heaviest
thumbdrive. (I realize it also can convert documents into iPhone-viewable
"notes", but frankly, that's just replacing his kludge with another one.)


> the iPhone is still less than a year old, it will have all those
> features quickly enough, relax.


That would've been a good excuse if the iPhone was the first smartphone to
market, and could stand behind the "we learned what our customers
wanted/needed" mantra. Unfortunately, the smartphone market was already
mature. Apple decided what they thought their customers could do without,
and are finding out that many of them actually want the features they gave
up when transitioning from their old phones to iPhones.

As far as "relaxing", I'll be fine. My venerable HTC Wizard finally died
after 30 months of use and abuse, so I treated myself to a Tilt as it's
replacement today. This is my firt post from it.

---

› See More: Paul Thurrott - "You need an iPhone"

Todd Allcock <[email protected]> amazed us all with the
following in news:[email protected]:

> At 25 Jun 2008 11:05:29 -0600 David Moyer wrote:
>
>> > Kidding aside, the iPhone is an impressive device in a "savant"
>> > kind of way. A great browser, e-mail client and media player
>> > powering a device that's been crippled in the most ridiculous ways.
>> > A friend of mine (who LOVES his iPhone) has to e-mail himself
>> > every document he thinks he'll need before any overseas trip
>> > because you can't store them locally on the phone- he has to open
>> > the documents as e-mail attachments to view them (and still can't
>> > edit, annotate, or save them.) 16GB of storage, and he can't put a
>> > spreadsheet or PDF on it without his e-mail "trick." (Yet, as
>> > testimony to the device, he's willing and happy to do that rather
>> > than use his old Treo that could store such documents internally.)
>>
>>
>> well, you can store any file on an iPhone with PhoneView.
>>
>> http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/instructions.html
>
>
> Um, here's some info from their website:
>
> "Note: Files stored on the iPhone using PhoneView cannot be viewed on
> the iPhone screen."
>
> My friend's intent is to use the iPhone _in lieu_ of dragging a laptop
> along.
> It sounds like PhoneView just turns the iPhone into the world's
> heaviest
> thumbdrive. (I realize it also can convert documents into
> iPhone-viewable "notes", but frankly, that's just replacing his kludge
> with another one.)
>
>
>> the iPhone is still less than a year old, it will have all those
>> features quickly enough, relax.
>
>
> That would've been a good excuse if the iPhone was the first
> smartphone to market, and could stand behind the "we learned what our
> customers wanted/needed" mantra. Unfortunately, the smartphone market
> was already mature. Apple decided what they thought their customers
> could do without, and are finding out that many of them actually want
> the features they gave up when transitioning from their old phones to
> iPhones.

Actually, the mentality that Apple used was they knew much better than
their customers about form and functionality. They knew what their
customers wanted and needed- no need to ask customers for their
opinions.

Typical of a company getting ready to tank. They end up choking on
their own pomposity.

>
> As far as "relaxing", I'll be fine. My venerable HTC Wizard finally
> died after 30 months of use and abuse, so I treated myself to a Tilt
> as it's replacement today. This is my firt post from it.
>
>
>

"Todd Allcock" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Apple decided what they thought their customers could do without,
> and are finding out that many of them actually want the features they gave
> up when transitioning from their old phones to iPhones.

Given the number of iPhones sold, I'd say they did a pretty good job of
balancing "how many features do we need, noting that any time we add another
one it lengthens the schedule and we're burning a lot of money every day" and
"how many features do we need, noting that the presence or lack of certain
ones will directly lead to increased or decreased sales."

Running a business is about making money, and the correlation between that and
how feature-laden your widget is isn't always that strong. The iPhone, as far
as I can tell, was purposely *not* designed to try to achieve large uptake
from either the business community nor the "power user" community.

David Moyer wrote:
> Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Kidding aside, the iPhone is an impressive device in a "savant" kind
>> of way. A great browser, e-mail client and media player powering a
>> device that's been crippled in the most ridiculous ways. A friend
>> of mine (who LOVES his iPhone) has to e-mail himself every document
>> he thinks he'll need before any overseas trip because you can't
>> store them locally on the phone- he has to open the documents as
>> e-mail attachments to view them, (and still can't edit, annotate, or
>> save them.) 16GB of storage, and he can't put a spreadsheet or PDF
>> on it without his e-mail "trick." (Yet, as testimony to the device,
>> he's willing and happy to do that rather than use his old Treo that
>> could store such documents internally.)
>
> well, you can store any file on an iPhone with PhoneView.
>
Not quite a reasonable "solution". Besides that this program is only
available for Mac owners, it begins to seem unreasonable that you have to
pay for every bit of functionality by buying another program, when these
functions should be already available, even if in some rudimentary form out
of the box.

Since I've been following info about the newest iPhone 3G, two such
"solutions" have been suggested to me to put the iPhone where even a small
time business user like myself needs it to be: Mobileme to get it to sync
(not even completely for heaven's sake) with Outlook, and Phoneview, which
is only available for Macs at this time. Phone view is at least only 20
bucks (but that's only because it doesn't really do much) but Mobileme is
100 bucks a year! Come on, give a fella a break. I'll take a $10 USB cord
and suffer if they'd allow the option.

I'm wanting to switch to AT&T and own an iPhone, but they're forcing me to
stick with my Vz Blackberry Curve, which, by the way, does it all, just not
as cutely (nor as expensively either).

Todd Allcock wrote:

> As cumbersome as my WinMobile device can be to configure or use at times,
> at least it knows who owns it! ;-) Sure, I envy the iPhone's thinness and
> pretty display, but the price of those thngs (not in dollars, but in
> reduced functionality) just isn't worth it. I use my device as a laptop
> replacement, and the thought of mass-e-mailing myself the contents of my
> current device's My Documents folder just to have access to needed
> documents eliminates the iPhone, at least in current form, from my list of
> potential next devices.

It'll be interesting to see the HTC Diamond. The biggest problem with
the WinMo phones has been the lame browser, but supposedly the Opera
browser on the Diamond is as good as iPhone browsing experience, and
with the Diamond you've still got Windows Mobile Professional, rather
then the crippled Apple operating system.

Still it might be worth waiting to see if the third-party applications
for the iPhone provide ways around the iPhone's limitations.

At 27 Jun 2008 12:06:31 -0700 SMS wrote:

> > As cumbersome as my WinMobile device can be to configure or use at times,

> > at least it knows who owns it! ;-) Sure, I envy the iPhone's thinness
and
> > pretty display, but the price of those thngs (not in dollars, but in
> > reduced functionality) just isn't worth it. I use my device as a laptop
> > replacement, and the thought of mass-e-mailing myself the contents of my
> > current device's My Documents folder just to have access to needed
> > documents eliminates the iPhone, at least in current form, from my list
of
> > potential next devices.
>
> It'll be interesting to see the HTC Diamond. The biggest problem with
> the WinMo phones has been the lame browser

I'm not sure that's the BIGGEST problem! ;-)

The biggest problem, in terms of customer feedback on support sites and
NGs, anyway, has been the sync software- when it works, it works, but many
people have connection problems (device not recognized when connected) or
sync problems (one way syncs, duplicate items, etc.) Knock wood, I've been
spared most of these, but I'm using an old beta version of Activesync, and
the trouble reports have kept me from upgrading to a release version, under
the "if it ain't broke..." theory.


> , but supposedly the Opera browser on the Diamond is as good as
> iPhone browsing experience, and with the Diamond you've still got
> Windows Mobile Professional, rather then the crippled Apple operating
> system.


I've used earlier releases of Opera Mobile, and they're certainly an
improvement over IE Mobile, but IE Mobile is "good enough" for general
purpose info lookups, particularly when using mobile-formatted sites- the
type of quick browsing I'm likely to do from my device. I use Opera Mini
when needing the "real web" for prolonged browsing, and Skyfire's beta when
I need flash support (TV sites like Hulu, for example.)

As you point out, the excellent third-party support certainly helps
overcome any inherent flaws in the OS or included apps.


> Still it might be worth waiting to see if the third-party applications
> for the iPhone provide ways around the iPhone's limitations.


I'm sure it will given time. It's a sexy piece of hardware that will
continue to gain more third-party support, both official and "unofficial."
As I predicted a year ago, it's a tide that's lifted all boats- prior to
the launch/success of the iPhone, we'd never have seen WinMo devices on the
drawing boards with gigs of internal storage, or RIM so serious about
integrating media players and improving their browsers. Plus, despite the
promise of the "real web," the ubiquitous mobile data use by iPhoners seems
to be increasing the number of mobile-friendly sites out there, which are
still preferable to view on small screens regardless of how good the
device's browser is.

While I wouldn't own one, at least in it's current state, the Phone has
been a very good thing for consumers- it's drawn attention to the
multimedia phone/smartphone category, giving the phone manufacturers the
incentive to kick it up a notch, knowing the US consumer space will support
higher-end, more expensive devices even if enterprise isn't footing the bill.