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Published by Ewan on Friday 11th July 2008, 20:46 | Related | Filed Under

This was posted (reasonably anonymously, i.e. the chap doesn’t have a Disqus profile) by ‘Colin’ on an earlier iPhone-related post. I felt it deserved airing to the wider readership thus:

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Someone please help me out here, ’cause I’m on the verge of giving up. I’ve tried - really - to understand the iPhone hype. I’ve become used to it in the mainstream media, because the mainstream media are gullible, and thus easy prey for Apple’s unstoppable spin machine. But here, on a site which specialises in mobile tech, I really thought I might hear some sense amongst the hysteria. But no.

OK, anyone? All I want to know is the answer to one question. What, precisely, is so damn great about the iPhone? I really can’t see it. I hear it’s “revolutionary” - but it contains hardly any features not seen already on other devices, many of which have been around for quite some time.

It has 3G? Great, there must be at least 50+ devices doing that now. They’re pushing a 2Mpx camera with no videocapture when “normobs” are offering 5Mpx or more WITH videocapture. The lack of videocapture means it’s actually irrelevant that it lacks a front-facing secondary camera for videocalling. It still can’t handle MMS, and Apple’s only (weak) response to that has been “but it has full email capability, you don’t need MMS” (oh really? And how are you meant to exchange picture messages with the 95% of the market who don’t have email capable phones, or is the truth that iPhone users are trying to form an elitist clique where they’ll only converse with the similarly equipped while looking down disdainfully on the “normob wielders”?). Can you copy and paste yet in messages? Errrr… OK, what’s Uncle Steve’s explanation for that one, is copy & paste obsolete now too?

My personal current favourite is the ludicrous congratulations being heaped on Apple for the new App Store. Yeah! Great! Apparently, iPhone users now have the incredible ability to… wait for it… actually install new applications on the devices they paid for! Congratulating Apple for that is a bit like saying Nelson Mandela should thank the people who imprisoned him for eventually releasing him (i.e. he shouldn’t actually have been imprisoned in the first place, so why the hell should he thank them?) Just curious, does the app store also include the facility to install your own ringtones instead of being limited to just the ringtones you’ve had to pay Uncle Steve yet more money for? Mmmm… let’s see… oops, let’s not go there. The App Store? Every major mobile OS has an “App Store” out there on the web, offering umpteen times the amount of software Apple’s does, and when Android-based devices eventually arrive, they’ll have an “App Store” everyone will struggle to match. For God’s sake - if Steve Jobs physically kicked these people in the nuts, they’d probably thank him for it.

We’ll also just gloss over the fact that if I want an app. for a Blackberry, Palm or Symbian-based device, I just need to Google it, and if I can’t find what I want… well, I could always write it myself and slap it on there! I could do the same for the iPhone, couldn’t I? Well, no. Because the only way of getting an app onto an iPhone is via the iTunes App Store, which means that Uncle Steve STILL gets the last word on what you can put on YOUR device (remember, the one you paid for) and what you can’t. Speaking of money, although I can’t blame Apple for this directly, the tariffs offered by O2? Still in excess of what you pay for any other device. Same with AT&T in the US, and there’s been a virtual revolution in Canada over Rogers’s initial data plan offerings.

Bottom line, the iPhone has one (or two, if you’re picky) thing(s) going for it - Mobile Safari is the best browser out there, and combined with the multi-touch screen, it offers the best browsing experience currently available on mobile (you trade that off for messaging though, tests have proved the iPhone touchscreen is no faster to type on and suffers from the same error rates as predictive text keypads, both being roughly 3 times as slow as a physical QWERTY a la Blackberry). But for how long? Speaking of RIM, rumours are beginning to circulate that they’ve seen the iPhone as a shot across their bows, and are going to respond full-force with the upcoming Thunder (or Storm, no-one’s quite sure of the name). Electrokinetic touchscreen? The same engine in their new browser as M-Safari? Ouch. If they get multi-touch on that too, the iPhone’s only true market-leading features just bit the dust and quite probably got aced. Hard to believe the browser bit considering the existing ‘berry browser is so bad, but this is what Apple have brought on themselves in a way - they set new standards in this area, now everyone else is going to copy them.

Still, keep believing the hype. Of course, I forgot the iPhone’s other big advantage - ooo… doesn’t it look cool sitting there next to the skinny latte and the organic carrot cake? I’m waiting for one of the iPhone poseurs to start claiming that Steve Jobs actually INVENTED 3G. Eh? No, He DID! He really, really, really did. And the internet. Or was that Al Gore?

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Excellent viewpoints Colin. Any takers?

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Viewing 33 Comments

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    I could not have said this much better myself. I am tired of the media acting like the iphone is the first and only smartphone/internet capable phone on the market.
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    In short. I had a Nokia N05 in 2005 - yep, a developer model. Sure, it had GPS, 3G, bluetooth. way before the iPhone. But you know what, try using any of them. The iPhone changed that cause they're actually useful (unless you're a sad geek who willing to go and put up with weird quirks - note, I regard myself as one of these people - I've been using a mobile since 1997 so not brought up on the early tech but since they introduced functions like SMS, etc.!).
    for once, the iPhone makes all these items a little easier to use. Note, a little easier to use. someone will hopefully get their finger out and prove that they can be even easier.

    In short, there's hype - but incomparison to most other interfaces, the hardware is easier to use. doesn't matter what the hardware is if the front-end is crap (try a cutting-edge pc from a hardware point of view with Vista installed as an example of this).
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    It's the most humanist bit of mobile technology I have ever owned, and for that alone I respect Steve Jobs and his team of 'organic carrot cake' eating engineers!

    It's not about the bits, it's about how the bits are put together. Isn't that obvious by now? How many iPhone customer satisfaction surveys do some people have to read... We are tired of having to shape ourselves around the technology rather than the technology being shaped to fit us. It's time for a change.
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    James, actually, when you think about it - with the iPhone you are shaping yourself around the technology rather than vice versa than ever before. That's Apple's entire business model - "do things our way, and if we market it hard enough, you'll thank us for it". It's worked so far, because they're riding a winning streak of hitting the bullseye on "how to do stuff", but frankly, and IMO, they've not taken any "wild ass swings" at anything yet and have stuck to safe territory.

    Oh, and customer satisfaction surveys? Not worth the paper they're written on. Self-Justification made the whole concept of customer satisfaction surveys obsolete years ago.
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    Whew. Glad to find out I'm not alone, Colin.
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    Ah Colin, you bagged so many cliches in there (Organic carrot cake / MMS vs email snobbery / copy'n'paste etc). I'll give you $100 if you can walk into a British high street, stop someone at random and get them to show you how they cut'n'paste on their mobiles. Stop 10 people. 100 people. They still won't know. There are only 200 people in the whole of the UK who use S60 Cut'n'Paste, and they will all be at MoMo next week, pocket protectors & slide-rules at the ready. It's an utter myth that its omission from the i3G is a let-down to anyone else except uber-geeks. NO-ONE ELSE cut's'npastes because it's utter drivel on a normal phone. So, it's hard to take your questioning as unbiased, but here's a crack at it.

    Let's face it, Apple didn't need to try hard to better the current mobile experience. To this day, over 1 YEAR after the i2G launch, look at the typical mobile internet experience. Utter crap. Dismal. Beyond dismal. Both browsing and application discovery / addition. Ever asked yourself why normobs DON'T install apps or browse the net on their phones? Because they can't be arsed. it's too hard. Too many popups. too much scaredy-technophobia.

    Apple got rid of all that, and for that the geekerati hate them. They took away the cachet of understanding what a Symbian-Signed warning meant, what warnings it was OK to ignore, and where to find the freakin' thing once installed etc.

    Freedom from choice was what the i2G gave us.

    Plus it had the world's best-evolved MP3 player bolted inside. Oh, and the best photo-viewer too.

    It lacked the stuff normal people don't care two hoots about - stereo Bluetooth, tethered-as-a-modem config, multitasking, videocalling, (and a year ago, 3G) etc.

    The i2G has built the demand for the i3G, because people saw that the internet was actually viable on a small screen, mobile. now just make it snappier please? Ok, done. Here's 250kbps instead of 25. Sorted. Same screen, same browser, 10x the speed. Or thereabouts. Result - nicer experience.

    No, Jobs didn't invent 3G. He just delivered the first device to really take advantage of it (he didn't invent the GUI either for that matter). If he couldn't do something well he didn't do it - MMS for example. Don't bag it, thank it. Nokia et al have been forced to lift their game, and we all win.

    As someone with more phones than I can comfortably carry at once (simple fact, not bragging - it's my job) I prefer the iPhone hands down to anything anyone else offers. Sure, I grab an N95 for a bit of ZoneTag geo-love, maybe a W950 for some LEMONADE Pushmail argy-bargy, but for the everyday niceness of call handling, music, browsing, photos, games, email & SMS, it's the iPhone. I'm not hung up on the label. The bugger for folks like you is that It Just Works. Accept it. Move On. Ask Nokia why they, a year after the fact, STILL build phones like the E71, which on paper promises so much (HSPA/GPS/3.2MP/QWERTY) but woefully underdelivers when used for more than a few things at once (reboot/hang/reboot/reboot). Pesky bloody user - how dare they try to do more than 1 thing at once.

    It's in the press, annoying you, because normal people connect with it, like it. They don't like the price, but that game is the MNO's to cock up. It's not the device's fault. Put an iPhone in the hands of a 59-year old vegetarian gardener who eschews almost all mod cons, doesn't own a mobile, never has, and watch her have A Good Time. I have done this, and it is an amazing and frustrating experience. Amazing because you witness someone waking up to the possibilities our industry can bring, frustration because (for non-voice/SMS) we've only just begun to get it right.

    Cheers,

    Mike
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    "No, Jobs didn't invent 3G. He just delivered the first device to really take advantage of it"

    Eh? I'm having some of what you're smoking.. So all the 3G data access I've been doing over the past four years or so - at first with clunky USB connections to my Nokias and nowadays with nice 3G USB dongle modem thingies - has been in vain til today's launch of the Jesus Phone mk2?

    Don't get me wrong, I love my Macbook Pro. Leopard rocks. But the iPhone? I just don't 'get' it. At the end of the day, it's a mobile phone - not a) a sex toy that can bring you untold pleasure, b) a magnet that can make you the most attractive and popular person in the world, or c) the secret key to the universe. As soon as people get over this fact and realise there's a hell of a lot more to life than spending hours of your life queueing up to get one of these damn things, feeding the hype in the process, and then realising people like you for who you are, not what device you can geek over - the better the world will be.
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    "So all the 3G data access I've been doing over the past four years or so - at first with clunky USB connections to my Nokias and nowadays with nice 3G USB dongle modem thingies - has been in vain til today's launch of the Jesus Phone mk2?"

    I meant to have said HANDSET, not device, as yes, dongles have been a huge success. But USB/Bluetooth tethering? Don't_wind_me_up. You managed to connect despite the industry's best efforts to stop you. Both Bluetooth and USB were/are horrific customer experiences, fraught with multiple failure points, software/driver issues, etc. The new breed of WiFi apps go a long way to removing this pain.

    But I stand by my point that the iPhone has been the saviour of the mobile-internet-on-a-handset business case. All you need do is glance at the Google analytics results for incontrovertible proof that the internet works much better on the iPhone than on all other devices previously, in spades.

    A queue does not a good or bad device make. People will queue for anything (especially in Britain). Don't let your judgement be warped by hype and a few desperate folks with spare time on their hands.
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    REPLACED BY SEPARATE RESPONSE BELOW
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    Great response Mike! I'm far from being a normob but I'm getting an iPhone 3G because, thanks to the ease of use of the app store, the choice and quality of apps will be outstanding over time. Yes, Apple act as a filter which could cause some good apps to be blocked from sale. The thing is though, most of the little apps I like on S60 run under Python and rarely work properly anyway. Then there's the clunky interface.

    Give me Apps that have at least been checked for bugs, are easy to download and update and have a straightforward interface over S60 any day. Now, all I need is a Qik app on the App store!

    MMS? I send/receive about 5 a year. I won't miss it much.

    Naturally, I'm keeping my E61i though...
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    Mike,

    You made a number of good points and deserve a response, but only got the Disqus thingy set up just now (Ewan, can you delete my original shorter response I did last night (when I was nearly asleep) out of the queue, it's redundant).

    Mike - you may be surprised to know that I actually agree with you on a lot of that. My issue with the iPhone is the way it's being trumpeted as the be-all and end-all, because it's not. It never has been. You know it, I know it, and Jobs knows it too.

    What Apple have done with the iPhone is the same thing they did with the iPod - it wasn't the first DMP, nor was/is it the best sounding. The reason for its massive success was rather that Apple made the first DMP that "Average Joe/Jill" felt absolutely comfortable with. Everything up to then had always required at least a small bit of geekery and awkwardness (mainly because everything up to then had "Sony" embossed on it, and they make the worst interfaces known to man. Still do, come to think about it).

    I'm fully on board with what you're saying the Apple approach was. I get it, OK? Normob users care about three things - calls, texts and a bit of photography. The rest, they don't give a hoot about. Apple knew that, and made sure these elements were included. Then they added another couple of elements - organizer functions, email - that they knew they had to include to gain some level of comparability with smartphones already out there. The next group of functions were the easiest for them - media management - because they (Apple) already had that expertise in spades via the iPod, and given the new device was basically going to be an iPod with all the new stuff bolted onto the chassis, that didn't require more than 5 seconds thought. Finally, their ace card, the mobile internet. Normob users don't care about it right now, because it's a horrible experience, I agree. Apple have (and this is their biggest success) made it... OK, I won't say enjoyable, because mobile browsing is still a long way from being that... but they've made it at least practical and palatable.

    Mix it all up in a big bowl, add some sexy touchscreen sugar, and you've just baked an iPhone. But wait? What about the other 600 functions you can do on a Nokia N95 or whatever? Steve? Steve says "Oh, them? No-one cares. Fuggedaboudit". And, of course, he's right. There's more too - as you've rightly pointed out, they equally don't care about the "nuts and bolts" of it all. So he's told them "you don't need to worry about all that anymore - I'll make those decisions for you, one less thing for you to worry about, so you can get back to your carrot cake!" (Sorry, couldn't resist, I lived in Northern CA for six years, and the stereotypes actually do fit the reality).

    So I understand the mix, right? I'm no Apple hater, in fact on a commercial level, I admire what they've achieved very much. They've taken smoke and mirrors to a whole new level, not in the least by still having a lot of people convinced that they're the noble, struggling Robin Hood types fighting the Evil Empire of Redmond when in fact, Jobs is such a control freak that he makes Steve Balmer look like a champion of open-source.

    I don't retract my criticisms of the iPhone though. MMS? OK, I'll give you that one, as it's not really widely used. The lack of copy and paste? No, I'm sure most normob users don't copy and paste - because their devices can't, end of story. But every WinMo, Palm or Blackberry user can. Would it have been too much to ask, Steve? Seriously? The crappy camera though is a real miss. This is, remember, one of the three core Normob demands. Actually, I forgot, it doesn't have a flash either. Come on Steve, what would putting a flash on it have cost you? $1 extra per unit? Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Apple's market research said "the normob users only need 2Mpx because they never look at their pictures anywhere except on the device itself. Could be that. Maybe it also told them "and they don't take pictures at night either", but I doubt it. Actually, there is a rumour that Apple originally really messed up here - that they literally forgot about the camera until something like two months before Jobs's keynote where he'd pull it out (insert Fnarr, Fnarr joke here) and the assembled acolytes would all go "oooo!!!!", because they assumed it would be easy to do, something they could add at the last minute. It wasn't, and the result was a bargain-basement rush job.

    I'm equally not going to retract my criticisms of Apple's distribution/pricing practises. They're a joke, and have been long before the iPhone. One of my pet peeves to this day regarding iTunes store is the pricing they apply to music downloads. 99c per track represents zero discount on buying the CD, and furthermore, it's an inferior product (128kbps AAC - try listening to that on anything other than the earbuds and if you can't spot the difference between that and the original, you're factually tone deaf). For 99c Steve, I want that track in Lossless format at least. But, I'm guessing that... yep, Apple's market research told them that hardly anyone ever does listen to these tracks via anything other than the earbuds.

    All of which points to what Steve Jobs really is and what Apple has become - a popularist, and a very, very good one. He gives the people what they want. He doesn't give them the best, just what they want - and in some cases, he actually manages to convince them they want something they didn't actually KNOW they wanted before.

    And if the iPhone had been described that way from the beginning, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. What is it? It's a smartphone for Normob users. It doesn't bother with every last function, just the important ones, and it's done them (with the camera exception) as well as anyone else has so far.

    But it's NOT the "GodPhone", so let's not describe it like it is. Instead of giving an honest forthright appraisal though (on both 2G and 3G releases), what we got was every tech writer in the world suddenly transformed into a dribbling fanboy who completely ignored all the iPhones faults and talked about it as if it was 110% perfect. It wasn't. Not then, not now. "Oh, it's got a touchscreen, that makes everything else look SO obsolete!" - no it doesn't, you cretin! Touchscreens have +s and -s, how about you discuss them instead of conducting your own personal experiment on how easy it is to... ahem... wipe down the touchscreen?

    For me (and I may represent only a very small proportion of the market)... it just doesn't work. It has too many shortcomings. For the interests of disclosure, what's sitting next to me as I type this on my PC? Two devices - a Blackberry Curve and an iPod Touch. Best of both worlds as far as I'm concerned. The Touch does everything that's good about the iPhone, but lacks the phone/messaging/3G elements (still get the WiFi though). The Blackberry is my phone, my organizer, and my messaging device (for those functions, RIM still rule the waves). The Blackberry lacks badly in the media management and mobile internet departments, so I leave those to the Touch. Does that 1-2 punch have shortcomings? A few, but they're minor, and some of which will go away once the 8300 gets replaced with a BB Bold in the next month or two (hopefully), but not enough things will be eliminated to make it perfect. For that, I'm waiting for iPhone 3 (whenever that may be... in time for next Christmas), the BB Thunder (Q1 09?), and maybe (if they can make it semi-usable) the Sony X1. I doubt we're even within a year of seeing the ideal "all-in-one" device though, and it's certainly not the iPhone of today.
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    Colin,

    You're not on your own. Really.

    J.
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    This ewan guy is an old dinosaur stuck in the stone age. All he does is complain about the iphone. Stay with your green screen nokia buddy.

    Iphone takes fine pictures, 5mp is overkill for normal cameras anyways. Any photog can confirm that 2-3mp is enough for 5x7 photos.
    App store - yeah go ahead and keep writing those apps and googling for warez software. Who wants to do that??? hahah
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    I didn't write the post, Craig -- it's a chap by the name of Colin!
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    Does/Did 'Craig H' actually read the post in question?

    *sigh*
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    How dare I complain about the iPhone. Yup. Sorry, didn't realise the Jobs Mind-Control 'bots would come down on me for that. Guess I'll be turned into Soylent Green by nightfall then. Damn.

    With ref to the pictures - you're semi-correct. If you consider that even a full hi-def image comprises not much more than 2 million pixels (1920x1080), then yep. Why even bother with anything over 2M pixels then? One word: "Zoom". Another word: "Crop".

    With ref to "warez" - so you're saying that anything not produced and approved by Oberfuhrer Jobs must be warez? Better tell Google that, 'cause they're producing stuff that Steve hasn't approved yet. Case in point - I use GooSync to two-way sync my Google Calendar with my BB Calendar. Doesn't work in iPhone. Only program that does (as far as I know) costs you $30 and you have to jailbreak your iPhone to install it 'cause it ain't on Apple Apps Store. Must mean Steve's not managed to force whoever makes it into passing $29 per download to him.
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    What the iPhone does is makes it simple for Normobs. It may not be the best smartphone but it's simple & it trades on a brand that consumers love. Us mobile geeks prefer something we can tinker with! Like a Nokia S60 device.
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