The new Apple iPhone, the craze of all design industry. After much awaited time, Jobs has taken advantage of delayed market entry to observe and capitalize on past PDA-Phone-Entertainment devices. Nonetheless, let's look at the practicality behind the $500+ device in terms of its implementation.
Most importantly, the iPhone will be available exclusively on the Cingular network. The number of people that will switch to Cingular to take advantage of the newest Apple creation (we can define these people as the die-hard Apple fans, which are none too few) are those that we can say that are the first-adopters of the device. In fact, we can say that there will be a great number of people who will buy the device at any given cost, only because they are so focused on buying the next hottest Apple device. For the rest of us, as much as we like this device, and at its incredible cost, we must now seek to weigh the cost of breaking our contracts and leaving our beloved carriers simply to buy into a trend. Practically, I have Verizon, my friends have Verizon, as much as the iPhone looks appealing, I dont think I will be breaking my contract anytime soon.
On the design front of the device, it has appealing features, but holistically it is the spokesman of the "creative" type. What the iPhone does for us creative types is help provide an alternative to the highly formal blackberry or treo. We are no longer mislabeled by the phone we carry, and we can succumb to our ever-vocal choice in electronics (MacBook, iPod, and iPhone to match). The software on the iPhone nonetheless (yes I have had a unique chance to test drive) is what sells it for me. Intuitive interfaces that are familiar to us from our work and play interactions, the iPhone plays upon the ease, adaptability, and error-free operation that us users of OSX have grown to love and those users of Windows XP have not realized exist in digital interactions.
All in all, I give kudos to Apple and its next-obvious step in innovative production, but their terms are too selfish. Apple knows it has cornered a certain type of market and is seeking to expand that market everyday (see the latest TV ads obviously geared towards older PC-using men). Knowing this, reviewing past failed deals, Apple had demanded way too much in past talks with Verizon and maybe T-Mobile and thus failed in being able to introduce on several carriers (like Treo, Blackberry, etc).
FUTURE RELATED POST: iPhone REVIST
Listening to Paolo Nutini.
iPhone: Planning vs. Implementation
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
what is it with some people and their obsession with the iPhone rather apple. It is a cult driven business, and I wonder if something better came along, like a whole plethora of products, maybe the banana and the banana ipad, and the banana icell, etc etc...
I think you make a couple of great points, and as this is a design blog I won't go into the fact that Apple has hedged its bets with new (multi-touch displays) and old (GSM)technologies. I think it's such a fresh take on the phone that people immediately gravitate towards it - virtually everyone I talked to on the day of launch (and I was surrounded by consumer electronics nerds at CES) was drooling over it.
It's been a long time since we felt that way about a phone - I guess the last time was with the RAZR (but aspects of Motorola's UI were cumbersome so I never gave it a second look), but it wasn't like this. Apple, at first glance, has once again revamped something we take for granted into a thing of beauty - it's functionality (no tactile text input, 2.5G data network, walled garden software) however is still to be tested.
Post a Comment