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The iPhone Has Not Revolutionized Anything

By crooky | November 1, 2008

All this talk lately about the iPhone as a laptop replacement [READ] (pardon me while I laugh until I throw up) as a serious video game platform [READ] has led me to the conclusion that the iPhone and Communism have a lot in common. Both seem like the solutions to all life’s problems when you’re an undergrad student.

For any serious mobile professional, no smart phone is a replacement for a laptop - least of all the iPhone with its annoying touch interface. I’m actually writing this post in the body of an e-mail on my BlackBerry while I hang out with my kids but can I do a good job of posting this through my Wordpress account? No. Can I work effectively with my timesheet that’s hosted on my Google Apps back end? No. Can I easily pull up a report that I wrote last year, edit it and send it to a client? No.

I’ve said it in a previous article [READ] and I’ll say it again: iPhones are a neat toy but they aren’t a serious business device. Typing on them sucks. The screen is too small to do any serious work on and, even if you could convince yourself that Google Apps on an iPhone is a substitute for a laptop running some flavour of wordprocessor/spreadsheet/e-mail software - iPhone doesn’t run Java so Apps isn’t going to run right either.

Moving swiftly along to the suggestion that the iPhone is a viable gaming platform - Bahahahahahahahahaha. On my jailbroken iPod Touch, I have run games, ROMS and all manner of games. None of them run right - mostly because you need to control them with touch interface buttons on the screen. The most frustrating experience in my life to date (even moreso than the time I had to shave my cat with clippers) was my attempt to play Super Mario Brothers on my iPod Touch.

Unless they’re talking about lame-ass games where you just tilt the iPhone to control something or shake it to fire, it’s not a viable platform for gaming. Apple’s assertion that a touch interface is a paradigm shift in human-computer interface is a stretch - especially when it’s a step backwards in many applications like typing and gaming.

Maybe one could develop games that could run responsively with gestures - that’s essentially what Wii games do. There’s a key difference between the iPhone and the Wii. The Wii doesn’t have the display on the controller. The Wii setup works because the users don’t have to look at the controller to use it. Could you bowl in an iPhone? Not well.

As someone with a marketing background, I know that 90% of a commercial product’s success is the marketing campaign that drives. Apples arguably leverages this better than anyone. The fact of the matter is that the iPhone is a neat toy but like many other neat toys in the mobile phone market, the iPhone too will fade. I also must cop to the fact that I’m coming at this from the perspective of a business person - not a college kid with $300 to drop on a phone that you can’t write off.

As a parting shot - I will concede that the iPhone is a viable replacement for “netbooks” like the Asus EeePC and the like. There’s also some talk that phone carriers will start selling them with wireless data plans [READ].

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2 Responses to “The iPhone Has Not Revolutionized Anything”

  1. shanti Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    “The most frustrating experience in my life to date (even moreso than the time I had to shave my cat with clippers)” LOL… you’ve tried shaving your cat - really? I gave my co-owned cat a bath once, wasn’t pretty. But yes, I get your metaphor. iPhone is cool but I have problems with privacy. With everything so consolidated, what does Apple do to make sure that the data inside the iPhone is protected when the phone is lost? I know that with MobileMe, you can keep the data in your iPhone and your MacBook or iMac synced. Can you install a software that erases everything when unauthorized person tries to access your iPhone?

  2. crooky Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    My cat has problem hair and the groomer won’t cut it. He’s only got three legs and he can’t clean himself very well.

    I wasn’t aware of all the privacy platforms with the iPhone. I’m not shocked but I hadn’t heard about that.

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