It’s not that I don’t want one — really, really badly. I’ve said for years, that if Apple ever releases a PDA, I’d sell my car to get one. But this Friday they’re doing what we’ve all wanted them to do for the past decade, and I’m not joining the party — not yet anyway.
The iPhone has a lot of insanely great features, and knowing Apple (and having watched the 20 minute tour on their site with rapt attention) I’m sure it will have the most elegant and revolutionary interface the mobile phone world has ever seen. I’m totally confident that Apple will do to the cell phone industry what they’ve been doing to the music industry — totally shaking things up and kicking butt. But I’m still not jumping on the bandwagon.
First of all, there’s the list of features that currently are NOT being provided for…
• Songs as Ringtones
• Games
• Flash support
• Instant Messaging
• Picture messages (MMS)
• Video recording
• Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
• Standard headset jack
Some of these things aren’t a big deal for me. Actually the biggest problems I have with it as a convergence device are its crappy (2 megapixel, no flash) camera and its complete lack of IM support. Plus there’s no API or SDK for developing 3rd party apps, so no one can fill any of these holes.
And of course, there’s the first generation trap. You have to spend $600 to get worthwhile functionality — which you KNOW they’re going to trump in 6-12 months, with a smaller, better and cheaper version. I love my Macs, but Apple is infamous for moving on to the next thing, and expecting all their users to buy in every round. I have a MacBook Pro that’s only 6 months old, but its a CoreDuo instead of a Core2Duo, it has a max of 2GB RAM and won’t run native 64-bit apps, and I’m stuck with 802.11G which used to be “Airport Extreme” until 802.11N came out and the moniker got moved. There’s no upgrade path for any of these things, save for buying a whole new computer. For the average user, this isn’t so bad, but for me… well, it drives me nuts!
I will get an iPhone, eventually. But I’ll wait for at least the 2nd generation — when the bugs are worked out, the price is lower, and the feature-set is more mature. Despite the frenzy of loyal Apple users lining up already to get their paws on the latest thing from His Jobsness, I know that Apple will happily leave these early-adopters behind when they get version 2 out the door.
I might still go by the Apple store on Friday — to take pictures and enjoy the insanity…
Update: I have decided on my new phone. The Nokia N80.
