iPhone: Mostly Harmless

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:21:42 +0000

Sigh. It doesn't feel right, damning Apple with faint praise for both of their major announcements within 24 hours of their launch, but here I go anyway.

First off, let's talk about device convergence. I'm sorry, but I don't want a bundle of second rate camera/second rate music player/second rate phone. If excellence in each means keeping multiple devices, then my shirt pocket is going to have to cope. So to even get on the ballpark, Apple is going to have to convince me of the following:

That the phone actually works.: Reliably. As reliably as the non-whizzy Nokias I've known, used and loved for years now. This is the foundation competence. I used to own a Treo, having got bored transferring numbers via my brain. But the damned thing crashed with dependably high frequency, so I went back to my Nokia.
The data service is reliable and affordable and coverage is good: No idea which network carrier Apple are going to partner with in Europe. But unless it's O2, I'm not going be able to use it at all, as that's who my work phone is contracted to. And that's before I persuade my employers that data services are worth paying for.
The camera is a reasonable quality: By which I mean, the lens is semi-decent optically and the CCD has enough sensitivity and colour fidelity. Never mind pixel numbers which are largely meaningless, it's quality I want. I'm assuming here by the way that the location awareness of the device records appropriate geocoded metadata into the image file's Exif tags. Which could be very fun for moblogging to flickr.

As for the music player — yes, it's an iPod, and therefore de facto of quality. But it's an iPod nano in capacity terms, and I have 30+GB of music, and don't want to have to choose what to take with me.

But what I'm more concerned about is the interface. TheSteve made much of the lack of physical keyboard in the announcement, claiming that a similar problem had been solved in desktop computing by the bitmapped screen and mouse combo. I've news for you Steve — for any text-related function (like the email you showed off), you need a keyboard as well.

One of the most popular Palm accessories has been the wee fold-out keyboard add-on, because text entry by on-screen keyboard is truly hard. People like the physical feedback of key travel. It does wonders for speed and accuracy of entry. And small on-screen keyboards are particularly difficult, as self-confessed fat fingered friends opined yesterday; it's the devil's own job to press only one onscreen key. Unless this Multi-touch stuff is a step-change beyond what we're used to, we'll be back to stylii pretty quickly.

TomTom Are Go!

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:48:28 +0000

I got fed up of getting lost, driving between client sites in Blackpool and Preston, so I bought me a TomTom. And thanks to the magic that is eBay, I found a Palm T3 + TomTom for £150, gave the Palm to Lucy (who'd been looking for one) and ended up with Satnav for under £50 net. Result!

Talkin' 'bout my Generation

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 17:46:36 +0000

Writing this on my PDA, sat in a restaurant in Oxford.

What generation am I? I can see a family sat opposite: ma, pa + 3 daughters. The parent look, what, late 40s or so. The kids look like they've just finished their GCSEs, the A-levels + their 1st degree.

Both parents and daughters seem like my generation to me.

Similarly, I had a conversation today with a member of client staff. His daughter has just done A-levels and is going to Cambridge. She's doing science but also has a strong musical talent - sounds like me 15 years ago. He was looking for advice from me, but both as a contemporary of his and as one of hers.

Confused? I was.

But it's been the same when I've been in Edinburgh for, I don't know - 10 years now. The new crop of Freshers due into Edinburgh this October will mostly have been born in 1985. When I was a (20 year old) Fresher, they weren't even at Infant School...

easyweb.co.uk - pda

iPhone: Mostly Harmless

TomTom Are Go!

Talkin' 'bout my Generation