Attention. If you are an Apple fan, stop right here, don’t read any further. Take care about your nerves. You are not a fan, that’s for sure?! Don’t tell us nobody warned you after you read this. This article has been written for normal people, rather than those coming from Homo iPhonus species. To that group we relegate the consumers who alter themselves, as well as their physical parameters, so as to make use of the iPhone.
Following the canons of trenched warfare, Apple fans have already prepared a fallback to their fortified positions. Occasionally they mumble that it is merely a “fancy toy” that can’t be judged on its technical merits. Personally, I have no quarrel with this definition, for it is a precise way to describe what this device actually is.
Wrapping it all up, all these claims of the iPhone fans on SMS-messages give an interesting picture. I’m curious about what their song will be when the phone arrives in Europe. Ah, right, I almost forgot – it will turn into a spaceship. I suppose there is nothing more to talk about. What is typical of fans, they always shift gears, so their moans have already traveled from the field of solid facts to philosophy. But enough of this gas, moving straight to the substance.
Short summary
While in the messaging department we made sure that the iPhone has almost nothing to it, the phone features are doing better – it rings, which is a good thing already. The ergonomics of the phonebook, dialing display and, basically, everything that has something to do with calls have been carried over from the past century. Any iPhone user spends twice as much time on dialing a number – if you call at least 15 times a day, it will make 6 to 9 hours a year. Of course it may not seem much at a glance, but in the end it all leads to tremendous amounts of wasted time.
The sound quality is pretty moderate in view of no sound enhancement systems. The absence of voice dialing capabilities on a handset (it is also a touchscreen-centric device, mind it) hyped this much looks odd, the say the least. Had Nokia released a phone lacking voice dialing, it would have been trampled at once.
The iPhone doesn’t have any profiles or call settings either. Moreover, the handset produces such mediocre volume level, that you have to wear headphones all the time – three meters away from the phone and you already can’t hear it ring. On the bright side, Apple has finally done away with disabled ringtones. But they still need to add a coffee grinder to the phone, so that all i-stronauts can have a cup of coffee whenever they want. Remember, this phone is turning into a spaceship soon, just keep this in mind.
Also, the iPhone doesn’t stand a chance in the enterprise segment – it simply doesn’t have the goods this type of users demand. No remote synchronization, no advanced features in the phonebook, no support for enterprise data bases.
It is a pity that in terms of its phone part, the “revolutionary” iPhone belongs to the 20th century. It is not particularly good at making calls, doesn’t offer its user great usability, or some all-round new abilities. Being a weak solution, both in software and hardware departments, it comes with a host of gizmos, you know, those cute-looking ones. I think Homo iPhonus need only these visual touches. But then again, there is no point in shouting about this phone’s overwhelming advantages over other models available on the market. Once you take an iPhone in hands, you are bound to spend a lot of time with it – that’s the company’s ultimate goal, which was reached by omitting ergonomically friendly interface. For the time being, the thing Apple really needs is walking ads, rather than a solid user base.
P.S. In the next installment we will focus on the iPhone’s “stellar” email, which is the third most popular application in this handset. And while the iPhone is still the talk of the town, Apple has made a handful of noticeable moves. First, they have rolled out recovered iPhones for the US market with a 100-dollar price cut – it seems that over the two months since the release date, Apple has accumulated a large stock of returned devices. Then, to boost the sales they have dumped the 4 Gb version, and have taken 200 USD off the 8 Gb version’s price tag. And last but not least – even before the European release of the iPhone, Apple’s sales haven’t lived up to expectations, and yet the market “surprisingly” finds out a relatively painless method of unlocking the phone. This will allow the company to prop the iPhone sales in this quarter.
