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What iThink about the iPhone

Why? Why has the iPhone been so successful? Why has an overpriced, under-featured gadget generated such excitement across the country, with people spending days waiting in line for a chance to spend $500-$600 for it?

After all, the iPhone does have a lot of limitations. As Wikipedia puts it:

iPhone lacks a number of common handheld features, including voice dialing, voice recording, instant messaging, memory card slot, MMS, A2DP (stereo bluetooth), common Bluetooth file transfer, GPS capability, text copy and paste, native games, and support for MP3 files as ringtones.

So what’s the reason?

Although the iPhone lacks much functionality, what the iPhone does do it does really, really well. The iPhone lacks many features common to other phones, but its feature set is sufficient for most people, and most importantly, it implements those features in a superior fashion.

Every product or feature has two conceptual components: the idea, and the implementation of the idea. Other phones may already have the same ideas, but with the iPhone Apple has really nailed the implementation.

And of course, Apple has done a fantastic job marketing this thing. They actually haven’t done a lot of marketing. Instead, they’ve used the consumer base to market the product for them. Everyone was talking about the iPhone. The media. Blogs. Podcasts. The iPhone was the coolest thing ever before it was even released. And as the release date approached, Apple leaked out additional details to keep the excitement going.

The whole campaign was very well done. The campaign was so successful, however, that in my opinion it does raise some concerns about society’s inordinate excitement about “stuff.”

But from a marketing standpoint, Apple has done a great job with the iPhone, even though the product itself isn’t the greatest. Though when a product has as many positive aspects as the iPhone, one is more likely to forgive or overlook the negative aspects.

What would be interesting to see is a technology product that is as close to perfect as possible in both the idea and the implementation, with a great feature set, great implementation of that feature set, and great marketing of that feature set. Who knows? Maybe in the future it’ll be something even more trivial than a cellphone.

AJAX Progress Bars and Activity Indicators

I found a webpage with some nice-looking animated GIF free public domain progress bars and activity indicators. (Wow, how many adjectives is that?) If you’re into AJAX development (or dabbling in it, like me), these little images will probably come in handy at some point.

Google Wi-Fi Via Your Toilet

This has to be the funniest Google April Fool’s Day joke yet:

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access [...] via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

[...]

With professional installation service, you can also have your Google Checkout purchases delivered directly through the sewage network into your bathroom.

[...]

We’re actively developing a higher-performance version of TiSP specifically tailored to small and medium-sized businesses, including 24-hour, on-site technical support in the event of backup problems, brownouts and data wipes.

Hilarious!

They even, uh, use the location of this WiFi access to provide uncanny monitoring:

Your FREE TiSP service includes a Google Toolbar-based analysis of your dietary habits and genetic predispositions, along with recommendations for healthier living.

[...]

To offset the cost of providing the TiSP service, we use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward.

Read more at Google TiSP (haven’t figured out what it stands for yet…).

Update: it appears that TiSP stands for “Toilet Internet Service Provider.” Makes sense.

Legal Windows Vista Ultimate for Free?!

This sounds too good to be true. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is indeed legitimate.

Microsoft is running a promotion whereby upon purchase of an OEM version of Windows Vista Ultimate you get the following hardware items for free:

  • Kingston 2GB Flash Drive
  • Artec HDTV Tuner
  • D-Link WiFi Pocket Router
  • Epson PictureMate Pal

NewEgg.com also has a promotion page for this deal.

The value of the items wasn’t advertised, but I found the model numbers for 3 of the 4 products and did some searching. Here’s what I found:

The total price for these four items adds up to $317.96. And what how much is Vista Ultimate OEM from NewEgg? Yep, only $199.99.

Assuming you were able to resell these hardware items at the above prices, you would get Vista Ultimate for free and get $117.97 extra. Or you could keep one or two of the items and sell the rest to recoup the cost of Vista. Or you could just keep all of them. :-) All the same, totally cool.

Mac OS X “Still the Best”? I Don’t Think So…

I checked out Apple’s website recently and have noticed that they’ve replaced their generic anti-PC content with specifically anti-Vista propaganda. And I think there are a few things that need to be cleared up.

They say that Mac OS X is still the best OS, and then proceed to say why.

While Vista does its best to copy some features that have been in Mac OS X for years, Mac OS X offers an experience that is simply years ahead.

So what do they do after saying that? They go on to list features that Mac OS X has (all of which Vista has too) or will have in Leopard (all of which appeared in Vista first). Sounds a little turned-around to me.

Spotlight, for example, is always there to help you find that elusive file hiding somewhere in your computer. It shows search results literally as you type, in emails, contacts, PDFs, images, contacts, calendars, and applications.

Dashboard Widgets are small, focused applications for accomplishing discrete tasks (like tracking deliveries, checking the weather, playing Soduku, printing envelopes, reviewing your stock portfolio, etc.).

Based on what they said above, it’s clear that they’re trying to imply that Vista doesn’t have these features, which, of course, is totally false.

Unlike Vista, which comes in four distinct flavors at four distinct prices, each with its own distinct set of features (and each in 32- and 64-bit dialects), there’s only one Mac OS X. It runs on every Mac. With a full set of features.

OK, I do admit, Vista’s editions can be a bit confusing. However, it does ensure that you’re not paying extra for features you don’t really need.

But even as Vista falls short in features that have long been part of Mac OS X, it’s about to lag even farther behind. Because Mac OS X Leopard is right around the corner. And with it will come an even richer set of features to make using your Mac easier and more amazing.

This is where I start laughing, because all of these features have been in Windows for years.

With the new Time Machine, built into Mac OS X Leopard, you’ll be able to peer into any folder on your Mac and travel back in time to retrieve an earlier version of a document. It’s an all-new (and fantastically cool) take on data backup.

This four-year-old (at least) Windows feature has been around in Windows Server 2003 (and quite possibly earlier versions, though I don’t know for sure), and is now entering the consumer editions of Windows.

The Spaces feature allows you to create multiple desktops so that you can organize your workspace differently for different tasks. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Excuse me? This feature is a free Microsoft add-on to Windows XP … that’s right, it’s a five-year-old feature. Sure, so it’s not integrated in the OS, but this still sounds like a rip-off of Microsoft innovation.

The choice today is between an OS trying its best to catch up… or Mac OS X, which continues to lead the way.

Pah! I do respect the Mac OS X, but this “marketing” just seems to be deceitful propaganda designed to take advantage of people who don’t know the full feature set of Windows Vista and earlier versions.

Apple feels threatened. I can tell.

iPhone Causing iPod Price Cuts?

I’ve been considering an iPod purchase recently, and I noticed that Amazon has cut prices on the 5.5 generation iPods by about $13 for the 30GB version and $18 for the 80GB.

So yes, this is only a 5% discount, but I thought this was of note because I’ve rarely seen iPods below the standard retail price. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the iPhone announcement had something to do with it, considering the recent buzz about how it might impact iPod sales.

What I Found in My Junk Mail

I recently found a message from my ISP in my Junk Mail folder, with the subject “Spam – How It’s Growing and What We’re Doing About It.”

Oh, the irony. ;-)

Download .NET Framework 3.0 Stuff

I’m just getting into .NET Framework 3.0 development (that is, I will be, as soon as I’m able to get the SDK to actually install :roll: ), and I found Microsoft’s “Ready for a New Day” page (intended to help developers get started with .NET Framework 3.0, Office 2007, and ASP.NET AJAX development) very helpful.

It includes links to, among other things, download the .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package (which is for running .NET Framework 3.0 applications), the Windows SDK (which is for developing them), and the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (which is for integrating .NET Framework 3.0 with Visual Studio 2005).

This .NET Framework 3.0 stuff is very exciting, especially the XAML stuff.

By the way, considering that this post contains 7 instances of “.NET Framework 3.0″, anyone know if there’s some sort of acronym that I can be using? :-)

The Mad PS3 Rush

I am just amazed at the seeming absurdity shown by some people as they fight to be one of the first to own Sony’s new PlayStation 3 console. People sleeping in parking lots, coming an hour early so that they can get a ticket that gives them a chance to purchase the PS3, etc.

I just don’t get it: why spend all that time, effort, and energy when you can just walk into a store and purchase the thing a week later?

Falling Sand Game

I found this link at Jeremy Visser’s blog: the simple yet fun Falling Sand Game. If you’re anything like me, I think you’ll find it very entertaining!