Re: [NTLK] The day the Newton died it's final death...

From: Riccardo Mori <rick_at_poc.it>
Date: Wed Jan 10 2007 - 17:24:59 EST

Lord Groundhog:

>
> Dear Rick,
>
> These are the kind of things that beguiled me when I first saw it.
> The
> trouble is that when I looked for the things that I need, rather
> than the
> things that I'd just have fun with in between using the things I
> need, it
> was a bit like having a cell phone that had great games but no tri- or
> quad-band. For example, seamless and easy customizing of
> wallpaper? On a
> phone? Nice touch, but on a scale of 1-10 of usefulness, that gets
> a yawn.

Don't think I've been amazed by _that_. I know well how useless a
wallpaper on a mobile phone is. I was just making an example of what,
in my opinion, is a well-studied, phone-wide interface. The
interconnection of features, the fact that some data can be
manipulated throughout various "locations" in the iPhone. This bit of
information that's here can be easily adjusted, merged, moved, sent
there. The keyword is _easily_. And what makes things easy in such a
device? The interface. Now I understand why I've hated the usual
cellphones so far: Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung, etc., all fooled us
into thinking that they overcomplicated, feature-ridden phones were
"easy to use" with "intuitive interfaces". And those other
"smartphones" aren't really cheap. Yet lots of people paid good money
for these kinds of horrible wanna-be pocketable PDAs, where to
activate a feature or bring up some functions you have to dig your
way through menus and submenus while looking at ridiculously small
screens (in some cases, not small per se - some smartphones have
relatively big screens - but small for the need they're supposed to
fulfil). I was not surprised that some european journalists who were
allowed to use the iPhone for a while (supervised by Apple's Greg
Joswiak and David Moody) found it extremely easy to operate,
intuitive, and just needed a few minutes to find their way into it.

About the iPhone: I do think that considering it a cure-all for
whatever needs the man of the street may have is overly enthusiastic
or just foolish. Of course, despite my utter amazement, I think that
this device can't possibly be good at _everything_, nor I expect it
to be. On the other hand, it's myopic to consider it just a silly
toy, eye-candy, and full of useless gadgets. For example, I'd like to
use it also as a very portable hard drive where I can store a copy of
my works in progress when I move from one site to another to continue
my work. The data are easily exchanged with my PowerBooks and I don't
have to move around with a phone, an external hard drive, my iPod, an
USB pendrive, etc. I just put some music on the iPhone to listen on
the go, I backup the data I need and save them into it, and I don't
really need anything else to carry around. Obviously I take my
MessagePad with me if I need to do things that the iPhone doesn't do,
like scribbling away some notes on the nicely huge Newton screen. But
in the end my "digital life" is made a lot easier (and lighter for my
pockets and backpack).

> Come on, Steve, give us something more than an electronic theme
> park in a
> phone!

I still haven't seen any games in the iPhone :)

The point of the iPhone, in my opinion, is not to attract/focus
attention on itself as a self-contained, finite device. The
underlying message is that this is just the beginning of the road.
The beginning of a new way to view and use a portable device such as
the iPhone to manage all the personal information we carry around.
Whenever I look at the photos on the 'net or at the demos on the
Apple website, I really cannot consider it "just a phone". It's a
Personal Digital Assistant. Along with the Newton, I think it's the
only device that can really be called that way. The Newton and the
iPhone share the same basic concept: to be with you everywhere and to
help you organise your things and the data you want to keep at hand.
But they have different personalities and different ways to
accomplish that. There are people who would like to be able to phone
with a Newton, and people who would like to be able to just write
with a stylus on the iPhone and have their handwriting recognised. To
me both things sound a little contrived once we consider the
different approach the iPhone and the Newton have towards their
"Personal Digital Assistant" role.

But these, obviously, are just my $0.02 :)

Cheers
Rick

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Received on Wed Jan 10 17:25:06 2007

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