In my last post, I ranted about the iPod and how it made me spend more than I thought I would. I was kinda thinking that I wouldn't get another thing like that for a long time.
Apparently, "long time" isn't as long as it used to be.
This is the new Apple iPhone.Yup, they finally showed it off at MacWorld yesterday. After more than a year of speculation and multiple accusations of this product being vaporware, Apple has shoved the naysayers' collective foot in their mouths and proven a lot of 'respected' journalists (cough...Leo LaPorte...cough) wrong!
Look at this thing! It's gorgeous! It's shiny, black, has a huge touch screen LCD, 4 or 8GB flash drive, 802.11g WiFi, bluetooth, 2MP digital camera, Mac OSX and most of all, it has Apple's widgets!
Hmmm... widgets....
What is thing anyway? First and foremost, it's a fashion accessory. Don't get me wrong, it has other uses but the most it'll be used for is making the user look good. Since I don't need artificial enhancements (ahem) I'll just go on to it's 'other' features.
The iPhone is a phone obviously. It does everything a normal smart phone should. SMS, email, calculator, calendar date book, miscellaneous applications, contact lists and etc. It's defining feature over other phones is the interface. There is no traditional keypad. No keys that will eventually get stubborn and/or sticky. That’s good right? Well... no. It uses the LCD as a touch screen keypad. Phone numbers are mostly through your contact list and the interface for dialing random numbers seems to be
buried under menus. This might also cause undue wear&tear on the lcd since you'll be touching it a lot of times. For SMS use, it's mostly the same. An on-screen keyboard let's you input texts and the contact recipients so basically same gripes with the phone function. The camera let's you take typical 2mp pictures from a point and shoot that's as simple as humanly possible. The only difference is that it can shoot at 16x9 format. 
The iPhone is also a media player. Its an addition to the iPod line and uses much of the iPod Video's technology with the Nano's flash memory. Video quality is reportedly as good as or better than the 5th Gen iPod, possibly due to the newer, brighter LCD. I was disappointed to see a traditional button interface for the media player. I would've loved to see a virtual click-wheel on this thing but maybe Apple wanted the screen real-estate to be used for something else.Not satisfied with being just a phone, the iPhone is a smart-phone! (would that make it a smart-iPhone or an i-smart-phone?) It does web browsing very well with Apple's own Safari interface. It incorporates their widgets with options to use custom versions. Google-maps works flawlessly! the best part? When holding the iPhone vertically and viewing a web-page, if you tilt it sideways, landscape style, the page will move with you! How cool is that?!?!
I seriously hope that this piece of technological wizardry isn't as prone to the iPod problem of a fragile finish. Let's face it, the 4/5th Gen video and the 1st gen iPod Nano was a nightmare to maintain. Breathing on it would cause scratches... If this is as bad as those products were then it'll be a huge dissapointment.
So obviously I'm intrigued. At the least, I'm impressed with how this thing looks on my screen. I might have another opinion when I see it in my hand but with Apple's track record of realllly realllly aesthetically pleasing products (2g shuffle, iPod Video, Nano, MacBook Pro, G5, etc..) I really think that it'll be love at first sight...
Again...
Suggested Retail Price? Around $600.
Damn.
