| Apple iPhone price cut surprising but brilliant |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Sunday, 09 September 2007 | |
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5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
State of the art, not only in the now even smoother design, but in the simplicity and sophistication of the relevant operating systems, and the richness of the third party industry, all of whom are no doubt busily planning and creating new accessories as we speak. The new iPods, and the iPhone price cut, are a challenge to the rest of the industry, and to consumers at large: here are the best and easiest to use digital devices for mobile music, video, photos. With an iPod touch you get access to a Wi-Fi music store, the Safari browser, YouTube videos, access to Web 2.0 apps and the promise of more official applications to come, as well as the option of 16GB of flash storage. If you want all that and more, aside from the 16GB option, then the current generation iPhone is the answer – and we all know it won’t be long before there’s a 16GB iPhone – or perhaps even a 32GB model – with 3.5G, a front video camera for video calls, better Bluetooth for A2DP music and Bluetooth keyboard support, the ability to cut and paste, and a proper third party software development kit. But that’s not all – how about a video out, a memory card socket so data can be easily transferred onto and off the iPhone if needed without having to tether it to a computer first, the ability to download from the Internet, the ability to use Flash, and to read PDFs, amongst other desires most iPhone owners have, along with some official games? Only the iPod Shuffle is now unable to play video as it has no screen and isn’t intended for that purpose, but all other iPods are now video capable. Both the iPod nano and the iPod classic get the ‘CoverFlow’ eyecandy, about the only nod to the completely different operating system of the iPhone and iPod touch, with the headline bonus of the iPod classic now available in a whopping 160GB or a library 40,000 128k AAC songs. Use it to store all your music and other digital media, but with that much space you could keep backups, run virtual operating systems or just store files as well. An iPod classic is arguably the best battery-powered portable hard drive you can get, which also comes with a screen and input system, and doesn’t cost that much more than a standalone 160GB portable hard drive. And while 160GB is a lot for an iPod now, by 2010 not only should our Internet connectivity be most robust, more reliable and much faster than it is today, but the amount of data that hard drives, flash memory drives, optical discs and online storage systems offer will be many times greater than what they are today – as standard. So, while 160GB is the largest 1.8-inch hard drive capacity today, there can be no doubt they’re working on releasing 250GB and 320GB models as soon as they figure out how to get that much data to work and fit reliably in that 1.8-inch space. And there can be no doubt they’re figure it out. Technology is moving more rapidly than it ever has before, with new innovations appearing on a daily basis – there has never been a more inventive or more innovative time in all of human history, nor have we ever all been able to be as connected as we can be today thanks to the Internet. While every boom has a bust, I hope the technological boom we are experiencing now doesn’t go bust for many decades, if not centuries, to come. We’re just at the beginning of it now, as far as 21st century technological breakthroughs are concerned. It’s been predicted that the next 20 to 30 years will see more technological development and evolution than the last 2000 years put together. As we sit here, on the cusp of robotics in homes, growing our food and manning production lines over the next few decades, alongside the harnessing of quantum computing that will only get better and better until it replaces conventional computing, of wellness and health technologies and therapies that help our bodies heal themselves instead of trying to medicate us, of widespread use and development of renewable energy sources, making us all individual micro energy generation sources that pump energy back into the grid as a whole, and other green technologies for manufacturing, recycling and more – the prediction becomes very believable. One very clear and obvious sign that the prediction is coming true is the arrival of truly reliable and easy to use touch technology that just works, and works wonderfully! Touch technology has been around for years, but frankly, it has sucked for a very, very long time. The iPhone and the iPod touch change that forever, and for the better! But they can’t claim all the credit. There are other cool new touch technologies as well. But was the iPhone priced too highly to begin with? Will the $599 price point come back with a 16GB iPhone? What will competitors do now against the Apple juggernaught? Find out all of this - and more - on the next page! |
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