It's a close call, but here we are post-iPhone-launch and I still don't want one. Well, I don't want one enough to blow $500 on it. Of course, if my Treo 600 had held out until now we'd be having a different discussion, but it didn't and I had to replace it a few months ago. Which involved two years of handcuffs to Sprint. According to Apple's site right now I could wake up tomorrow and go to any Apple store in California and buy one, but that isn't going to happen. I've watched the web videos, I've read the web frenzies and my final reaction is meh. See here's the thing - I don't really use a phone that much. And it may be the most fantastic phone browser on the planet, but it's not better than my Powerbook, except in obscure mobile circumstances that just don't happen to me very often. I want to play with the UI sure, but $500 worth? No. Video playback? I've never watched a single movie on my PSP, and I'm not going to start buying 480p from iTunes anytime soon. iPod replacement? Well . . . I have two iPods. My trusty 40gb "3rd generation" iPod which holds all my music and a smaller iPod Nano that I use pretty much just for podcasts. (This is a stupid point and it's because Apple never updated the 3G software to bookmark podcasts properly. I find that fairly annoying, since it's obviously a simple thing. But I've already crossed that hurdle, so leave that behind.)
The iPhone could replace my Nano, but my Nano doesn't need replacing. It can't replace my big iPod because the 40 Gig drive is mostly full and I've been debating upgrading my "base encoding" beyond 128 Kbps AAC. If I was going to replace my "big" iPod I'd have to replace it with a bigger iPod.
So I'm the user that is holding out for for that UI and the touchscreen stuck on a hard drive. Make something the size as a full iPod but with the multi-touch screen? Oh yes please. I don't really care whether it has a cell or Wi-Fi radio, that's not what I want in that size device. But as it is? I can wait for version 2.0. At least until they provide a real programming interface ("web apps!" <snort>) and there's a version of OmniFocus for the iPhone. That might bother me as well.
And I haven't even mentioned how much I disliked Cingular when I had them. From what I understand rebranding the network AT&T hasn't improved the quality in the Bay Area. Sprint isn't as good as Verizon was back in the day, but it's better than Cingular was circa 2004. Here's hoping that by iPhone 2.0 Apple supports more carriers.
technorati tags:iPhone, Kool-Aid, phones, hype
Blogged with Flock