Coolest Phone Ever? iPhone... Stuff Joe Wants to Know.
Will iPhone will make Palm Irrellevant?
These days, each and every day, friends and customers ask me about Apple's ultra-cool iPhone (out June 29th), and when I'm getting mine. Frankly, my take on the iPhone is equal parts WOW! and WAIT!. In our practice we've come to depend on our trusty Palm Treos. We run Treo 650s on Cingular (now AT&T).
In spite of NUMEROUS shortcomings, the Treos, all-in-all, have been great for our business. The Palm OS has long standing support for the Mac OS. The Treo syncs with iCal and Address Book which is how we manage our appointments and house calls. They are bolstered by a rich pool of third party software, and have good data support on the major networks. Sadly, on Cingular, the data support is limited to GSM/EDGE which is slow compared to Verizons high speed data network. Cingular has been baiting me for over a year with its upcoming 3G High speed data support, but in reality that service is still only available in a small number of US cities. This is a whole other story, so I won't get into it.
I currently run "Missing Sync" from Mark/Space, and a customized version of a small software package called "Take and Order" form Stevens Creek Software. With "Take and Order" and a custom interface developed in-house, we're able to create sales orders, and enter time slips in the field, on our Treo's, and have them automatically upload to our MYOB accounting system at every hotsync. We have a 100% closed loop paperless, integrated, mobile billing system as a result! This is pretty cool, and saves me a ton of time and frustration. I also run SnapperMail from SnapperFish software for email. which is a really nice 3rd party package that beats the built in email client. We also have Google Maps which is surprisingly fast on the slow Cingular network.
Here's the deal with the iPhone.
1) The iPhone is being announced on AT&T only, and on their slow GSM/EDGE data network, with NO support for the high speed 3G network they keep promising. I have to imagine that at some point soon Apple will have to upgrade the iPhone to support the 3G network. At that time it is very likely the first generation iPhones will NOT be upgradeable, and perpetually relegated to the older data network. So this gives me cause to wait! If I knew that the first Gen iPhones could be upgraded to support 3G, it would be a different story. I'd like to know.
2) AT&T ONLY? Does this mean that the phone will be locked, and I won't be able to use it with an alternate SIM card when I travel overseas? If so I'll wait until I can buy an unlocked phone domestically, or overseas.
3) Third Party Applications Support? This is one of the keys factors that makes the Palm (and Windows Mobile) platforms so versatile and robust. Apple had previously announced that "We define everything that is on the iPhone". This was not an encouraging statement to Developers. More recently, Steve Jobs stated the following at last weeks "All things Digital" conference:
- "We're working through a way [to support third-party development]," Jobs said. "We've got some pretty good ideas that we're working through, and I think sometime later this year we will find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security."
On June 29th we all get our first chance to experience the iPhone. I expect it to be dazzling. I really do! I'm hopeful that by years end we'll see a 3G iPhone, that can be purchased unlocked, and that will be open to third party developers.
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