Reasons why people buy the iPhone

So how many blogs have written "10 reasons why the iPhone sucks." I've seen them, I've read them, they have their points. But the point they are missing, is the reasons why people DO buy the iPhone. The good things far outweigh the bad. Here is my list of the good things.

* Multi-touch. This has to be the biggest breakthrough in mobile usability. Pinch and squeeze the items to zoom in and out, flick or swipe your finger across the interface to effortlessly move through your contacts and photo albums. Nothing comes close to the response and feel of an iPhone.

* Safari. The mobile browser that really does it all. And I don't have to convince you of this, the statistics speak for themselves. Give them a web browser they can use, and they will use it. Pinch zooming, double-tap focus, finger slide panning... hands down, no other mobile browser comes close to it's usability.

* The iPod. Let's face it, Apple built the iPhone with iPod users in mind. You don't need to carry two things around, and the iPod interface on the iPhone is easiest and most feature-rich thus far. For those already tapped into the iTunes ecosystem, the iPhone is an easy choice.

* The App Store. One place to get apps, available to every iPhone. Browse through applications and install them with ease. If you have ever gone through the gauntlet of installing and maintaining apps on platforms such as Windows Mobile, you will deeply appreciate the simplicity of the app store. For developers, you don't need hosting, and you get an instant world-wide audience!

* multi-lingual. This may not apply to individual phone owners, but being a touch-screen oriented device, the available languages are limitless, which is a very good thing for Apple supplying other countries with iPhones, and app developers can write their applications for any number of languages.

* The development platform. Cocoa and OS X have rave reviews on it's easy-to-use development tools (free with OS X), and the iPhone is no exception. Quickly and easily deploy applications on the iPhone that adhere to the apple user interface guidelines.

Of course there are shortcomings of the iPhone (You can read other blogs to get the juice.) But realize, the iPhone is in its infancy. After one year, Apple has completely changed the face of the mobile industry. IMHO, there are only better things to come.

first iPhone app

I wrote my first web-based iPhone app. It's ridiculously simple yet useful, a car lease calculator. Now when you're haggling for that payment price, you can look it up yourself :) It works in normal browsers too, have a look.

[edit: moved to motortopia.com]

http://www.motortopia.com/mobile/lease

The iphone drama

Yes, the iphone. It has been the talk of the town since June. Although I had not seen one in person, I wanted one. I never bought a PDA. I wanted to wait until the day I could easily do everything on one device, most notably:

* talk on the phone
* surf the web
* read email
* listen to music

I stress the word easily. The iphone is the first thing I've seen that lives up to this dream. I tried a few of the Smart phones such as the 8525 and 3125 from Cingular. They were, to say the least, difficult to work with. The 8525 sucked as a phone, and pretty bulky. The 3125 just wasn't too usable except as a phone, and it was sluggish.

Now that the price came down considerably, I ordered my iphone. It will be arriving next week. Also, I got a hold of a friend's iphone a few days ago and played with it. Although you could nitpick about a few things (3G, GPS, replaceable battery), even as a version 1.0 product it is MILES ahead of the pack. This has to be, by far, the most profound gadget in history.

I gave it the girlfriend test. She uses a Mac for Safari, Mail, and Microsoft Word. By no means is she a gadget user. I handed her the iphone and said, "Go to catster, look up your cat." She did it on her own, and quite easily. No coaching, no prior use or guidance of the iphone. Then I gave her my 3125 and said do the same thing. It took her at least a couple minutes to figure out how to use the soft-keys. Then she found the web browser, I had to help her a bit to get the URL prompt up. She did know how to punch in letters, she must have SMS'd before. But she couldn't figure out how to type a period "." without some help. Now as far as viewing the page in mobile IE, well let's just stop there.

No, I'm not a mac geek. I've used Macs, and I like them. I have a Mac at home. But I still use Ubuntu and Windows primarily. Why? A few reasons, but mostly because the poker clients I use are not available on a Mac. Poker Stars, are you listening?