Here we are now,
Entertain us!
More news out of some trade show that the world demands to replicate kids copying the deaf dumb and blind kid playing pinball from Tommy even though we all know the kids are really like the kids in Quadrophenia:
The head of the world's biggest maker of cellphones struck the tone for the whole wireless industry this week when he rode a bright yellow bicycle onto the stage before giving a keynote speech...Wireless e-mail was just the start. Major consumer electronics and technology players say the time is here for delivering e-mail, music and video to mobile devices, and that theme is dominating much of the discussion here at the world's largest consumer electronics trade show.No, not Steve Jobs and his hand Segway but a less interesting but actually practical head of Motorola about putting real things in to real people's hands.
I do not despair as I am entering that age of life where I am more and more unimportant and my thoughts on things are of less value to the populace than they ever were. But Canada's nicest geek, Tod Maffin, was on the CBC this morning talking about these new small screen gizmos, yapping them up like the biased frontman any business reporter is - the MSM bias on business never being a concern, of course - when the host gave the telling closing quation "how are your eyes?" Answer: "bad."
Problem? Like with recent US foreign policy there is no accountability with IT claims, no review of either the return on investment or the practical performance. These announcements will sell a bunch of stuff that does not yet really work and also sell some stuff that does work that has been on the market. Stuff will sell. That is the key to a bubble economy.
Comments
Paul of Kingston - January 10, 2007 10:54 AM
"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," Mr. Jobs said yesterday...
He must have been talking about the Blackberry, no?
Chris Taylor - January 10, 2007 11:05 AM
The new iPhone i-gizmo is going to sell waaaaay better then the Segway. It's the first smartphone in a while to smartly combine a bunch of presently-available features into one device. The smartphone market has been stagnating for the past two years with RIM and Palm unveiling new models that are largely improvement-free except for the addition of more memory so you can cart more electrons with you.
Not one RIM BlackBerry or Palm Treo smartphone currently supports 802.11b/g/n wi-fi, for instance -- a major oversight considering the technology has been around in consumer products for 8 years now. Neither Palm nor RIM's phones can broadcast music on the device to wireless headphones because they neglected to include A2DP support in their Bluetooth implementations. Yes you can use BT headsets to conduct a phone conversation, but music is a different animal handled by a different BT profile, and most smartphone manufacturers inconveniently left it out.
The biggest advantage of the iThing is that it runs OS X which is an actual, honest-to-God Unix-derived operating system with multitasking capabilities. If you have ever tried to multitask on a Palm or RIM device (i.e. talk on the phone while getting directions from Google Maps, listen to music while sending or receiving large e-mails) you will know that these handheld devices are gawd-awful at multithreading.
I use the Treo for a lot of multimedia junk (especially while commuting, watching TV shows PVRed the night before) and the iPhone's bigger screen in the same form-factor as the Treo is really a welcome evolution. I am a closet Apple-hater but I would buy one of those spanky new phones in a heartbeat.
Chris Taylor - January 10, 2007 11:18 AM
And with respect to Paul, I don't think Apple and RIM play in the same ballpark. RIM, like Microsoft, understands corporations. Their devices are built to make life easy on us IT jerks that go to work in tall buildings.
The Firm uses BBs extensively because we can control just about everything on that device. Whether or not you can dial out from your own phone, for instance. What phone numbers you are allowed to dial and what websites you are allowed to surf. Whether or not you can use the music-playing, camera, or mini-SD capabilities on your device. Whether your data gets synced wirelessly for <i>your</i> convenience or the desktop (for <i>our</i> convenience and to reduce wireless charges). Whether or not you can back up the data on your own device. We can reset your BB and dump all of its data wirelessly, too, in case it gets stolen or lost.
Apple on the other hand builds a great consumer device with zero corporate control capabilities and zero integration into existing BlackBerry server infrastructure. The Firm is never going to adopt the iPhone because of those missing pieces, but every kid and urban hipster will have two in their stocking next Christmas.
Don't get me wrong, I like BlackBerries just fine, but they are targeted at a completely different market than the Hand Segway&trade.
Paul of Kingston - January 10, 2007 11:22 AM
Good post Chris. I am beginning to appreciate the corp vs peep difference in focus between RIM and Apple.
Gordo - January 10, 2007 10:00 PM
The big question right now is why Apple tied themselves to Cingular, the cellular network with the highest level of service complaints in the US.
On the bright side, the word through Boingboing is that the iPhone does not carry any form of DRM virus.
Alan - January 10, 2007 10:03 PM
Not to strong on rights protection all around.
Alan - January 14, 2007 11:01 PM
More evidence of Apple's issues with trademark registry searches as part of due diligence.