The iPhone is...

With all the press coverage and probably hundreds of thousands of blog posts on the iPhone, why would I dedicate my first blog post to it? Because it is really cool! And it is not just because it is a neat gadget, or because I was one of the first people on Rogers in Canada with one! But it really is a revolutionary device.

I have had many Palm smartphones over the years, starting with the Tungsten W, followed by the Treo 600, and the Treo 650. I found all of these devices really handy, and they all had a few great features and a few flaws. And the iPhone is no exception. However what Apple brings to the table is 20 years of creating great user experiences. And that is they key to any great device, or really any great product in general.

Sure anyone who has driven a $100,000 car can tell you about all kinds of technologies that lie under the hood, but that is not what excites most people. It is the overall feeling of the experience that excites us, and makes us run out and tell all our friends!

As an example, I just bought my daughter an HTC tytyn phone. At regular price on Telus it is actually more expensive than the iPhone! (but I got a deal I just couldn't pass up) it is a Windows Mobile 5 based device with a slide out keyboard, and a whole bunch of other cool features. But it was pretty hard to figure out how to get around it! I would consider myself a pretty tech savvy guy, but I had a difficult time with figuring out a lot of the functions. I hope my 11 year old catches on!

So the point I am trying to make, is not only is the iPhone sexy, cute, fun and useful. It has a very short learning curve, and things just make sense on it.

The web browsing functionality is by far the most amazing feature as the web experience is not something that is just dumbed-down, but you really can interact with large, graphic intensive sites because the user controls are very easy and the technology is astounding. This is however providing you have a fast Internet connection. So for right now I am using wifi exclusively (it is amazing how many open access points there are around) until Rogers gets affordable data plans together, but I am sure as the demand for these devices and services increases the prices will shortly become somewhat reasonable. In the end I think demand will drive the bus, and I will get considerably more for my $25 than just 5 MB of data transfer.

And although sites like facebook are fully functional on the iPhone, mobile applications such as iphone.facebook.com are still better on a smaller device. For one thing most people wont be surfing for hours on the little thing, so a subset of the facebook features are AOK for the mobile version, especially because there is a lot less clutter and crap like Zombie biting going on.

So I am going to go way out on a limb here and say that the iPhone will be a success! And by the way, not only was I able to type this post (albeit a tiny bit slower) on my iPhone but I was also able to do a lot of the configuration and setup of this site as well.

Posted from my iPhone.