A trio of tech news items from the past couple of weeks that I haven’t weighed in on:
The iPhone 4 shows
Aside from watching Steve Jobs struggle with the WiFi connectivity during the iPhone 4 announcement, I find myself both impressed with the design of the latest generation of the best smartphone in the market and at the same time a little underwhelmed by the thing “that changes everything…again.”
Maybe it’s because I haven’t actually seen or held one of them in person yet, because more and more I find that as visually stunning as Apple products are, the bigger impression they make on me is how tactile their creations are.
My iPhone 3GS and my iPad are things that I like to hold, and really just fondle, even when I am not using them. I actually hate putting a case on either one of them. Jobs described the iPhone 4 as feeling like a beautiful old Leica camera, and anyone who has ever held one of those can tell you that it really is different than just holding any other camera. There is a sense of size, balance, and functional style that just makes it feel different in your hands.
If the iPhone 4 lives up to that billing, then it might be a must-have (for me at least) on that basis alone. But given that I will be able to update my one year old iPhone 3GS to the new 4th generation of the newly dubbed “iOS”–I might be content to live without the style, the video calling, and other improvements…for a little while.
At least a week or maybe even two.
(But I have noticed that with my trusty iPad, I don’t necessarily use the iPhone as much as once did for internet, movie watching or game playing. Truth is I now use my iPhone more as a….phone! I haven’t seen yet how the iPhone 4 actually improves on the counts of being a phone.)
AT&T Drops The Flag On The Wireless Data Meter
When you used to get into a yellow taxicab in New York City (and other places, I’m sure)–the driver had to start the electro-mechanical taximeter that recorded your fare by literally turning a metal handle from an upright position. The metal handle also served as a “flag” to indicate that the cab was vacant.
This act was known by drivers and experienced passengers alike as “dropping the flag”, meaning that the fare charges had begun accumulating for the ride. These days, there is no mechanical “flag” to drop in a taxi, the silent electronic taximeters of today look more like oversized calculators. The driver pushes a button to begin the process of charging you for every eight of a mile traveled.
You still watch the thing silently eat up whatever cash might be in your pocket.
I have always hated anything that followed a similar model of commerce. Early dial-up internet was charged by either the kilobyte of data, or hours spent online, or some other standard of “metering” usage. There was no better thing that the advent of “unlimited” internet service to the creation of services like audio and video streaming.
Now AT&T, who has pretty well-known issues just delivering a signal and data to its cell phones in many places, has decided to end the all-you-can-eat data buffet with the introduction of billing plans that have a limit (or “cap”) on just how much you can data you can use to surf the internet.
They say that the limits are generous and that most users will never bump into them and people like me who download a lot of whatever on their iPhones should be paying more for our bloated data diets in the first place. Even though we signed up for “unlimited” service in the first place.
Why does this strike me as one of those “all you can eat” buffet deals that charges you for your subsequent plates after the initial one?
To its credit, AT&T has grandfathered existing “unlimited” data users like myself, for as long as we want to keep paying more for the privilege. So I’ll probably keep paying more so I don’t have to go back to watching and worrying about the meter.
Revenge of the Droids
The arrival of the latest “iPhone Killer”, the Droid Incredible on Verizon Wireless a short while back, has come with the usual fanfare. Many good reviews, and now it is in short supply as people snap this good looking high-tech phone in droves.
Styled in the “slab of touchable glass” motif that the iPhone made iconic, the Droid Incredible features a wealth of latest technology that equals–and in some cases surpasses–the just announced iPhone 4, proving that the Android software that Google is pushing to phone makers for every wireless company is more than capable of battling with the iPhone–in principle at least.
Many who have gotten frustrated waiting for the oft-rumored arrival of the iPhone on a network other than AT&T, are going to look at hot new phones like the Droid Incredible and its equals that are arriving to every carrier on a near weekly basis, and in many cases those folks will settle for a wireless device that is not much of a compromise–except maybe in perceived status.
The smartphone wars are far from over, and for right now at least, the growing legions of Droids out there just might just keep the battle with the Apple empire going well into the future.
Or at least until someone writes the third script in this trilogy.