Hello iPhone, bye bye Treo.

Oh dear… I think I’ve been reading every single news and blog article on Apple’s iPhone since Steve Job’s Keynote on WWDC on June 9th. And I come to the conclusion, that many people have not yet understood what Apple litterally has „created“.

narrow-minded

Let’s ignore those silly narrow-minded statements like „this and that feature is missing“ and „touch screen is no innovation at all“. And let’s skip those details on stereo bluetooth or amount of pixels of a built-in cam. Let’s focus on the beaf and the real story that is coming up!

iPhone 1.0? Thanks but no thanks.

Confession first: When Steve announced the iPhone 1.0 last year I was happy to see that Apple had it’s next big thing – yay! But, I wasn’t convinced. „In 2007 I expect my little to device to help me navigate, and a faster data connectivity was neat.“, I thought. So I bought a Treo 680, which manages my data and provides navigation through TomTom Navigator. „I’ll wait two years.“, my estimation was. But now, after Apple has announced the iPhone 3G last week my first thought was: „That’s it! That’s the perfect device I’ve been waiting for. They did read my wish list“. Cool phone, MacOS X inside, iPod, PDA and navigation capabilities on board.

Hello Mac-Fans, did you feel the same? I am sure you did!
Hello Apple-Haters, read why there is so much upbeat!

Apple continues where Palm has stopped

About 10 years ago I got my first 3Com Palm Pilot – a real handy friend: Easy to use, storing addresses, memos and managing expenses. But above all that, there has been a vast number of marvelous little helpers (applications) that assisted you during the day: Birthday Manager, Thought Manager, Little Games, Document Readers, Maps or Schedules for Exibitions, Remote Control, password manager, alarm and world clock, converters (currency, measures, temperature,…), translators, … and so on. Then the Palm learned how to do phone calls: The Treo family – yay! But,  in my eyes the whole platform got stuck 2-3 years ago. I missed a real enhancement and potential for growth.

UNIX at your findertips

To me, Apple continues the story at exactly the point where Palm has slowed down or even stopped:

• The iPhone has a full features UNIX-based OS X inside – a literally high producing fundament, that allowes application development in any direction you can imagine: Navigation, Education, Business, Entertainment, Media, … Due to the SDK we’ll see hundreds and thousands of new innovative, modern applications (like we saw on PalmOS end of the 1990’s) on a state-of-the-art operating system.
• iPhone provides unprecedented ergonomics and easy to use GUI
• After 12 months Apple releases a full-featured device (3G, GPS, modern OS, cool GUI, 3rd party apps) – while other players, that have been on the mobile market for 5, 8 or 10 years, have not been able to ship such a device yet.
• Apple is seriously focussing the enterprise market
• Admitting that the industry is generating demand too (they all do): Apple has understood what people want beeing mobile, they understood how to make technology easy to use – and they are fast.

New room for growth and visions

Even more – American thinking – the iPhone allures new buisness models, visions and new way of making money and it will bring us new (or at least improved) services: Imagine your navigation system is showing current weather information layered on your route  , like rain, ice or storm. Or imagine you’re in a foreign city and your cell iphone directs you to the local steak house or drug store or starts a guided tour with you.

Have you understood the iPhone?

I ordered an iPhone 3G