All in one pocket: iPhone weds cellphone, camera, iPod, Internet
Friday's debut of the Apple device is part of a trend of being able to carry all the power of a computer in your pocket.
from the June 28, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Apple, however, isn't chasing the power business user but the general consumer who may be surprised to learn just how much phones can do these days.
"They are spending a lot of time educating the mass market, which is something that no one has really bothered doing before," says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research in New York.
The company has also whipped up buzz by offering teases of information while withholding the phone from widespread press review. The few initial reviews have been mostly positive, but the approach risks leaving consumers with either impossibly high expectations or a cautious attitude.
"I'm planning on waiting to see what happens after the initial rush and reviews," says Mac devotee David Golden standing outside an Apple store in San Francisco. While the phone is expensive, he says, he likes the Web features. "I could imagine wasting a lot of time looking at YouTube videos of dogs on skateboards."
Web page display represents the biggest breakthrough of the iPhone, says Craig Mathias of the Farpoint Group, an analysis firm specializing in wireless communications, based in Ashland, Mass. "The exciting thing is having a really good browser so that the mobile Web experience is very much the same as the desktop Web experience," he says.
Programmers can extend the capabilities of the phone by creating Web applications that the phone can run remotely through Safari. But Apple is preventing developers from writing software that sits on the phone, independent from the Web browser. That means the phone will not run many applications you can currently put on your laptop. Instead, the Web-only programs must run over the phone's network, which is criticized for being slow.
The ability of other handhelds to run outside software has allowed a few businesses to use the devices for serious work.
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