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iPhone, iPhone, iPhone
 by Paul Thurrott
Well, at least give Apple some credit for generating an unprecedented amount of hype. Unless the upcoming iPhone smart phone is a total dud—and let's face it, that's not going to happen—Apple has achieved the holy product trinity of anticipation, lust, and—I'm guessing—short supply. Furthermore, the company has cunningly handled the pre-release months by easing out details about the product over time. Brilliant. So, what's the deal with the iPhone? Is this the must-have device of the year, or is it just another road bump on the path toward mobile nerdvana? Given that I don't have an iPhone in my hands—and, until recently, didn't expect to get one—I'm still a bit mixed on it overall. The product looks decent, even excellent. It has the expected Apple design touches and UI innovations. But there are some problems. Here are the concerns that I think are relevant, as I now understand them. Things might change as the iPhone's June 29 release date approaches, and of course Apple updates its products regularly, so expect even more changes down the road. Design. The iPhone is better looking than any smart phone—period. It's also bigger and heavier than most smart phone users might prefer, so it's a mixed bag overall. And what about that touch screen? Will it scratch easily in your pocket, like an iPod? Stay tuned. Keyboard. The iPhone doesn't include a hardware keyboard, which makes it a non-starter for the two most important smart phone markets: business users and users who regularly send text messages. I don't care how good Apple's virtual keyboard is: Without a real keyboard, there's no tactile feedback, and thus you can't type easily on it without watching the virtual keys. Apple would have been better served by providing the device with a slide-out keyboard. This is a key area in which Apple has completely misread the market, and the company is only making it worse by pretending that it has invented a new market. Network. The iPhone will work only with AT&T's cell phone network, which has been disparagingly referred to as a "2.5G" system, compared with superior 3G systems such as the Verizon EV-VO network that I use. (On the flip side, he iPhone does natively support Wi-Fi, which will come in handy, more so in the coming months and years.) Switching mobile phone providers is expensive, and limiting the iPhone to just AT&T will make the device artificially less relevant than it could be. And if you're in Europe, you're just plain out of luck for now: Apple hasn't announced its European mobile phone service partner yet. Compatibility. Although the iPhone will work just fine with all POP3 email accounts and will work in superior fashion with the natively designed Gmail and Yahoo Mail systems, it won't work with most corporate email systems, which—in tandem with the lack of a real keyboard—makes the iPhone a non-event in the business world. Internet. My Motorola Q can browse the Web, and do so via its superior EV-DO network, but most Web sites aren't designed for the device's small screen, and finding sites that do work natively is difficult and frustrating. The iPhone, by contrast, offers a "true" Web experience because it has taken a desktop PC-based browser—Safari—and jammed it into a mobile device with a nice, large widescreen display. However, Safari is also an iPhone weakness because so few sites are designed for this niche browser. Why, oh why, couldn't Apple have just gone with the superior Firefox browser? That would have made this category a slam-dunk. Battery life. Apple now claims that the iPhone gets 8 hours of battery life for phone calls, which any cell phone user will immediately peg as a ludicrous claim. However, Apple had previously claimed just 5 hours, so something positive has happened here. A user-removable battery would make all the difference in the world. Storage. The iPhone comes with just 4GB or 8GB of storage, depending on the model, which will limit the device's ability to store your entire media collection. Movies, which should look wonderful on the iPhone's widescreen display, are particularly problematic. A typical 2-hour movie purchased from the iTunes Store weighs in at around 1.5GB. Worse still, this kind of content will rapidly sap battery life. Availability. If you want an iPhone, be prepared for short-term disappointment. You can order the device only through certain non-franchised AT&T retail stores, Apple retail stores, and—presumably—Apple's online store. I say "presumably" because, as of this writing, you can't actually preorder an iPhone anywhere, get on a waiting list, or even learn how the sales will be handled. Obviously, you'll need to sign a two-year commitment with AT&T, standard practice in the US cell phone market. The details, alas, are lacking. Pricing. The iPhone is expensive. Really expensive. Whereas I was able to snag my Q for just $100 (or free, after a $100 mail-in rebate), the iPhone will cost $500 or $600 depending on which model you get—in addition to whatever monthly fees you pay through AT&T. This pricing structure places the iPhone at the absolutely upper echelons of the smart phone market. When you combine this fact with the availability and functionality concerns I've noted above, you can see some reality setting in: Yes, the iPhone will be successful. It's most definitely, however, not a good buy for most phone users. Overall, I'm intrigued by the iPhone, mostly because I'm just now transitioning from desktop-based email and personal information management (PIM) software such as Microsoft Outlook to Web-based Google services, and the iPhone's interaction with these services is top-notch. Traditional email and business users, however, will find problems with the iPhone, as will anyone who pecks away regularly on today's smart phone keyboards. This situation, I believe, is the real risk with the iPhone, although Apple could easily push into traditional smart phone territory by releasing a keyboard-equipped iPhone in the next year. For now, hype will win out over common sense, and I have no doubt that people will be lining up to get an iPhone and create lines reminiscent of those that greeted Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace several years back. Personally, I'm not going to wait in line for an iPhone. But I most certainly will be getting one. How can I resist?
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How Goes the Next-Generation DVD Format War?
by Jason Bovberg
I'm getting it from all sides. I'm usually the first among my friends and associates to dive into new technologies—much to the chagrin of my wallet and my wife. I invested in laserdisc in its infancy, and I watched that format grow into the fairly large niche it became. I bought $100 disc sets and proudly watched my widescreen movies while everybody else rented crappy pan-and-scan VHS tapes. I was even an early buyer in the CD revolution, astounding the people around me with the new digital clarity that the format brought to music. More recently, I dove headlong into standard DVD when it debuted almost a decade ago. It seemed as if I had been waiting all my life for DVD to come along. It was an answer to my most fervent geek prayers: I could watch my favorite movies in glorious widescreen and powerful surround sound, and I could enjoy the discs' supplements as a kind of "film school in a box." DVD fixed all the problems of the video formats that preceded it—no more flipping huge LP-sized laser discs, no more VHS-inherent resolution and playback problems, instant access to chapters and features, pristine video and audio. I was almost religious about it, and still am. I'm a DVD nut. I struggled through the format war between DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD. What a sad, tragic war that was! Who could have foreseen that two fantastic, high-fidelity music formats would crumble in the face of the woefully underperforming MP3? Now, DVD-A and SACD are relegated to the niche market, and I have a $500 hybrid DVD/DVD-A/SACD that rotates through my huge collection of 20 high-fidelity music discs. Oh, you can bet I would have swooned for either of these formats, too, just as I did for DVD. But no, the average music listener—once serious-minded and meticulous about the experience—now values convenience over quality. Thanks to the iPod, music ain't art anymore. It's background noise. It's something to work out to. Which makes me sad and wary about the high-definition DVD format war. Like I said, I'm getting it from all sides. Friends and associates are wondering when I'm going to finally get an HD DVD or Blu-ray player and start enjoying the superior image quality of the next generation of DVDs. Like many, I'm weary of format wars, and this one seemed to almost precisely echo the music war that has wounded me so badly in more ways than one. Then again, this new war is being fought over an even more beloved form of media, and I must admit that high-definition DVD's siren's call is near irresistible. Early prices of the units were just high enough to make me feel OK about ignoring them. But now they're coming down. Earlier this year, I was tempted by the Microsoft Xbox HD DVD add-on ($199), but I learned that the unit runs fairly loud, and that flaw was enough to push me back. When will we see a hybrid player in this war? When will we see one of the formats fall away, leaving a clear winner? Whenever I see the dueling Blu-ray and HD DVD sections at Best Buy, I can only shake my head in despair. It all comes across as so much counter-productive bickering that could very well result in stalemate and consumer apathy. But I want so much for the format to work. High definition is the future of video entertainment. Right? Or, as with our music, would we rather just watch compressed, compromised, low-resolution movies on our iPod screens?
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| | | | |  | We've tabulated your votes!
Here are the results (from 96 votes) of last month's Connected Home Quick Poll question:
"Do you have an HD DVD or Blu-ray player yet?"
- 17% Yes
- 83% No
Check out our next Quick Poll question:
"Will you buy an iPhone?"
- Yes
- No
Vote now at the Connected Home Media home page!
| |  | | How to Get an iPhone at Launch On June 29, 2007, at 6pm local time in the United States, eager consumers will be able to pony up at their local Apple Store or select AT&T retail outlet and purchase an Apple iPhone and associated two-year network service contract. That's the theory anyway. The truth is, if you think you're going to just waltz into a store on June 29 and get Apple's latest mobile device, you've got to reset your expectations. Things just aren't that simple. First, the stores that do carry the iPhone on June 29 will have limited supplies, so you're going to have to get there early—as in, the day before—and camp out. If this notion doesn't completely turn you off, remember also that not all AT&T retail stores will be carrying the iPhone. So, call ahead to your local establishments ahead of time and find out whether it's worth bothering. Another tack to take is to simply order the device online. Although the iPhone isn't (yet) available even for preorder, Apple says it will be selling it through its online store as well as at its retail stores. Presumably, Web-based orders will take weeks if not months to fulfill, so the earlier the better. Stay tuned to Apple-oriented news sites such as Macsurfer.com for information about when Web orders become available. There are other details to attend to. If you're not an AT&T/Cingular customer, you're going to have to cancel your current wireless service in order to switch. That can be an expensive prospect because most US-based cell phone users are on a two-year service agreement, and wireless companies will typically try to recover an amount equal to the remainder of your contract. That said, Type-A personalities will discover that they can often talk wireless company reps into lowering the buy-out cost, so be prepared to put up a fight. Also, you're going to have to set up an iTunes Store account if you don't already have one, because the iPhone requires this account for registration. So, download iTunes 7 today from Apple's Web site and get ready. In the end, you'd be best served by waiting. But if you really want an iPhone at launch, you can get one. You just have to be prepared to make the appropriate sacrifices. | | |  | | Get to Know Your Photo Collection You probably have digital photos on your home computers, but do you really keep on top of managing that collection, sorting pictures and keeping track of what you've stored and where? Most users simply download photographs from cameras and disks to the easiest place, using weird, default names such as Photo0123.jpg, and they forget about properly managing the photos afterward. And if you use viewers and editors to manipulate your photos, your system is probably making space-devouring copies of your photos, even if you're just making minor changes such as resizing or rotating. As a result, even a relatively small collection of photos can steal half of your disk space, and your system might already be choked with copies of photos that are nearly impossible to find and identify. Complex photo-collection managers are one solution, but perhaps you need something that's a little more user-friendly. We don't all need the vast functionality sets that such packages provide: Most casual users only want to trim their collection now and then so that they have a handle on photo management and so that they know their system is using disk space efficiently. Duplicate Photo Finder offers great simplicity, letting you easily search for duplicate pictures stored in your computer. You can choose between scanning the whole disk and specifying certain folders and the order in which the folders are scanned. To make the search faster, you can set the minimum size of pictures and the required level of similarity. If you need quick skimming of vast numbers of photos, you can use the thumbnail mode, which is less accurate but very fast. Once you complete a search and have found all the duplicates and similar pictures, you'll see a list of them, showing the locations of the files and the level of similarity they have. You can then browse the pictures from this interface to verify matches and decide what to do about them: copy, move to another location, or delete the duplicate. You can also edit the list of results, so, for example, you can clear out the duplicates you need before deleting the whole batch. Duplicate Photo Finder requires Windows Vista/2003/XP/2000. Download your free trial version and then go back to get the full version for $19.95. | | |  | | Fighting the Format War? Welcome to Ask CHEX, your entry point to the Connected Home Express forum. Are you curious about a particular piece of home-technology equipment? Do you want to talk about a unique entertainment-networking setup that you've configured? Do you have an Apple iPod tip to share? Head on over to the Connected Home forums, and let's talk about it! This month, let's talk about the next-generation format war. Where do you stand? Prices are coming down, and more and more people are investing in either Blu-ray or HD DVD. The sections in Best Buy are getting larger. Are you still wary? What have been the factors in your decision either way? Head on over to the Connected Home discussion forum and join the discussion! | | | | |
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