iPhone: The not-so-obvious stuff

With the imminent release of the iPhone and the newly released iPhone ads it is easy to see why there is so much renewed frenzy surrounding the device.

Just the demonstration during the January Macworld keynote and the new iPhone ads have been enough to convince me that Jobs wasn't lying when he spoke about the next revolutionary interface. And the ads lend character to that statement and like John Gruber of daringfireball mentioned in his post "Taps", the UI is so obvious that its brilliant and beautiful!!

But the same ads and all the new talk made me think of things that are not quite so obvious and I haven't come across anyone talking about them either. Knowing Apple for a very long time now, these might not really be a problem as they must have thought of it and they are known to be thorough. But never-the-less, you never know.

It takes just two taps to make a call after having Google maps throw up the nearest restaurants. But what if you didn't want to make a call but wanted to SMS the details to a friend who doesn't have an iPhone? How would you do that? Or for that matter assume you already knew the restaurant and just looked it up on Google maps so that you could save the number to your contact list. In the example shown in the ad, the minute you tap on the number, a call is placed. There were no UI elements near the number indicating that you could do other things with it.

Similarly, in your contact list, if you tap on the number, the obvious action is to place a call, but what if all you wanted was to SMS the guy (the not so obvious thing). How would you achieve this? Or if you wanted to SMS this number to somebody else? Would you have to be in the SMS app for this?

Did anybody see time stamps on the conversations in the SMS app? Since they are going to show up as conversations, timestamps would be essential to put the SMSs in perspective. And can you pick up numbers from within the conversation and either make a call or add the number to your contact list?

Many websites, have a list of links in small fonts placed one below the other. How would you make sure that you've tapped on the right link when you use Safari on the iPhone? And assuming that you don't have contextual menus, how would you direct safari to open a link in a new window?

What if you wanted to send a mp3 file via MMS to your friend (we're talking about a non-drmed track), can you do that from inside the iPod app? In fact the real question here is - what is the level of interaction supported between the various apps on the iPhone?

For now, best we can do is speculate and in another 25 days we will know every teeny weeny bit there is to know about the iPhone। I know quite a few people who are bent on proving that the iPhone is not a revolutionary product. To them all I would say is that lets just wait and watch.

Updated:

Links to the Macworld 2007 Keynote:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/

Links to the 4 new ads:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad1/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad2/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad3/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad4/

Changing face of the Tech World

"History repeats itself" - quite true. I mean, one way or the other it's got to repeat itself.

See what's happening in the tech world. Even just 2 years back could anyone have predicted what's happening to Microsoft these days? And would anyone have thought that Apple was going to have a come back? Its funny isn't it. All the economics, statistics, trends just really cannot convincingly predict what's up for grabs in the future. Ofcourse, this isn't a classic case of history repeating itself but never-the-less is a different manifestation of history itself.

I'm not good at computer history but here's my analogy: let's go back say 20 years.

What do we see? Computers becoming more and more important. We have IBM, the giant, the be all and end all, of computers. An unstoppable avalanche. We have Apple, giving shape to personal computing and desktop computers. And a new kid who's good at software and writes Basic and MSDOS. Could anyone see anybody replacing IBM??? Or the kid going to be the richest man in the world? NO!

Fast forward 15 years. The kid's grown big now, though not in hardware he's the King Kong of software, some call it the monopolistic behemoth. Where's Apple and IBM, oh they're there alright but Big Blue is focussed on other things now and Apple, well Apple is trying hard not to shut shop and go home. And there's a new kid on the block, actually 2 kids this time. They make a nice search engine and hope people will like it.

Fast forward another 5 years. The Kid seems to wading in troubled waters. Apple is doing roaring business and climbing. But Google - its like catch me if you can. It's not often you get to see stock prices soaring so high. Where's IBM in all this, well they are there, but not quite in the limelight anymore. They are now into a whole bunch of other things but they are there.

Well, times change and businesses change, and the benefit of it all - things just get better and better for us ordinary folks.

Its funny isn't it? No matter how good we might be be at this, we still cannot predict what's gonna happen even in 2 years time from now.

My thoughts? Google will become the next behemoth, but I guess they would be better of at it after learning from some of M$'s mistakes. And Apple-Intel alliance is going to huge. Be wary Dell!! IBM? they'll still be around probably doing a bunch of other things that might not interest the common man much but would still make history from time to time. And Microsoft? well they'll also be around. If you thought Mr. Gates is going to give up, then you thought wrong.

After all history has to repeat itself.

-JJ

Digital Dilemma (Nikon 8700 vs Nikon D70)

Ever been in a Catch-22 situation?

Its funny how research can be very confusing when its supposed make things easy. For quite some time now, I have been reading up, ney researching on digital cameras.

Before I delve into the details, you should realise that I currently do not possess a camera and haven't been involved in any kind of photography - beginner/amateur/pro - sparing a few family snapshots taken with my dad's 35mm film camera. But I have this feeling that I can grow into a good photographer. That means I am looking up cameras like an enthusiast, and intend to grow into what I would call a "Professional Amateur" and no less.

Initially it all seemed pretty clear. I had a budget of $600-$800 chalked out when I embarked on my research. Realised soon that I could lay my hands on most of the new 8MP digi cams in the market. But on analysis, realised some inherent inconveniences and nuances with non-SLR cameras like speed, image quality, noise at higher ISO(especially with 8MP) etc.

Now I am the kind who would love to have only the bleeding edge stuff in my inventory. Haleleujiah!!!

That's when I started reading about amateurs and pros praising the dSLRs. And further reading only told me that dSLRs do have all the goodies I could ever want. Canon Digital Rebel ($1000) and the Nikon D70($1300) seemed to be the only ones that might be within reach (Are you crazy?? Thats $500 more than the budget). To make matters worse, every review I have read (read that as 50+), only tell you that dSLRs are better than prosumer cameras. What they don't tell you is - for a person like me, willing to make other sacrifices to get the best, but someone who is just starting out in photography; does the investment to the size of D70 justify itself, even if I had genuine interest in becoming a "Professional Amateur"???

Tough one eh? Amen! Albeit some tradeoffs like LCD, EVF, movie mode etc for OVF, performance, image quality (BTW, you can call me a semi pro in Photoshop and hence image quality is very important) I cannot decide which one to go in for from a monetary stand point. Most professional reviews out there are from dSLR/SLR fans. So you quite well know what to expect.

Ok enough is enough!! I have my choices narrowed down to two camera's:

Nikon Coolpix 8700 (Recently Nikon launched 8800 but no reviews yet)
Nikon D70

I guess its only a matter of time before I decide, my only hope being that I will not repent my choice in any way.

Any good Samaritan out there who thinks there is a way out is most welcome to pen down their thoughts.