Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Apple's iPhone: Return of the Touch Screen?
Posted by Janak Parekh in "THE COMPETITION" @ 01:15 PM
You know, I've been a Pocket PC fan for a long time. The large touch screen, the touch user interaction model -- it's been a great ride ever since I got my iPAQ 3650 with Pocket PC 2000. However, Microsoft's been moving the Pocket PC model steadily over to the Smartphone model -- softkey UI, smaller screens, less memory, more phone-oriented devices. And, honestly, I've actually liked it a lot. The Treo 700w, my main device, is a decent unit for what it does. But... but... in case you've been living under a rock, Apple introduced the iPhone today, and as a touch-screen lover, this is interesting stuff.
That's the pic from Apple's site. You'll notice right away -- this looks more like a PDA than a phone. I guess it's Steve's way of introducing a PDA while swearing it off. If you have a minute, I suggest you go to the site and page through. The device is touch-oriented, first and foremost. The UI controls resemble stuff third parties have been developing for Windows Mobile for years -- but integrated throughout the system. There's so much there that I can't even begin to summarize it in this post -- the full operating system, 4-8GB integrated, auto-landscape, the full-HTML zooming browser/photo viewer/etc., so on. But I'm very, very intrigued by the pervasiveness of the touch screen UI and the fact that Apple is going in precisely the opposite direction of Windows Mobile. So, that's my first impressions -- what do you think of this shot across the bow in the smartphone realm? (By the way, you may find Engadget's transcript of Jobs's keynote today and the tech specs to be of interest as well.)
That's the pic from Apple's site. You'll notice right away -- this looks more like a PDA than a phone. I guess it's Steve's way of introducing a PDA while swearing it off. If you have a minute, I suggest you go to the site and page through. The device is touch-oriented, first and foremost. The UI controls resemble stuff third parties have been developing for Windows Mobile for years -- but integrated throughout the system. There's so much there that I can't even begin to summarize it in this post -- the full operating system, 4-8GB integrated, auto-landscape, the full-HTML zooming browser/photo viewer/etc., so on. But I'm very, very intrigued by the pervasiveness of the touch screen UI and the fact that Apple is going in precisely the opposite direction of Windows Mobile. So, that's my first impressions -- what do you think of this shot across the bow in the smartphone realm? (By the way, you may find Engadget's transcript of Jobs's keynote today and the tech specs to be of interest as well.)
