My $0.02 about the iPhone

Ok ... it's cool. So far I like what I have read, except for a couple of things ... which I expected.

1. The price. Wow ... that is a lot of money for a phone. I know that it is more than a phone, but ouch. I'm also a little cautious about the cost of the cellular plans also. I already use Cingular and the data plans are not the most aggressive. The interesting part is that I already know they are going to sell as many as they can make. Steve Jobs knows how to market.
2. The storage. This really caught me off-guard. Only a 4GB and 8GB version? I have become so used to my 80GB Video iPod that I can't even imagine going back to only 8GB. I really enjoy taking such a huge portion of my music collection - along with several videos and numerous podcasts - everywhere that I go. I would really have to reset how I use my iPod if I was going to drop back to only 8GB. Maybe I shift to using my phone ... oops, I mean iPhone (trademark Cisco Systems) ... for all of the podcasts, but still keep my Video iPod for my music, etc.
3. Touch Screen. As usual, Steve has outdone himself as the iPhone appears to have even further enhanced the user interface. I have always liked touch-pads and touch interfaces, and hearing about some of the new multi-finger aspects really impressed me. It has me thinking about how natural some of this is going to become.
   
4. Application Support. I'm also impressed with this aspect ... it appears that this is OS-X and has support for the Apple Widgets. If there is truly compatibility with the standard development environment for Widgets this is going to really open up development for the phones. In addition, if Apple has truly opened up the iPhone and it's APIs, then things are going to get fun. When I last looked at some of the API limitations, I was unable to write an application that could access the camera, and even the text/SMS interfaces. I'm hoping that Apple will break through these barriers.
5. Battery Design. I had heard about the two-battery design, and it makes complete sense. Cool idea. Now if I use my iPhone for music too much ... I don't kill the battery for my phone. Nice.

I stopped by the Apple store here in Salt Lake City today. They said they have no idea when they will see one. It'll be interesting to see when the iPhone begins to show up everywhere. I'm sure that it won't be too long. It's already the thing to be seen using ...

[tags: apple ipod iphone cingular]