Two Slashes

So everyone’s up in arms about this entire Apple iPhone deal. I say big deal, it’s another flashy gadget. Everyone was the same way back when Handspring released the Treo (yes, I’m talking before their Palm/palmOne/Palm buyout/merger), or (to a lesser extent) when Danger released the Sidekick.

Gizmodo decided to take a survey or something and guess what the ideal demographic for iPhone users would be. To sum their findings up, the ideal iPhone target is a well-educated (read: college graduate) male around the age of 31, probably living in New York or California, and definitely interested in leaving T-Mobile. In an odd way, it makes sense, but I’m still saying that it’s bullsh*t for various reasons, all phone-related as opposed to user-related.

The first reason I can think of is that brandishing a very expensive, very hard-to-get phone is just like hanging a ‘Pickpocket Me’ sign over your back. Obviously, you’ve got at least a phone that’ll get the pickpocket several hundred bucks on eBay (potentially more than you paid, if it’s close to the launch date), and chances are if you’re brandishing one of those, you can afford a few other luxuries with the cash and credit cards stuffed into that just-won’t-shut wallet of yours. Or should I say, the pickpocket’s?

The next reason isn’t so much concerned with cost as it is for what you’re buying. We’re talking about a device that doesn’t just have a basic calculator, but has the means to do your taxes, calculate mortgage rates for all the top banks, and play Bono songs back to you all at the same time. While combining a few different devices is cool, a la the Swiss Army Knife, this borders ridiculous in the implementation. Let me explain.

Alright, take your basic desktop PC. Tower and monitor. Alright, now take that to laptop form. Suddenly, your data’s portable, right? Now, take that laptop, miniaturize or get rid of the keyboard altogether, and give the thing a small touchscreen, and now you’ve got a PDA. Three different machines, all accomplishing the same or similar thing: holding your data and allowing you to manipulate it or view it. These three stages sound good…but then everyone has to cram the PDA’s touchscreen into the laptop (tablet PC), cram desktop power into that same laptop (the monster-sized 20″ desktop-replacement laptops that have about 25 minutes of battery life and get hot enough to cook eggs on), and make that desktop PC wireless (Wi-Fi, Wireless USB, etc.).

So everything’s already a mess, right? Let’s stack the Origami project on top. Now you have a machine that’s not quite pocket-small (unless you’re wearing a pair of cargo pants), with a touchscreen and the full power of a desktop. Wait…sounds familiar right? Sounds just like my PDA, only instead of that basic OMAP processor, I’ve got a f**king Pentium 4 in my hand in something that vaguely resembles a Sega GameGear. Funny thing is, the iPhone doesn’t look that far off either. And it’s definitely more than it should be crammed into a not-so-one-handed package.

Also in line with that is the usability. You’re taking the keypad everyone is oh-so-used to, and replacing it with a touchscreen. Scrolling through the contacts? Touchscreen. Navigating menus? Touchscreen. And the icing on the cake: browsing the web…all by touch. The thing is so touch-oriented they had to add a proximity sensor so you don’t hang the blasted thing up with the side of your face while you’re talking up your wife/boss/multimillion-dollar client. And the very concept of the bare-skin touchscreen needs thought. Even my PDA screen gets pretty nasty, and that’s with a stylus involved. I can’t imagine what’s going to get all over it from someone’s finger when it swipes directly across the length of the screen.

Another point coming to mind is expandability. Unlike some current-generation video game console-makers (*cough* all of them *cough*), MP3 player makers (*ahem* Apple’s a good example, among others), and other various people I could go on to mention, you’ll notice that they’ve actually opened the thing up to limited third-party development. Oh yes, you’ll be able to expand with more official Apple apps as well, but those aren’t sandboxed up the way the third-party offerings are going to be. I smell a virus target in the making. How does a flock of f**king iPhones DDoSing your web server sound? I bet it happens sooner or later. And this also begs the question of why they’re using OS X as the basis for it either. It’s not your MacBook. It shouldn’t be running an OS that requires over 500 MB of storage space to be installed; for comparison my PDA has 32 MB for EVERYTHING, including user storage space (although admittedly there’s an SD card crammed into the thing too for various things).

I digress.  Once again, I’m not convinced that ANYONE needs this. If anything, it’s too far ahead, and would have been better off held a few years. I’m sticking with the cheapest phone that suits my needs, my (dying ) Palm Tungsten T2, and my Zen MicroPhoto.