Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Apple iPhone & Apple TV - Initial thoughts...

I was very very curious like a lot of geeks about what the Phone would look like. So having seen the information presented from Apple, here are my initial thoughts...


- A touch-panel interface is quite risky, and will restrict the range of people that will buy this. The panel will get smudgy, I do not know how one can get around that. Until I use it, it will be hard to really understand or appreciate if it will actually work.

- It runs OSX .. an O/S designed to run a computer. I will have to assume that they will have re-worked quite a few bits to get it to fit into a phone. The real question is what they ended up sacrificing to get OSX to fit in a phone that small.

- 3 months after it is released, we will know if it will be a massive hit or not. But, I suspect that Apple will have to re-work and/or re-engineer many aspects of the phone over the next 6-12 months.

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- Apple TV will be a hit (as predicted in my previous blog posting). The speed at which people will take it up may not be fast initially, but it will accelerate over time. The fact that you cannot record TV Shows on this device is a really interesting omission. I also think Apple will drop the price of this thing over time as they mass-produce.

Overall, very skeptical on the iPhone interface, I want to really use it before making a call on this one. Apple TV is very sleek and a lot of people will buy it.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've enjoyed reading your unabashed predictions, keep them coming.

You say: "A touch-panel interface is quite risky, and will restrict the range of people that will buy this"

How is a touch-panel interface risky and why would some people avoid buying this?

If it's only the smudge-factor perhaps there's a market for a self-cleaning suede case. Just like stay sharp knives.

I'm wondering why they bothered with even the 1 button since they've chosen a touch-screen as the primary input mechanism.

Rajesh Vasa said...

Anyone working in a non-office environment would avoid this phone. I was actually thinking of people like constructor workers, drivers, couriers etc.

The other thing with touch panels is that it hides everything else expect the information you need for the context -- hence the need for the 1-button at the bottom to help people go back to other tasks.

Anonymous said...

Good point, it does seem delicate.

I find it interesting that they chose a hardware'd button for context switching instead of say a software feature like a dock, or better still Exposé!