In article <5eda2bF38m05fU1@mid.individual.net>,
"Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote:

> ZnU <znu@fake.invalid> wrote

> > It might take a couple of years and a couple of
> > price cuts. It did for the iPod. But it will happen.
>
> I doubt it with market penetration, essentially because a phone
> is much more locked to the telco than a media player ever is
> and most care about what their phone plan is costing them, it aint
> just the sticker price on the hardware that matters with phones.

The major carriers in the US are all fairly competitive on price. AT&T
isn't at a particular disadvantage there.

[snip]

> >> And those who want to be able to do email etc mostly
> >> want a real keyboard, not a touchscreen one too.
>
> > Doubt it.
>
> Have a look at the high end phones.

Um. Well, yes, if you assume that people want what existing phones
offer, and not what the iPhone offers, then of course the iPhone won't
amount to much. But since the issue we're discussing is, basically,
whether people want the iPhone, assuming at the start that they don't
isn't a valid thing to do.

[snip]

> Doesnt matter with a GPS where you are only entering a street
> and town name and you get to select from a list once you have
> typed a couple of letters, but email cant be done like that.

OK, but unlike for the Blackberry, e-mail is not the "killer app" for
the iPhone. The media player function is, and to a lesser extent
probably the mapping and web browsing functions. Not to mention just the
slick all-around UI, for everything from SMS to contact management to
conference calling. All of these benefit from the fact that almost the
entire face of the device is covered with a screen, instead of half of
if being taken up by a physical keyboard.

[snip]

> > Even most unlikely concept product UI demos one sees don't look as good.
>
> My main reservation is with the the two finger approach,
> cant see that being too viable in a phone where you mostly
> hold it in one hand and use the other on the screen.
>
> Maybe you wont do the two finger stuff enough to matter tho.

The two-finger stuff is mostly used for resizing images and such, using
a pinching motion with the thumb and index finger of the same had. So,
it's fine one-handed.

> >> And virtually everyone didnt already have a media player at
> >> the time that the ipod showed up. Virtually everyone already
> >> has a cellphone now and most of those already have a media
> >> player now too if they use one much. Hordes of them have a
> >> media player/phone/camera combined already.
>
> > However, most of those people don't use the media player
> > functions of their phones, because they use iPods instead.
>
> That is just plain wrong when their phone has a media player.

Not in my experience, it's not. Many phones sold these days have a music
player function. Most users don't even know their phone has it. And even
if they did, they wouldn't want to use a media player that didn't sync
with iTunes automatically, since that's where they probably have their
music.

[snip]

> > Plus, people replace their phone and media player every couple of years
> > anyway.
>
> Sure, thats certainly one thing in Apple's favour, but you dont see
> too many change platform completely. Thats what fucked the Mac.

Most people don't really think of mobile phones as "platforms", though.
Switching from a Motorola phone (or whatever) to an iPhone isn't nearly
like switching from Windows to the Mac. The vast majority of users have
no third-party applications at all and no data beyond contact
information and photos, all of which can be ported over (well, if their
current phone can sync it to a computer at all).

> > And the iPhone isn't all that expensive compared
> > with the cost of an iPod + a phone.
>
> Thats not a valid comparison, you should be comparing it with other media
> player phones.

The market has clearly expressed that "media player" does not equal
"iPod".

I suppose we could compare it to all the other iPod phones. After Apple
makes more models. <g>

[snip]

--
"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing
about him is that I read three--three or four books about him last year. Isn't
that interesting?"
- George W. Bush to reporter Kai Diekmann, May 5, 2006