I went to the Apple store late in the day today to have a play with the infamous iPhone.  I think Apple really nailed the product release, but I’m not convinced by the product itself.

As you’d expect, Apple also nailed the in-store presentation with at least 12 demo units available to play with (and this was one of the smaller Apple stores).

The iPhone really is beautifully designed, very pretty, feels nicely substantive and has a great screen.  The UI seems pretty good and intuitive.  I tip my hat to Apple for failing to cave in to button-creep — it is a marvel of "almost no buttons" design, and I don’t just mean the lack of a keyboard.  I love my Sony Ericsson phones, but the number of buttons is out of control… 

For certain functions, the multi-touch stuff works like a charm.  Panning and zooming in and out on Google Maps for example.

It is probably the best portable Photo/Video/MP3 playing device I’ve seen.  Period.  Seriously.

But… And it is a HUGE but.  As a phone, I was wholly unimpressed.  The text "keyboard" is fine, but there’s no equivalent of T9 or any other kind of predictive text (as far as I could see) so you ALWAYS have to type out words in full.  That kills SMS for me (and probably puts a dent in email practicality too). 

Dialing numbers was slightly odd too — I think because the buttons are so large in comparison to any other phone you might have used in the last 10 years…  Think of your Grandma’s first big-button non-rotary phone (God I feel old saying that) and you’re in the right place scale-wise.  I had more trouble dialing with fat fingers than I had spelling words.

When I think of how I use my phone, a great deal of it involves pressing buttons without looking at them e.g. pressing speed-dial for voicemail or other numbers, quick text replies, accessing web mail or email etc.  Having no keys totally kills this.  Furthermore, you really can ONLY use the iPhone with two hands.  There is just no way to type without a keypad on a device this size and shape.  That’s a dealbreaker too.

My other minor gripe is that the much-lauded motion sensor that rotates your view when you rotate the phone seemed very slow to respond, taking up to 2 seconds to re-orient the screen.  Not sure why that should be.

My brief experience left me wanting an iPhod.  A currently mythical device that has everything the iPhone has EXCEPT the phone (and the associated AT&T baggage).  Photos, videos, MP3s, multi-touch, wi-fi, browser and the UI in general:  sign me up.  iPhone?  Not so much.

My only other thoughts of the day:

The award for Best Comment goes to Dave Geradi of MobileCrunch: "It’s hard to keep projecting my air of cultured, metropolitan superiority when so many of my cohorts are acting like technopop lemmings"

And of course, by far the best pre-release coverage is this little movie.  If you haven’t seen it, you really should have: 

Categories: Thought o' the Day
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I hadn’t intended my last post to be celebrity-bait.  Of course I’ve read stories about deliberately incendiary blog articles designed solely to drive traffic to a site, but that certainly wasn’t my intention when I wrote yesterday’s post.

But then I woke up this morning to find a comment from none other than Guy Kawasaki in response to my post.  He’s either mastered omnipresence, or is very diligent about monitoring the net for relevant articles…

So perhaps celebrity-baiting in the Blogosphere is a valuable marketing tactic after all, hence today’s headline.

And now back to our regular scheduled programming.

UPDATE:

Behold the power of this blog!  The very day I post this, she’s back in jail.  Spooky!

Categories: Thought o' the Day
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For the past week, the blogosphere has been praising and/or vilifying Truemors, Guy Kawasaki’s new venture.  Kawasaki himself has been promoting the fact that the site/company got up and running for just $12,107.09.  There is even a matching Kawasaki blog post eloquently titled "By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09" [link deliberately NOT provided].

But here’s the thing.  IT’S SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

In the literal sense, sure.  I gather he spent $12,107.09.  Although looking at the amount spent on legal fees, and the number of items it covers, I’d say he got a break on pricing.

But that’s not my real point.  My real point is that this is NOT a case where some guy (pun intended) set up a Web 2.0 company on a dime and it became a success.  Kawasaki and others seem to be actively implying that this is a yCombinator-like build-a-company-for-nothing success story, and at best, that’s misleading.

This was not a break-out phenomenon by a relatively unknown individual, (like Twitter, for example).  This was a pet project by a well known tech celebrity with ENORMOUS media leverage.  Yes, only $12k was “spent”, but it was Guy Kawasaki spending it. I don’t mean that he is some kind of Warren Buffet-esque genius, but he has access to, and has exploited, more marketing leverage than any typical entrepreneur could possibly hope for.

TechCrunch coverage alone has been enough to get companies started, never mind the rest of the hoopla throughout the blogosphere and beyond.

It reminds me of the urban legend about Picasso sketching a portrait on the back of a napkin for a persistent fan. When he told her the price was $5000, she was shocked and pointed out that it only took a minute to draw. To which Picasso replied “No, it took me my whole life”.

In this case, Picasso is an overly kind comparison.  But the point remains that almost all companies live or die by their ability to attract customers a.k.a. marketing. Truemors is a blog-bait idea from someone with extensive access to the media. And that kind of access is (a) rare and (b) typically expensive.

I’m a fan of Kawasaki works such as “The Art of the Start”, and I think all potential entrepreneurs should be encouraged to start something.  I also firmly believe that the Internet has dramatically lowered the costs associated with starting a business.

But all that being said, I think it is pretty disingenuous of Kawasaki to actively promote the pretence that that anyone could have started a company just like this for only $12k and had the same level of initial success. 

"Life is good for entrepreneurs these days **" [quote from the aforementioned Kawasaki blog]

** Provided you have Guy Kawasaki’s reputation and media contacts to build on.

Categories: Thought o' the Day
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