new iphone Archives - Page 6 of 6

There has been a whole lot of back and forth today about regarding whether or not Apple will announce its latest iPhone at WWDC this year.

Most folks were saying no, citing Steve Jobs’ absence from the conference this year. Instead, the Keynote will be given by Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing. Prominent Apple analyst Gene Munster thinks the address will primarily deal with software (at a developer conference? No way!), specifically Snow Leopard and the iPhone OS 3.0. Munster expects Apple to hold a special event in late June, early July, which will herald the return of Jobs and the release of a new line of iPhones.

So why wait? We already know the iPhone App Store to be the fastest growing developer community in the world. Wouldn’t Apple want to let that massive developer base know about the new hardware they’ll be working with at…the developer conference? And what makes the Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing a bad choice to do this?

Dan Frommer, an analyst at SAI, agrees, and cites quite a few compelling reasons for Apple to roll things out in June. For starters, the first round of iPhone contracts expire in late June. Also, the Palm Pre drops later this month. What better time to get people to start thinking about some new hardware?

We’ve had a week to sit back and digest all that was announced for the new iPhone OS 3.0 that will be released this summer. And there is a lot to like. We are getting several features that have been clearly missing in the past. For instance:

Cut, copy, and paste
Multimedia Messaging
Universal Search
Landscape mode in all apps
A2DP stereo Bluetooth
Turn-by-turn directions

How has the iPhone done so well for so long without all of these? Most, if not all, legitimate smart phones have had this functionality for a long time. Therefore adding these features doesn’t do much to excite me. We should have had them all along. Luckily there were several unexpected announcements with the new OS 3.0. At a high level, here are several of them:

In app purchases
Peer-to-peer connectivity
Tethered accessories
Embedded maps
Push notifications
Voice-memos
Additional calendar support
3G tethering

Well, those are some welcome additions. Again though, several of these items have been available on the better smart phones for a while. So while Apple is playing catch up in several categories, at least it’s running at full speed to do it.

This is where I have to give Apple some credit. It seems that the iPhone OS 3.0 has done a lot of catching up and answered many of the skeptics questions as to whether or not the iPhone could compete against the top smart phones on the market. I know it’s kinda crazy to question the iPhone’s overall competitiveness but in all reality, it has suffered from a slower adoption into the business world. For example, many companies and professionals would probably love to switch to the iPhone but couldn’t fathom not having cut, copy, and paste in their smart phone. Nor have a phone without a landscape mode to read and respond to emails. And how useful to a business person is a phone that cannot do a basic search?

So the question remains… Does the iPhone OS 3.0 measure up? I say it does. With the addition of several unexpected features to go along with the ones that have been missing for quite a while, I believe that Apple has finally turned a corner and has created a smart phone for everyone.

Tag: new iphone (Page 6 of 6)

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