10 things I like about my iPhone (and 5 things that I don't)

Things I like:
1. All-in-one Unit - I don't need to carry my phone, music player, and PDA separately anymore. Just one iPhone will do!
2. User Interface - After comparing it to my old Windows mobile machine, I wonder why I didn't make the switch sooner.
3. Functionalities - now I can make phone calls, check emails, listen to music, play games, watch TV... that makes daily commute so much more fun.
4. Stability - 7 days into using it - never an instance did I run into a system freeze. That compared to at least 3 times a day for my old pda (LG KS20 running WM6.1).
5. Looking Cool - since everyone's using it, I don't feel awkward holding that piece of brick on the street.
6. Great Camera - now I can take snapshots at anytime!
7. Interesting Apps - and most of them are free/cheap. My favorite so far: OpenRice. With that I can locate restaurants nearby (thank to the GPS capability), get their information (address and phone) and call them direct! No more 1083!
8. GPS - Not a lot of practical use at the moment, but looking forward to a software that can give me turn-by-turn directions (TomTom's coming out with a version soon, I heard)
9. Speed. I don't know how that compared to the old iPhone, but it's amazingly fast when compared to my old pda.
10. Apple. They never disappoint. Maybe it's time to ditch my PC and switch to a Mac too? I wonder.


And things that I don't like:
1. Cost. HK$5400 for a phone. Ouch! I'd better not lose or break it.
2. Cost for accessories. I like this new toy so much that I keep looking for accessories to make it look/work/sound better, and cost for those things adds up pretty fast.
3. Battery. I keep worrying that I may run out of battery in the middle of the day and can't take any phone calls.
4. Bulkiness. May need to get a smaller wallet so it and the iPhone can all fit in my pocket.
5. Bandwidth. Many applications do require internet connection to function properly. Now I need to switch to an unlimited data plan with my mobile carrier, but I am sure it's all worth it.

predictions

Saw this on InfoWorld. It's funny how people would say the most stupid thing, well, partly because we have the luxury of seeing things in retrospect to judge.

The 7 Worst Tech Predictions of All Time

1. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, President of IBM, 1943

2. "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." - Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946

3. "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years." - Alex Lewyt, president of Lewyt vacuum company, 1955

4. "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

5. "Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." - Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, 1995

6. "Apple is already dead." - Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO, 1997

7. "Two years from now, spam will be solved." - Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, 2004

unified communications

it all sounds very rosy of what unified communications can bring - at least that's what tech firms such as microsoft, cisco or nortel are trying to tell us: with a click of the mouse you can connect to a colleague whether one's on the road or in office, a voice mail message left on your office extension will be delivered to you by email instantly and retrievable from your pda; instant messaging is no longer for casual chit-chat with friends but for serious interactive business collaborations across nations without long-distance charges; and you can control your schedule, set up meetings, retrieve contact information... all by "talking" to a voice-enabled communications server, from anywhere and in any way you like. But my question is, is it what we need, or are we ready for it?

my arguments against this come two-fold. first, a major problem we are currently facing is information overload and further convergence in communications means is unlikely to solve this, if not aggrevate the problem. how many of us already got hooked on blackberry, as well as your mobile phone, pda, laptop etc etc. these days more often than not we are receiving repeating or non-necessary information through redundant means, instead of not able to be reached and contacted - just look at your blackberry, how many of those emails really did require immediate attention and how many can wait til next day in office? now we know how the stock market does every day through email alert, sms alert, multiple websites and financial news channels, words of mouth, tv screen on the street... is that even necessary?

without a true universal access solution - under which each individual should only have a single "identifier" (which will replace email address, phone number, msn messenger handle, etc) and possibly one single device which can perform multiple functions - we are still in the world of too many numbers, too many devices and too much information to be digested and processed. before that can happen, i don't see much point or value of any further convergence of widely-used communication means.

second, further convergence based on the current ip network will probably leave us more vulnerable to any unexpected breakdown and create a single point of failure as we are trying to put more eggs in the same basket. remember the tsunami that severed the cross-pacific internet connection between hk and usa and led us into a virual blackout for a couple of weeks? just think what would be like if telephone services were affected at the same time as well - which would have been real if phone is exclusively based on voip network. thank god it doesn't, at least for now. currently, as we have experienced in the last episode, we don't have a satisfactory solution to this yet, by having an alternative and viable path for our ip-based network infrastructure.

so my answer to the original question i raised is - yes, we do need it, but probably not now. there are still further study and research needed to bring about the optimal level of connectivity and information richness for individual. advancements need to be made in our network infrastructure, software applications, implementation road-map and business value proposition in order to make a convincing case for business to make such investment and adapt such technology.

some of the features available today (for example, integration between voice mail and email) do provide convenience in some ways, esp for people constantly on the road, but to get to the level of perfect unified communications and connectivity - as the vendors depicted - we still have a long way to go.

a quick look back

i stumbled across this little piece of article that i wrote some 12 years ago on some student newspaper (while in college). funny to realise the world has evolved so much since then.

to give you a better perspective, 1995 was the time when windows 95 was just released, and ie is still in version 2, which barely allowed sounds to be embedded onto websites. that was the time when netscape's still alive, just had its historic ipo (the event for which thomas friedman named as one of the world's flatteners in his book later) and for the first time, has acrobat/pdf plug-in available in its latest version. that was the time when people were still exploring how this new programming language called java's going to do to this world, and there were dreams of web-based, "disposable" softwares. that was the time when amazon just started its online book store business and e-commerce was considered an innovative concept.

today, windows is in its fourth consumer version after 95 (and still as buggy as ever) - 98, me, xp and vista; ie became the lone survivor in the browser war (unless you still count firefox in). netscape is nowhere to be found - so is aol who bought netscape for $4.2b in 1998; java has become an enterprise programming language of choice, contrary to what people first thought; online shopping has become a norm for business and consumer worldwide - it has passed mail order in overall sales last year already; and finally the concept of "disposable" software has gone mainstream with google, salesforce.com, saas (software as a service) concept and alike.

oh wow. only when we slowly looked back do we realise we have gone so far, and how stupid my writing was. ha ha.

microsoft is dead?

recently there's been quite a buzz about a blog entry "microsoft is dead" written by paul graham, even prompting strong rebuttal from people within the microsoft organization.

in layman terms, basically paul's arguing that microsoft is dead (or as he clarified later, became irrelevent) because google and other web-based softwares (the so-called web 2.0) are going to take over microsoft's desktop software dominance - with the popularization of broadband internet and alternative os such as apple mac os served as stimulants.

well, i think paul partly has his points. nowadays people and companies no longer fear microsoft's dominance - at least they don't care as much. has anyone around started using vista yet? how about office 2007? zune? live search? or did anyone hear the "woos" and "wahs" of the new internet explorer 7? or windows mobile 6? or try showing this video clip to your i.t. guy at office to see if they will start jumping up and down, getting all excited?

these days, some of the web-based softwares are almost as good as the desktop ones - think about the new yahoo mail, or the editor i used to create this blog - a few years down the road we definitely will see more of those with leaps and bounds in functions, sophistication and speed, not less. if that is so, what will microsoft's role be?

but still, it's too early to call them dead, or even irrelevent, yet. well, some 12 years ago people made the same prediction when microsoft seemed to have missed the internet boat and the likes of netscape and yahoo were running the show. but they turned around miraculously, by whatever means. microsoft had the same adoption problem with windows xp in the beginning; yet nowadays it’s used in 80% of the world’s desktop computers. so this time i won’t be so sure.

true, the rise of google does sound an alarm for microsoft’s future, and that microsoft may never be a monopolistic power as they were in the 80s and 90s; but don’t call them off just yet. even if they are on a decline, don’t expect they will go away completely any time soon – just think novell. they are still sorta hanging around, isn’t it?