Us geeks can certainly be a peculiar lot, but sometimes we do something that I just really don’t understand. Really, I just don’t get this whole iPhone thing.
Now, let me start out by saying I have never used an iPhone. Never even touched one. When I first heard the $600 price tag, I quickly dismissed it. Then when it came down to $400, I was in the market to replace my old Audiovox SMT5600 anyway, so I briefly did some research on it.
Once I did, I couldn’t believe this was the device that everyone was raving about:
- No 3G support.
- No custom ringtones (unless you want to pay twice for music you already own).
- No SDK (unless you want to hack around yourself and risk everything breaking with the next update).
- No expansion slot.
- DRM out the wazoo.
- No included USB mass storage
OK, so apparently the iPhone UI is amazing. Like, really amazing. So you’ve got a really amazing UI on top of a black box that you can’t customize without paying extra or risking that Apple can and will break your stuff whenever they want.
Compare this to the phone I ended up getting, the Windows Mobile based AT&T (Cingular) 8525. This device is amazing. Full 3G support, a great user experience, slide-out keyboard, Micro SD expansion slot, etc… but the stuff that gets the geek in me really excited:
- A full-fledged, fully supported development environment. There’s the amazing .NET 2.0 Compact Framework, plus Embedded Visual C++ if you want to get crazy and write services or device drivers. You can debug apps from your PC while they’re running on your phone, or you can use the included emulators for testing.
- Not true USB mass storage support, but very close. Using ActiveSync Explore, I can pretty much drag and drop files anywhere I want. Including ringtones (in .wav format, no less!), programs, shortcuts, themes, etc. And there’s no DRM locking me out of my own files.
- Push-based and desktop-based sync with as many email accounts as I want
- OK, the built-in browser (Pocket IE) sucks, but Opera Mini (free) and Opera Mobile ($24) are superb alternatives.
So, I’m really struggling to understand here why the very same geeks who cry foul when organizations such as the RIAA try to shove DRM down our throats, happily play along when Apple sells a device that basically uses every trick it can to close you out and make you keep paying them for using your own files on your own hardware. No wonderful UI is enough to make up for that.
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