This is a cell phone, not a laptop, and not a digital camera. All cell phone digital cameras offer is digital zoom and digital zoom mean zilch. It's Optical zoom that counts. It doesn't matter how many megapixels a cell phone digital camera has, it is still no substitute for a digital camera. My digital camera is 7.1 megapixels and has 10x optical zoom is so small it slips into my pocket. I love my iPhone. If I needed to do work I would need at least a 12" screen to do it on. I can see that a PDA phone could come in handy for last minute changes to a document, but wouldn't a laptop be better. Laptops have gotten so light. My Macbook Pro is so light and portable. Phones should be used for what they are meant for calls, anything else is cool extras.
As for the camera, I have only used the camera on my phone twice in the three+ years, since I got my first camera phone. In fact, it irritates me that with most phones, I have to pay for a camera that I won't use. If Apple was going to include a camera (and charge us for it), I would have expected them to have included one that was at least as good as other high-end phones (ex. the Nokia n95 has a 5mpx camera, with a flash). I would much rather that Apple left off the camera,
than make us pay for obsolete technology.
Off the subject, but I just have to say it.
WOW! I just used the new Safari handle in the lower right hand corner of the field in which I am typing this, to enlarge this field, so I can see all of what I am typing, at once. NEAT. Leopard roars!
Back to using the iPhone for work. The last I heard, the number of Blackberry users is in the tens of millions, worldwide. Many companies have adopted it as a company standard, because they have found that their employees will use it to answer emails and chat with co-workers, while on the train or bus or even while waiting for the waiter to bring their lunch.
I have a 17" Macbook Pro that goes almost everywhere with me. I don't leave the house without first, checking my email. Even so, I don't know anyone who would pull out even the small Macbook, on the London Tube, to start answering those emails. Yet, every time I ride the Tube, I see someone on the platform or on the train, typing on a Blackberry, Treo, etc. If the iPhone had the features that we have come to expect (and rely on) in a cellphone, I would certainly use it regularly, to read and answer emails, while in the taxi, while waiting for my wife to do some shopping or as I said, while waiting for the waiter to bring my lunch. I would not pull out my laptop in any of those cases.
Also, one of the things that I often end up doing is copying a small piece of an email and pasting it into a text message to a colleague, who doesn't have email on his cellphone. I may copy a block of text from the web and paste it into an email. Try to do that on an iPhone. Copy & paste don't exist on the iPhone.
As for using the iPhone as just a very expensive cellphone (that makes people look at you), even that has several serious problems.
Where's the voice dialing? I use voice dialing at least 20 times, for every time that I actually take my phone out and dial a number. Then, what about A2DP Bluetooth support? My Bluetooth headset works both with my existing cellphone, in mono and my iPod (w/Bluetooth adaptor), in stereo. But, it doesn't even work in mono, with the iPhone. So, if I switch to iPhone, that's another $140 down the drain.
Also, besides being just a cellphone, the iPhone is a great music player - or so it is advertised. Yet, when I get on a plane between the UK and the USA, I expect to plug my Sennheiser PXC 450 noise reduction headphones ($400+) into my iPod, to block out the noise. I can't do that with the iPhone. To use my headphones that, by the way, have a
"standard" plug, I have to buy an adaptor that sticks up almost 2 inches and is an accident just waiting to happen.
Once again, Apple did what Apple does. They created an innovative device, with tons of
potential and marketed it as a
toy. I know quite a few businesssmen and at least one company, who would switch to the iPhone, if all of those innovative features had been built on top of the functionality of an
ordinary cellphone. Instead, we got a luxury train with lots of bells and whistles, a great dining car, but no locomotive. Fortunately, in recent years, Apple has begun to learn how to recognize their marketing errors and has become rather quick to rectify them. That's why I'm waiting for iPhone2. But, I can't wait too long.
For the record, I am normally an Apple evangelist and early adopter. Apple usually makes great products that I am willing to buy on the first day. In fact, I am writing this on a Mac, with Leopard installed, less than one full day after Leopard's release. But, I'm really afraid that if Apple doesn't make some serious changes in the iPhone, it will end up being a flash in the pan. Once the early adopter's rush is over, I doubt that most businesss (where the money is) and serious businesss people, will be even the least bit interested, until basic cellphone functionality is included. And, while Apple is fixing all the iPhone problems, do you think that Motorola, Nokia, PalmOne, Blackberry and others aren't working on competing products? If just one of them gets a truly functional competing product to market, before Apple gets the iPhone fixed, then the iPhone will fade into obscurity, just like another very innovative product - the Edsel.
and the most important thing on iPhone is cut n paste, 3g feature on it hehehe 