Posts Tagged “iPhone”

I’ve had my iPhone for a week now. This is the point in time at which flaws and annoyances begin to rear their ugly heads. I’ve got to say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that these are few and far between. What I’m left with, as of today, is a feeling of amazement – that I’m still somewhat in awe of how seemlessly the interface functions, how easy everything is to use, and how Apple seems to have thought of just about everything.

If I have a gripe, I suspect it will be with battery life, but that’s only because I’ve been on it so much. Not sure, short of using an OLED screen, what they could do to fix this, but from what I hear, the 3G S is a lot better than the 3G in that respect.

By comparison, at this stage of the game with the Windows Mobile phone, I was busy making excuses for the OS, doing my best to explain away the problems, like some newlywed who’s desperately trying to believe that their spouse is “just a little stressed” and not really abusive.

Ouch.

That leads me to what I think is a huge mistake that Apple and AT&T are making regarding the marketing of the iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, June 19th, I was fortunate enough to score a new, black 32GB iPhone. No, I didn’t wait in line at the crack of dawn. I didn’t pre-order it. I just walked into an AT&T store around 2PM, and waited (only about 30 minutes) and walked out with my new phone. When I’m gonna buy into something that requires a (2 year) commitment, I typically wait for version 3.0. This is because I’ve learned – the hard way – that the first release of anything is usually the “one-point-UH-oh” release. In version 2, they get the bugs worked out from the first one, but it’s version three where the product really hits the sweet spot. So I waited to jump on the iPhone bandwagon until the 3G s was released (a.k.a. iPhone version 3.0/iPhone OS 3.0). I’m happy to report that the product lives up to it’s marketing hype – and then some. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple made their big yearly announcement today, coming down off Mt. Cupertino with the word from on high of new MacBook Pros and new iPhones. While the announcement was something of a mixed bag – a (very) few surprises, a lot of nice, new features, and one or two that didn’t make it into the products – overall it made for a pretty savvy media/marketing event. Nobody but Apple (even in the absence of Steve Jobs) can whip the faithful to a frenzy, not to mention get some serious ink by the mainstream media, like Apple can.

Earlier today, I read an editorial by marketer Laura Ries that reflected on the popularity of the iPhone. She offered that she’d originally believed that the iPhone would fail, because “convergence” is generally a bad idea, but owned up to the fact that the iPhone has been a success in spite of – not because of – it’s blending of a cell phone and a PDA. She then cited reasons she believed the iPhone took off (here’s a clue: “marketing”), and finished up by admonishing Apple to “keep it simple” and not continue to add functionality and features to the iPhone.

With all respect to a marketer that usually hits it out of the park, analysis-wise, I think she’s got a swing and a miss here. Here’s why… Read the rest of this entry »