leolambertini.com | Pointing the obvious

I guess there had to be one, right?

Since I’m no gadget expert like Manu, I just wanted to post how excited I am about the iPhone. Definitely the most expected gadget I’ve ever seen. The most hyped, and the most wanted by everyone.

But there is a lot of discussion around it. Will it really become the ultimate gadget? My guess is not (at least not for a while), and every time there there’s a discussion about it people don’t really seem to understand why it doesn’t have all the features they expected. Why is it not the perfect gadget, why does it have all these flaws? Why it isn’t my dream come true?

As we all know, it’s not easy to please everyone. Having some features in your project may affect other features that a specific group of people has been expecting.

The thing with Apple is that somehow they’re expected to change the world with every single release (weather it be hardware or software). Maybe they’ve been so good at impressing us, that they have to reach that standard they’ve created in order to not be attacked and criticized the way they are right know.

The thing about setting standards is that you are putting yourself in a situation where you cannot be compared with anyone rather than yourself, and this could mean a very hard time for your company/project.

Setting new standards is as cool as setting your own rules, but it doesn’t come for free either.

Pointing the obvious, I feel that Apple has taken a great risk with the iPhone because it depends a lot on the carrier. Actually, as we all know, AT&T had to improve its networks in order to support some of the iPhone features (maybe this is the first reason why you can only get one with an AT&T contract), so the carrier is taking a big risk too. But either way, they’re releasing a great product. It has a revolutionary UI, it has some features you can’t find on any other phone, and (since we are already used to) maybe they’re setting new industry standards (like with the visual voice mail feature) that some day every other phone will have to adopt.

In the near future we’ll see how much of a success it becomes. For starts, Apple has improved the smart phone market in many ways. I’m sure it won’t eat the smart phone market like the iPod since it has much more powerful competitors, but along with its success, we’ll see how its features become industry standards, and when more carriers start betting on Apple as a phone developer, maybe then can start creating our dream phone without so much restrictions and more investment. If the iPhone as it is today does not become quickly the number 1 phone in sales, it doesn’t mean it failed, it means that it’s not such an easy goal as the mp3 player market was.

Either way I think I’m getting one