Davis Gentry

What if Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned to Apple in 1997?

come on - what single capability on the iPhone was unique when the started selling them? I had a touchscreen phone (with full keyboard) from HTC running Windows Mobile at least two years before the iPhone came out. It had voice recognition (how long did it take Apple to realize the ideal interface to a phone was, well, voice?), web browsing, was tied to my email, and I could and did buy lots of apps for it. The iPhone browsing experience was better to start with, but I prefer my Blackberry Bold for browsing over the iPhone today. Their touch interface was innovative, and did forward the state of the art. But if you did (or do, for that matter) use a PC as a primary interface to the rest of the world, Apple in general has severe limitations. You cannot buy MAC versions of a great deal of engineering software, so engineers HAVE to have something with a Windows operating system (not a complaint, mind you - I LIKE Windows - and as an operating system OSX has some advantages, too). My latest computer is a MacBook Pro with Fusion and Windows. I originally planned to not use MS Office, and just run engineering stuff and Visual Studio on the Windows side. The iWork package is so bad (try comparing a Word doc with embedded spreadsheet to the same thing with iWork) that I bought a copy of Office and installed it on the Windows side. And Apple has nothing that compares to Outlook. And my old HTC was fully integrated with all of it. My desktop Inbox stayed integrated with my phone one (iPhone still cannot do that, last I heard). I ran pdfs, spreadsheets, and documents on the phone. What Apple is great at is the same thing that Microsoft was great at twenty years ago - marketing.

Top 10 Touchscreen Devices: iPhone Drives 159% Growth

JamesApple has no idea what a Blackberry does. I looked at new smartphones this year and went with the Blackberry Bold because it is a better platform than the iPhone is. I run multiple apps simultaneously, have full voice control, a physical keyboard, thousands of apps available at a number of retailers and RIM itself, full Google Maps using the onboard GPS, Yahoo Search with voice control, etc, etc. And I'm one of the thousands of people who have been using smartphones for almost a decade. I've used Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices (Motorola and HTC), and Palm devices. Apple has come out with a great offering, but it is not the best available for my purposes. They have not revolutionized anything - just built on years of development from many companies. The shakeup the iPhone generated has been great, though. Typed, btw, on my MacBook Pro.

Davis Gentry


On Nov 04 04:59 PM JamesApple wrote:

> With the exception of the iPhone, none of these phones are general
> purpose that can do anything the customer wants. Rim blackberry for
> example can only do some email and texting!! Unlike the 100000 iPhone
> apps from the App Store. I think it's just Apple iPhone creating
> and expanding a general purpose mobile smartphone market, the rest
> are just tagging along hoping to get a piece of the Apple market
> which is 100% controlled by Apple's App Store.

Google Redefines GPS Navigation Landscape

Actually, Google Maps, combined with Google Mobile gives every one of the capabilities except for street view on my Blackberry. The voice search is not quite as convenient for use while driving as this appears to be, but it is more than capable.

Davis Gentry

Microsoft: iPhone Envy Is Starting to Show

After over 20 years in computing working with MS-DOS to XP (no, not vista - why would anyone go there???) as a developer and engineer I would have to say that MS is not in Apple's league - they are after completely different markets, at least in professional applications. I would also say that Apple's applications are not ready for prime time in the professional world. That is in part due to the question of adoption, but also because MS' business applications are more polished - as might be expected given that MS has been chasing that market for more years. I recently bought a MACBook Pro - and that is the best hardware I have ever used. The OS is good (though I like the control that I have with XP more - possibly just a question of learning how OSX handles the details rather than a lack of capability in OSX to allow the same control), but the applications at the business end are just ok. And as an engineer there are major problems with the fact the many applications are not ported to OSX - even basic consumer ones such as Delorme Street Atlas (and no, there is no comparable app in Apple world the allows me to use my GPS the Laptop together so conveniently). Using VMWare and a separate XP license gives the best of both worlds, and that has been my approach. But it will be nice when (if?) Apple offers the hardware, os, and applications adoption so I can view a Mac as being truly competitive without the need to buy a separate license and install Windows.

So while I would strongly recommend the Apple for someone who has little need for professional use outside of graphics, they aren't there yet for most of us in corporate America.

Why I'm All About Apple

It appears from this article that Apple does not have spell check...

Why I'm All About Apple

It appears from this article that Apple does not have spell check...