Apple Phone
I used to have a Kyocera Smart Phone. Having a fully functional Palm with a phone was pretty convenient. The thing was pretty tubby looking, though. BTW, I have something of a beef with the current crop of ridiculously tiny cellphones. I would rather have a slightly larger unit that a) allows me to place the phone near both my mouth and my ear at the same time, b) has MUCH longer battery life (weeks, not days or hours) and c) durable enough to take some punishment and still work.
If Apple were to do this, I would like to see the following:
1) Beefy, overengineered form factor. Drop on the sidewalk accidentally and you should only have some cosmetic scratches to worry about.
2) Large internal HD in order to use it as an iPod, a portable file storage system, and even a remote HD for "take your Mac with you" computing possibilities. 10-60GB or so.
3) Large color screen big enough to comfortably read email/word processing, and even .pdf documents (scan & pan to view the whole page if necessary) on the road.
4) Ability for constant uplink to a remote server (a la Blackberry) in order to have constant real-time info for business purposes if desired. Perhaps a small stylus-sensitive area for legal on-the-spot contract signatures.
5) An "OSX-Lite" OS that works intuitively and flawlessly.
6) Camera built in--right above the view screen in order to facilitate iChat AV implementation remotely.
7) LONG battery life.
8) Apple's world class innovative design.
9) Still uses iPod Dock or some similar arrangement.
Thsi product would sell for about $500-600 or so, and there are LOTS of companies which would buy them up, in addition to those individuals who want to take the "iLfe" philosophy to its next logical step. When deciding what this thing should be able to do, we have to ask ourselves "what would we want a portable phone device to do that would make it a better option than merely lugging our laptop everywhere?" My answers would be:
- music playback
- document viewing (including mp4/flash)
- still photo snapshots and the ability to transmit them
- audio recording (meetings, lectures, etc.)
- realtime interaction w/remote server (orders, inventory, memos, etc.)
- portable video conferencing
Five years ago this would have been crazy list. Now it is totally doable. And no one could do it better than Apple (or market it better). If you think people have an unnatural fondness for their PowerMac or PBook, imagine how they'd love these things!
I used to have a Kyocera Smart Phone. Having a fully functional Palm with a phone was pretty convenient. The thing was pretty tubby looking, though. BTW, I have something of a beef with the current crop of ridiculously tiny cellphones. I would rather have a slightly larger unit that a) allows me to place the phone near both my mouth and my ear at the same time, b) has MUCH longer battery life (weeks, not days or hours) and c) durable enough to take some punishment and still work.
If Apple were to do this, I would like to see the following:
1) Beefy, overengineered form factor. Drop on the sidewalk accidentally and you should only have some cosmetic scratches to worry about.
2) Large internal HD in order to use it as an iPod, a portable file storage system, and even a remote HD for "take your Mac with you" computing possibilities. 10-60GB or so.
3) Large color screen big enough to comfortably read email/word processing, and even .pdf documents (scan & pan to view the whole page if necessary) on the road.
4) Ability for constant uplink to a remote server (a la Blackberry) in order to have constant real-time info for business purposes if desired. Perhaps a small stylus-sensitive area for legal on-the-spot contract signatures.
5) An "OSX-Lite" OS that works intuitively and flawlessly.
6) Camera built in--right above the view screen in order to facilitate iChat AV implementation remotely.
7) LONG battery life.
8) Apple's world class innovative design.
9) Still uses iPod Dock or some similar arrangement.
Thsi product would sell for about $500-600 or so, and there are LOTS of companies which would buy them up, in addition to those individuals who want to take the "iLfe" philosophy to its next logical step. When deciding what this thing should be able to do, we have to ask ourselves "what would we want a portable phone device to do that would make it a better option than merely lugging our laptop everywhere?" My answers would be:
- music playback
- document viewing (including mp4/flash)
- still photo snapshots and the ability to transmit them
- audio recording (meetings, lectures, etc.)
- realtime interaction w/remote server (orders, inventory, memos, etc.)
- portable video conferencing
Five years ago this would have been crazy list. Now it is totally doable. And no one could do it better than Apple (or market it better). If you think people have an unnatural fondness for their PowerMac or PBook, imagine how they'd love these things!
