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Tuesday, July 03, 2007
About that New iPhone Thingie...
I've been somewhat of a Treo evangelist for quite sometime. I've also been a bit disenchanted with their latest offerings, and with the difficulties that arose from their latest maintenance release for ATT/Cingular. The word lately has been that the new Apple device, the iPhone, will be the final death knell for the Treo. I've been skeptical of this being the case, but, given my growing frustration with the Treo product, I figured I should at least check it out.
After handling an iPhone at my local Cingular retailer during lunch, I can see why it is so seductive to the target audience for which it is intended. Certainly, I hope that some of the iPhone's UI innovations find their way into the Palm products. I think the new Apple keyboard interface is interesting, while not intuitive for me, since I am sold on the Treo QWERTY keyboard (plus I can type 40 WPM on it on a good day). And for sure, I have been frustrated in the past with configuration issues, periodic crashes, etc. that have plagued the Treo.
But...
I finally have a pretty stable device after some tweaking and some elimination of some third party apps that I didn't really need. And the things I do on a daily basis, the iPhone simply cannot do. Those things include:
Push email from a BES server
PDF viewing
Synchronization with Project, and Office apps
Open IM client
External keyboard
GPS connectivity
Ability to record calls
Ability to function as an external USB drive
Fax capability
VPN connectivity to enterprise networks
File manager capable of viewing hierarchical storage
Read e-books
Read several versions of the Bible
Play all major forms of audio files, incl. WMA
Play all major forms of video files, incl. DivX AVI
Remote access into Windows and VNC
Telnet access using SSH
View videos from Slingplayer
Online radio and video
Robust backups and restores from external SD card
OTA sync with bank accounts
Blogging and photo-blogging tools
Voice activated menus and phone dialing
CAD tools
You will notice that these things are both work-related enterprise apps and play-related multimedia apps. The beauty of the Treo, for me, is that it accomplishes both. I believe the iPhone is marketed to those that desire the latter. For those people, the iPhone is a godsend. For me, it is in need of a few more iterations before I will even consider a change.
.: posted by
Dave
9:55 AM
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