Xblog

I have to say I have an increasing dislike of the TV, and tend to prefer the Internet. I didn’t watch MSN’s broadcast either (bets as to whether it was Linux compatible? ;-), but I saw a few screenshots of the interface. It looked a lot like a TV. ;-)

Two things have become clear to me:

1. The Internet is going to kill TV.
2. TV will have the last laugh, because the Internet is going to look more and more like TV.

So who loses in all this? Well, I worry that the Internet might suffer, but I imagine it is a matter of perspective. I suspect search engines are going to have to work a bit harder to extract meaning from video content, but it hardly seems impossible. I’m thinking probably the biggest pain will be felt by satellite companies (I’m looking at you Rupert Murdoch with your DirecTV and SkyTV networks) followed up with any cable companies whose profit was largely the function of being a licensed monopoly.

Otherwise, it is probably going to be a Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose chose kind of thing. What is also becoming clear to me is that the Nielson ratings are becoming an increasingly irrelevant metric of what the younger generation is interested in, which hopefully explains why TV’s content is getting worse and worse in a way that doesn’t doom us all to extinction in like two generations.

I’m going to have to chat with some of my neighbours (who are overwhelmingly in the TV business) to get an idea as to how the industry is going to respond to this. I thought they were all focused on HDTV, which at this point seems likely to be stillborn. To get an idea just how far off target HDTV is, keep in mind that the younger generation seems more than happy to view TV content on 2.5” diagonal screens with 320x240 resolution. So much so that a good chunk of them will pay money for it. About the only aspect of HDTV that is following something resembling a trend is the focus on thin TV’s, which seems to be following the already so-overdone-it-may-be-losing-its-cool razor thin cell phone trend.

Here’s where it gets interesting: the don’t walk sign was flashing, so we were both stuck on the corner for a bit. Eventually, the car signal went from green, to yellow, and then to red. For a brief moment, the iPhoner’s brain misfired, and he somehow concluded that the red light meant it was now time for him to cross the street.

I say a brief moment, but he had enough time to get three or four steps out in to the street before he realized his error, and in that hesitant, diffident, and embarrassed manner that only geeks really ever master, he turned around and got back on the sidewalk. I could see the shame in his eyes: he had just exposed how uncool he was.

Now, I am a geek myself, and while I usually don’t walk out in to the middle of the street, I probably have geeky lapses like this several times a day. So I’m not about to poke fun at this guy for that. This stuff happens. What amuses me is what happened next.

In a desperate attempt to regain his composure and air of confidence, he brought up his iPhone to eye level, and started randomly fidgeting with it. As far as I could tell (based on his hand gestures), he was just scrolling through something, probably his contacts. He rubbed his techno-worrystone for a couple of seconds, and then lowered it back by his side.

His self-assured air had returned. He was cool again, because he’d just played with his iPhone. In that moment, I was forced to realize why Apple keeps winning the image battle with the techno-elite.

Apple sells something better than more speed, more capacity and more capabilities. Apple sells cool in a box.

That in itself was not a revelation to me. The painful realization that flowed from this moment, was that we geeks crave/need cool more desperately than any other segment of society, and for the most part we need it to be as straightforward to obtain as opening a box, because the road to cool involves dexterity or social skills, we’re screwed.

From a hardware perspective, there really isn’t much that’s exciting about the iPhone. It’s features match up pretty well with my 6700 (the 6700 doesn’t do 802.11g, the 6700 is CDMA and can use Sprint’s EV-DO data service, its camera’s resolution is somewhat lower, and the 6700 has a mini-SD slot).

The form factor is different. The iPhone is slimmer, and in order to achieve that it gives up the slide out keyboard (which is really nice). That’s an interesting trade off, but one that other manufacturers have gone with, although I think Apple is the first to completely eschew any kind of keypad.

The user interface is different. If there is anything innovative about this phone, it’s going to be the UI, but of course multi finger touch screens aren’t exactly new. I’m not sure what exactly Apple has “patented the hell out of”, but I could see where this could prove to be a killer feature.

Personally, a stylus is a nice way to avoid fingerprints on my screen, but otherwise it would be nice to throw it away. Still, the PPC-6700 is currently available with $100 manufacturer’s rebate, which makes it roughly 2/3 the price of the iPhone, and also suggests there will be a new model out shortly, and this is months before iPhone even launches.

Compared to the options available for WinCE phones, the iPhone seems kind of lacking to me. The only asset it really has is that it isn’t marketed by Microsoft, who have done a horrid job promoting WinCE phones.