Community Matters

And, puzzling as it may seem, it is called the iPhone, even though Cisco/Linksys just recently released their iPhone. Trademarks are fun. And apparently neither Cisco/Linksys nor Apple really own the trademark in the US.

Technology wise Apple certainly seems to have lived up to the hype. And then some. A combination of a cell phone, the wide screen video iPod we’ve been waiting for, plus maybe the coolest mobile web pad, yet. All this with what appears to be a really cool user interface and running a full-fledged OS (which is what I like so much about my Motorola A1200 / Ming). Only this is Mac OS X, which in my mind has the best user experience of all the OSs out there.

But let’s do a comparison with the Motorola Ming. Contrary to the Ming, the iPhone supports EDGE and not just GPRS, has an incredibly smooth user interface (at least from what you can tell from the demos on Apple’s site) and is integrated into the iTunes infrastructure. Oh, almost forgot. It also has 802.11b/g WIFI.

The Ming on the other hand has a Micro SD card (i.e., you can expand the memory for cheap - but admittedly that’s limited to 2GB today). It allows you to install your own applications (but see my posting on the lack of an active developer community). And is available today (well, over the internet or in stores in South East Asia) and works on all GSM networks, not just on Cingular (which is one of the biggest issues I see with the iPhone).

I guess this summarizes a lot of the differences between a Linux Desktop system and a Mac. The Linux system is much more open and flexible, easily available and comparably cheap. The Mac provides an awesome user interface in a rather closed environment; DRM encrusted, but with strong support from “premium content owners”.

It will be interesting to see the response of the market and the end users. I certainly am excited. Which doesn’t mean that I’ll buy one and switch wireless providers. But I’ll look at it.

Oh, the stock market seems to like it so far. As I write this Apple shares are up more than 8% to a new all time high.

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