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Shazam!

Entry 820, on 2008-07-26 at 23:57:52 (Rating 2, Computers)

I'm sorry if I am beginning to sound rather tedious when I blog about how great the iPhone is, but I just can't help it. I am a technology enthusiast (that's a fancy term for techno-geek) and I appreciate fine design and beautiful functionality when I see it. There are two things which have prompted this further entry: first, I have used two other highly rated smart phones this week; and second, I have installed some useful extra iPhone apps from the iTunes music store.

OK, I know the iPhone has some missing features. I have already discussed these in past blog entries, but I'll just list them again: no video capture, no video chat, no MMS, no copy and paste. Hopefully these might be addressed in future updates of the iPhone OS, and I just read today that copy and paste looks like it will be introduced in version 2.1. But even without these the iPhone transcends mere feature lists. Its not so much what it does, its how it does it.

The two other smart phones I used this week were a recent model Blackberry and a Windows Mobile phone. The difference between using either of these and an iPhone is so great that its hard to believe they belong in the same category of device and the same era of technology. The Windows Mobile phone in particular was a jumbled mess and had a hideous user interface. I can see why it might be beneficial to base the GUI on the most widely used OS (Windows XP) to enhance the user's familiarity, but that does introduce two problems: first, Windows has a horrible GUI to start with; and second, a desktop GUI isn't necessarily appropriate for a compact mobile device.

Apple have been brave and have created a totally new interface specifically for small screen, mobile devices. There are a few elements in common with the desktop version of Mac OS X, but a lot is different. There are no pull-down menus, no scroll bars, no keyboard shortcuts, etc. But people can still start using the phone with very little instruction because its just so intuitive. This is where Apple really excels and they have shown their leadership in the area again.

The iTunes app store is a nice environment for buying and downloading programs. I would prefer an open approach where programs can be loaded from anywhere but Apple has decided to follow this model, and at least they have done it well.

Mobile Safari is a great surfing experience on such a small screen. Of course it depends on the speed of the network but its quite good on wifi or 3G. The lack of speed is frustrating in 2G or weak signal areas though. The same applies to Mail. This is a very useful mobile email program and when it shares an account which is synced with a computer its almost a perfect email solution. When I'm at home I quite often wander around the house checking my email and doing other stuff at the same time.

There's another program I downloaded and installed yesterday which really impresses people. Its called Shazam. Let me give you an example of it in action. My daughter was listening to a music TV channel and wanted to know what a song was called. I held the iPhone up to the speaker and after a few seconds showed her the screen. There was the band, song, album, artwork, and a link to buy the track! I think she thought I was joking when I first did it, but it works. I know it uses a service which can also be used from a computer but the iPhone just makes it so much easier.

I'm at a swim meet now and when we arrived we were told there was an article about swimming in the local paper which mentioned a record set by our son. Of course, instead of finding a paper I had the article on the screen of the iPhone within a few minutes. And it only took that long because it was buried in a strange place I didn't look in to start with.

Yes, the iPhone can't do some things, but what it does do it does brilliantly. When you go back to using another type of smart phone its like using something from a museum!

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