For the guy who has everything from the woman with money to burn. The ipod is the gift I would most like to see in my stocking this Christmas.
The ipod is apple’s first foray into the mobile phone business. But at over £600 they have priced themselves out of most of the mobile phone market. Some argue that it is value for money because to buy a mobile phone, ipod and electronic organiser would cost a lot more. In addition the ipod is much smaller than all of these combined and would allow me to purchase an even smaller handbag. But do you really want your phone and music player and diary with you all the time? I quite like not having to worry about dropping my cheep phone into my beer on a night out or loosing it half way up a mountain. Furthermore, rumours suggest that the iphone is not protected from the effects of beer.
In all honesty, the iphone is not the wonder phone it was advertised to be. As a reference tool it is limitless with the internet at your finger tips. However, some of the larger more complicated sites cannot be viewed on the iphone. Even stalwarts such as the BBC website have managed to crash iphones I have tried out. Even more importantly, when you are somewhere that does not have a wireless network or mobile reception, the iphone becomes no more than a shiny, and rather expensive brick. I need more than just the ability to read articles and websites. I need to be able to write aswell. I need a pda that has document, presentation and spreadsheet capabilities. Like my trusty Palm Tungsten T5. Roumours however suggest that when apple opens up the iphone to third party software in February all of this and more will be come available.
In the mean time the iphone is really just a shiny toy. And like all computer toys it should have some decent games. There are a variety that you can download now from the apple website. My favourite is esudoku. Esudoku is the fastest logical sudoku solver on line and on the iphone it has a daily sudoku solution with many thousands of players on the score board.
I am also quite excited about the combination of an iphone and an online website content management system. For example something like rectang xsm would enable me to edit my websites from my iphone anywhere I go without the need for proprietary software. So I could be writing this blog from anywhere …
So the iphone does not really do the things that I want a mobile device to do. But it is shiny and new and expansive, which is what the perfect Christmas present should be.
