Jun 10, 2008

Apple's pocket-size PC

By Larry Magid / Daily News columnist

If you liked the Apple iPhone, you're going to love the new 3G iPhone. It's faster, it's cheaper and it knows where you are. The new phone will go on sale on July 11 at a starting price of $199 for an 8 gigabyte model - half the price of today's 8 GB iPhone, and $299 will buy a 16 gigabyte iPhone. That extra memory is important to anyone who wants to use the phone to store lots of music, video and photos. Speaking of music, the new iPhone has a regular headphone jack so you'll be able to use any brand headphones. The old one had a recessed jack that didn't work with a lot of headphones.

At under $200, the new iPhone is priced to compete with other smart phones such as the BlackBerry from Research in Motion, the Treo from Palm and the numerous phones that run Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. The iPhone is also a full-featured iPod and thanks to both Apple and a network of independent software developers, it's rapidly evolving into a pocket-size personal computer.

However the same could be said for other smart phones that also run application programs.

Still, there is a lot of excitement about software for the iPhone. Prior to announcing the new hardware, a parade of developers took the stage to show off programs that are being written for the iPhone platform. Some of the programs will also run on the iPod touch, which looks and works a lot like an iPhone. The iPod touch lacks the phone, but it does connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi.

New applications for the iPhone include the Loopt friend finder system. It's a mobile social networking service that uses the phone's GPS capability to not just locate the user, but to share that information with the user's friends so that friends can answer the question "where are you" just by looking at the screen. Loopt is available on plenty of other phones, but the iPhone's user interface, larger screen and faster network make it easier to see where your friends are.

Typepad also showed off a social networking application that makes it a snap for a mobile blogger to upload a picture to a blog posting.

The Associated Press will release a free program to allow users to quickly get access to news, photos and video from the AP. But in keeping with the Web 2.0 notion of "citizen journalism" it will also allow users to submit their own photos and stories to the news organization.

Baseball fans might enjoy an application from MLB.com that will provide nearly real-time video game highlights shortly after the play - while the game is still going on. It will also keep fans up to date on the score, the pitch and who's at bat.

There were several game developers who showed off their wares including Pangea Software, which demonstrated the iPhone version of Enigmo, a 3-D puzzle game along with Cro-Mag Rally, a racing game featuring cave men. The iPhone could turn out to be a very interesting portable gaming platform thanks not only to its persistent Internet connectivity, but also its built-in accelerometer - sensors that can determine the position of the iPhone as the user moves it about in his or her hand.

To me, the most impressive demonstration was from Mimvista, a medical-imaging software company that is developing a program that will let radiologists and other physicians examine scans, X-rays and other digital images from anywhere, including the golf course. The program can show very detailed images and overlays, allowing a doctor to use his or her fingers to zoom in on a particular area or isolate areas using different color schemes. The application also will allow a doctor to review moving video images. Another application from Modality will allow medical students to review detailed anatomical images all the way down to veins and arteries on their iPhone screens.

One of the most interesting announcements is a new Apple service called MobileMe that - among other things - pushes e-mail, contacts and calendar information directly to an iPhone. The $99-a-year service also allows users to keep the iPhone or an iPod Touch in sync with a PC or a Mac. Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred to it as "Exchange for the rest of us" in reference to Microsoft Exchange, a service that many large enterprises use to synchronize mobile e-mail with servers and office computers. The beauty of MobileMe is that any event you add to your iPhone or iPod touch calendar is automatically uploaded to the Internet ("the could") and then downloaded to your Windows PC or Mac. The same is true for address book changes and e-mail, and it works in the other direction, too, so what you update at home or the office is synced to your iPhone. MobileMe works with major personal computer applications including Microsoft Outlook, but it also has a Web interface that works with any browser. Based on the demo, the Web interface looks and works like desktop PC software, allowing users, for example, to move the time of an appointment by dragging a calendar listing from one time to another.

I'm going to reserve judgment about the new iPhone until I get to test one out in real-world situations, but based on the demos and a few minutes checking it out immediately after the presentation, I feel confident in predicting that the new model will do well. After selling 5 million of the old iPhones, I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't move at least another 5 million units by this time next year. Having said that, I still don't think that the iPhone is for everyone. Although the touch-screen interface has its advantages (it can be easily updated and can support multiple languages without having to change devices), it also has its drawbacks. There are plenty of people who prefer a smart phone with physical keys and there remain lots of people who have no intention of abandoning their BlackBerries or even their boring old flip phones that don't have a lot of bells and whistles yet do a great job at one thing - making and receiving phone calls.