I’m going on about this like a stuck record, but it’s something I feel strongly about.
I was in a meeting at work the other day. The subject of the meeting was streaming formats, bitrates and accessibility to these streams. The usual boring work related subjects. Along came the topic of mobile listening. Asked by someone in the meeting “Do you own an IPhone David?” the answer was “no, no I don’t.” And just like that, almost instantly, I was dismissed as having any sort of knowledgeable viewpoint or understanding of mobiles, streaming and their future.
Trying to bring to the meeting the idea that media organisations shouldn’t just concentrate on iPhone development, but multi platform support, bringing in devices such as Android and Blackberry was almost frowned upon, because it wasn’t the latest ‘in craze’, the iPhone.
Thinking about it afterwards, I should have said yes to the question posed to me. While I don’t own an actual iPhone, it would seem that the term ‘ iPhone’ has become an umbrella term for anything smart phone like, and I do own an smart phone, a much smarter phone than an iPhone in my opinion. In pretty much in the same way that I own a Hoover, well I don’t, I own a Dyson, and the Tannoy system in our school was actually made by Panasonic, therefore it wasn’t Tannoy at all because Tannoy is a brand name of Sony.
I know a lot of people who love technology, love media, and quite often show me the ‘latest amazing thing’ that their iPhone can do. If I try and do the same with my Android phone I’m ignored because it’s not an iPhone.
With Apple releasing details of their latest iPhone OS4.0, news outlets like the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and loads more are all over the story. I like these newspapers, but sometimes their over biased coverage of Apple products amaze me. And this is why your bog standard punter doesn’t know or like anything other than the iPhone, because Apple get so much coverage and the mainstream media are not at all interested in anything else.
This isn’t a dig at anyone I work with. It’s not a dig on iPhone users. It’s a dig on the general ignorance and perception of iPhone’s as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some things Apple and the iPhone do far superior than my Google Android phone. Brilliant marketing, seamless integration with your computer, well timed regular software updates and the games and graphics on an iPhone is far superior to any other phone I’ve seen . But we shouldn’t put all our development eggs in one iPhone shaped basket. Once the iPhone app is ready we shouldn’t just sit back and rub our hands with glee because we have an fancy pants iPhone app, because if we do that, we are alienating A LOT of people.
The future of mobiles isn’t the iPhone. It will play a large part of the future, but so will Android, Symbian, Blackberry, WebOS, Meemo and who knows what else as time goes by.
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I know the feeling very well. Just you wait until you get your hands on a HTC Desire, such a massive leap in Android OS + it blows the iPwn out the water.
Comment by Jennifer Jones — April 12, 2010 @ 10:03 pm
I’m patiently waiting for the 2.1 update to come to the HTC Hero. HTC have been promising it since December. Was supposed to be March, then beginning of April, they are now saying end of April.
Comment by David — April 13, 2010 @ 10:28 pm