iPhone Announcement Day After Thoughts

I’m going through my RSS feeds on Google Reader, and obviously most are about the iPhone. Even some of the Christian life and theology blogs that I follow are about the iPhone. I have my choice of which article to link for the purposes of this blog post, and for now, I’m going to go with Lifehacker. My reaction to iPhone features, new, improved, and unexpected, run the gamut from “Wow, that's cool!" to "I've been able to do that on Windows Mobile for years" to "Who cares?"

• Price- $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB- "Wow, that's cool!"
• 3G- "Wow, that's cool!" and "Windows Mobile phones (with the exception of mine) have had that for years."
• Integrated GPS "Mine can already do that." My iPaq 6945 came out of the box with the ability to geotag photos. When I'm using the camera application, I can activate the GPS, and with the GPS running all the pictures I take with have GPS information embedded in them. Welcome, iPhone users to the useful (but not often used) feature. One thing I have to warn about though is that a device with an internal GPS antenna doesn't always work that well.
• Headphone jack- sort of all three. The original iPhone had a recessed headphone jack. I forget the design logic for this, but I never understood the point, unless it was some kind of planned obsolescence plot. Apple releases a phone with such a stupid design, fixes it in the next release, and Apple fans bow down and worship. Oh, yeah, all of the Windows Mobile devices I've had did not have a recessed headphone jack, although my iPaq 6945 has a 2.5mm jack, but it came with headphones that fit. In this case, I have to say "who cares?" because the original iPhone should have been designed with a proper headphone jack.
• Camera- again, all three. It's a 2.0 Megapixel camera, which is better than the 1.3 Megapixel camera on my phone. Of course, I can zoom and shoot video on mine. I haven't seen if Apple integrated software allowing iPhone users to zoom and film video on the iPhone yet. I know that jailbroken iPhone can download a program that will take video from the camera.
• Mobile Me- "Wow, that's cool!" and "Who cares?" Mobile Me has a font that looks a lot like Windows ME. It's supposed to allow you to sync your mail, calendar, and contacts across PCs, Macs, and the iPhone. Basically it's Apple's .Mac service, rebranded, with PCs in mind and the same price. Let's see, I can already sync my email across multiple clients with gmail. I think Plaxo allows syncing of contacts. It would be nice to sync my calendar more easily though. Microsoft ActiveSuck likes to duplicate my Outlook tasks when I try to sync across multiple computers, and of course only allows syncing with two computers in the first place. Mobile Me doesn't sync Outlook tasks, or notes, so I don't have much use for it, especially at $99.
• Notes- "Who cares?" and "Windows Mobile has done this better all along." I haven't seen any indication that Apple improved the notes function on the iPhone. The iPhone/iPod Touch have a client that allows the user to take notes, but the only way to get the notes off the device is to email them. All along, I've had the ability to create notes in either Outlook or my device and synchronize them.

I'm not trying to pick apart the iPhone. I think it's an amazing device and the coolness factor makes up for any limitations it may have. I enjoy my 32 GB iPod Touch, and I probably will pay the $10 to upgrade the firmware next month. In the words of Fake Steve Jobs, it restores a childlike sense of wonder to my life. This also isn't a comprehensive list, just what stood out to me the most.