Getting The Web Right Is Just One Piece…

I’ve used more “smart phone” devices than I can count…

There hasn’t been a single one of them that let me browse the web like I can on my laptop. For this reason (among others), I could never travel with just my phone/PDA and leave my laptop at home – it’s just way too limiting. Apple is clearly tapping in to this latent frustration with it’s latest iPhone ad:

Getting access to the web right will be a big selling point for the iPhone, but it is only a piece of the whole. Apple will also need to support the various Office document formats as well as PDF’s to make the iPhone into a true mobile information appliance. They will come as downloads off the web and as attachments to emails, and simply can’t be marginalized. There also needs to be synchronization support for various mail/calendar clients on the desktop (including Outlook and Entourage), as well as syncing provisions for web based calendars like those from yahoo and Google.

The iPhone has shown more promise than any other “smart phone” device I have used or seen. But it also has some significant questions surrounding it that won’t get answered until after it’s launch. As much as I would love to have one on launch day, I’ll probably give it enough time to see how all of these issues shake out.

I believe the iPhone will be an incredible hit, and don’t mean for this post to sound negative.

I just need it to handle what I want it to do…

Tagged as: Gadgets & Gear