CrunchGear

This article is blasphemy.
Apple has ruined the ‘smartphone’ with the same closed minded proprietary make it cool attitude that caused Itunes and the Ipod to ruin the MP3, podcasting, and downloadable music (think DRM).

That right fan boys, your beloved Apple’s actions and products work against progress and the advancement of technology.

Putting a ‘smartphone’ in not so smart peoples hands, because it cool and new and stylish and then confining it to one network (minus all the hacking) and selling ‘special’ plans, controlling how and how many someone can purchase and all the other bullshit people have put up with to have an super expensive common man’s ‘smart phone’.

And, as comrade Hickey will tell you, it doesn’t cut and paste.
It aint no smart phone

It’s a media phone.
Get an Itouch, when they drop the price and increase the storage size.

ryan please clam down. From your rant you must be a Blackberry or Windows Mobile user. It is understandable for people using other platforms to feel threatened when Apple brings in a new product. Don’t worry there is plenty of room for all platforms in the market for the foreseeable future (although that future maybe short for Palm).
The problem ryan when you rant is you make mistakes that makes you look foolish and your statements lose any genuine impact. People will read it and laugh because you are talking about why the iPhone isn’t a “smartphone” yet you are making dumb mistakes in your post. So did you write this on your “smartphone” ?
Your statements about Apple ruining smartphones are completely unsupported - so add some facts here please.
Dear ryan try proof reading, you said “That right fan boys” and of course it should have been “That’s right fan boys”.
Your next sentence, which is what is know in English grammar as a run on sentence, actually makes no sense. You say “Putting a ‘smartphone’ in not so smart peoples hands” then go in to a run on rant that never gets to the point and never completes the original statement “Putting a ‘smartphone’ in not so smart peoples hands”. Also again please proof read your comments “it cool” should have been “it’s cool”
Ok and the next line: “And, as comrade Hickey will tell you, it doesn’t cut and paste.”. Does that mean since my Moto Razr can cut and paste it is a smartphone??
Now what to do about the word ain’t (yes again proof reading is needed as ryan misspelled it aint). In modern language ain’t is actually becoming more accepted as a culturally based word. But generally this is only accepted in oral usage. Using ain’t in a written communication is generally seen as unacceptable. Hence why ain’t will show up in a computers dictionary yet the computer will still flag it as misspelled. It is a word for use orally.
ryan what does price and storage size have to do with making the iPhone a smartphone??

kirasaw slaps himself upside the head.
yes I also could use some proof reading, sorry, “which is what is know in English grammar” should have been “which is what is known in English grammar”

Ryan,
How exactly did Apple ruin the MP3 market. What an ignorant statement.
DRM was around way before Apple. MS makes money buy licensing DRM to it’s hardware partners. Apple’s devices have always supported the MP3 format. MS on the other hand tried to kill MP3 as a format & didn’t support MP3 in any of it’s initial music ventures. AAC is not owned by Apple & it is the record companies that want DRM. All the other MS formats you spoke of are all proprietary. Look up Janus (much more draconian version of MS DRM), Plays for sure, etc. etc. etc. You haven’t got a clue as to what you are talking about.

With all do respect, the iphone is a very capable phone, but it is NOT a smartphone…. compared to the phones of 10 years ago, sure the iphone is very “smart”… in that it has a color screen and can access the internet…. but the question you need to ask here, how is this different than any other non-smart phone out there? Sure the iphone has some slick apps with nice functionality, such as google maps, the stock widget, weather, and lest we forget youtube…. but these apps… all of these apps present content to us in unique ways, content that it pulls off of the internet… I would argue that this does not define a smartphone…. a smartphone is one where you can ADD APPLICATIONS to enhance the “out of the box” capabilities of your phone…

Perhaps the term “smartphone” is a misnomer, maybe they should be called “teachable phones” or “learning phones” implying that you can teach your old phone new tricks by simply installing new native applications on it. This is why the iphone is NOT and phones like the treo are.

This may be a moot discussion in 2 months when we get more details about apple’s SDK for the iphone.

For the record I own an iphone and am very happy with it, but I have not deluded myself into thinking its a “smartphone”…

–Jeff

By your definition, virtually everything is a smartphone. Hell, even the Razr I got the wife for free can browse the web, do e-mail and play music. It’s not a smartphone. To join that category, a phone needs to be able to install third-party applications and sync with an Exchange server (yeah, that means that all smartphones are “business phones” - get over it). The iPhone has its virtues, but being a smartphone is not one of them.

I would argue that it wasn’t a smartphone originally, but now with all the apps it has, it fits the definition perfectly. So it can’t run any app you throw at it, big deal. Neither can Palm or WM. Just because the interface doesn’t make you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon, or it’s so unstable and hard to use you need a team of engineers at all times, doesn’t mean it’s not a smartphone. I’d argue that if anything Palm and WM are dumb phones, it’s like they’re designed to slow me down at every step.

To clarify, I believe I actually said I felt the iPhone wasn’t a smartphone yet. I agree with the idea that after the SDK launches, it’ll step into smartphone territory, but it’s not there yet. It’s not even a good phone, though it is an amazing device.

I explain a little more of my definition here, but that just might start more fights.

Also, Nicholas has no odor. None at all. It’s very off-putting.

Kind of a funny argument–a bit like arguing that a white box PC without Windows installed on it isn’t a computer. The iPhone is a computer that happens to fit in your pocket and make phone calls, much like the iPod was a hard drive that fit in your pocket and played music. Given the paltry marketshare that the smartphone genre had managed to carve out, perhaps it’s a compliment to the iPhone to say it’s not a smartphone. It’s a brilliantphone that some time next year will manage to subsume what had been the smartphone market.

Right now, the iPhone isn’t a smartphone. It may yet become one.

Today, my old Sony Ericsson Z520a can do everything the iPhone can do. Camera, XHTML web browser, voicemail, phonebook, e-mail, to-do list, Google Maps, calendar, sync with Mac. It can also do a ton of things the iPhone can’t do: MMS, third party applications, Bluetooth file transfer, Bluetooth keyboard, replaceable battery, modem support, instant messaging, and voice dial.

Does that mean the Z520a is a smartphone? I think not.

I look forward to the iPhone of a couple of years from now, that has all the functionality I expect. Until then, BlackBerry. Which, incidentally, is not just a business phone these days.

Ryan, you’re an idiot. Jeff, you follow in Ryan’s footsteps. Fred, you’re cut from the same block of wood as Ryan and Jeff. PhilK, gimme a high five bro. Matt, the verdict is out on you, so lets go have a beer to figure it out.

BTW, it’s now iCrack.
NOW GIVE ME MY DAMN FREE EARBUDS!

http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/21/ultimate-ears-superfi-4vi-the-review-and-the-giveaway-yes-that-means-free-stuff/

wait…

when did asking Hickey out for a beer and calling me an idiot win somebody a set of earbuds?
’cause if thats the case, lots of people will be getting those free earbuds.

I don’t consider it a smartphone. It doesn’t need to be. It’s a unique platform unto itself. What difference does it make what it’s called. You basically want a handset that can do what you want it to do. So for the things it can do well, use it, but it isn’t capable of doing a lot of things that other defined smartphones can do, YET. The iPhone is still immature. Consider it still teething. Pretty soon it will bite and gobble up the rest of the smartphone empire. However, not RIM anytime soon.

Even if/when the iPhone can do what those BlackBerrys can do, RIM does have a fairly loyal following that might be hard to make into switchers. Business is business and I suppose if the iPhone can make it so much easier to make money, well, maybe it won’t be that hard to make BlackBerry users defect.

The iPhone is very good, but it’s far from perfect for corporate users. Let’s see how useful it is for consumers around the world first. It’s a much larger market and that’s where the most money can be made. Rather than dethroning RIM, Apple needs to continue attracting the average consumer to iPhones and keep that halo momentum going strong for their other products.

I’d personally like to see Apple beat the crap out of RIM in the corporate sector, but that’s just a vanity thing and it doesn’t make much sense at all since there’s more than enough handset users for both the iPhone and BlackBerrys to co-exist.

Major LOLS.
Peter Ha and I just settled an argument of sorts over this exact topic. We concluded that it really isn’t a smartphone, despite some of the ’smart’ features it has.
Check it out and read it here:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/19/smartphones-now-not-so-smartphones/#comment-543628
Good stuff. Maybe you and Peter can take up the debate!

You know what? I don’t care what anyone else says. It’s a smart phone — period.

The weird hair-splitting by anti-apple morons in more an indication of their insecurity than anything else — with all DUE respect, the success of the iPhone, iPod, and now Macs (even my formerly Apple resistant IT manager has decided to switch the company to Macs as they replace old hardware, in large part because Vista is such a major disaster) seems to making a lot of geeks uncomfortable.

I really don’t care why. All I know is I have a kick-ass smart phone I actually USE, as opposed to an overpriced piece of carrier crippled hardware.

Especially amusing was the first rant laying the sins of DRM at Apple’s door. Considering Vista’s over-abundance of DRM crippled performance, I wouldn’t be so quick to blame Apple for “ruining” anything — though how iPod’s could have “ruined” podcasting when the very base of the word COMES from “iPod” is a mystery best left to far better mental health experts than myself. ;-)

Anyway, happy holidays everyone!

John H, you can have a beer with us too bro.

NOW GIVE ME MY DAMN FREE EARBUDS!

http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/21/ultimate-ears-superfi-4vi-the-review-and-the-giveaway-yes-that-means-free-stuff/

Smart phone? Maybe not. But having Safari recognize phone numbers within web pages and being able to click on them to call seems like a smart thing to do. No?

Also being able to talk with someone on speaker phone while surfing the web or looking up an address in Google maps is pretty brilliant as well.

Once the SDK is released and other applications are created, the real power of the iPhone will finally be realized. You can get a taste of that now by jailbreaking it and installing “unofficial” third party applications.

Smart phone? Maybe not, but an innovative new handheld computing device? Definitely!

Apple has done it again.
And just to all of my fellow Mac users, I have 3 Mac’s and 2 iPhones in my house.

To be honest. Apple has made a super nice design, But it stops right there.
THIS IS NOT A SMART PHONE
The lack of any good features is like urinating on us consumers, and I guess all my fellow Mac users has not used a real smart phone.
Apple need to stop looking at there new 3G iPhone for a bit and give us a Smart phone. It’s a Hard-drive, with a screen, it can do everything and the hackers has proven it.
Cut and paste, should had been there 5 years ago.
My old Nokia can do email and copy paste, dictaphone transfer files to it.
Apple has now said that in the update 1.1.3 they will bring some of it, but not cut and paste.
Apple/MAC is the new Microsoft

I have always viewed a smartphone as a souped up PDA with a mini keyboard (a la Palm Treos and various BlackBerries, the Motorola Q, etc.). An onscreen keyboard like what the iPhone has is more like a PDA-phone (a la the HTC devices sold by carriers, XV-6800, 8925, etc.) , only it’s a DMP not a PDA. (Though you can make the case that either the iPhone is a DMP but also a DMP, or that the other devices are PDAs but also DMPs.

I don’t really care what you call it. Marrying it to AT&T for 5 years makes it a non-starter for me regardless.

Woadan