Archive for July 8th, 2007

I’m starting to want one

I’m not a phone person. I was a PDA person before (my one and only PDA was a Palm IIIc, this first color one) but now I’m back to paper and pencils. I liked my Palm. It was fast and fun and could recognize handwriting. I took down notes of my meetings on it and stored all of my friends’ numbers and addresses on it. But back then I had no computer to call my own. But now I do but sadly Palm has gone into a different direction altogether and I don’t want to go there. I have a Smart Phone but I don’t use the calendar. I have iCal files on my mac but I don’t use it either to sync with my lifestyle. I’ve reverted to paper. I’ve held the long belief that it is difficult if not impossible to merge various devices into one. That even if it was merged, one function will suffer and the whole device won’t be a thing of joy.

Then here comes Apple and their iPhone. I must admit that I was impressed when Steve Jobs unveiled the device in January. It was a thing of beauty and elegance at first glance but does the design match the function of the device. Sure we saw it underneath a glass case at the Moscone Center but we wanted to know how that screen felt like when you touched it. Sure it was a cool device and a lot of people, especially the mac faithful wanted one. But I wasn’t entirely convinced.

A week later and it seems that the phone matches the hype. Others are calling it the “Jesus Phone”. For US consumers, it fits the bill but savvy Asians and Europeans where the phone market is a lot more complicated, it is lacking in a lot of areas. #g, HSDPA, video recording, zoom capability, MMS and so on. But I’m pretty sure that these features will be in the versions coming out in November and 1Q 2008.

But for now, I’m pretty much bent on getting one for myself when it comes out here locally. And I’m planning on getting all the bells and whistles with it. Prepare to be redeemed.

iTunes update

Apple clarified that the Universal music contract is now offerred to them on a per month basis instead of the previous 2-5 year contract.

The announcement comes after it was revealed that Universal Music was unwilling to sign the 2 year contract with iTunes. 

Well it seems that this chapter is far from over. Just don’t expect me to pay some sort of “music tax” for buying digital music.