Earlier today, Apple unveiled the new firmware 3.0 that will ship sometimes this summer. While there were a lot of new features announced, I think people are getting a little too excited. Let me explain myself.
Most of these features are old news
First, I think what people are forgetting here, is that most new smartphones now come with all the features showcased during the presentation today. Sure, copy/paste is nice, but my 3 year old BlackBerry can do that. Sure, push notification is great, but my 3 year old BlackBerry can do that. Sure MMS is awesome, but my 4 year old Nokia can do that. Sure allowing developers to create GPS enabled apps that can do turn-by-turn navigation is amazing, but again, my good old BlackBerry would do this 3 years ago… Do you get my point?
My point here is that we are fooled by Apple to believe that what they unveiled today is amazing. It’s not! I said it before and I’ll say it again, all these features should have been on the iPhone since day 1. Why didn’t they do it? Because they are marketing geniuses, and if they give us everything at once, what are they gonna give us next year… Other companies can’t afford to do that because they don’t have the marketing and branding power to do so.
We are getting ripped off!
Now regarding the in-app purchasing… I have to admit that from a developer/commercial stand point, this is a great feature. However, from an end user stand point, this is a complete rip off! As it is currently, when you buy a game in the App Store for let’s say $4.99, you know that you will get updates and new levels for free. Forget that in 3.0! Now you will have to pay for your updates and I think users are gonna get screwed.
There is still a lot missing
All these new features are pretty exciting because that’s what we’ve always asked for, but I think there is still a lot missing: iChat, push Gmail, background multitasking, flash support, and video recording are just a few of the big features I want to see on my iPhone. The Palm Pre does all of that so why can’t the iPhone too?
I don’t want to sound like an asshole but again, Apple is giving us new features one drop at a time and that’s very annoying. The thing is, all these missing features don’t prevent me from being really excited about 3.0 and I am hopeful that it will come with new hardware (aka new iPhone) this summer.