Specs are not the be-all-and-end-all of tech... user experience is.
If it has something in the specs but the user can't find it to use, it's no good.
That's what this article is about... and it's why Apple IS kicking everyone else's respective hiney's ...
They know what to take out...
They know what to make as an add on for the minority who needs it and not to foist it on everyone, just because the minority MIGHT want it.
And they know how to make the features they leave in DROP DEAD EASY TO USE.
My last phone I had before my iPhone, a Motorola, had a speaker phone capability. During to TWO years I had that damn phone, I was able to use the speaker phone capability just twice... because I could NEVER find it when I needed it... the two times I did use it, the icon for it just suddenly appeared on the screen over the button... and there it was.
But other times, in the same circumstances, it was NEVER THERE. I went looking for it... and could never find it. I am not a stupid person. I am a tech savvy person. I sat there one afternoon with the thick manual for that phone in my hand and COULD NOT FIND IT. I went to AT&T and THEY COULD NOT FIND IT.
That phone had conference call features... every single time I attempted to use it, it disconnected the first call. Without fail. I had the AT&T people try it. Did the same damn thing for them. It was in the SPECS... but it did not work. Looked good on paper. But as a user interface it sucked big time. I HATED THAT PHONE... and i hated every previous phone I had beyond the first cell phone I had that simply made phone calls.
blah blah blah swordmaker. hype is hype
Too bad you have a complex phone then and now. When I want to use the speakerphone functionality of my HTC Touch Pro 2 (which I use a lot, because it's so convenient) I simply turn it over, exposing the external speaker and dual mics on the back. The phone - that antiquated, non-user-friendly Windows Mobile thing - just works. Face it towards you, it's a regular phone. Set it down on a table and it becomes a speaker phone.
It just works.
You convinced me to my a Mac. I’ve had it for more than a year. We also have a couple of iPods and iTouch music players that we’ve owned for years.
I have to say I am less than impressed.
The Mac is less than a year old and the battery is shot. From what I see, it is not user servicable, I’ll have to drive an hour to the service center when I get a chance.
You cannot drag and drop files to the iPods manually. My wife won’t let the kids use her Mac because she is afraid they will screw up her iTunes account. That means the kids run iTunes off the PCs in the house. Apple may write great software for Macs, but they write horrible software for PCs. Every PC I have that had iTunes installed started having problems, I suspect it is a “feature” that Steve put in the software to screw with PC users.
My daughters iTouch hung during a software upgrade. It won’t let her use the hardware telling her she needs to reset something. When she tries to reset it on the PC, it tells her there has been an error and asks her if she wants to reset the iTouch. Over and Over. I’ll take it to the service center too when I get a chance. In addition, she somehow lost all of her music.
In the future, I’ll have her buy all of her music from Amazon. I can drag and drop their music to any device I own, store it on a hard drive and never be limited on how many devices I use it on.
I still get woken up in the middle of the night for tech questions, but now I have to fix them on a Mac.
And to top it off, I had to buy my wife a Win 7 laptop because her professor can’t read her projects when she turns them in from the Mac. Nobody knows why, the Mac sends empty files through the university system. It’s supposed to work with their system but nobody in IT could come up with a solution.
I totally believe that Mac is kicking but. It has been kicking my but regularly and I’m getting a little sore.