[FoRK] $100M for iPhone Developers

[Jeff Bone]

On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:57 AM, Luis Villa wrote:

> Fair. I guess I don't see it as qualitatively new, or maybe more
> precisely the only thing I see as qualitatively new is the
> web-browsing experience, and that qualitative lead won't last, since
> it is based on delivery of standards-based content.

One other bit:

If you look at the iPhone as a bullet list of features, there's not  
really any one thing that's fundamentally new other than multi-touch,  
which IMHO is as a feature a bit overhyped.  But that's not the  
point;  the qualitatively new thing is the sum of many incrementally- 
improved "old hat" features.  The bet is that this collection of  
incremental improvements achieves a kind of synergistic critical mass,  
and that this whole is a qualitatively different thing than the sum of  
its parts.

And FWIW, as an iPhone owner I'm not entirely convinced yet.  I think  
it needs a better camera, MMS, better e-mail, slight sync and browsing  
improvements in order to really get to critical mass.  And all these  
things need to be somewhat better integrated than they are presently  
--- making phone numbers clickable in web pages is a start, but more  
of that kind of thing is necessary.  But then, I'm not the typical  
user...

$0.02,


jb