iPhone - cool because it's marketed that way

I saw an iPhone commercial this weekend. The iPhone is Mac's newest gadget that is being marketed by people who like to all be different in the same way. I can't decide which new product is worse, the iPhone or the Palm Foleo. Perhaps they are equally bad for the same reasons.

Both devices are marketed as the next step in portable data evolution. Both devices make this claim as they are left in the dust by devices without the brand name on the outside that do much more.

The Treo was marketed as a phone first and PDA second. The iPaq was a PDA with phone capabilities. The BlackBerry is a email device with phone and PDA functions.

Take the function out of the Treo, the function variety out of the iPaq and the simplicity out of the Blackberry and you have the iPhone.

Samsung once had a pretty nice phone called the i330 [1]. It was a Palm/cell phone with a touch screen interface. If this phone had been updated with time, it would be a very strong competitor to the iPhone. However, Samsung dropped the i300/330 line years ago.

Here is a list of pros and cons for the iPhone:

Pros	Cons
Plays iTunes music like an iPod	Dial pad numbers difficult to see in direct sun light
Pretty icons and interface	Only offered by GSM provider AT&T/Cingular
Listen of voice mail in any order	No hard buttons for dialing
Pretty screen for videos	Not compatible with high speed data/Internet
It makes you cool	Only approved third party applications can be added
It's shiny and ~~white~~ silver	Battery time is expected to be less than 10 (5?) hours.
It's made by Apple	Treo <$300, LG Chocolate <$100, RAZR <$100, iPhone $500.

I would have listed more, but I wanted to stop when I ran out of "Pros."

If this helped, consider buying me a beer or an Americano! [2]