I’m playing tag with UPS right now, but I’ve taken the plunge and ordered a 3G iPhone with 6GB/month 3G data access.
While having GPS will be nice, it’s the 3G data access I’m most looking forward to. I’ve already started to browse the apps store looking for productivity apps, and I’ve upgraded to Flickr Pro which I’ll be using to share my mobile pics.
Some of the apps that have really stood out so far are Evernote, Wordpress, reQall (speech-to-text!), and Wikipanion. I’m still waiting for a good turn-by-turn navigation app. I’ve heard that the soon to be released 2.1.0 iPhone firmware might add this. I hope I can add the John Cleese voice … OMG they have Mr. T! “I said turn LEFT you FOOL!”.
18 months ago if you told someone the hottest niche in mobile computing in 2008/09 would be sub $500 mini notebooks called NETBOOKS they’d call you crazy. Subnotebooks typically cost a hefty premium over typically larger notebooks. I still remember ooohing and awwwing over those first $4000 Sony 505 notebooks in the late 90s.
Netbooks (Asus EeePC, MSI Wind, etc) are not as feature-rich as those high-end subnotebooks. But for most “typical” people netbooks will fill 80% of their needs. Plus they’re really cheap. Perfect second computers.
But my dream second computer is still yet to appear. My iPhone handles most of my comms needs, but I still would like an A5 sized, touch/wacom-digitizer screen that has a browser and an Alias Sketch like app to replace my Macbook. Oh, and it should cost less than $500.
I don’t know if there are enough people like me (who go through at least 4 sketchbooks a year) to support a device like this. So I might have to wait another 10-15 years for on-demand custom designed gadget printing to appear. Or maybe if the Techcrunch gadget takes off, enough people like me will get together and crowd-source it into existence.
