REthink Wine Blog

I just couldn’t resist and had to be an early adopter of the iPhone.  One week in and I have to say that I LOVE its functionality and it looks cool to boot.  Apple certainly thought of just about everything to make this pda an easy, highly functional, and very fun toy (I mean tool).

Some of the coolest features include: one-touch phone calls, voicemail retrieval in any order you want, quick synch to Outlook, instant internet access via wifi, and then, of course, the ipod functionality to listen to all of those wine podcasts.

 

 

BUT, with all of the cool stuff Apple packed in, there are a couple of features/functions that Blackberry had and this does not. First, the ability to delete multiple email messages at one time.  Very important for those of us who receive over 150 emails a day. Second, unless you are a pixie with teeny tiny fingers, the iPhone onscreen keyboard is a bit clumsy.  Or maybe it’s me, but I’m quite certain that my fingers aren’t extraordinarily large. 

In any event, as I’ve played with my iPhone it made me think about how they developed the product. I am certain that the functions that I miss were on the development list, but booted off in exchange for something else.  In iteration one of the iPhone, I’m guessing there was a discussion that went something like this: would the consumer rather have the ability to delete multiple mail messages OR would the consumer rather have an instant catalogue of their You Tube favorites? And so on.

My experience at Inertia has given me quite a bit more patience for new technologies. As we plan for our new RTE platform (to be released next year), we think through all of the same trade-offs.  We start out with a wish list of everything that should be in the new platform.  “Everything” includes what we think we need, what our clients want, what we think our clients will want one day, what our partners have requested, and what our future partners will require.  After compiling all of these features, our able product management and tech teams assess each request, compile the development plan for version one, and then schedule each approved feature in subsequent releases. 

And so, having experienced the product development cycle at several companies, I am patient with Apple. I LOVE my new iPhone and I’m glad I have it now, even though there are a couple things that I would improve. I could have waited for the next version of the iPhone and it will likely have everything I want, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.  This iPhone is better than the pda I had before and I’m certian that future releases will only catapult the technology further ahead. 

Cheers,

This entry was posted by Andrea Johnston on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Inertia Buzz, Inertia Products and Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.