New Look, and... the iPhone!

First of all, the new look introduced with the iPhone, and then moved over to the iMacs, will it move over to the laptops and screens as well? You know the one with the black around the LCD. I am quite curious about it. I would have imagined tons of MacBooks turned aluminum with iMacish look to have been photoshopped and featured in every single Mac related news collector. Strangely this haven't happened.

One thing I do hope though is the return of more colors. I so would like a blue or green MacBook myself. White is a bit sterile, black is awful, and the brushed aluminum thing isn't really my thing. I like colors. I really do miss the transparent plastic iMac look. Same with the PowerMacs. I crave more color.

Which just reminded me of something different. How come PC cases are so awful? Just about all of them are really awfully looking, and none look really good. You'd think there would be a market out there, or could it be that simply nobody with the capital out there cares at all about the customers?

Now to the iPhone. There has been more written about it than what I care to ever read. Ever. Way too much from people with zero clue about what they are talking about. So with that in mind, why the heck will I write about it as well? Well, first of all I do have a clue. Second of all I do think that I might actually have a point to make.

I think that the locked down state of the v1.0 of the iPhone makes a lot of sense. Making a security model for a mobile device is not at all the same as making one for a computer. OS X is a computer OS. It makes a lot of sense to have 3rd party applications, but not if they can screw your iPhone over really easy, and the iPhone is a much better target for viruses and malware than a Mac is.

The iPhone is an appliance, just as your microwave. You are not suppose to hack it, open it up, or fiddle around with it. It doesn't try to be the perfect device for everyone, but rather to be the perfect device in itself. If you try to put everyones favorite functionality into it it will burst out of it seams and turn into every other horrible mess of too much features. People are upset because their special piece of functionality isn't there. They want it to do things it doesn't. They wished that it was a computer, a Newton, a PocketPC device made by Apple, etc.

They are all obviously going to be disappointed. The iPhone is just an iPhone. An iPod you can call and SMS with, especially now with the iPod touch released. But that is what makes it so great. It really is an appliance. It really doesn't need to do more. You don't want games in your microwave now do you?

But what I do find interesting is that there is more internet buzz about something you shouldn't be able to do, 3rd party iPhone apps, than something you can do, 3rd party apps for all the other mobile devices out there. Maybe, just maybe, they are screw enough to build up a need this way. It reeks WAY too much of conspiracy theories. But remember what they say, just because you are Paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you...