Apple today released this 20 minute demo of the iPhone. It may be one of the most linked pages on the web at this moment. Even assuming that not everything in the demo is actually as easy as they make it look, the thing is decidedly sweet. If I had loads of disposable income, I would be disposing some of it at an Apple or AT&T store really soon.

But I don't. So to ease the bitterness of my failure in life, I will point out something that Apple seems to have gotten wrong.

Thanks to our governmental overlords, every cell phone sold in America has a GPS capability. Your phone knows where you are. No doubt this comes in handy on 911 calls, or in helping the man track you down.

Apple's demo highlights two very location specific applications. Maps and Weather. Both of these applications (as indicated in the demo) rely on the user to tell the iPhone where they are.

Yes it's great and cool as hell that you can build a list of cities and flip through their weather reports and forecasts with a flick of your finger but wouldn't it be great if the default first screen in the Weather app. was the current weather and short term forecast for where you are. Wouldn't that be cool for someone who travels a lot?

And the Map application. The iPhone runs Google maps. You can get directions to places. But you have to tell it where you are starting from. Might not be such a great feature if you're lost. Wouldn't it be really cool, and really helpfully if the Map application opened up with green dot on the screen that said you are here? Remember, the phone already knows where you are. Is it impossible to get that info from the GPS to the map?

C'mon Apple. Think Different. Why do I have to tell a device that by law has to know where I am, where I am? You guys really dropped the ball on this one, and until you get it right, I won't be buying an iPhone. (Just don't fix it too fast, it's going to take me a while to save up the $500.00)

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment