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Old 01-25-2008, 11:35 AM   #6
Gideon
Wearer of Pants
Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.Gideon knows the square root of minus one.
 
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Posts: 1,050
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Norman, OK
Device: Amazon Kindle DX / iPhone
Exactly.... It's a lot like the iPhone.

My old HTC-8125 could do just about everything the iPhone could do (and more, in some instances.) However, it was a pain in the butt to use. It required work to make anything work well on it, and in general wasn't quite ready for prime time.

But then the iPhone came out and suddenly "smart phones" were something everyone could use, and eventually, what everyone will expect. They took what was available and made it both easy and fun to use and brought it to the publics attention in a big way. That counts for a lot.

A similar situation occurred with the iPod. Are there better devices out there than your average iPod? Sure. But do they have a huge store with almost all the music they want just a click away and pain free syncing.

Some of us may be pretty willing to spend hours cobbeling together files to get them onto our devices but most people just want a one-click solution. Making it a one click solution is innovative.

I got, and took back, this week a Sony505. I loved it. I still love it. But it had two big problems - I'm on a Mac, and so I had to run the software through parallels if I wanted to use any purchased content. And not only did they have crappy selection, the software was slow, buggy, and a pain to use. Also, and importantly, the device had neither a search feature nor the ability to get things like newspapers and magazines on it easily (if at all in some cases.) I mean, sure... Libprs made getting the New York Times a breeze, but I still had to download it in one program, go to another program and add it, and then sync it with the device. However, if I wanted the Atlantic or something without an full RSS feed - I was SOL.

Easy is innovative. It may be the most innovative, because it is what allows people to actually use it.
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