[jimmylittle]

i'll buy the TomTom app for my phone, for use in a pinch, but I'm not giving up my TomTom!!
Why would anyone want to try to switch from GPS, to a Voicemail, back to the iPod to change music, and back to the GPS? It's dangerous and inconvenient. Keep the GPS on the dash, and the iPhone in the music dock.

[rameeti]

A compass is not needed for the 3G to have turn by turn. GPS is all that is necessary and the 3G has that.

[rameeti]

Unless the Tom Tom app includes maps, which is not clear to me, then it will have little value compared to a GPS device. There are too many places that a wireless signal will not exist and merely having a blue dot doesn't help without a map underneath it.

[Motivated]

The future is not the death of single-function devices, but the proliferation of single-function add-ons for the iPhone. The Tom Tom solution is an add-on, not just a piece of software. Other examples might be a bike computer add-on, home weather kit add-on, garage door opener add-on, home A/C control add-on, etc. The options are endless. Compare the past to the present and by-in-large you see that technology breeds MORE options, not DIFFERENT options.

[DogHouseDub]

The ability to find points of interest using Google (and their phone number and their hours) instead of an antiquated vendor-compiled database make the iPhone 3GS the first of the next-gen navigation devices. Connectivity has been the real missing link in the nav market, IMO.

[bpeacock22]

Any word on whether we will be able to play music through the car stereo system while using the dock and TomTom software?

[vulpine]

The answer is... why? Do you think single-purpose GPS devices have a compass in them? Uh, uh. Nope. They actually use your own movement to determine the direction you're traveling, not any kind of compass. You only need to move about 10 feet to establish a base direction.

[dbutenhof]

bpeacock22 said:

Any word on whether we will be able to play music through the car stereo system while using the dock and TomTom software?

I'm sure you will. But a better question is: can you do anything else, like read Mail, or check a web page, and have TomTom voice directions going at the same time? And the answer, unless there's a big "one more thing" waiting on June 17 or June 19, is "no way". Without background processing support, you'll have to quit the TomTom app to do any of that. (Or even to change iTunes tracks manually, for that matter.) With luck TomTom will at least re-launch in exactly the state you left it, as Maps does.

But iTunes already runs in the background, and will continue playing until you do something to stop it. Whether the TomTom integration will mute iTunes, as an incoming call would, whenever it decides to give out a new direction, (which I think would really bug me), or whether the voice just talks over the music as if you had a completely unintegrated GPS unit, is a different question.

[dbutenhof]

vulpine said:

The answer is... why? Do you think single-purpose GPS devices have a compass in them? Uh, uh. Nope. They actually use your own movement to determine the direction you're traveling, not any kind of compass. You only need to move about 10 feet to establish a base direction.

Right. And one big advantage of having a compass is that the GPS can tell you how to start out. Right now, when you're stationary, like sitting in a driveway or parking garage, the unit knows nothing about which way you're facing, so it can't tell you whether to start out going left or right. (Or backup or turn around.) With a compass, it could.

Imagine sliding sideways to your right on a frozen lake, and the GPS is trying to direct you to the exit straight ahead. A standard GPS will say "turn left and proceed to the exit"; because it can only infer which direction the vehicle is facing by assuming you're facing the way you're moving. With a compass, it could say "hey, you're going sideways, dude; stop your skid before you hit something, and proceed straight ahead to the exit".

So, OK, there are other applications that are likely to be more interesting for most people, like Google Earth knowing which way the phone is facing to show a 3D view; but if you're ever trying to use a GPS to get out of a skid, remember that I told you so. ;-)

[minimalist]

Jacks of all trades... master of none.
Convergence devices always sound better in theory then they actually work in practice because the more stuff you add to a device the cheaper the components have to be to keep the overall cost at below a threshold that consumers will tolerate. Which means they kind of sort of do a lot of tasks but when we really need to do something WELL we will inevitably turn to more specialized devices.
Cell phone cameras are super convenient but I am not going on a trip without a real pocket camera with quality optics and a decent sized censor. Video on a phone is handy but its not going to compare to even a cheap HD camera. GPS is great for walking directions and location services but it remains to be seen how well they execute turn by Turn for en environment where you need to keep your hands on the wheel. Portable video is handy but I doubt I'll be giving up my TiVo or my Blu-ray player any time soon.
Basically, we will let the things that are simple or that don't matter that much to us get sucked up into our cell phones (the iPhone makes a great music player for example) but the things that do matter (and Pictures are preetty important to most people)

[dbutenhof]

minimalist said:

Quote

Basically, we will let the things that are simple or that don't matter that much to us get sucked up into our cell phones (the iPhone makes a great music player for example) but the things that do matter (and Pictures are preetty important to most people)

Hmm. I don't think an iPod is really "simple", nor does music "not matter" (certainly no more so than pictures, which are no more vital for life and health).

Rather, the iPhone is a great iPod (albeit a small one), because, by design, it really is an iPod with added features. Heck, it's even a better iPod, because it has speakers and you can listen to music without a headphone or external speakers, if you really want to. If size and cost (and battery life) weren't issues, it could have been a better iPod, by adding substantially more storage; but that's a matter of degree, not kind. The iPhone as iPod has another advantage over other iPhone apps... Apple can run it in the background when you're doing something else; an option they don't leave open (at least yet) to other developers.

Camera optics, however, are bulky, and expensive. Even small camera optics. And then we have flashes; big, if they're useful, and lots of power. It's not something you throw onto the back of something like an iPhone phone factor and roll into the cost. The inherent physical demands of good photography are fundamentally incompatible with the nature and purpose of a phone. (Some day, someone will no doubt perfect an electronic nanolens than can do a 200x optical zoom in a space no bigger than the current iPhone's camera; but that's a long way off.)

Same goes for family entertainment; the screen is too small for a group of people to watch from across a room, no matter how sharp the image is or how much media it can store. (Maybe someday I'll be able to unroll my phone to a 72" e-Ink printed screen that can be hung on the wall; that's also still a way off.)

GPS? Maybe. Most car GPS units have bigger screens; but a few not by much, and the iPhone's is sharper and easier to read than most of them. However, most have far bigger GPS antennae to pull a much better signal. The iPhone, in many areas, relies as much on surface station triangulation as on satellite GPS signal; a standalone GPS doesn't need to, but some of the antennae are half the size of an iPhone. Of course it wasn't all that long ago -- well within the lifetime of many of us -- that the idea of a pocket-sized radio transceiver operating off a self-contained battery would have been inconceivable. (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)

Video camera? Good video generates an enormous amount of data very quickly. Gigabytes per minute. Tell me you're going to tape a couple hours of a child's performance, or graduation, on a 32 Gb iPhone -- sharing memory with all those cool iPhone 3G S OpenGL ES 2 enabled games, productivity apps, and a good chunk of your music library... and I'll tell you that it won't fit, and the image size and resolution is not going to be something you'll really want to remember.

[MrLarrity]

dbustenhof, you said alot, but I agree with you on most of what you say here. I find it funny when people try to judge what will matter and what won't to the collective based on their own bias.

The iPhone may not be a perfect device (show me one, please!), but it is better at most tasks and more fun to play with than anything else before it or on the market now. Cover flow is an example of how flipping through your CD collection just looks so cool, and this even before you even play a song! Even a country music collection looks good in cover flow!

Monday, Apple showed you that they could just do a minor upgrade and still hit a homer like it was nothing. If they were to really release the hounds of potential, many of the critics would burst out into tears crying uncontrollably as if they'd just seen God. I exaggerate a little, but I think you get what I mean.

I am so sick of hearing about this darn Pre, so sick of hearing about Blackberry, which I've owned for two years. My iPod Touch is like my best friend now, I take it more places than I do my wife. When I get the iPhone, I can only imagine how much cash I will burn in the App Store.

The experience is what matters, all there and convenient. This is why Apple rules. They take the complex, make it simple and fun to use and look brilliant. They make the obvious look like genius and most of these ideas come out of the head of a college drop out named Steve. The high IQ nerds spend most of their time trying to make life more complicated (try learning to use a Blackberry without a manual), just to justify their costly educations and inflated salaries.

The iPod before iTunes+ didn't sound better than CDs, it was just easier and more convenient. I no longer have to think of what CDs to bring in the car or work. Almost my entire music library is always right in my pocket and even backed up on my Mac, that tells it all.

Apple isn't just smarter or genius, they just implement common sense through innovative technology.

[fstop808]

Tom Tom may have turn-by-turn directions on the iPhone, but it appeared from the demo that it will not announce the street names. Is this true with all Tom Tom devices?

[minimalist]

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I thought that convergence devices would make standalone devices obsolete (except maybe the PDA). I think all they do is add new categories we didn't know we wanted or needed before... cheap quick video for that unplanned moment, all your photos and music there to share with others or plug into a party stereo, video for that long flight. None of this stuff replaces standalone devices. It just adds to them.

But for casual use maybe the iPhone will be enough. I certainly have no plans to get a standalone GPS. I just don;t drive that much. My iPhone will work for the few times I need it to. The same could be said for people who don;t listen to music music, or don;t take many pictures or who rarely watch movies. Maybe the iPod will be enough for them. But in general I doubt standalone devices will go away anytime soon because with focus comes quality.