Thursday, April 3, 2008

Another iPhony? Yes, the Samsung Instinct.

Samsung is going to introduce the Instinct, a multimedia phone that-oh, that's funny- looks exactly like the iPhone! It does, however, have a little more under the hood. It has built in GPS with voice recognition, radio, a camcorder, faster internet connection, and yes, Sprint TV. And it is essentially the same size as the iPhone.
First lets talk about GPS. Their GPS system recognizes voice for when you are on the go, and knows exactly where you are, not which district of San Francisco you are in like the iPhone does. It also pinpoints ATM machines, restaurants etc. like the iPhone. But the question is, does it have a user friendly system like google maps. Some of these navigation systems require the reading of a manual. Me, I like it plain and simple, straight cut.
Radio is another convenience Samsung has figured out, although between listening to the radio and listening to commercial free songs, and podcasts, I would pick the latter. The iPhone does not offer radio, but it has got it covered with songs, podcasts and video.
The camera and camcorder. Not much I can say against it, although the digital zoom will make thing s a little blurry. This phone will allow you to capture and send video directly with the touch of a button. Not a feature one would find on the iPhone. The iPhone does of course allow you to take and send photos, just like the Instinct.
The Sprint network that the Instinct will receive its internet from is exceedingly fast compared to that of Cingular's Edge network that the iPhone is currently running on.
Sprint TV is going to be a hard one to compete with apple. It offers live and on demand TV straight to your phone. The only TV Apple has is on sale in the apple store, which i guess you can download from the store but it takes up room and downloads slowly.
Apple might have 20+% of the smartphone market-share right now, but look out Apple, other phone companies on on the prowl, waiting for their turn to jump at Apple's neck.
On the other hand, Apple has the best integration software I have seen on any piece of hardware, which is part of the reason people love it. It also uses one of the most popular media centers in the business right now, which is most likely the reason it is so successful. The media player might be the sole downfall of the Instinct, but it may bury it underneath the all encompassing mass of Apple Inc.

The Myspace Store Flop

Hey guys, this is my first post and I thought I would start my blog on the proposed Myspace.com Music Store.
I know that people like David Pogue Complain about people who review before they have tried things out for themselves, but Myspace's new attempt at a music store is just sad. If they look at the market, the majority of people are buying their songs from iTunes, Napster, or stores like Borders. Or they download it illegally from someplace like Limewire. I understand that Myspace might be looking at upping their profit through a music store so people can buy songs fro their profiles, but why waste the effort. People are just going to download it illegally from another source or just import the song to their profile from iTunes. iTunes is so profitable because Apple makes products that work so nicely with their music store, making it convenient to buy songs. Since Myspace has no myPod, there  is little to no chance of this franchise exploding, although they go around this by allowing the songs to be played on the iPod. One of the other problems with this deal is this: people do not want to change music stores. Many people are using iTunes now and few are tech savvy enough to figure out how to transfer songs from one library to another.
On the other hand, some people want convenience at the cost of price, and don't mind the fact they will have paid for a copy of a song twice, and will buy a copy of that song solely for their page. Who knows, I could just be another naysaying blogger, but I strongly believe this will fail.