You’ve likely seen Apple’s Calamari iPhone commercial-the one that takes you from movie, to maps, to restaurant-reservation in search of a steaming heap of squid. It’s a great demonstration of how the various components of the iPhone can interact. Better yet, it’s actually useful. As in….
Yesterday my band had a concert-in-the-park gig (which went very nicely, thank you for asking). During the breaks, setup, and tear-down I flashed my iPhone at the boys in the band, demonstrating one cool feature or another. Satisfying oohs and aahs accompanied same. Kevin, our guitar player, is generally unimpressed by technology (unless it’s guitar technology, natch). However, while we were breaking down he mentioned that family had come in from out of town, was staying in Palo Alto, and he wondered where, as it was a hot day, they might find a restaurant with outdoor seating in Palo Alto.
It had been awhile since I’d tromped the haughty silicon-paved streets of P.A., but I managed to pull a name from the brain-Empire Tap Room. Except I couldn’t remember on which side-street it resided. The rest of the band hemmed, hawed, suggested that it was within a block of University and only a couple of blocks up from El Camino, couldn’t miss it, when it suddenly dawned on me that I had the answer in my pocket.
Pulling out the iPhone I tapped Maps, entered “Empire Tap Room, Palo Alto, CA” in the search field and, within a couple of seconds, the red push-pin revealed the answer-651 Emerson Street. I whipped the phone around to show Kevin.
“Here it is,” I said.
“Wow,” he replied.
“Want to make a reservation?” I asked, handing him the phone.
“Yeah.”
“Tap the blue button there.”
“Wow,” again as the Info screen appeared that listed the E.T.R.’s phone, home page, and address (along with Directions To Here and Directions From Here buttons).
“Now tap the phone number and start talking.”
Reservation complete he tapped the large red End Call button and, before returning the phone to me, gazed in wonder for a few seconds.
“This,” he said, “is impressive.”
Anyone who touches these things gets the same reaction. My friend who hates Apple, hates Macs, and hates iPods is the first to grab my iPhone whenever we go out to dinner and monopolize it the whole time surfing the web like an old pro.
He may actually buy one. LOL
great story -- everyone who has an iphone (me included) seems to have one like this! more stories like this need to be told. take that, naysayers!
Prefacing this by saying that I'm a Mac person, think the iPhone is so very pretty, and don't have one only because I don't want to switch to AT&T ... but, my Treo does this. I think most smartphones will. Clickable phone number links are de rigeur. Google maps isn't even necessary ... local.google.com will do just as well.
Having used Google Maps on Treo and iPhone, let me say clearly: The experience is so much better on the iPhone, it's not even funny.
Not even close.
"Has the same feature" ≠ "Is the same"
My son has a CrackBerry and though we have mutually agreed that each of us has a great phone, we still have some fun trying to one-up each other.
This past weekend I was in NY visiting him and we were all in Central Park. One of the gals announced she was craving a smoothie.
Out comes the CrackBerry and the iPhone and the race is on. While my son was typing away on the 3G network to access local Google, I tapped the address of the apartment where we were staying, which I already had in contacts. That quickly loaded the map on Google and I typed "juice bar" in the search field.
Before he was done typing, I had the address of a great smoothie joint a few blocks away and directions to it.
Network throughput and "same features" as noted above, are not the whole story out there in the real world [g].
-dan
After seeing my iPhone, 2 fellow employees and both bosses got iPhones. One of my bosses was driving through Arizona when his truck starting giving him trouble. He picked up his iPhone, typed the city he was in and the brand name of the truck. 2 dealers popped up, he selected one and called to make sure they were open, touched the address to see it on the map. He put in the address he was near and got turn by turn directions. That is one small set of features of this incredible device.
Had a funny experience with just this feature. While showing my iPhone to the guys in the hall at work, one said "will it show you the nearest brothel?" The fact that he used the word "brothel" probably says something about the guy, but I said "I don't know, let's check."
In maps, I typed "brothels near xxxxx" where "xxxxx" was our zip. The resulting shower of pushpins revealed a puzzling combination of businesses, but the first to display a name was a nationally known budget hotel chain.
Big laugh.
Similar thing happened to me...
I was playing poker with some friends, and we ran out of beer (seriously!) Someone suggested calling the local liquor place that delivers, but no one knew the number. Several people started looking in their phones for it -- I pulled my iPhone, hit the bookmark for my house, typed the name and handed it to the guy on my left (he had folded and I was still in the pot). The store popped up on the map, I told him to tap on it, and he was on with them ordering up some more beer in a jiffy. Cripes, I should get a commission for selling 6 iPhones that night.