Boxing Day: Reflections on Nerd Christmas

The day after Nerd Christmas is known as Boxing Day, named after the traditional public boxing matches that are held between those singing praises on the mysterious man from California and those disappointed by his wonderful new toys.

Men (and the occasional woman) don brightly-coloured outfits and shout their praises or curses from rooftops, and the children on the street dance, make wishes for the toys to arrive soon, eat sweets and generally ignore the noise coming from above. But the rooftop men continue their shouting, eventually descending on a public square and taking part in the traditional boxing matches.

For those who do not live in the vicinity of the Amwaj sector of JBR - and therefore did not hear my reactions bellowed from the rooftop at sunrise this morning - a few thoughts on Apple's new iPhone 4:

Good

- As a piece of hardware, the iPhone leads the market in a way it has not done for the last year (am I the only one who thinks the 3G / 3GS was a step down, visually, from the original?). It looks absolutely beautiful, has a screen that puts everything else to shame, and a battery with days and days of life in it. That is enough alone to make Nexus One owners, who are lucky to make it from morning to night on a charge (and can't see their screens in daylight) think hard about things.

- Video calling has been around for years, but have you ever tried using it? It is terrible: low quality, badly-compressed, image with lots of lag and interference, pretty much useless. And expensive. Just like Apple did not invent the mobile web browser, Apple has not invented video calling. But the difference seems similar to the first iPhone browser compared to the  web broweser on a Nokia Communicator. Apple haven't created a new concept here, they have just taken something totally neglected and made mediocre by mediocre companies, thought hard about it, and made it good. Sometimes, that is what is needed.

Bad

- The iPhone operating system is now lagging behind Android in a number of key ways, particularly in its integration with the internet and the flexibility of what applications can and cannot do. Absolutely nothing was done about this in yesterday's launch, so you are now looking at a solid 6 months before anything is likely to happen. For all its advances in hardware, the iPhone OS - rebranded as iOS last night - is now looking seriously dated.

- Notable that despite signing up previously, Apple now seems to have dropped out of the

. Every other major phone maker has agreed to do this. The lack of a Micro-USB port on the iPhone suggests that Apple is no longer taking part in what is clearly a pro-consumer standardisation that is pretty much universally in demand by mobile users. Apple always had more to lose in moving to this standard, given the giant galaxy of accessories like speaker docks and car chargers designed exclusively for the iPod / iPhone connector. But this fits a pattern of Apple choosing to use its newfound Microsoft-style industry clout to do things that suck for its customers but are good for business.

Ugly

- Like the 3G-enabled iPad, the new iPhone cannot accept regular SIM cards, requiring instead a smaller chip called a Micro SIM. This is a terrible thing. While a Micro SIM can be put into a regular phone via an adaptor, there is no way of getting a regular SIM into an iPhone without chopping it up with a knife. Sure, the iPhone is huge enough that every serious network operator will need to introduce Micro SIM cards. And yes, you can get a regular SIM card, chop it up, and use it in an iPhone.

But about those of us who have a few different SIM cards for each of the countries we regularly travel to? We have to either hope the operator in each country will give us a new micro SIM (and waste our travel time dealing with it) or chop it up. And because no other phone in the world uses these new Micro SIM cards, it gives the mobile network operators huge power over their customer - if you want a Micro SIM, you'll need to play by their rules.

All considered

As a piece of hardware (and art) this is the best mobile phone you can buy. It is beautiful to look at and technically superior to the competition. Its operating system is second-rate compared to others on the market - but its critical mass of hundreds of millions of users means it has all sorts of advantages (everyone will make an applications for it, but not everyone will make BlackBerry/Android / Maemo / WebOS apps). This is a MacBook Pro running Windows Vista - and for the mainstream, that is pretty much a dream proposition. It will sell like hotcakes. But if you are interested in leading-edge software and technology as a philosophy, not just a product, there are plenty of reasons why this beautiful woman with a mean, controlling spirit should send shivers down your spine.