iPod Touch Rocks… iPhone Sucks!

This battle has been going on since the day Apple launched iPhone. iPod Touch came into the market a bit later. And it seemed like Touch is the lite version of the full-blown iPhone. It was always dicey whether to go for iPhone, which initially seems like a sensible investment as it has everything that iPod Touch has and it also has something more to offer. But again it comes to you at a price.

When I was planning to buy one of these devices, I did a preliminary research on the two products. On the face of it, iPod Touch has two major features missing as compared to iPhone – a phone and a camera. Secondly in India, iPhone is not officially available. In the gray market, you either get an unlocked/modded US made phone… or a Europe-made pre-unlocked phone. Any which ways, you got to shell out around 25-28k and you don’t get a warranty when you buy an iPhone in India. On the other hand an 8GB iPod Touch costs 12.5k and comes with a 1 year warranty. And I went in for an iPod Touch.

It’s been almost 3 weeks since I bought my iPod and I’m very satisfied with it. And then I read this month’s PC World and it had an article – 10 Things iHate About the iPhone. So I thought I will express my pleasure in taking the right decision by going for the iPod Touch!

1. Single Carrier: The legal version of iPhone works only with one carrier – AT&T in the US and when it comes to India, it will be Vodafone
2. Not-so-good Camera: iPhone has a 2MP camera which is not really good enough. A mid-range Sony Ericsson phone has a better camera than an iPhone.
3. 3.5mm Headphone Port Missing: The headphone jack is not like the traditional port than iPods have.
4. On-Screen Keypad: The keypad is supposed to be a state-of-the-art onscreen keypad. But state-of-the-art stuff means it is experimental ;) In short, not satisfactory!
5. Toothless Bluetooth: Tell me why do you use Bluetooth? To transfer files with other phones, to transfer files from PC, and in rare cases use it with the PC Suite. But the Bluetooth with iPhone can be used only for calls. This means that your Bluetooth headset would work, but apart from that nothing else would work. Y.U.C.K!!!
6. Non-Removable Battery: This problem has been prevailing with iPod since its first release. And it still continues even with iPhone!
7. No MMS: Howzzat? No MMS! Even an ordinary 5K Nokia mobile has MMS capability. And its missing in iPhone.
8. No FM: Apple filled in so much into iPhone seemed to have missed the good ol’ radio. FM is an integral part of every phone of today’s generation. And iPhone lacks it.
9. Un-user-friendly Navigation: Every time you want to swap between applications, you gotta press that HOME button. What the hell! You have a touch-screen keypad but there is no link on the screen for going back HOME!
10. Non-Multi-Tasking Safari: If you are browsing and you decide to change the music that’s playing in the background, you will lose the webpage you were in when you come back to Safari after changing the music. Safari needs full focus when in use.

And thus I feel that I took the right decision of buying an iPod Touch rather than buying the iPhone!

The Showman

“It takes to be a showman to host a successful show.”

Seems like a sensible but absurd statement. But that’s the fact of life. There are plentiful of people who attempt to host shows. A show could be anything from hosting a roadside “nautanki” to hosting international tournaments. The amount of money involved could be anything from a cipher to billions of dollars. The audience could be just a few bystanders to the entire six billion people in the world. And none of these factors actually guarantee or rather even decide the probability of success. But at the same time, you can’t give credit/blame the luck factor completely.

Take an example… in the November of 2007, a movie starring Shahrukh Khan was released. Yes, you guessed it right, it was Om Shanti Om. Now you can call it luck or co-incidence or whatever. Om Shanti Om was released on the same day as Saawariya which was the worst movie I have seen the last decade. At the same time, a wonderful movie – Jab We Met – was released a month before Om Shanti Om. If Om Shanti Om had a stiff competition by Jab We Met, it had an encouraging audience because of Saawariya. Personally I would rate Om Shanti Om as an average movie. People who love SRK would love it, people who hate him would hate it and people like me who don’t mind the King Khan would not mind the movie either.

Given this scenario, Om Shanti Om was a big hit. Even bigger than Jab We Met; in spite of the fact that Jab We Met outclassed Om Shanti Om in every aspect. But it was SRK’s diligent marketing that actually resulted in Om Shanti Om being a bigger success. Its not that Om Shanti Om was bad, but it did not certainly deserve to be a blockbuster. But Shahrukh made it happen. How? Pure Marketing.

Same is the case with the Indian Premiere League. The original concept of Twenty-20 is of the British. The first company to implement the concept at the commercial was Zee with ICL. But it is quite evident that today IPL is very very successful as compared to ICL or England’s internal Twenty-20 cricket. Again it was excellent marketing strategy of the BCCI that has resulted in the success of IPL.

What I am trying to explain is that India has produced two text book cases for management students where a product has been sold which the costumer did not want to buy. No one wanted to see Om Shanti Om and still it was a success. No one initially liked the concept of IPL, yet it is a success. And that’s why I would like to repeat the golden statement that I mentioned in the beginning of this post:

“It takes to be a showman to host a successful show.”