Is iPhone 3GS Apple’s netbook?
Magnus Nystedt | Nov 05, 2009 | Comments 7
I must say that I’ve been one of the voices asking Apple for a netbook or tablet for a long time now. And I’ve tried many PC netbooks and I think they’re pretty cool and actually surprisingly useful even though they have small keyboards.
But after getting an iPhone 3GS I don’t feel the same need for Apple to bring out a netbook anymore. In fact, I find myself leaving my MacBook behind more and more and just working off of my iPhone. It’s a combination of things that makes that possible but most of all it’s the increased speed. Everything just happens right away and with 3G data on the go from everywhere I can do the things I need wherever and whenever.
Email: The iPhone has become a very strusted email partner for me. The speed of the 3GS certainly helps. I sort a lot of email into various folders and some of them I deal with later on my Mac. I use GMail to consolidate all my accounts and having access to all my email on the go is great.
Web: What can I say? Mobile Safari is great. Okay so it doesn’t have Flash support but I can live with that. Most sites I need to access work just fine on the iPhone.
Scheduling: I have access to our shared company calendar for viewing and editing and it has all the events and things I need to know about.
Twitter: My favorite Twitter client is Tweetie 2. With it I tweet just about as easily on the iPhone compared to Mac.
Facebook: I don’t spend as much time with Facebook as I used to but they’ve done a good job with their iPhone app. Basically I don’t feel I miss the full web site that much.
Landscape keyboard: The landscape keyboard functionality that arrives with iPhone OS 3.0 makes typing, at least for me, much better for me on iPhone. I make less mistakes and type faster. Not quite as fast as on a regular computer keyboard but close enough.
DropBox app: I’m a big fan of GetDropBox and having access to my files from the iPhone is great. I currently have some 30GB in my DropBox account and with the iPhone app I can at least view most of my files.
Documents To Go: I don’t work that much with Office documents like Word and Excel but sometimes it’s just a must. Currently I prefer Documents To Go for this. It allows me to sync Office documents from my Mac to my iPhone and I can also create and edit Word and Excel files on the iPhone.
EverNote: I use it mainly to take notes and capture info. In some ways it overlaps in functionality to DropBox but I use EverNote more for text information and some graphics and DropBox for my work files.
Google Docs: We work a lot with Google Docs at Shufflegazine and having access to them on the iPhone is a great help. I can’t create documents and editing is limited but that’s okay for now and I’m sure they’ll expand on that in the future.
So there you go, most of the functionality of a netbook in my much smaller iPhone 3GS. I’m not saying that iPhone can totally replace a netbook for everyone – having a larger screen and real keyboard is sometimes a must – but it can in many ways it can. I’ve found that with the increased speed of the 3GS I can leave my notebook behind, and that’s a great feeling.
What’s your experience? Does your iPhone replace a netbook/notebook, at least to some extend?
Isn't the iPhone a bit too small for a netbook? I mean if I have to do anything remotely serious it involves typing on a micro keyboard, and a lot of scrolling, pinching.
Well, yes, I'm not seriously saying that it's a netbook but it can in fact do many of the things that people use netbooks for, so in that sense it can be a netbook.
And based on that line of reasoning, I can likewise argue that my Nokia E51 mobile phone qualifies as a netbook since it allows me to do the following:
email
web
scheduling
twitter (using Twitter's mobile interface)
facebook (using Facebook's mobile interface)
decent input method (I can type as fast on T9 as I can on the iPhone and Android keyboards)
dropbox — there are other services out there that offer file storage and management
Docs to Go
notetaking — Nokia has an excellent ActiveNotes app that is free, and handles insertion of multiple media types
Google Docs — no matter how you cut this, Google Docs just isn't ready for mobile screens just yet
I'm not disagreeing that the iPhone does all these, but the entire user experience is significantly different between an iPhone/Android/WinMo device and an actual netbook. If I wanted to work on my spreadsheets, a project plan, an article/paper, enjoy large screen web browsing, experience web sites with Flash, etc, and still have the benefit of a quick startup time and long battery life.
Let's compare Apples and apples, and not Apples and netbooks
True, user experience is different because of screen, keyboard, trackpad and more. But in functionality, what you actually do with it, they at least significantly overlap, the iPhone and netbooks. And you're perfectly within your rights to compare your E51 to a netbook, just that my piece wasn't about E51
For me, what I have previously done sometimes on a netbook running Mac OS X I now do on my 3GS.
Yeah, but one could also argue that E51, iPhone, Android, netbooks and full scale notebooks all have areas of functional overlaps, yet each caters to certain unique use cases that the others cannot meet.
Yeah, but one could also argue that E51, iPhone, Android, netbooks and full scale notebooks all have areas of functional overlaps, yet each caters to certain unique use cases that the others cannot meet.
Yeah, but one could also argue that E51, iPhone, Android, netbooks and full scale notebooks all have areas of functional overlaps, yet each caters to certain unique use cases that the others cannot meet.