Apple iPhone - Marketing genius or excessive hype?

Steve Jobs, as far as I am concerned is a brilliant marketing guy! The hype surrounding the iPhone is simply stupendous!

He has managed to still have a niche segment of customers with the Mac, completely blew the market with the iPod – that brilliant device, which has in my opinion, revitalized the music industry and now is trying to carve a slice in the overcrowded mobile phone pie with the iPhone!

Why would anyone want to buy the iPhone from a company which is just getting into consumer electronics?

The answer is simple – Jaw dropping features – everyone today listens to music on the phone, obvious usage as a phone and of course surf the net! Plus the added bonus of being a product of the Apple company! It looks sleek and small compared to the rest of the phones, which end up looking like prehistoric models! I suspect, this will eat into mobile biggies such as Nokia, LG, Samsung and Motorola’s revenues.

I have been following the hype closely over the internet and cannot wait for it to launch in India – even though it is tentatively scheduled to be launched only in 2008.

Let there be no doubt that there will be teething problems but will be nothing that Apple cannot handle and I am certain, all of the features that the critics are saying that are missing especially with regards to direct downloads of music from iTunes will certainly overcome. With the other common gripe that there is no keypad – well, I think that is precisely something that will help the company – remember the jog dial on the iPod – who thought that will work and it became iconic!

The iPhone can again, like the iPod, change the fortune of Apple and I am just dying to own one – even though I have never owned the Mac or the iPod – simply because of the iconic style quotient it will have, at least initially.

Live on Steve and get out some more great products!

Kathy Sierra and misuse of the Democracy on the Internet

I am new to blogging and have begun to enjoy it a lot! It is indeed a whole new experience and the sheer freedom it lets us enjoy is huge!

It is indeed extremely sad commentary that Kathy Sierra is getting targeted for being a woman blogger and for expressing her personal views. Internet was supposed to be the new frontier for true democracy without the policing!

While the freedom is absolutely awesome, there needs to be personal policing – everyone has the right to air their comments – after all it is a free space – but there has to be some restraint to what they are saying. Agree that we cannot, as humans, like everybody or agree with their opinions, but death threats, cyber stalking against them should be stopped. This is misusing the freedom that we bloggers have.

I am against policing this wonderful medium called internet which gives us the right to rant – but this is going too far. Free blogs such as Blogger, Wordpress et cetera should not condone this kind of stuff and pull their websites off the internet as soon as they receive some complaint against a few bloggers. While the rest of the more experienced people who have their own blog websites – the servers hosting them should ask them to go take a hike!

It is against the law to post death threats – the medium of posting should not matter – whether it is the web or the phone – it is against the law.

I feel for Kathy and while a witch hunt is not going to stop this, and while I accept that censorship is not the right way, is there any other way of stopping this?