Talking about Apple and swooning over their products like an obsessed fanboy is boring. But what can’t be ignored is the sheer hype machine that IS Apple. The volume of queues for two days this time round for the new iPhone 4 must surely mean they’re doing something right? First off the new iPhone. The new iOS4 is great and best served by the gorgeous new hardware that it now sports. Bit of a summary below and in my next post I’m going all out Apple fanboy as I explain WHY I love Apple, even though they often infuriate me.

Apple have leapfrogged every other smartphone right now with the iPhone 4. Android offers some great devices but the OS remains fiddly and the entire package is not yet a slick match for Apple’s hardware / software / App integration.

What’s to like about the new iPhone? Lots. The display has a crazy pixel resolution and looks fantastic. The engineering of the phone (Antenna issues aside) is so meticulous it makes the outgoing 3GS seem like a toy – you can only really ‘get’ this when you hold it in your hand. The speed of the device means that Apple’s ‘multitasking’ seems to work well, even if it isn’t really true multitasking but more ‘fast app switching’. The camera is improved, the new iMovie for the phone is a nice touch and in general it’s a big move forward even from the 3GS.

The only thing that does bug me with the iPhone is the complete lack of a dashboard display showing all your stuff at once. Even though multitasking now makes things easier it’s still not as good as showing your mails, social media nonsense and other bits and pieces all on one screen. A shame because I think if Apple turned themselves to such a dashboard it would be great. Oh well, maybe next year then. I’d also love some form of LED notification system on the hardware instead of badges which I find crude.

The new phone seems to be even more of a hit than the 3GS with practically no handsets available in the UK today. Crazy stuff.

What does interest me is that all networks now can sell the iPhone but not one of them is really doing anything on price. I expected THREE to come in with unlimited data as their usual data plans are generous but no such luck. Bizarrely whilst I don’t really rate their network I’ve decided to stick with O2. They seem to be the only people doing visual voicemail (Which I couldn’t live without) and their prices don’t differ too much from anyone else. As for the nasty 500mb data cap – well, go online and see what your data use is each month. I use my phone all day long and don’t really ever go above the 500mb mark.

So in summary the iPhone 4 is a worthwhile upgrade, even for 3GS users. WIRED have a video if you haven’t been able to have a look for yourself yet:

Google is gaining some serious traction with their Android platform (They’ve just been showcasing Android 2.0 OS) and providing free GPS turn by turn navigation can only serve to enhance their mobile offering. There are rumours of the app being ported to Apple’s iPhone where it will sit side by side paid GPS Navigation packages such as Navigon, Copilot and Tom Tom.

What interests me are the realtime benefits of a Google App – syncing your contacts’ whereabouts, the most up to date POI available and so on. I’ve often wondered why a company so involved with mapping and search has not developed a GPS navigation sooner. They look set to assert more mobile dominance now this has been released.

I’m still in amazement that YouTube has failed to successfully monetise their site and seem to be plucking all the wrong ideas out of the hat. Recently they are trying to leverage some sort of revenue stream by tapping in to social media and still try to keep advertising revenue flowing with little effect on cost.

I wonder how many publishers would benefit though from a subscription model? Flickr has successfully applied this to their picture sharing site and I see no reason why YouTube cannot offer a similar or even more complex cost model. As a YouTube ‘Pro’ account member you would be able to upload longer videos, customise the player in depth and add more widgets to your channel or host it on your site via enhanced tools. There is so much scope for YouTube to ramp up revenue here, make it’s online position stronger as a more advanced media player and also offer groundbreaking features to publishers and digital marketeers.

I’d love a YouTube ‘Pro’ account and would gladly pay for it. There are other online video solutions of course such as Brightcove, Ooyala and many more but full implementation is costly and way beyond the means of SMEs or individual publishers wishing to host or encode client content. A YouTube ‘Pro’ account could be a halfway house between the free and corporate video services offering longer videos, thumbnail generation and editing and easy widget creation and embedding / publishing options. 

I’m surprised YouTube haven’t offered this yet but I was talking about HD YouTube videos a while back so this may only be a matter of time.

A possibly serious threat to VoIP carriers and even Skype – Google Voice seems to match up enhanced functionality, a unified ‘one’ number philosophy AND a great price point. Whether it can be rolled out internationally to combine all the features and SMS notifications remains to be seen however the concept is very attractive. The amount of times I’ve played voicemail tennis with friends and colleagues means that the current offering is behind the times – a unified number with cheaper calls, forwarding and notifications as well as full mobile compatibility would undoubtedly pose a threat to existing telcos.

This is a great back to basics tool posted on the Inside AdWords Blog – in other words how your maximum CPC and Quality Score will affect how much you’ll pay when clicking on an ad in Google’s search results.