iPhone and changing the world one device at a time

I must admit that I've been an Apple fan for years, but Microsoft's dominance over compatible software has kept me a loyal Microsoft user. I've never been into music as much as most people around me. As I was finishing college, the iPod appeared on the scene. I saw my fellow classmates displaying them proudly in the computer labs. Would I get one? No. I've never had a large music collection, until getting married, and it's still not large. It's kind of always just been background music while I was working on my car or on a computer.

I've always been a little bit of a techie. I've had a mobile phone for a little over 5 years now. My current phone is an Audiovox SMT5600. It's been a really great phone, and has a crazy amount of features. A year and half ago, as the cell phone companies were marketing cell phones with MP3 players, Microsoft snuck onto the scene with Window Mobile 2003 software in mobile phones. It was a little weird to see advertisements for brand new "music phones", when I had just that in my pocket already. What was the big deal?

Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago when Treo released it's 750. Beautiful. I think I found a replacement for my Audiovox. I've always had a little dilema though. I needed a phone first, then a multifunction devise with contacts and a calendar that can sync to Outlook, then an MP3 player, camera, and internet connection. All of this had to be small enough to fit in my pocket comfortably, which is the reason I have not updated to a PDA sized device.
Just days ago, Steve Jobs reveals what everyone has been waiting for. The holy grail iPhone. It has made a glorius entrance into a market that already has products that have the same features. (OK, I can't get an 8 GB memory card for the Treo 750 just yet, but it's coming.) I do have to admit that I love the iPhone. It's super cool. It's quite amazing that it runs that same software as Apple computers, which is a one up for Apple compared to the Windows Mobile 5.0 and Pocket PC software packages on smartphones and PDAs. The iPhone is kind of like the Treo LifeDrive, but can also be used as a phone.

So where are we headed? The UMPCs are coming. Bigger than a smartphone or PDA, smaller than a laptop. Being a gearhead, the auto industry is trying to plan for the integration of infotainment systems in the new cars you buy. There were a significant number of cars this year that had a provision to hook up your iPod. PDAs and UMPCs have just about the perfect screen size for GPS navigation or watching videos in a car. Cars, trucks, and SUVs have a much longer life than most electronic devices. How is the iPhone going to change things? I think the radio in the dash will just become a hub for distributing all the informaton we have on a personal device that we attach to it, or a screen with a storage device that we sync our home's PC to before we leave on a trip.