I was in New York last Friday when the iPhone went on sale nationwide. An hour before the Big Bang, the line outside of Apple’s 5th Avenue store was impressive. Each time I get to see one of these lines, I admire the discipline and patience of the dedicated American consumer. Try this in France for instance, and you will most likely end up with a riot. Anybody who travels frequently between the US and France certainly has noticed the – err…– “liveliness” of the boarding process on Air France flights… For a glimpse of this brilliant piece of Americana, check out on YouTube – I especially like the guys playing ping pong in “iLine”.

I did not join in this frenzy, as you might have guessed. Instead, I went later that night, at 2am. “Swan lake” at the Met and a nice late dinner on Columbus Avenue (it is all about values, right?) had put me in the right mood for an iPhone commando operation. So deep into the night I went. The line was then gone, but the store was still crowded. And to my surprise, Apple had done a great job stocking up these toys: I was walking out the door with an 8Gb iPhone in about 15 minutes. Getting back to my hotel without getting mugged was a breeze.
Now was the time for the first ever test of qipit with an iPhone.

Dear readers, despite the (few) negative comments echoed by some bloggers about the iPhone camera, I have to say that the news is excellent as far as we are concerned: the iPhone works well with qipit!

Apple has done a great job simplifying the functions of the iPhone to distillate them to their ultimate essence. That’s why you will find no camera setting, no zoom, no auto-focus, no flash, and no video mode on the iPhone. Because it does not pretend to be a digital camera in disguise. It stands true to its nature — a connected device that provides the ability to snap pictures on the fly and share them. Thank you Apple for listening to what the mass of us users want. All several million of us. The iPhone camera is all that is needed.

The iPhone camera provides great images in most usage scenarios. It has a fantastic viewer, great management and transfer software, and offers a very simple user experience.

And guess what? This is the exact same philosophy that we, at qipit, have adopted for the design of our service since we introduced mobile scanning back in early 2005. Since then, we have been working with mobile carriers as far as Japan, and with consumers in Europe and in the US, to design a service that is intuitive, straightforward, ridden of hyped-but-useless features, and that delivers real value to you!

Apple and qipit are compatible in offering the same core design values for your benefit. DNA match.

But enough self-praise, and back to the testing: here are a few qipits made with my iPhone:

Fedex waybill.

Make sure you check the full public page to see the original and compare !

Inspirational Whiteboard

As you can see, the iPhone, when used with qipit, is great for publishing information found in books, on forms, on leaflets, or information that has been written on whiteboards.

So go ahead, try qipit with your iPhone to add another impressive feature to this marvel of innovation, mobile scanning!

Benoit.