Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2007 > January > 09 > Entry
The iPhone is real: now what?
Few in the tech industry were surprised today that the long-rumored iPhone from Apple is real.
What is surprising is that five months before the thing is even available through Cingular, it already feels like a clear victor against its clunky, hard-to-use and inelegant competitors.
Assuming the device works as advertised and doesn’t have some crippling design or interface issues, the iPhone manages to cram MacOS onto a nice-looking touch-screen-based device that brings together the iPod video (now with widescreen capabilities); Web browsing, chat and photo capabilities from Mac computers; and innovative ways to manipulate information with your fingers.
Plenty of ink will be spilled on what the iPhone can and can’t do, but by including WiFi capabilities, GPS features, syncing with desktop applications and fingers-only navigation that already screams, “Eureka!” Apple may be driving a huge stake through the heart of the cell phone hardware industry.
My prediction is that it won’t be the iPod features or Web browsing that’ll sell the iPhone — it’ll be the tactile innovation allowing users to move through menus, zoom in on Web pages and photos, and zip through e-mails and voice mail messages with just a few finger movements. Anyone who has gotten used to the two-finger scrolling method on Apple laptop touchpads knows that it’s hard to go back once you’ve gotten used to such an innovation.
Cell phones, even “smart” phones like the Treo and Blackjack, are relatively difficult to use and expensive and have more buttons than are probably necessary. Even though the iPhone’s price is high ($499 and $599 depending on the included amount of flash memory), if you consider the price of buying a high-end smart phone and an iPod Nano, it doesn’t seem so outrageous.
The true test of whether it’s the breakthrough product will be when it’s available and in people’s hands — will it give the same thrill as the iPod did the first time everyone learned to use its touch-wheel?
Start saving those pennies. If it works as promised, the iPhone is going to profoundly change the communications industry, perhaps as deeply as the iPod changed music.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Gadgets, Phones
Comments
By SallyD
January 10, 2007 12:04 PM | Link to this
People who will own the iPhone will have more car accidents than those who do not since they will no longer have the touch and feel of the dialing pad.
I thought that iPhone was a Cisco or Nortel product name!
Omar replies: from the New York Times story -- "Apple chose to name the new phone iPhone despite the fact that Cisco Systems, the network and consumer wireless company, has recently introduced a Wi-Fi-based phone with the same name. Mr. Jobs had been negotiating with Cisco executives over the trademark in recent days. Both companies claim the name."
By Brocktoon
January 10, 2007 11:58 AM | Link to this
Let's remember that this is a 1st-generation product, and merely the first in what will be a long line of telecommunications products from Apple.
Look what they've done with their desktop, laptop and iPod lines: two out of the three have expensive, high-end models, mid-range products and low-end models (the laptops, currently, skip the middle step).
If history is any indicator, we can expect several tiers of iPhones in the future. And, as we've seen with their other products, Apple is not averse to decreasing price (or maintaining price and seriously beefing up specs).
Some of the same negatives were said about the iPod when it debuted � no user-replaceable battery; not enough storage; too slow.
We all saw how THAT product tanked. :-)
By JT
January 10, 2007 9:43 AM | Link to this
Thought the exclusion of 3G was odd too, although WiFi goes a long way towards making up for it. The price will be a hurdle $500/600 (WITH a 2yr contract from what I've read) will keep many out of play. Even at a lower price, a touchscreen-only interface is problematic in a phone for a few reasons: get a screen protector, and give up dialing by feel. With my Treo, I can dial/type by feel very well, and use a mem card instead of a dedicated mp3 player. Very affordable by comparison. That said, the iPhone seems to be a very impressive marriage of soft/hardware, that will please many (I'd consider getting one) and force existing competition to step up. Love the OSX on the desktop, and it looks impressive in this application. Hope there's a user-replaceable batt.
Omar responds: I'm unsure as to what'll happen with pricing -- cell phone carriers have a history of dropping prices on products quickly (look at how fast the RAZR went from a premium product to a giveaway), but Apple is usually a lot slower about price drops unless a new version of a product is being introduced. I wouldn't expect the iPhone to drop in price for at least six months, maybe longer, especially if demand is huge and supply is tight, unless a 3G version with more memory is introduced late in the year or next January.
It doesn't look like the battery would be user replaceable, but I could be wrong about that.
By MDominguezMD
January 10, 2007 9:17 AM | Link to this
Having a Cingular 8525 for only a month, I won't be upgrading soon. But one thing likely worth waiting for would be the 3G version. Having used both the EDGE network and the 3G, it would be hard to go back.
By Ryan Joy
January 9, 2007 7:41 PM | Link to this
Having just bought the Blackjack, I'm not exactly in a position to get a brand new smartphone. But this thing looks amazing and if it is able to maintain the fluidity of a Mac on the small screen, I'll be shelling out some money for this one.
A couple of things bother me though: finger prints and the seemingly absent support for 3G networks?!?! It's great that Safari will be the best mobile browser out there, but it's not as impressive if you're surfing at a crawl.
By Brocktoon
January 9, 2007 5:53 PM | Link to this
This is the culmination of Steve Jobs' strategy, which began with iTunes and iPods for Windows and continued with Apple's switch to Intel processors (and the ability to run Windows OS on new Macs). The creation of this device puts all those moves -- inexplicable at the time -- in perfect perspective.
The dropping of "Computer" from Apple's corporate moniker aside, through the inclusion of OSX as it's operating system this phone has the potential to drive more consumers to Apple and the Macintosh itself than the iPod ever did.
This is epic.
By AB In Norman
January 9, 2007 4:23 PM | Link to this
There are a lot of AMAZING things about this, but one of the less-glamorous ones stands out to me: "visual voicemail."
How come nobody else has figured out a way to let you get voice mail messages in an order that makes sense, or see who sent them before opening?
A lot of the other things are cool, but that's the first one people should be copying.