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Apple iPhone Rumors Resurface
donkeyDevil writes: "Following the rule of 'i before e except before P,' rumors of an iPhone resurface in the New York Times (registration required).
The evidence: OS features, foiled acquisition attempts, PIXO relations, and the genius of Steven P. Jobs.
Unmentioned, Apple's tried phones before. PIE produced a nifty desktop phone design, Apple Europe produced some nice telephone-computer integration software."
There is an intersting discussion about this in the register. To summarise, it makes little sense for Apple to design and build its own phone - a partnership with Sony and Ericson would be more reasonable. Designing and builind a portable phone is much more expensive that building a MP3 player. All Apple wants is to integrate the phone into their digital hub.
Mobile phones are an extremely competitive market: if you bring out an overpriced phone (relative to the other phones on the market), it just plain doesn't matter how cool it is - you won't sell enough volume to make a profit. Makers like Nokia can afford to make uber-cool super-phones, because they enhance the company image and make you want to buy a cheaper Nokia phone. Apple doesn't have that kind of market model, so how are they going to succeed on their own?
What's your damage, Heather?
The reductionism of the history of Apple to "Wasn't that Newton a bad proposition?" is especially obvious and seems like the sort of journalistic conceit that pushes faked-up drama in a story. I mean:
The Newton might have lost Apple money, okay. But it lost Apple money for a variety of reasons -- among them the problem Apple's always had with supply chain on its products, and the way Apple collapsed in the laptop market for years before releasing the first shoddy Power PC powerbooks. To lump Apple's entire fortune as a company into that one product just to create a false sort of journalistic flow in the story is just lame.
Real story: There are some indirect signs that Apple may enter the PDA market again. They did once before, but they were a little ahead of the market and they eventually cut bait. Wait and see.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I'll tell you what *I* think needs to be done: integration of iPod with a full Palm OS capability.
One thing that keeps me from getting an iPod is that I already have too many damn gadgets that I need to function. Pager (work), cell phone (personal), Palm pilot, wallet, and keys. If I add a iPod to this mix, I run out of pocket space. And I don't want to clip three or four things to my belt.
I know that Apple is moving to include calendar and contact information on the iPod, but read-only access is not enough, and entering data through the five buttons + wheel on the iPod would be tedious.
iPod + Palm + phone *might* someday be even better, but a hard drive in a cell phone seems a bit much. I've never really liked the idea of being hooked to my cell phone through a headset.
This, of course, doesn't prove anything but it is interesting nonetheless.
Registrant:
Apple Computer, Inc. (IPHONE11-DOM)
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
US
Domain Name: IPHONE.ORG
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Eddings, Kenneth (KE557) eddingsk@APPLE.COM
Apple Computer, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
M/SAti 60-DR
Cupertino, CA 95014
408 974-4286 (FAX) 408 974-1560
Record expires on 15-Dec-2003.
Record created on 15-Dec-1999.
Database last updated on 18-Aug-2002 05:26:24 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NSERVER.APPLE.COM 17.254.0.50
NSERVER2.APPLE.COM 17.254.0.59
News Flash: After the iPod, iMac, iTunes, etc. etc., Steve Jobs today announced that from today he will be officially refering to himself as iI.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Err....mistake? From whose viewpoint? Apple got to service their customers first, got a cool product to entice the OS-agnostic to their machines for a while, and then once demand had died down a bit they added Win compatibility and now have access to that market too.
I don't see much in the way of a mistake being made there.
Cheers,
Ian
I'll tell you why not. Because Apple doesn't produce cookie-cutter products. Steve Jobs can't just go to the company that builds Nokias and say, "Produce XXXXXX of these, but oh yeah -- make the case white and silver."
For Apple, it doesn't work like that. Not anymore. Apple has come the conclusion -- rightly -- that the ergonomics and user-interface are just as important as functionality. No, they are integral to the functionality of the device.
For most people this is so obvious that it usually gets overlooked. A great book that demonstrates this is The Design of Everyday Things -- if you haven't read it and are in product engineering/design, I highly recommend it.
The point is, what truly sets Apple apart, is its attention to detail. The small details can make or break a product, and they know that. It's particularly well-evidenced in their laptop designs and the iPod. If you haven't had a chance to play with either of these, find someone who owns one and spend 30 minutes of your life with it, and you'll see what I'm saying...
blog |
Apple's certainly got something up its sleeve when it comes to telephony, but everyone's hung up on the hardware aspects - why not think about software for a second?
.mac or OS X Server as some sort of add-on.
With QuickTime 6 (especially) the potential for clear, bandwidth-adaptable communications is right in the OS. Anyone who's seen streaming QT6 broadcasts knows that it's a quantum leap in quality over previous incarnations. There is a strong likelihood that some form of realtime video conferencing will be built into future versions of iChat - using Rendezvous and the Address Book to locate people across LANs and WANs, for instance. Now, eliminate the video component, and imagine those algorithms being brought to bear on multiple audio streams. You could pack quite a lot of conversations on a Gigabit Ethernet connection...and with the appropriate gateways, iChat becomes a softphone. I presume Apple is already up to speed on H.323 and its rapidly rising successor, SIP.
Furthermore, with the emergence of T.38 Fax-over-IP, Apple could integrate a T.38 client into the OS (as part of Print Center or a Telephony Center) to work with FoIP servers like XMediusFAX.
I've even heard that Apple might integrate IP faxing into
Future versions of Xserve might be used as VoIP gateways and softswitches - combined with the usual hardware from Cisco, Alcatel, Avaya etc.
If there is a hardware "phone" it might not come from Apple. Most likely it will just be a 3rd-party phone or PDA loaded with a combo of Bluetooth and 802.11g to allow synchronization and wireless "roaming" in-office, respectively. I've seen solutions like this (minus Bluetooth) running on Compaq iPaq PDAs, so there's no reason Apple can't do it.
Did anyone read the article about the design of the iPod? Apple basically bought all the parts off the shelf, with the exception of the case. They didn't build it all from scratch, and used existing parts wherever possible. So given the relative success of the iPod, the logical choice for the design of the iPhone would be to partner with Sony or Ericsson, let them provide the guts, and let Ivo dream up the nifty case.
.mac, downloading all your contacts and stuff? That's assuming you don't spring for the Bluetooth adapter.
Then consider all the new stuff in Jaguar. Some posters have said, "Like including chat and address books in the OS is anything unusual". Well, it's not... except that Apple is all about the "Digital Hub". What do you wanna bet the iPhone will have the ability to sync with
The biggest problem with phones is they aren't like MP3 players, in that phone services are localized. You can't use your bitching Sony with Nextel, or whatever. If they want the phone to work, they'll need to have the best penetration possible in terms of phone use.
I think there's at least a decent chance.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
It's that time of the year when someone has to post a link to this other idea from Apple. :)
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
1) Palm is tanking, badly.
2) Handspring has yet to support OS X native despite platitudes for over a year.
3) Windows CE devices are not Mac compatible.
4) Sony doesn't support Mac OS directly.
Apple's PDA section of the digital hub is about to get very sparse and remain unsupported if it doesn't do something fairly soon. Options are:
1) Kick Handspring in the nuts. (Please do!)
2) Buy Palm outright.
3) Convince Sony to play nice.
4) Live with outdated PDAs.
Or, in my not so humble opionion, dump the whole problem by making the right move and producing (either on their own or in cahoots with a mobile phone manufacturer) a combined PDA/phone.
Think about it, it doesn't make sense to spend time and effort syncing your PDA, your Phone, your iPod, and your desktop. It makes a lot more sense to start putting them into one device, and syncing that to your desktop.
Battery life is now reasonable to support it, Apple has repeatedly proved that the can put out UI that makes a device world class. (See the iPod). And nobody else out there wants to support Apple's hub strategy, they all want a share of the Bill Gates' market.
While I don't agree that Apple will likely produce a proprietary phone. They don't have to. All they have to do is work their interface magic on the front end of one.
Who care's who's 'talk to the network guts' live inside the phone, at that level, there is no differentiation from Nokia, to Erricson to Kyocera. What's going to make thing killer is a new 'front end' that makes your phone a better tool. And who's produced the most innovative tools in the last 15 years?