Inside Apple's iPhone

DECS writes "Despite CNET's wild claims, Roughly Drafted is reporting that Apple's market position and recent performance show the company has the ability, capacity, and interest in shaking up the mobile phone industry. Something that service providers, manufacturers, and consumers desperately need."

Comments

Cell providers are the problem, not the phone

[lhaeh]

There are lots of easy to use phones with every feature you could want, great UI, etc.

The problem is cell providers who make most phones ones that force you to pay ridiculous fees for things that you should be able to get for free (like ringtones, backgrounds, etc). This is the reason why apply had problems with the iPhone the first time around, because the cell companies wanted to charge people for being able to transfer songs to their phones.

For me VOIP on a PDA is the way to go. Works great with with my wireless broadband, or wi-fi hot-spots if they are around. Not the most reliable setup for incoming calls, but having a $10/month pager solves that problem.

Re:Cell providers are the problem, not the phone

[dangitman]

I haven't seen any phones with a "great UI." Come to think of it, I haven't even seen any with "every feature I could want." Which ones are you talking about?

Re:Cell providers are the problem, not the phone

[Lord Kano]

I haven't seen any phones with a "great UI." Come to think of it, I haven't even seen any with "every feature I could want." Which ones are you talking about?

I had that in 1994 when I bought my Motorola Flip Phone. Fantastic UI, 10 or so digit LED display. 1-0 numbered buttons, a Send and an End key. It let me make and receive telephone calls where ever I was.

Perfectly simple UI, dial and send. All the features I wanted, placed calls. I already have a PDA, my PDA plays MP3s. I already have a digital camera. I don't want or need GPS in my phone; if I wanted a GPS receiver, I'd buy one.

I want a phone that works well as a phone, and nothing else. I want a phone that I won't lose if while it's on my desk I happen to place a piece of paper over it. I want a phone that won't detonate on impact if I happen to drop it onto the cement sidewalk. I want a phone that won't get scratched up by me putting it into and taking it out of my pocket.

It seems to me that we've spent the last 13 years solving "problems" that didn't exist.

LK

Re:Cell providers are the problem, not the phone

[dangitman]

Perfectly simple UI, dial and send. All the features I wanted, placed calls. I already have a PDA, my PDA plays MP3s. I already have a digital camera. I don't want or need GPS in my phone; if I wanted a GPS receiver, I'd buy one.

But when you get a phone that "has every feature (one) could ever want" then the UI becomes very important. I don't want a PDA, I want a phone with better calendar and contact features, for example.

I want a phone that works well as a phone, and nothing else.

Well, I'm pretty happy with that. But the GGP post was talking about a phone with every feature imaginable, and a great UI. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. I get around this problem mostly by using my computer as the interface for entering data, via bluetooth. But I'd still like to see a better UI for navigating the data on the phone, for when I am away from my bluetooth-enabled computers. A laser-projection qwerty keyboard would be great for sending text messages, I hate entering alphanumeric via the numeric keypad. Heck, even the ability to plug in a USB keyboard would be a great improvement on most phones.

Even if you just want a telephone with no extra features, sometimes it's nice to look up numbers from your address book if you haven't memorized the phone numbers. Most phones seem to make this simple feature an unnecessarily clunky task.

Re:Cell providers are the problem, not the phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a phone that works well as a phone, and nothing else.

For me that would be like wishing back for PCs without Internet. The difference between a non-connected PC and a phone without mail, internet, calendar, IM, camera/MMS etc. is, for me, more or less the same.

Form, not Function

[calciphus]

Apple sells form, not function. They sell image.

Why doesn't the iPod publish audio specs? Because it under performs compared to every other player in the market. How does a minor upgrade in processors constitute a 37% increase in speed?

Expect the iMobile (not iPhone, remember) to be expensive, poorly integrated with service providers (or an MVNO) and a mediocre phone / mediocre mp3 player.

But it'll have HYPE, and so it'll sell. That iPod you just bought your kids for Christmas will be old hat, and the new iMobile make phone calls, text message badly, shoot crappy pictures, and make the cheerleader want to go out with you.

Or at least that's what the ads will say. Maybe I'm just too jaded to bite into the Apple hype. Too many worms.

Re:Form, not Function

[bucky0]

Why doesn't the iPod publish audio specs? Because it under performs compared to every other player in the market.

Not trying to be difficult, but what does that mean? I mean, granted, I don't listen to music on great headphones or anything, but every CD player or mp3 player I've tried has sounded fine to me. And why would they need to release the specs? Can't people just test it themselves?

Re:Form, not Function

[vought]

I've wandered a bit into corporate culture and away from the impending iMobile. I apologize. But for the iMobile to reach the maximum number of consumers, it won't be a powerful product. It will flash Apple's minimalist design and carry a premium price point, because you're not just buying a cellphone, you're buying "cool".

That entire paragraph was written with the kind of blissful ignorance that discounts the idea that form can be powerful. The parent seems to think that if something is cool, it _can't_ be powerful - that the two concepts are mutually exclusive.

What prevents cool from being powerful? Nothing.

Check out Mac OS X Server. It is quite plainly "cool" and it is demonstrably as powerful or more so than competing products.

XServe RAID - extremely competitive on price, powerful, and very "cool" - the fit and finish of this product far surpass anything else in the space. The management software is very flexible and powerful.

The click wheel and hierarchical interface of the iPod are two more examples. How much could you do with four poles and a clicker? You can provide users with a way to navigate music and build a playlist without even looking at the device - if you're Apple.

The built-in handle and kid-proof shell of the teardrop iMacs is another example.

Form can quite easily be demonstrated as power. I think you're too wrapped up in the idea that something has to have myriad dialog boxes, option sub-menus and configurators to be "powerful".

Re:Form, not Function

[Splunge]

There is no on/off control and the battery life sacrifices that result are dumped on the end user. Huh? Just hold down the play button and it shuts off.

Re:I wonder what they'll use DRM-wise.

[dangitman]

I can't help but think of how Apple's iTunes cripples the MP3 industry by restricting use with proprietary formats.

MP3 is itself a proprietary format. And iTunes (and iPod) fully supports MP3. So how can iTunes be crippling the "MP3 industry" when it supports MP3?

Re:Affordable?

[jcr]

But if it works well AS A PHONE, it gets my vote.

Well, the iPod sells like crazy, because it works very well as a music player. This lesson is not lost on Apple: notice how they've been very careful not to add a feature just because they can, and when they add something like games, they don't clutter the UI. It's the same number of clicks to get to a song on an iPod today as it was on the first ones they shipped.

If Apple brings out a phone, one thing you can count on is that they will have really studied what's good and bad about the existing products. It will be very, very easy to look up a number in your address book and dial it, to record your voice mail messages, to capture and save a number from an incoming call, to set your ring tones, etc.

-jcr

Shaking up?

[Lord Kano]

Are they going to building a new competing cell network? Are they going to lower the cost of airtime? Cheap flat rates for unlimited plans?

If not, all they're doing is releasing a new phone. Hella cool or not, it's still just going to be a new phone.

LK

The real problem with cell phones...

[Rix]

Is that all the service providers want to wall you off in their own little managed garden.

For obvious reasons, Apple isn't likely to solve this problem.

TFA is garbage.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the CNET article linked to by TFA:

However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits.

Somehow, this is misinterpreted and twisted into the following passage in TFA:

Kanellos starts out by inventing a series of ideas to critique: an imagined gushing review of the iPhone, then a hypothetical Apple colostomy bag, then invented memories of historical products, supposedly from Apple, including a "random video camera" and previous cell phones. ... Facts are optional at CNET, where writers can make up ideas and invent quotes to support their agenda.

If anyone is inventing quotes and attacking strawmen, it's the Apple fanboy who runs roughlydrafted.com. It's pretty clear to me that Kanellos is suggesting that an Apple phone would be up against stiff competition, and that he expects it to be quickly forgotten like countless other gadgets. Nowhere does he attribute these "random video cameras" and other failures to Apple.

Oh well. At least he gets some ad revenue out of the Slashdotting. Maybe he's not such a dolt after all.

Will it be able to make phonecalls?

[sheldon]

That's my biggest problem with most of the cell phones out today. They can play music, games, look pretty.

But very few of them do the basics well... i.e. make phone calls. My old Nokia would lose signal. My new Samsung, the vibrate isn't powerful enough, and the ring isn't loud enough.

Oh yeah, but sure, it has a camera phone and will do all these other cool worthless things.

I doubt Apple is entering this market to make a cell phone. They probably just want to make an iPod that can occasionally make phone calls.