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How Apple Kept the iPhone Secret
An anonymous reader writes "Bogus prototypes, bullying the press, stifling pillow talk — all to keep iPhone under wraps. Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches. One of the most astonishing things about the new Apple iPhone, introduced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld trade show, is how Apple managed to keep it a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development while working with partners like Cingular, Yahoo and Google."
Given the absurd numbers of rumours which abounded over the past few months, what is this "secret" of which you speak?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Step 1) dont tell anyone about it.
Step 2) dont deny it exists.
Thats about it realy.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I think most of us who tool around the macrumor sites had a pretty good idea of what they were going to release. The only 'secret' was when. I wasn't surprised by any feature the phone had.
Latewire
Everyone and their mother has been waiting for months, maybe even a year, for the official announcement of an iPhone. How exactly is this a secret?
Is this the Newton v2 or v3?
Honestly, I can't remember, how many lives has the Newton had so far?
Yes, you are.
Seems that Apple is keeping the secrecy going... questions that I have:
- What processor?
- How much "system" RAM in the thing?
- Can users install their own software? Rumor is that you cannot - you have to buy it from Apple or Cingular.
- What bluetooth profiles are available?
- Can I get shell?
I have a feeling that this is not going to be a geek's toy.
jh
It wasn't kept under wraps. We knew about it more than a year ago, we just didn;t know whay it looked like or who was involved. We didn't know any more about this product before it was revealed than we knew about the iPod, Zune, Macbooks, a new cell phone, or any other tech product before their releases.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
I'm not sure any job is worth this, let alone producing a gadget.
Sony ha
It's the first Apple product I really wanted.
A full fledged PC OS on a PDA, the phone part is nice too...
If they make those things for Sprint, I'd get one.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
... that anybody who cares already knew about.
aoeu
With all of this recent iPhone talk, why haven't I seen a single mention about Cisco already trademarking the "iPhone" and creating their own iPhone a month or so ago?
Have Cisco and Apple settled their talks over the trademark usage?
This is my signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Steve Jobs directed his gaze towards representatives from the different phone companies and threatened to kill their families and their neighbors and their neighbors grandchildren if they ever talked...
You don't even know IF my company exists, not to speak of WHAT we're going to produce.
I'm just gonna scrummage around in my closet for my old turtleneck and then watch out!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
as the size of the thing? Thats a fairly hefty unit to try and pass off as a phone.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
After checking the feature set on Apple's web site, mark me down for at least two of those things.
My Treo looks positively anemic in comparison. It is enough to overcome my disgust for Cingular too.
I dont think anyone outside of Apple anticipated just how well recieved that phone would be.
"...goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches." One of the years biggest tech launches? It's only been 10 days! And really, if the most interesting thing about your product is how you kept it secret, and it wasn't even that much of a secret, then you probably aren't doing so hot.
Microsoft should take a leaf out of Apple's book:
Microsoft: Microsoft does not comment on rumours or speculation
Us: It's real!!!
Apple: Nope, we're not making such a product
Us: Oh, OK then.
Summation 2
The sad part is that Apple used to be a lot better at keeping secrets. The big day would come, they'd trot out the new iPod or laptop or whatever, it would often be a near-complete surprise, and then they'd tell you that it's available for purchase that very day. The iPhone doesn't actually becaome available for six months.
Keeping something a secret until six months before release is much, much easier than keeping it a secret until release day.
It's interesting to see that Apple "gets it". They must have been planning on doing the iPhone for a long time - for there are legions of people who scour the FCC website regularly for new registrations to catch the latest and greatest cellphone to hit the market. And add to that the legions of Apple fans who probably scour the FCC website just incase there's something wireless going to hit the market.
That's why iPhone doesn't have approval (though I bet it already passes certification - they just haven't filed yet) - the instant it's filed, it's public information, and Apple hates that. (Especially since a lot of collateral gets filed - internal photos, external photos, user manuals, lab reports, etc).
Honestly, until now, I really didn't find anything that made me want a new cellphone (the one I have is great, but it's coming up in the years), so I wouldn't know what to get when it died. Guess I do now. It's pricey, but I paid more for my current smartphone...
And given how difficult it is to do a cellphone (very - carriers are very picky - if the color of the button is wrong... or if it has certain features like call timers or byte counters...), I wouldn't see Apple as being able to get one in since it has no experience. (I expected it to be some super-hyped rumor that someone started and everyone ran with it after being upset at how crappy their current phone was, or some half-assed thing as is typical reaction.). But I suppose GSM carriers are less strict than CDMA ones since you don't strictly need carrier approval to sell a GSM handset (just replace the SIM card).
Lol mate, like your face! Seriously looks are subjective but the general consensus was that the n-gage was ugly. Whereas in this case the only consensus is... you. And in my opinion it looks great so now we have 50% of people in a sample size of two think the iPhone is drop dead gorgeous.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
Do you think the year has already come to the end?
A year is quite long for technology advances and we are just at the very beginnings!
Well, iPhone is actually another cell phone.
It's by Apple, it has touch screen, plays MP3s and videos etc. etc.
Nonetheless is yet another cell phone, a 20+ years old technology and dozens of cell phones can do the same things as the iPhone does!
I'd rather say that Vanu's (claims for) new radio technology could be more interesting.
Let's wait some more weeks before talijg about "year's biggest tech launches".
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Wow, I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the designers of the Zune posted!
To me the untold story is how Apple managed to build such a strong buzz for their product, while avoiding any of the negative backlash that can accompany such a campaign (compare to Sony's PSP debacle right before the holidays, for instance).
They waged a viral campaign so effective that analysts and customers were basically demanding to be given the opportunity to purchase the new product--and they did it so silently that I'll probably get responses arguing that Apple didn't even do a campaign. THAT, to me, is the real story of secret-keeping.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Oh no your not!
Damn, pantomine season is over.
"Hey! The Iphone is comming!"
/ignore
drooling, rage, deception
"Hey! The Iphone is trully comming!"
drooling, rage, deception
"This year it is! The Iphone is comming!"
welcome to
surprise?
The same would happen with Duke Nukem, if it was ever released. Nobody would believe that it had finally hit the streets.
Jobs keeps the Apple engineers locked up in the dungeon under Building 7 with little food or water (If someone ask for more, he's sold to Oracle...MS treats their employees too well) until George Lucas shows up and puts his "Window Dressing-No Substance" stamp of approval on the product and recommends Hayden Christenson to be the spokesman for the product *shudder*. Only then does the Marketing Department get wind of the product and start fine-tuning the Reality Distortion Field...er...Job's presentation.
While Mr. Wu and many other analysts who scour the supply chains for hints of what might come had an idea that an Apple phone device was almost certainly imminent; no one outside the loop knew what the specifications, configurations, capabilities, software, interface (soft and hard) were going to be to a reasonable degree. Surely, many people guessed at the features. Some people actually got some right; many got them wrong but no-one got it all right. Most guessed incorrectly and were working from obscurity and not from secret, in-the-know information. It was predominantly wild-guessing. Therefore it can be asseted as a secret. If one guesses enough one is apt to guess right.
Isn't that what brute-force password attacks are about? One cannot claim that hackers knew one's secret password only because they were able to discover that a password existed and then were able to gain it by brute-force attack.
I think it can be classified as having been an unqualified bona-fide industrial secret to the extent they were able to keep the details about the device at large from the press and the public and even their competitors.
Actually, why am I hiding behind AC? No reason for it.
This is me. I made the parent post. Become my enemy, mod me down, I don't care.
You are still an ignorant consumer and still make me want to stab things.
Living With a Nerd
Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches
It's January 10th. Obviously this is going to be the year's biggest tech launch to date. Talk about hyperbole. Talk to me in November and then we can talk year's biggest tech launches.
Yet Another Phone, huh? The secret isn't so much how they kept this thing "under wraps" (as if) but how Apple is getting various media outlets to flog what appears to be Yet Another Phone (or PDA) as the "next generation", "innovative", etc.
At $500 a pop it may be Sony-ing it's way out of its target market too.
The initial users of this will be the Apple Inc. otaku and the bloody edge types who will buy one only to hack it hard&softwise. (Bless'them, their prybars & their knowledge of the obscure.)
Once set free this knowledge will lead to a firestore of devlopment.
Apple Inc is selling hardware here and software here.
It's OSX. It'll open, maybe like one of those funky aspirin bottles, but it'll open.
What's the name of that handwriting recoginition program that runs under OSX again?
Something to giggle about.
You could, um, turn off the Apple section in your preferences.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You're right on two out of the three. They do scratch easily and they are overpriced. You may not be a fan of the interface (I myself am not an apple zealot when it comes to UI), but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that the user interface is bad. Look at 95% of the other products on the market. Apple consistently has easier to use, more intuitive UI's than practically all of it's competitors. This is Apple's strength and they play off of this constantly with all of their products. That's like saying Nintendo makes crappy videogames. You may not like the hardware, you may not like the games, but you'll have a hard time convincing people that they make bad games. That's their bread and butter. They use it to push their hardware.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I suspect that the CPU will be the new Intel Santa Rosa CPU. The Santa Rosa is based on the Core architecture. The Apple iPhone will probably be the first phone with a dual core processor.
Like everyone else, I have no inside information at all, and this is merely speculation, but the performance of the device apeared to be pretty amazing.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I'm sure this is a nice device but, unless
it has a GPS in it that can be programmed
around, this phone is as useless as any
other geographically crippled handheld.
The ability to look up maps on google earth
is nice but, unless you actually *know*
where you are, you may as well be reading
comic book for directions.
Rio Carbon and the Rio Karma. Two mp3 players that are WAY older than the iPod, and MUCH MUCH easier to use.
Living With a Nerd
George Broussard? Is that really you?
After checking the feature set on Apple's web site, mark me down for at least two of those things.
You want it because all you saw was what Apple wanted you to see. You have no idea how it'll actually perform as a phone in ways that matter. I don't care how sexy it animates the UI if it's a shitty phone.
All the fervor is akin to GM showing off a new sexy looking car, and people wanting it, having no idea if it'll actually be a good car or not.
You won't know any of this until Apple gives units to users (or maybe SOME journalists who aren't too distracted by "OOOO, NEW SHINY APPLE TOY". You're an absolute fool if you "pre-order" this thing.
Please help metamoderate.
Nit-picking, I know, but still:
Therefore it can be asseted as a secret. If one guesses enough one is apt to guess right. Isn't that what brute-force password attacks are about?
A password hacked through brute force is still a password hacked, isn't it? It's not like you can say "sure, they did access all our data and steal our designs, but they did it with a brute force hack so really it's all still secret." The difference isn't that everyone was just guessing (e.g. a brute force attack) it's that there was no way to verify the guess before the announcement. That makes it not like a brute-force attack.
I'm sorry. It's a compulsion.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I never said there were no mp3 players with better interfaces than the iPod (I think my Sony Vaio mp3 player has the best interface), the main arguement was that Apple's UI isn't a bad UI and that it's better than most of it's competition.
Also, as a former Rio owner I felt the interface was clunky. Not hard to use, just clunky and bland.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I'd say they did pretty good.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Using a Rio, I can select my music by not even LOOKING at the damn thing. It's that easy to memorize where you are in the system and where things are located.
How does that constitute as being clunky?
Oh well, to each his own...I guess I just have a problem navigating using a mutilated nipple.
Living With a Nerd
not enough DRM in it.
This thing needs a Linux port.
Say, how much does a Beowulf cluster cost on the Cingular network?
That is what I am wondering also. I would guess that it wouldn't be that hard to program a widget to be a GPS display, but it would be even better if Google Earth would be on it and able to zoom in on your current position right at the start. The current GPS handheld industry would be very afraid if you could pre-download maps for certain regions in Google Earth prior to visiting a place (if there was no cell phone signal).
And don't all phones have to have GPS for e911? I know my phone does, but there is no way to get to those numbers for some reason.
I've got a Nokia 9300 that pretty much rocks the party.
I've got ssh and rdp clients for admin work, mp3 player, removable flash media, email, sms, good back-up restore functionality and works in linux too. There's even an OSS gui toolkit on sourceforge.
No, it didn't come from the Jobs Reality Distortion Field, but it allows me to have a life when I'm on weekend support rotation.
FYI, it's available now.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Death camp? Whooooooa! Where did that come from?
They knocked down the WTC? Whoooooooooa! I never saw that coming.
There are people in this world who are perfectly capable of ignoring the reality of what "everyone" is talking about. People are funny critters.
KFG
And all morning I've had thoughts dancing in my head about buffer overruns embedded into perhaps an MP3 or a picture used to execute some code to disable the security on one of these things.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
That's nothing. We are so secretive that even I don't know that I own a company.
The Rio Carbon was announced in August 2004, and the Rio Karma appears to have been announced around November of 2003.
While Rio can be credited as having birthed the first mp3 player back before they were known as Rio, the models you have mentioned were announced years after the first iPods hit the market in 2001.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Anyone notice how he introduced the iPhone with Beatles music?
You currently cannot obtain Sgt. Pepper from iTunes, so could this be a subtle hint that an agreement has been made between the two Apples?
That would be quite a coup as well.
Either that or the RIAA needs to jump his case...how dare he steal from those poor old men and their widows and use that copyrighted material?
Can defendants now cite Steve Jobs at MACWorld as a precedent for fair use?!
Yes, they announced that it had GPS. And while it wasn't explicitly stated, can you really imagine any possibility of it NOT "knowing" where it is when you fire up google earth on it?
I couldn't even be remotely called an Apple fanboy.
I don't own any of their products or heck, have a phone that was made in the last 5 years.
But to suggest that knowing those two facts are all that would be needed to create a knockoff to steal Apple's thunder is absurd.
It's like saying that had Microsoft known Apple was going to create a music player they could have made a better iPod ahead of time, instead of an iPod clone a few years later.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Can the iPhone OS X dual boot ?
How well does Windows CE run on it?
(ducks...)
RDF = Reality Distortion Field. I am kind of going through withdraw at this point. This is the first Macworld I can remember where I had nothing to go out and buy the next day. Sure I could get a 802.11n Airport Express Base Station, but where is iLife? Where is something interesting that is available today? And how long before the Apple faithful tire of gadgets... The Mac is a computer, not a gadget and it seems unforgivable, IMO, that all that was announced during the keynote were gadgets.
Yes, but the difference is when you guess the right password, you know nearly instantly that you are right. The same is not true of the various iPhone guesses.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Overpriced by your and the GP's estimation possibly, but they seem to be selling well enough, no? I'm not particularly happy with the pricing structure myself, but you can't disagree with the market - when the buyer and seller agree on a price the price is fair. You or I may not be able to afford it, but lots of people can.
Besides its content, the author has the inability to spell: "Before Jobs revealed the iPhone at Macworld, Apple had to keep secrets from multiple companees and its own employees."
There's a thread running on dailydave with some speculation as to the gory technical details of the iPhone. The thread includes a job offer from someone who is apparently an Apple hiring director :D
2 007-January/003938.html
http://lists.immunitysec.com/pipermail/dailydave/
Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
While we do know a good deal about the iphone, one thing I am still wondering about: what processor is it running on? Are they really running a full version of OS X? And if so, what's to prevent that thing from giving you second degree burns as it sits in your pocket?
I know that traditionally apple has been mum about the components in their portable devices. However, this isn't exactly another ipod, but not quite a portable computer either. I guess I just want a guarantee that it's going to be able to handle apps faster and more crisply than any other mobile on the market.
...I sit corrected at my desk then. I have no excuse for the distortion of my time perception other than my ineptitude:-)
Regardless. there is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING the iPod does (in my opinion, of course) that hasn't been done better...excluding appealing to the ignorant masses of course....which, from a buisness standpoint, you could say they have done better.
Still. Putting sugar on shit doesn't make it taste like something other than shit with sugar on it.
Living With a Nerd
I've been carrying a PPC-6700 (with qwerty keyboard) for almost a year. From what I've seen, I can do everything the iPhone does. Granted, mine is thicker but still...
It's just a phone there are many like it this one is Apples. Also there has been swirling rumors for ages about this supposed secret. Yawn no digg
Obviously you felt the need to come to slashdot and go to the Apple article and comment on it. I suspect you are actually just envious of Apple and Steve Jobs.
You really need professional help for your inferiority complex.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Man, how much does it suck to be someone who got one of the iPod renditions for Christmas right now ?
I'd be pretty pissed off if I just spend a couple hundo on an iPod then this thing comes out a few weeks later, I hope retail stores are ready for the iPod rush at the return counters.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
you haven't looked at the specs but are dissmissing it because it's an apple product?
Talk about fanboy. Why don't you go take a look at the specs. Apple has built a smart phone that is unique. While I personally won't buy one no matter what the cost, I have to give apple credit. it's an amazing phone with an amazing feature set. No phone made today is an where close in all the features. No interface is as unique. No other phone uses accelerometers to rotate the display on the fly(to watch movies or broswe), or to turn off the display if placed near the face so you can talk with out a glowing face.
Those two features are the kinds of things that set Apple products apart from every day crap. I won't buy one simply because i like simple phones, I don't need a smart phone. Though I might get it for the ipod features.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Did you watch the keynote speech? Did you read any of the summaries from it? Apparently not because it doesn't just make phone calls and play music. The LG Chocolate does both of those (as do many other devices). The key difference is that, if this device lives up to Apple's claims (which most of the products in recent years have), it will make phone calls and play music better than any other device has ever done it. That's why the iPod has been as successful as it has: it doesn't just play audio and video files; it plays audio and video files better. Apple didn't just cram an MP3 player into a phone or vice versa; they engineered a new device that was designed to do both equally well. It's not just a handheld device that happens to run Windows Mobile; it's a device whose software and hardware were designed from the ground up together to create a seamless thing that makes my life easier. No I don't work for Apple.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
If I had mod points, I would have modded you funny:-)
I'm not envious of either apple or Steve Jobs. I don't like apple products (never really have, cept the IIe) and I don't care how much you pay me, my free time is priceless. I wouldn't take a position that takes away the vast majority of my free time. No, I would rather work a 9-5 with a "normal" salary. I can feed and clothe my family, and keep them warm.
That's enough for me.
Living With a Nerd
http://www.engadget.com/2005/08/05/sprint-ppc-6700 -is-the-htc-apache/
I have the Cingular 8125, which is basically the same thing as Sprint's version.
running windows mobile 5.0 and a 200mhz processor, it is SLOW...although usable.
I do love my phone, but i think i'd love iphone much much more. it's everything that i would do to my phone to improve it!
I'd argue that the iPod isn't "shit" per se, but at the same time I wouldn't argue that it's the best there is.
You did hit on the reason why Apple does so well. When it comes to marketing, no one is as good as Apple in the mp3 player field. Even though the iPod may simply be a good option equivalent to many others and inferior to some, the truth is that Apple knows how to get the word out.
Anyway, kudos to sitting corrected. That's more than most here would ever do.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
They had the R&D department wear tin-foil hats around for 2 years.
What bothers me is they went for Cingular...
My guess is they made it a GSM phone because there are more GSM carriers worldwide?
I'll hug my treo until the CDMA version hits the streets. The MacBook and Mini have to wait for their new friend.
I like Apple's choices 99.5% of the time, just not that one.
... because it hasn't been released - it's only been announced. What we do know is that Apple are a thousand and one times better at managing their prospective user base than anyone else out there.
I can think of lots of reasons why it may not be very good as a phone, or as a media player, and I'm sure plenty of other people can, but not too many people seem to be doing other than raving about it. One exception was the Register, with a couple of recent "emperor has no clothes" articles (which drove lots of traffic to their letters pages).
So it's going to be released some time in June (or not if it's late), and it'll completely dominate it's market, (or perhaps it won't). We just don't know yet. The thing that we can reasonably assume is that lots of people will buy it whenever it comes out, because Apple's marketing has been so good so far. So we'll find out whether it's any good real soon after it's been released.
The secret being that I, for one, did not hear any official word from any involved parties until Jobs introduced it. there was nothing more than speculation, hopes, fears, lots of photoshop mockups, and a crapload of other fantasy.
But I challenge you to point me to one legitimate, trustworthy source who said there is an iPhone in development.
I liken iTunes to Microsoft.
Everyone complains that Microsoft makes their own standards which are incompatible with others, thus causing lock-in to their "sub-standard formats."
How many people you know won't buy something other than an iPod because "it won't integrate with iTunes?"
Granted, people (for whatever reason) seem to like iTunes, but apparently so does 90% of the mass computing market like Windows. The lock-in is still the same: iTunes-branded/managed/converted mp3s only work with iPods and the software itself.
Sound familier?
Living With a Nerd
OS X is now EMBEDDED. Apple can now take their OS and use it to run a whole mountain of consumer electronic devices.
So how long till they announce HD based widescreen iPods.
Andy
The secret is how much they paid Linksys/Cisco to be able to use the name iPhone.
c hive/2007/01/10/102198.aspx
http://www.gizmocafe.com/blogs/gizmo_cafe_blog/ar
Heh heh.
Mark
You don't even know IF my company exists, not to speak of WHAT we're going to produce.
I can top that with a pronoun change. I don't even know if my company exists, let alone what we're producing.
It would be even funnier to me if it weren't actually true.
You may not be a fan of the interface [...] but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that the user interface is bad.
Many phones and PDAs have sucked in the past, and I thought apple's would be the same, but when I saw this picture I thought: That is how a phone UI should be designed. Look at those large, clearly labelled buttons. I've never seen a phone with such a clear interface.
Of course, before dropping ~$500 on a phone I'd want to know it was nigh-on impossible to damage the screen - the last thing you want to do is crack your screen while going on dodgems or something...
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I think it serves as a great tech demo. Features that work will start showing up elsewhere, patents or no patents. Phones are a commodity business, the iPhone is a boutique product. Too expensive for wide adoption, but maybe a portent of things to come.
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/* Not sure if I'm making fun or not
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Which is why I've love to see a system that took a variety of passwords and provided you with a fake UI :)
I really don't get it. Laptops with WiFi, gobs more storage, and gobs more usability can be had for the same price point and no lock-in to 1 service provider. No real work can be done on this phone. Whereas a notebook with a EVDO card or a HSDPA card can get tons more done. I think this device tries to be too many things, and on that note it will fail. Wowee, It plays MP3s. So did my Samsung uproar, I quickly moved to a dedicated device that did just that. It plays movies and tv clips... Jobs thinks I want this on a phone? I don't want phone calls interrupting my user experience. I really do hope you can turn the phone function off when you don't want to be interrupted. JMO. And GPS? Even my cell from 5 years ago has GPS on it and location based services. This thing looks like an Axim. You can turn those into internet phones using wi-fi and Wi-Max in the future. That is where it is all headed anyways. Why tie it too old cellular network again? Sprint has the right idea moving to Wi-Max. It will kill Cellular in the long run.
Not to fret. I'm quite sure most slashdotters would have a problem navigating a non-mutilated nipple. Consider yourself a step ahead! ;)
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Countdown to complaints about scratches on the screen...
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
There are people in this world who are perfectly capable of ignoring the reality of what "everyone" is talking about.
And some of them have mod points.
KFG
To be a Newton, it has to be overpriced, at least twice what devices with similar capabilities cost. At first glance the iPhone meets this requirement. BUT it has an iPod inside.
The iPod, not the i-anything else, is Apple's killer app. There really is no equivalent to iPod technology. This is an iPod with a phone tacked on, and its price is not quite so silly if you consider it has the capabilities of a $200 Nano plus a $200 phone plus a big color screen. For those who must have an iPod, it's not too much of a premium, especially if it ends up getting subsidized by a carrier.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I guess security through obscurity works after all.
What?
The notion that Apple actually produced first-party, in-house, fake iPhones is a sublimely fascinating concept to me. Might any of these "official fakes" have been the ones we saw making rounds on the blogs in the past six months?
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
see, to me that is exactly the same reason why I don't like the iPod's interface: it looks like a toy, almost childish. Yes it's simple, yes it's clean and clear and colorful, but it looks like a toy. Now, nothing against things aimed at kids, some of them can be fun (I have been known to break out rock em sock em or even mouse trap every now and then) but still...I've never been a fan of any interface apple has put out, and this one is no exception.
See, what apple should have done is gotten liscense to use the touchscreen technology that alpine has where it still (kinda) feels like you are pushing a button...I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of trying to send a text message while driving with nothing to go on feel but a pane of plastic.
Living With a Nerd
Finally, someone talking sense. "scratches easily" is short hand for "OMG I put glass in my pocket with my keys and somehow it got scratched!" The only thing that changed between the regular ipod and ipod nano is that the nano was small enough for people to easily put in their pocket with their keys. The nano comes with a cloth sleeve for exactly this reason.
My last phone was extremely scratched up by keeping it in my pocket with my keys. For that reason when I got a new phone, I decided to keep it in my other pocket with my wallet. Four months and not a single scratch on it. Amazing how that works out, isn't it?
Agreed, although it's not that I can't afford it, it's that I feel you can get more for your money elsewhere. When the market deems something worth the price, then it's obviously worth the price to the market. The UI on the product is great, it just depends on if UI is more important to you than more storage space and additional options. This is why the geek and consumer markets will always be polarized. They can be melded together, it's just rare that they do. Geeks who design products for geeks usually aren't commercial and user interface designers by trade. Then again, geek's don't pull out the roll of duct tape for aesthetics, they do it because it works. That might not be the best comparison, but I think it gets my point across.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I still think your Phantom Game Console will ever be released
What's pillow talk, some kind of wireless pillow phone?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'd think Apple would have a pretty good defense: either that "i[Whatever]" tends to be automatically associated with it nowadays anyway, or that "i[Whatever]" is such a diluted term that it's un-trademark-able.
In fact, this is one case where I'd almost think Apple has grounds to sue Cisco, not the other way around. People at Cisco must have heard about the long-standing rumors of the [Apple] iPhone (even the rumors were using that name); to release a product of the same name makes them look like squatters intentionally trying to profit off Apple's mindshare.
You can tell that the word "iPhone" was always associated with Apple in several ways:
and, most persuasive IMHO:
Even the mere fact that the Apple article uses the generic term, while the Linksys one requires the qualifier, should be a huge clue. The bottom line is this: if anyone has a claim to the term "iPhone," it's Apple, not Cisco.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Make that two out of three that think it is very stylish. How about a Slashdot Poll????
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Better is subjective. The iPod interface is the best I've used. *shrug*
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
[quote]
I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of trying to send a text message while driving with nothing to go on feel but a pane of plastic.
[/quote]
Ummm. I don't like the idea of you trying to send a text message while driving, whether you have a keypad to feel or not.
include_once "bill_is_that_you.inc".....
29 mpg. YMMV.
That's why it's nice having a physical keypad that you can learn based on feel. I can create a new message, type it, and send it, all without looking at my phone with no problem at all.
The chances of me doing that with little to no mistakes (much less in a way that it is readable) with just a solid smooth surface are VERY VERY small.
Living With a Nerd
You know what I hate? Airplane food. Man! It's awful!
And VCRs with the blinking 12:00! What's up with that?
Smartphone interface which doesn't suck? I've heard the Symbian OS slated any number of times and recently four people I know gave up their complicated smartphones, for alternatives.
My dad stopped using his Nokia 6600 and has bought a Motorolla V3i, which he hates, completetly. I can't mention phones in anyway without being told how horrible the interface is and how is older phone was better, in the end I gave him my Orange SPV m500, which he loves.
My Friend chris, he used to have a Nokia 6680 he to complained it was no good and got a Samsung E900. Again I can't hold a conversation with him about phones because he hates he new one he doesn't like the interface and he finds the phone much more limited.
My little sister Tara, she had a Nokia 7610. Again the normal to complicated and too large complaints. She has a Nokia 6111 for this years contract, while she does prefer the newer phone she'll happily admit that she liked using the Symbian OS in retrospect.
Finally my mum originally she had a Nokia 7210, then a 7610 and now shes back to the 7210. Again she preferred the Symbian OS layout over the older 7210's because it was much clearer.
I've been using a Orange SPV m500 for 18 months, recently I upgraded to an O2 XDA Mini S. The phone cast £0 the contract isn't bad (£30 inc vat) and the 2gb memory card for it was £27.95 (including P&P.) There were things in the m500 I wanted fixed and the Mini S has them all (although I still wish the camera was better) its quick to turn on the inbuilt keybaord makes texting easy, WMP 10 interfaces great with WMP 11 on my PC and the way it sync's with Outlook is fine. Its easy to use if it had a 3.5mm stereo socket instead of 2.5mm, 40grams lighter and had a 3 megapixel camera which didn't have a crap lense, it would be the IDEAL phone, you wouldn't be able to do any better, or atleast I can't think of any way to improve it. (Ease of use based on slightly drunken hot girl being able to put her phone number in, it ranks a 10.)
Apple have finally managed to make their version, which will sync with OS X's version of Outlook whats exciting? Its not new, its not innovative and yet because this is made by Apple the people who make Ipod this will be 'cool'. Let me see the interface and then I'll try work up excitement just like I'm currently trying to figure why I would upgrade to an O2 XDA Global which appears to be a backward step.
Exactly. Usually there are candid shots of prototypes and all manner of specific information in the weeks up to MacWorld. This year was pretty amazing in how tight the seal was kept.
I have been unable to find any details of this new plan. You'd think some news source somewhere might have mentioned this.
n g-rear-and-taking-names-for-iphone/
Could you provide a link? The only info I found says that Cingular will announce the plan you need to get with the iPhone later. Nothing says that they won't make you get one of their existing plans.
Cingular's release:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/10/cingular-kicki
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
I currently have a 9300i, and it is already starting to show signs of breakup (loosening of keys, noises etc.). Previously I had a 6800 and a 9500, and both broke at the hinge. There were also numerous problems with the software. At least iPhone doesn't have hinges or many plastic keys causing problems.
They seemed to have kept the Nike+ipod secret until it was released. Didn't even hear any rumors until it was released. The iphone was pretty much a given that someday they would try to make up for the Rokr.
Two large companies like Apple and Nike joining forces (think stock prices) seems like something that people would have wanted to know about.
I'm not a Mac fanboi but I can appreciate them. With the iphone I know a good thing when I see it. If someone thinks the iphone is just another cell phone with a music player they need to go to the Apple web site and go through the whole demo. The interface is way too cool. With OSX underneath it they have a lot of potential for cool things. Plus they can sell you another set of subscriptions for ilife and OSX upgrades.
Macs and the iphone are a bit too expensive for the masses. That isn't their target audience. People have paid a lot to be early adopters of high end cell phones before.
Cisco's already put out a press release saying they negotiated with Apple for naming rights.
This
Check it out.
"Did you see the keynote. It's not just a phone + iPod, it's a smartphone (with all of the features you expect when you hear "smartphone") + iPod with an interface that doesn't suck."
Good thing it's not patented so now we can build the GnuPhone.
I could tell you. But then I would have to kill you.
Quote Lt.Com. Ivanova, Babylon 5: "Boom".
He met with Speaker Pelosi last November, didn't you know?
t h-nancy-pelosi.html
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2006/11/my-lunch-wi
And 1% is about 10,000,000 phones, at $500 (or $600) is $5 BILLION a year.
- doesnt-know-difference-between-dollars-and-cents-2 20362.php)
And 5% (like the Intel Mac) is...well you can do the math, but I better do it for the other guys who work for Verizon:
$5 Billion * 5 = $25 Billion
And it is huge if they can get anywhere near the iPod penetration rates - or even 1/5 of them!
Clamshells, I don't like them, but that is a personal preference.
(Verizon: http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/clips/verizon
Yes it's a cool interface and has great features, but I just can't see a virtual keyboard being truly useful. I want a pop-out / slide-out chiclet keyboard, period.
I like Aeroplane Jelly.
... and then they built the supercollider.
That's the whole idea. Setup honeypots and DDoS the cracker. In fact if you're being cracked, take a major chunk of IP address space and setup lots of virtual machines to keep the cracker real busy.
Apple's marketing dept is keeping their legal dept idle.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I'm a current (pissed off) Verizon customer;- what has me pissed is
1) I got a V3 Razr from verizon with r.01 firmware. I was able bluetooth mp3 ringtones, pictures to my heart's content using my OSX 10.3.8 G4 powerbook.
2) I had battery problems, then took the phone into Verizon; they sold me a new battery, and "upgraded" my firmware to get me better performance from the phone (what they told me at least).
3) I then found out that bluetooth had been disabled via new firmware!
4) I'm now paying per pic, can't do ringtones for myself etc. Needless to say, this was without me knowing what they were doing.
In short, Verizon is totally untrustworthy, and I will leave them ASAP. I was glad to see that Apple was going with another provider, but so many of the comments posted put Cingular in a bad light. I'd be worried that they also would pull some crap to basically force users toward their data xfer plans, of course racking up charges etc.
Can they actually be worse than Verizon?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Uhhh, I can do that with an iPod too, so what's your point?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Incorrect. Where did you get this blatantly false idea from?
... and then they built the supercollider.
This is how they kept it secret:
t /secretiPhone.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y243/johnnylocus
Havoc Video
They stayed alive thanks to their iMac and iBook but they've faded and are passe. Then the iPod almost made Apple a household name again. Now the iPhone? Apparently Apple is now a tech gadget company, their computing division will soon be gone. Much like IBM dropping its PC dominance for server and business consulting services.
Can I point out to you that Cisco's trademark is from about 1998? First used in commerce 1997-06-06? http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=9 96pnk.2.6
So no, if anything Cisco could sue APPLE for creating a confusing similar mark (not a lawyer, this is not legal advice)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I'm not sure any job is worth this, let alone producing a gadget.
I have a Google employee in my family. We got the same thing, except he doesn't even have a physical gadget to show for it.
The news are in, Apple is being sued by Cisco over the iPhone trademark, and I'm not surprised. Now what, these two are going to eat each other alive? Apple already announced the product, but Cisco pwns the name. What's it gonna be?
Check out Pandora by Music Genome Project
Do you by any chance employ a bespectacled male with a striped tie that won't lay flat and several other over-worked and under-motivated employees?
If so, I'm available for some contract work, but it'll require a trip out to may native Elbonia (as I don't have the means to leave here).
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
In my market for the 'iphone', they have cingular. Cingular is specing in their contracts that no one can join a class action lawsuit.
Picking unreasonable (for consumers) partners is one way to keep the project "under wraps"
Ouch! They chose Cingular? The leader in dropped calls? Apple, what were you thinking? I can already hear people yelling into their iPhones, giving up on them, and blaming Apple for making such a poor quality product, when it's the network. This is going to be a huge backlash for Apple. Oh well. As long as they learn something from it.
Now that Cisco sued Apple, we can't call it an iPhone till the storm blows over. To me, this reeks of arrogance on apple's part.
Apple stopped selling Powerbooks in May of last year. You obviously haven't been paying attention. ... We'll have to run more Apple stories for you.
...a Dashboard widget that emulates all the phone's functions (maybe actual calling could be a VoIP-type thing?) in screen-resolution-sensing actual size on my monitor!
With chocolate sprinkles!
I'm going to add one more thing to my own post.
...
I showed the iPhone to my trendy friend.
"Cool! I want one," he said.
I explained to him that, plan taken into account, it would cost almost as much as his PowerMac. (He got a used one.) He mentioned that because he likes to be out and about and hip and go to all the parties and what-not, he would get more use out of it than a PowerMac.
I wonder if the interface with Google Maps offers spoken driving directions through the speaker? This might just be something you could do with a widget, if there's a speaking interface for it. I know that the navigation system in my S500 is downright addictive, and a standalone nav system's about $300. So if you add the cost of the iPod ($200), the cost of the full-featured smartphone ($200) and the cost of the nav system ($300), now you're starting to talk
D
For all the secrecy, the iPhone looks a lot like some pictures on Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/possible -ipod-touchscreen-picture-156619.php from early 2006. They thought it was an iPod though. I think a lot of the cover was helped by the fact that nothing on the final device makes it look like a phone.
Now I can't help but wonder if this may be a preview of a near-future video iPod. Think about it: if you strip out the phone functionality (and thus hopefully much of the expense) from the iPhone, you'd have an video+music player+basic PDA that supports 802.11 synch AND has enough horsepower to buy from iTunes directly from the player.
Apple (speaking to Apple folks collectively)
Just publicly preannounce product and the general time.
Microsoft does it all the time. Granted, their product preannouncements often lie somewhere between wishful thinking and outright fraud, but it lets us know SOMETHING is coming.
You see, I just bought a brand-new PocketPC to replace my aging iPaq 3670, and planned to buy a bluetooth-equipped phone for data connectivity. Had I known that the iPhone release were imminent, I'd have held off on the upgrade and waited for Cingular to make the iPhone available.
Sometime prannouncing product and confirming rumors and specifying a general timeframe will WIN customers. Don't be stupid and pull an osborne by preannouncing a new version of product if it will kill current sales, but if it's a brand-new product line in a new market, you will likely win over NEW customers (I am NOT a Mac person, I think they're fine and all, but I find your GUI limiting) who are intending to buy competitors' products.
I COULD sell the new PocketPC when the iPhone becomes available, but with GPS and other software upgrades, I've pretty much committed to this device for at least a few years. In other words, you likely lost me as a new customer for the next two or three years because although I knew about the iPhone rumors, your constant denials led me to believe the launch was at least a year away.
Now, at least one rep at Apple knows who I am since I sent an email to this same effect yesterday, but I'm voicing it here and am wondering how many others very recently bought new phones or new PDAs either thinking the launch was a lot further off, or that embedded devices like this were not in active development at Apple?
I'm pretty sure the phone runs an embedded linux kernel with a special version of the OS X mobile AppKit on top.
The touchscreen is definitely capacitive. The chip is definitely Intel's new mobile x86 architecture.
Did anyone notice the lack of Flash plugin support on the NY Times demo?
You work for SCO, don't you?
It does have a button. Ok, just the one ;)
...and didn't come to an agreement.
Cisco Sues Apple for Trademark Infringement. From the article: "Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
SSH should be simple to do even without applications. All you need is a web site which provides an ssh client. This would be very easy to write, if it doesn't already exist.
The iPod owns around 70% of the MP3 player market. Apple expects to get 1% of the phone market during 2008. Not even this year. Next year. They know they have real competition here.
I bought both an original Newton and a Newton 2000 (upgraded to a 2100). I bought them used, after Apple stopped producing them, because they interested me. While the original Newton's handwriting is hit-or-miss (seems to work for some people, but not for me), the Newton 2000's handwriting is very, very good. It's easily on par with any modern handwriting recognition solution.
My guess is that the Simpsons episode hurt the Newton more than the actual quality of the handwriting recognition ever did :-)
Apple always has been and always will be a hardware company and doing things like suing employees to keep secrets is just a way of doing business. Let's be realistic. If some person acutally set up a web site with all of the iPhones pictures, features, and whatever else. What would happen? Yeah they can sue but a typical employee today has nothing. I rent and have no savings, so threatening to sue me is a pretty shallow threat. Fear is what keeps most people in line and Apple understands that. By the way, Cingular blows and that is why I will never own an iPhone.