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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."
Is this the Newton v2 or v3?
Honestly, I can't remember, how many lives has the Newton had so far?
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.
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
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.
Actually I'm currently using a smartphone that I thoroughly enjoy using.
Its a Motorola E680i, it uses standard SD Cards
and yes it does run linux.
Their two new models, the A1200 and the E6,
also run linux and use standard SD cards.
You make a good point. This is why Apple will never be really big. This is why they originally failed in the PC business and their current computer business is stalling. They just want to control everything. They will not let the creativity of the entire computer industry work in favor of their products.
Essentially, Apple wants anything running on an Apple product to be either developed and provided by Apple or provided by another party which is under contract from Apple so that Apple still has control over the software. As you said, that is a recipe for failure, because things new and exciting usually come from unexpected places, which means Apple will never feature anything new and exciting, which means they will always be trying to catch up.
Admittedly they have had some success with mobile devices, and that is because people are not yet used to running third party software on mobile devices. But that is going to change soon, and then the iPhone will be just like the Apple computers -- an expensive and cute looking gadget which never supports the software you need.
It will be a shame too, because hardware-wise this phone is far ahead of anything else out there, because it completely removes the key pad and replaces it with a huge screen.
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
Yeah, seriously! No Wi-Max support? Lame.