Slashdot Mirror
Why the iPhone Keynote Was A Mistake
jcatcw writes "Mike Elgan at Computerworld lists six reasons why it was a mistake to make the iPhone keynote at Macworld. He argues that extremely high expectations can only lead to disappointment for consumers and investors. The focus on the phone during the keynote also took away from the Apple TV announcement, put iPod sales at risk, gave competitors a head start, and (perhaps worst of all) ruined the company's talks with Cisco over the iPhone name. From the article: 'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones. The problem Apple now faces because of Jobs' premature detail-oriented announcement is that of dashed expectations. When customers expect more and don't get it, they become dissatisfied.'"
The worst thing is the amount of time there is for your significant other to hear about the new iPhone and hide the credit cards before release day.
Beep beep.
I still think the iphone will sell a lot, apple is still riding the coolness factor they created with the ipod.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
According to an Andy Inhatko article in the Chicago Sun-Times, the phone is far from finished. In my opinion, Jobs introduced it only to kill the enormous hype that had been created and if let loose any longer, could hurt more that benefit. So I think he had no option.
Right at the start of the presentation, Jobs says something like "When's it going to be available? We're shipping them in June -- we're announcing it today because we have to go get FCC approval... We thought it'd be better to introduce this today rather than let the FCC introduce this".
Judging from all the rumours about the Zune the future iPods that have been helped along by FCC documents, I think they made the right call.
I hadn't thought of the iPhone cannibalizing iPod sales. Seems as if they are forcing thier customers to pick on or the other: a lot of features (iPhone) or a lot of storage space (iPod). Perhaps if they offered a much larger capacity iPhone, they wouldn't have that problem. Of course, it'd be $1,000 or something...
Clearly I forgot to equip my +5 Codpiece of Karma.
All valid points, but it will affect competitors as well. Right now, people in the consumer smart phone market will be at least tempted to hold out and wait for the iPhone. Since those companies are already in the market, and Apple is not, who will it hurt more? Also, I think its good to announce 6 months out, with the 2 year cycle of cell phone plans. This gives consumers enough advanced notice to decide about entering into a new plan now, or just extending their old plan until the iPhone is available.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Blackberry Pearl has been released to first t-mobile and then to cingular without as much hype as Apple phone. And its getting pretty good traction. A solid phone overall, with *real* keyboard. And will come out the eventual winner - though they are not in the same category.
Wow, kudos to the submitter and the article writer -- while speculative, it makes logical sense and uses existing evidence to predict future events. See, this is the sort of story /. needs more often. ...
Having said that, I think that no force in the world (not Microsoft, not even Apple) could make iPods stop selling -- I don't think that by having the main attraction of the keynote be the iPhone makes the iPod any less the world's most watched MP3 player. Apple TV may be a little less stable and visible, so that getting hurt is a more legitimate concern, but it doesn't make sense to delay the announcement -- who knows what Apple is going to spring on us next?
games journalism blog
"He argues that extremely high expectations can only lead to disappointment for consumers and investors."
In that case they shouldn't ever announce any cool products ever again. Seriously, what kind of logic is that? Apple makes cool things so people put unrealistic expectations on them. People do the same thing with Google, but Google still releases new services. The new stuff might not match the hype but Google and Apple can't change how much people obsess about them.
If they had waited to unveil the iPhone, then most of the details would have been leaked beforehand, giving competitors a head start and raising consumer's expectations even higher. Just look at all of the iPhone speculation we've been hearing for the past six months.
"Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing."
The seemingly obvious explanation is that Steve Jobs needed a better negotiating position for something. So he announces it, gets a major media circus, half a billion eager buyers, Wall Street ready to punish anybody who doesn't jump on this product launch, and then goes back to his negotiating partner with a much stronger position.
It could be the 3G network - Cringely's written a bit about Cingular insisting on selling its own music store items over 3G, which is why Apple is on EDGE only. Maybe the iPhone trademark... he made a point of boasting about patents (read: patent suit). Maybe something else - I haven't finished watching the whole keynote yet.
Unappreciated gem from the Keynote - Jobs made the audience a point of showing them pictures of penguins on the iPhone. I don't think anything Jobs does these days is uncalculated. Oh, and Mach/xnu is slow...just sayin'.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's already dead in the water for me if they stick with being limited to one carrier. I don't care if it's possible through some loops to make it work with other carriers; If they limit my choice from the start, I won't be wasting my money on it.
Then again, it is also a very nice bottle opener, an electronic razor, a blowdryer, a mousetrap......
Steve Jobs clearly explained why they announced it so early in his Keynote. They needed FCC approval, so if Jobs didn't do the keynote this early, then the FCC would have been the one to announce the iPhone. This probably would have increased anticipation, and possibly even increased the amount of dissatisfied customers.
Some of the things the author talks about that the phone can't do, nobody really uses anyway. Voice Dialing? My old phone had voice dialing, and it was the most worthless piece of crap technology I have ever used. Rarely worked correctly, so I never used it anyway. 3G Internet Access would have been a nice feature, but Jobs mentioned they were planning on this in a later version of the product. As for Microsoft Outlook... who uses it these days anyway? I sure as hell don't.
I agree the iPhone has much to be desired, but it is still MUCH better than any other phone available in the US to date. I only wish the iPhone was just a little bit cheaper.
google.slashdot
I for one had raised expectations. I was very disappointed on the 8GB limit. I have a ton of music and was expecting something on the order of a 30gb at a minimum for storage.
But what I think REALLY hurts is the Cingular tie in. I was hoping to have a phone not tied to a contract or carrier. VERY disappointing.
just mention right away that the ipod does far less than pretty much every high end MP3 player you can buy. How many happy ipod users are there? I think as long as the iphone does what it advertises and does it with style and ease (like the ipod), it will be a great success.
i dont think apple is really going after the IT crowd with this, they are the only ones who will complain because it doesnt have feature X, rather than focusing on how well it performs the things it can do.
From the moment the iPod was announced it seems that a commentary on Apple isn't complete without some suggestion that the iPod is in terrible danger. Eventually, maybe it'll get supplanted by some other cool little gizmo, but for now it ain't in danger guys. If he's referring to the idea that people will stop buying iPods waiting for the iPhone, I doubt that would be all that big of a sales hit....the iPhone will, for a while at least, be more far more expensive than an iPod, for far less capacity. I won't be trading in my 30GB iPod any time soon.....unless it's for an 80GB.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
took away from the Apple TV announcement the apple tv that set the record for apple's online sales?
...I am pretty sure by the time the iPhone comes out, there will be significant spec improvements. I don't know how much "wiggle room" they'll have after being granted FCC approval, but I would expect them to use it to the maximum possible effect.
It's a sure thing that by the time it's released, their major competitors will have produced similar (if not quite as slick) devices at markedly lower prices, so Stevie J. likely has a plan.
Or maybe this is just naiveté about business! We shall see...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
at this point i have a nano,
one of the free cell phones (POS) one gets when they sign up for service,
and blackberries / windows mobile devices are over priced and under powered
so the idea of the iphone really excited me, until I thought about. This is not a consumer product, at least no more than the average smart phone. There is no way I can affored the 1000+ real-dollars the iphone is going to cost in its 1st year of service.
What apple needs to do is release another iphone, only without the phone, kinda like Palm's LifeDrive.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
I was talking to someone pre-iPhone announcement about what cell phones should be.
One of the key features I wanted. make something that doesn't do all of those things I don't want but does the things I do want well. Phones have been developing crazy unusable features like mad for years.
Do less but do what you do well.
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
The iphone is a play against the "merging" of phone and ipods. Thats all. Its a long term play, as they expect to get the price down and more service providers over the years.
I love the way all pundits are smarter than jobs, yet the company's track record is amazing (I'm a stock holder since the 90s).
Its cool to know the best
Competition has much better products with better UI, cheaper and higher definition. Who in the right might would get a box just to view low-def videos from apple's website.
Compare and contrast
iPod launch (wiki - little to no pre-publicity
with the iPhone - where we are seeing every last bit of information from tech specs, usability, form factor down to projected price points. I believe the iPod launch worked because even though there were plenty of detractors, ultimately the device was in peoples hands and proving itself. The pre-launch on the iPhone opens up too much opportunity for competitors to steal ideas and be at market in a similar timeframe, and worse it lets everyone make a decision about the product before they get one in their hands - which is ultimately where hearts and minds are won.
I believe apple makes some of the most user friendly devices around, and they should focus on getting them out to market (and THEN hyping the mother-loving goodness out of them).
I think it is great how companies are finally crossing over market lines and coming out with better products. I assume its because competition got so fierce within markets that entering new, traditionally artificial divided-up markets was not a bigger challenge. Now, just be sure to be ready to duck and jump when you switch brand names!
Dear god, you guys are actually making me defend Apple. And Cingular.
Wow.
Guys, there are only two GSM carriers in the states -- Cingular and T-Mobile. You might have heard of T-Mobile, they have this rather popular device called the Sidekick that only works (really works, anyway) on their network.
Lame? You bet.
I don't think Apple feels they where going anywhere with Cisco, and that they had nothing to loose. There is some speculation that Apple thinks Cisco abandoned the trademark, and that Apple can win that point in court. Cisco needs Apple, not the other way around. Apple can name the phone device something else with little or no loss in visibility or branding power.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Thats one way to see it, but that wouldn't be a smartphone anymore. A key feature of smartphones is a wide selection of user installable apps. So far nothing have been announced so we don't know yet what we have to choose from. I guess 99.99% of the world don't need an ssh app so I'm propably out of luck there.
The public had a extraordinarily high expectation of the keynote. If Mr. Jobs hadn't announced the product there would have been disappointment anyway. This probably would have hit the share price as the iPhone was factored in already.
Secondly, he couldn't keep it secret anyway. He has to go to the FCC anyway and their disclosures would have announced the product instead.
WRT to Apple TV, on the surface the dilution of that announcement does not appear to have hurt sales in any way. If he had announced Apple TV only at the keynote, public disappointment may have killed it. It is quite likely that the iPhone announcement has reinforced the Apple brand and this is the reason for high Apple TV sales. The psyche is : I can't get an iPhone now, but I'll buy an Apple TV in the meantime to tide me over.
Apple's brilliance is often in reducing the cruft and useless features from common, everyday gadgets. The ipod wasn't first, it wasn't second, and it STILL isn't the most featureful. Features are added as they mature and the right way to do it (according to apple) is found.
You're free to use whatever phone you want - but a lot of people will take a look at the iphone because of Apple's track record in the past. I love my Razr, but there's a lot of crap on there I'll never use.
Sometimes, less IS more, reality distortion fields aside.
..don't panic
who knows how to run Apple better than Steve Jobs.
go find me another FLASH player that offers 30GB+ before making that comment
Then there's the fact that people get bored quickly. Announce a product and, even if it is not available, people still start to get used to the idea. When you finally release it, it is no longer "edgy".
Sure, the FCC rumour mill would have released product details, but that just builds hype and anticipation.
Still, bottom line though is that Apple tends to know their customers well and has a (recent and far) history [we'll ignore the middle bit] of making good calls. No doubt they have weighed these and other factors and have still gone on to make the announcement.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The Ipod dominates because there really isn't that much that can really challenge it. Its that good of a player. If the Zune was really as good as its hype you'd probably see Ipod sales drop. Unfortunately the hype was just...well hype and the Zune sucked. Nothing else on the horizon either.
The Iphone on the other hand is jumping into a saturated market with plenty of REALLY good competition. Its not going to dominate and to be honest as I go over the features I can't really see anything really special about it other than the apple logo or the virtual keypad. The latter might turn out to be a more of a hinderance for some people and the single carrier is really going to put off alot of others. And to top it off you can't even change out the battery (sound familiar fellow Ipod users?). I guess if I buy it I'll have to get a new phone when my service is up in 2yrs...sorta like my Ipod. Sheesh!
Jobs put alot of hype on this thing because it would create a media frenzy. And it worked. Stocks are up and people are buzzing. The buzzing is already starting to fade and will be flat by the time it actually starts to sell. After that point is when it will really be held up for measurement and the buzzing starts again or the bitching begins.
It is often ironic that those that define others as lemmings are often themselves lemmings dancing to the latest fad.
Why will the iPhone (rev 1) suck?
Simple. It's an EDGE "smartphone". And you have to deal with AT&T come Cingular. And you have to pay $$$, in addition to signing a 2 year contract.
I must admit, I'm very attracted to the idea of an Apple phone; but EDGE really sucks, and AT&T sucks worse. Once you've gone EVDO, HSDPA, or even UMTS, you'll never go back to EDGE/GPRS. It's a gigantic step backwards, and considering that Verizon/Sprint now have an additional 6 months to pursue a high-end smart phone, I would be shocked to see the iPhone succeed in any big way.
Certainly a phone utilizing yesterday's data technology will not muscle it's way to the top of the market. No video downloads over EDGE, and audio downloads will pause while you are speaking on the phone. Furthermore, it doesn't even seem that it will have a J2ME stack.
I don't have high hopes for this phone, and I'll be damned if I have to deal with AT&T to get one.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
But will real-life iPhone users do more with their phones? Personally I've never used more than a handful of the "bullet-points" of any cellphone.
At $500, there won't be too many disappointed customers.
What part of discussion do you not understand? If Slashdot was just a facts site there would be hardly anything worth discussing. If you can't handle debating and accepting other peoples opinions go read an encyclopedia, until then quit your complaining.
find / -iname life 2>
You mean you set your expectations about a groundbreaking new product based on currently shipping technologies (maybe they will have announced a newer higher density solid state storage) and assumptions about what tech they will use (maybe they'd use a hard drive?) Niiiiice
I too was very disappointed by the 8GB size. I understand it, but I'm still disappointed by it.
And like OP, it's the Cingular tie-in that kills it for me, and everyone I know.
On the other hand, there are now people who are putting off buying another phone and are waiting for the iPhone. This has to be good for Apple.
Of course, the wait in the UK for this phone is excessive as ever, we're always behind the US and Japan even though mobile phone ownership here has been ahead of the US as a percentage of the population. In Europe 70% of the population use mobiles, 63% in Canada and in the US 55%.
For me, it's not that Jobs didn't focus on the iPhone. It's the fact that he DIDN'T focus on Macintosh. This is a fundamentally bigger point than hyping the device, or building expectations too high. This is more or less a copy of post I made on another site, but I think it's worth repeating.
The launch of Vista is literally days away. What does this mean?
1. Average Joe is going to start thinking about whether he needs to upgrade.
2. If he decides to upgrade to Vista, he may consider buying new hardware.
Apple should be adding a third point to this:
3. Since he's upgrading, and considering a new hardware purchase, why not tempt him to look at some of the alternatives out there?
The Vista upgrade release is a fundamental, time-lined opportunity for Apple to win converts. With Bootcamp they can even offer that upgrade with the comfort of knowing that you can still run Windows if you need to. Macintosh should have been absolutely FRONT AND CENTER of the keynote.
If a consumer upgrades buys new non-Mac hardware, that's it. Apple has lost them for *at least* another couple of years until they decide to go through the process again.
Jobs missed a golden opportunity at this keynote. Given the momentum and the increased buzz around Apple, their slowly increasing market share, more developers on board, Bootcamp etc. he could have finally presented Apple as a serious and viable alternative to Microsoft. For everyone. But instead he decided to go with a f**king phone, which doesn't even launch until the summer in the US, end of the year in Europe and 2008 in Asia.
All the other "mistakes" of the keynote can be forgiven; except this one rule, and Jobs broke it.
.. 48 hours from the "FCC discovery", Apple can be in a position to announce the product itself, and ship and take orders then and there.
.. nevertheless, I personally still look forward to seeing Apple get some competition in the iPhone space ..
In the hardware world, and I say this from the perspective of the music-hardware (synthesizer) segment, where the rule has been proven again and again and again, there is a Cardinal Rule:
Never announce a product until you can actually ship it.
None of these other factors mentioned in this article would have any effect on Apple in the short, mid- and long-term, if but for the fact that there was a huge, deeply felt "Awwwww...." on the part of the audience when he announced the shipping date. That moment was when the hype balloon lost a lot of its gas.
And no, I dont think the FCC-would-announce-it-for-us is a good enough excuse to pre-emptively announce a product. A company like Apple should be ready to take orders the day the FCC approvals have been aquired
Big mistake, but courtesy of us mac fanboix, maybe not a ship sinker
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I was in the market for a new phone, but decided to delay a decision until I heard whether Apple announced anything. If Apple hadn't announced, I was ready to buy another model. Now I'm waiting for iPhone.
Well I'm not gonna buy one. Just promised us the future that looked like having a single device being used for all kinds of neat purposes, but since the iPhone won't run third-party apps, it will actually do far less than most of todays smartphones. If you look at it objectively, this is just a combo of phone/browser/ipod with a really nice interface. The iPhone is kind of the Pamela Anderson of mobile phones: Damn nice to look at, but after a few hours it becomes really boring.
Steve, open up the iPhone! There would be so many great things we could do with it! And then I would buy one, too!
If I were a columnist for a computer publication, I'd sure as hell be writing about the iPhone. It's an easy target. Fantastic intro by Jobs, lots of oohs and ahs, and plenty of time to come up with reasons why it's going to Suck Like A Hoover.
I don't know if the iPhone is going to be a success or not, but all of the back and forth about whether it will revolutionize the world or be the biggest flop since the Cube are rather irrelevant. We don't know how durable the iPhone will be in actual use. We don't know if the spiffy interface really will be that much of an improvement over existing phones. We don't know what Cingular's iPhone plans will be like six months from now.
I am not at all satisfied with existing cellphones, because I always feel like I have to relearn things that should be simple every time I get a new phone. If there was ever a device crying out for an Apple makeover, it's the cellphone. I'd like it to succeed, if only so I can enjoy using my cell the way I enjoy using my Mac. If it doesn't succeed, at least Apple is trying something radical, instead of sticking with the same annoying interface standards that have made cellphones such a pain in the ass for so long. Apple doesn't need to own the market in order to succeed, either. Just look at the Mac. Microsoft beat Apple handily in the marketplace, but where are all the MS-DOS fanboys now? They're using an interface remarkably similar to Macintosh.
It is also rather appalling that a journalist missed the obvious fact that Apple merely wanted to control the unveiling of the iPhone. They're all about controlling the message, and it seems to me that Steve giving the iPhone keynote was better than Apple going after the countless bloggers who would have taken the FCC filing and run with it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's amazing the Apple bashing given they are the only real consistent innovators among the major computer companies. This from a long time PC user who still does 95% of his work on a PC.
If Apple doesn't release information early enough they are being secretive and harming customers that might have waited to buy if they had more information. If they release information ahead of time they are seen as foolish for revealing too much too early and there's no way they can meet expectations.
I was shocked at the statement that there are smart phones now that do more better. Name one? I've heard complaints about the interface but I find most phones a major headache to use. I haven't bothered to add more than a couple of numbers into the autodialer in mine because it's such a hassle. Name one that plays wide screen movies? Name one with a full web browser? Name one with a full desktop OS? Name a current one with a screen that size? There are dozens of other features I've never seen in a cell phone.
Look if you don't want one fine but knocking them sounds like sour grapes. People before Vista came out were claiming the Mac OSX was just a rip off of Vista. Bizzare given how long OSX had been on the market especially considering Vista does less than Tiger and Leopard when comes out soon and does drastically more.
Personally I'm a heretic and will use whatever works best. I just find it odd all the Apple bashing since they seem to be the driving force in a lot of the new technology. Most of Vista is under the hood where as most of Tiger/Leopard's features are user oriented. After waiting six years Vista seems to be a major letdown. The biggest thing I hear about is that some features are really slow. My sole interest in it is Direct X10, otherwise I'd avoid it. I find XP a hassle and the very things I find a hassle about XP are supposed to be drastically worse. I really hate getting prompted all the time and from what I hear it's a constant thing in Vista. People have for years been speculating and complaining about the lack of an Apple phone. The day it's anounced they start complaining about the phone itself inspite of it being a major innovation in phone, media and computer intergration. Given it has a full OS once the hardware catches up they can seamlessly turn it into a portable computer. I really question whether the detractors have done their homework or is it more that Apple is about to take the technical high ground and people are starting the king bashing early? Will they take over the cell phone market? No. They admit that was never the plan. What they have done is in a first generation smart phone set a very high mark for the other companies to hit. Give it two more generations and I think people will be stunned with what it can do.
The grapes may be sour but have the decency to taste them first, or at least wait until they are picked, to declare their shortcomings.
I don't agree that this gives the power to Cisco in the negotiations. Even if Apple can't get the rights, either in court or in a reasonable deal with Cisco, they could simply change the name to ApplePhone just before release, exactly as they did with iTV...I mean, AppleTV. And even if they change the name, everybody will keep calling it iPhone, anyway.
So I've just bought a Sony Ericsson p990i. It's slow and clumsy. At least it's not crippled, as far as I can tell. And from what I can tell the iPhone won't be crippled, and it looks fast and... hey, is everyone forgetting the blow-away graphics and the iPod stuff? I mean, this replaces two gadgets in *my* pocket, I don't know about yours.
Of course, I'm here in the UK. Well, look - I'll get the iPhone version 2. Prices will drop, market share will grow... blah blah. I've heard this stuff before. This is just another journalist trying to get readers - maybe even trying to get slashdot coverage - by saying something controversial. From what I see, the iPhone is better than what's in my pocket now. So where's my money going next?
The trouble, such as it was, was that nothing was ready to announce, which is to say, ship. It's all vaporware, albeit very likely to appear eventually vaporware.
Leopard wasn't ready; iPhone wasn't ready; iTV wasn't ready; no improvements to the laptops, minis, desktops... nothing. Not even an iPod variant. So what was Apple to do in the face of high customer expectations, ongoing stock and accounting scandals? Announce vaporware, that's what, and that's precisely what they did. And Apple stock went up that day, because people are gullible. Now the common folk have had a little time to stare at their completely empty hands, and they're beginning to mutter "say... where's my stuff?" Doesn't matter that they were told it wouldn't come until later. People expect a lot from Apple, especially at "announcement time", and when they get nothing... well, they tend to notice.
That announcement was worse than nothing to me and people like me; I am no fan of telephones (mostly just another way for people to interrupt you), nor do I think that touch-pads are good for dialing, nor do I think that LCD's are very useful in sunlight, nor am I impressed by the use of OSX in a venue where I can't add software, nor do I see what iTV will do for me that will be useful beyond the usual stack of DVR, satellite and other gear I already own.
I am very interested in Leopard, but of that there was no sign. So... bleagh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The stock price would have tanked because there were no major announcements from Apple.
Ick, too many vendor sports recently. I understand it's Apple and all, but please. There were half a dozen iPhone stories in the first couple days. Now we've got a story about the negative impact that all those other stories *might have, in some guy's opinion, on the eventual product that we've been speculating about.
Surely someone, somewhere is doing something important. Shuttleworth, I'm looking in your direction...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
1) Expectations too high?
It seems like a lot of people now seem to have rather low expectations of the device feature wise, with not many other specific details ironed out. And so what people are really looking forward to with the Apple iPhone is a well designed product with intuitive gestures, which they will probably deliver on from hands-on accounts. Does no-one think what expectations would have been like with only FCC leaked rumors abounding?
All of the points he raised are valid (as far as well know) in terms of other smart phone features the iPhone does not seem to have (ignoring what the iPhone does have the others do not) but refute the point that announcing the iphone at the keynote raised expectations too high; instead it seems it set them to a reasonable level instead of stratospheric guesses.
2) Sales expectations too high?
Possibly, but perhaps the real internal projections are higher and Apple is giving a conservative estimate, just as they do with iPods every quarter. In fact ten million units sold in a year and a half does not seem like an overly unrealistic goal given than the iPhone can create "cross-switchers" - people who are tired of a phone and an iPod being seperate, and want both in one. Or people who want a smart phone and dislike the current selection. People keep harping on the price yet Apple sells way more iPods than that at pretty high prices every quarter, so even with a service plan you know a lot of people are going to go for it.
3) Jobs gave competitors a head start. Yes, the same head start they would have had anyway from FCC leaks. A non-issue, and a negative spin on the impact unveiling the phone has on other people in the phone space - consider a recent concept video from Nokia that was recently floating around Digg that showed a dual-screen smart phone that they said was a "idea, an example of a phone that might be three or four years off". How is Nokia supposed to compress four years of development into five months and get it FCC approved? The keynote only served as a swift kick in the ass to phone companies that really needed one (Treo, I'm looking at you!!!). As a consumer, I am more than happy at any "head start" that leads to good products sooner rather than later!
4) Jobs undermined Apple TV hype?
This one I kind of agree with, but it was sort of unavoidable really. They had to announce the iPhone to build it, and the iTV release coincided... it won't matter much though if it has good marketing behind it to let people know why they would want or need one. This is where Apple stores are going to have to play a key role I think because people are going to have to see it in action.
5) Jobs put iPod sales at risk?
So which is it man, unrealistic expecations of ten million units sold by the end of 2008, or that it will cannibalize existing iPod sales? That the device is so different means it more expands the realm of iPod buyers rather than clearcuts any particular category of existing iPods. People buying the 30/80GB iPods won't care - the storage is too smal. People buying Nanos and Minis for the gymn or purse will not care, as they are a lot cheaper. It's really for people that want a PDA with an innovative interface that also happens to be really good at playing music.
6) Jobs wrecked Cisco talks
Perhaps - but perhaps Apple lawyers came to the realization the night before that Cisco doesn't really have a valid claim on the name after all! Why pay now if there's a chance you don't have to pay at all? That may be a correct observation - but deliberate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I recommend this short movie mocking Kim Jong Il and his secret agent buying Hennessy XO wine from Chinese black market :=)
1 495685
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EE52D9ED0
And Apple might want to take advantage of the 4 security layers of the x86 processor, something Linux doesn't do.
I thought I read something recently that modern x86 processors actually didn't implement the additional security layers anymore, since basically no operating system in wide use takes advantage of them?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
i'd love to see some user uninstallable apps. i hate the fact that some of the cost of my phone went to pay for craphole games that come for free, or other apps or services i don't want/need.
Apple always does this, and their stock price and profits have only gone up. Try and find an expo where the major announcment was ready to ship after the keynote. As for announcing a phone months before it will ship, it makes perfect sense, because thousands of people who would have ordinarily signed a 1 or 2 year contract with a different carrier will now wait until the iPhone ships and then switch to Cingular.
Apple doesn't release the iPhone, MAJOR fanboy revolt. + Look at all the comments above, it sounds to me like everyone now knows what to save their money for, no matter what the cost.
Jobs has stated that if they didn't announce it, there would be a leak when they went for FCC approval. In that case it makes perfect sense to release while they can still surprise.
From the reaction, they chose correctly.
Yeah, except that everyone I know is asking me whether the iPhone is going to change their world the way the iPod changed everyone else's. More than ever wanted to know about the iPod when it was announced, though the iPod took over the world.
Besides, who's to say that Jobs isn't underpromising? When the iPhone is even cooler than Jobs promised, will these doomsayers eat their words? Buy me an iPhone?
--
make install -not war
IHO, Apple is doing this now for several reasons:
1) Steve likes doing major announcements at MacWorld.
2) Unlike a lot of Apple products that can ship right after announcement with no connection needed to 3rd parties, the iPhone was going to need a bunch of pre-release work with at least one telco (Cingular it appears) organization -which is unlikely to be as good as keeping the iPhone secret as Apple employees are. Steve is bowing to the enevitable leak of iPhone details by Cingular if they had to keep the secret for very long. By announcing so far in advance of the product that nobody but a tight few at Cingular knew about it yet, he insured the first word would come from Apple.
3) The iPhone fight with Cisco is probably also deliberate. Recent reports revealing that Cisco's hold the on the trademark is thin probably emboldened Steve and crew to persue something they have probably been planning to to do anyway. Apple's probably been really unhappy about the proliferation of products staring with "i". They'd really like to get a trademark court to say Apple owns "i". If, due to Cisco's sloppyness, they can get a judgement that makes Cisco go away and gives them ammunition to convince smaller players to back off they may be able to enforce it. My guess is that Apple never really wanted to licence "iPhone" from Cisco (certainly not on the extra non-monetary terms Cisco wanted). They wanted to own it outright.
The trouble, such as it was, was that nothing was ready to announce
They do have the Apple TV and the AirPort Extreme both shipping in February. Apple didn't even announce the new AirPort in the keynote. Apple tends to release consumer devices at Macworld and operating systems at WWDC. So they announced their new gadgets at Macworld, and they'll announce their new OS at WWDC in a few months.
"When customers expect more and don't get it, they become dissatisfied.'""
Whew! Glad we dodged that bullet.
Step...
1. Copy Digg article.
2. Wait one week.
3. Submit to slashdot.
Whine about other people's taste, complain constantly about fashion trends, and pretend like you know what's 'really cool'. Fads come and fads go, but putting others down for following them has always remained 'cool'.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
There can be no denying that Steve Jobs raised expectations very high, but that's what he does best.
But since then, there have been countless stories calculated to make the iPhone sound much less attractive. They usually follow a similar script, mentioning the screen that may get scratched, Apple's 'closed' systems, DRM, limited capacity, how touch screens don't have tactile feedback, how expensive it will be, why touch screens don't work and why businessmen won't like iPhones etc.
Although those FUD stories are clearly intended to harm Apple, the net result is that instead of everybody talking about the iPhone for just a few days, they keep the story very much alive so that people will be discussing it for weeks. Furthermore, by dwelling on alarmist negative factors, they are countering Steve Jobs' raised expectations and lowering them.
Now one thing that you can rely on is that when Apple release a product, it will be very well able to do what it's intended to do, so people who read those FUD pieces will start out with somewhat low expectations and then be pleasantly surprised when the screen doesn't actually get scratched, the DRM doesn't get in the way and the touch screen really is an intuitive way to operate it.
One company releases a product and completely eclipses thousands of new products at CES ? I don't see that as a mistake, that was a stroke of genius and the FUD pieces will have lowered expectations, which gives the iPhone more scope to exceed user's expectations and make a much better impression, thereby generating much more of a buzz when people start using them for themselves.
The keynote did not give competitors any lead time they would have otherwise not had. The iPhone's design, by law, was apparently practically entirely layed out and spec'd as part of process of obtaining FCC approval, and FCC approval takes over 6 months. The competitors already had all the details of its design. This is fact. One could argue that the iPhone's incredible awesomeness when witnessed in real life might have lit additional fire to the heals of competitors, but even that would be of dubious merit because it's doubtful there's ever been personal electronic device that's induced nearly the same chatter, speculation, anticipation, and general buzz ahead of time -- the competitors were on it you can count on it.
Six months is not that much time. When you look at the details of how Cisco got the trademark, how they renamed an already existing phone practically a day before the trademark was going to expire just to create the future conflict, and various other details, it's clear that there really wasn't any doubt that Apple would and will eventually get the name.
Announcing things way ahead of time is a proven effective strategy for introducing new products. It creates so much anticipation that people are practically nuts for it once it comes out. Look at what people did to get their hands on PS2s and PS3s -- two actually pretty mediocre products -- certainly no things so wonderful as to be commensurate with the insane appetite consumers had for them once they were finally able to get their hands on.
Moreover, by announcing 6 months ahead of time, a lot of people are going to be able to say "hold on, maybe I shouldn't sign another two year contract with whoever other provider, or buy the latest "Chocolate" or other Korean knockoff of some $800 Nokia. Maybe I can bear not having the latest phone out there for about 6 more months if it means I will be able to get this iPhone thing which will be leaps and bounds better."
You'll get a new phone before you will need a new battery. The Treo also has a built in battery. Mine has been in daily use for, umm, I think 4 years now with no loss of power. The average Ameican replaces his cell every 18 months. The average European: 12 months. The average Japanese: 6 months. The fact that the battery is not easily replaceable is a non-issue.
Also, do you really think they'll only be one iPhone? How many iPod models are there? Jobs even said this in his speech. This is a family of products, not a single product.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Yes, but to put not too fine a point on it, it isn't February yet. Or June. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
People would've had higher expectations if the approval thing would've made public by the FCC. I mean, think about it this way, it's better that Apple talks about some of the features that *will* be present in the iPhone (if it gets approved of course), than people simply thinking about stuff that is VERY likely to not be present, like, I don't know. Think about something just way too futuristic and impossible for our time.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Here are a few things that any mobile phone of mine must be capable of.
1. Working, with no extra interaction from me, in any country I travel to.
2. Being robust enough to bounce around in my bag with a set of car keys and a couple of bucks in loose change for an hour or so without getting cosmetically ruined.
3. Operating painlessly as a modem for my laptop when I need it.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I agree that those announcements that end in, "and you can buy them in stores today" are much more powerful. I recall the Intel-based Macs were announced that way. Clearly the iPhone didn't miss MacWorld due to development delays, they announced it now to make the biggest splash. I thought it was overdone at the time - especially as they completly ignored the 11n AirPort upgrade - but who can argue with the incredible PR it brought them and the 5% stock bump, all ahead of another jump at earnings announcement. And they beat the LG/Prada phone to the punch. This was less an analysis of the unqualified success that it was, and more a prediction of the failure that iPhone is going to be. These journalists seem to be rewarded for making wrong predictions, because they're labeled "controvertial." Adjust accordingly.
I still want a AirPort Extreme though.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
There's two sides to this fence:
Either you're a typical consumer who doesn't know the nitty-gritty details of the phone and will purchase it (or not) depending on Apple's track record alone in their eyes.
The other side is to simply avoid the phone because, armed with knowledge, the iPhone's matchstick castle is shattered.
That leaves the middle... which I suppose amounts to having the knowledge its not going to give you what you want, but buying it anyway for humourous and ironic spite.
Elgan is obviously a smart, logical guy and probably even has a college degree. Jobs is a dropout with such limited education he believes "Think Different" is proper English. We Apple shareholders should take note and immediately replace Steve so as to enjoy the benefits of Mike's obviously superior marketing skills.
... I love the way all pundits are smarter than jobs, yet the company's track record is amazing (I'm a stock holder since the 90s) ...
... Holding Apple stock since the 90s suggest a naive investor, taking profits periodically and perhaps repurchasing after a correction that follows a wave of speculation would suggest more sophistication. Apple's stock price incorporates a lot of speculation, Apple may live up to it but that is in part due to failures amongst Apple's competitors, something beyond Apple's control. For example, Apple is more of a digital music player company than a computer company in the eyes of investors. If a competitor were able to introduce a viable iPod competitor, not necessarily better - just competitive, Apple's stock could easily crash.
Being an Apple stockholder is not necessarily a sign of good judgment. It may be a sign of faith, not good analysis. First let me emphasize that stock price is not based on a firm's health, at time there is more speculation than analysis. Apple will undoubtedly be healthy for the foreseeable future and have the cash reserves to finance any necessary adaptations to changing market conditions, however the stock price could easily come crashing down despite good sales. Witness $90 to $80 in December, $70 to $50 in July, $85 to $60 in March,
4. Be able to take it off a charger on Friday, fly to another city, use it heavily over the weekend, and fly back on Monday with at least two bars still left on the battery.
It doesn't sound like the iPhone will be able to make it through a workday without a charger, let alone a weekend. So it doesn't interest me.
...opinion pieces about technology. The ones who write things like: "The iPod will fail" "Nobody will buy an Xbox" "Nobody will buy a PS3" "The iPhone is a disaster" "Why would anyone buy a GBA Micro when it does no more than a GBA?" "The problem with X is they released their product before anyone else so nobody understood what it was" "The problem with X is they released their product at the same time as competitors" "The problem with X is they released their product too late" and so on. And then I'd like to do something really mean to them. Oh...I don't know exactly what...maybe tickle them with an ostrich feather while they're tied up and can do nothing about it. Really nasty anyway.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Simple. It's an EDGE "smartphone".
Wrong. It's a WiFi PDA, that also happens to be able to make use of the most widely deployed data network in the US as well in-between deep WiFi data pools.
That's why no-one understands why it's going to be a success, because they don't understand that finally someone has done a followup to the Palm Pilot, adding cell phone ablities, that people would want to actually buy.
Those of use who liked Graffiti, those of us who dispaired when so much of a Palm form factor was sucked up by a keyboard on the Treo and so many other "smartphones" and pagers - we have been waiting, and are ready for the true next generation Palm Pilot - even if someone else other than Palm had to build it. The people who really want an iPhone are not really Apple fanatics at all, we are exiled Palm fans!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the articles strangest point. How did Jobs give competitors get a head start on the iPhone? Six months is not a long time, even when it includes copying another product's features.
Apple was right not to dwarf any OS X/Mac hardware announcement with the release of the iPhone - which is why Macworld will be primarily consumer electronics going forward, and some other venue will be devoted to the Mac and OS X.
Does it not sem strategically more sound to wait until the week after Vista releases to talk more about Leopard? Or to release new hardware at that point and remind everyone again how well Vista runs upon it?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's amazing that folks who have never held the iPhone in their hands for a nanosecond are suddenly rushing to their keyboards to type predictions of doom and gloom. Well, one is thing is for sure: Apple (unlike other some other notorious companies who raise expectations to all new Vistas then fail to deliver on promised features) actually delivers on what they announce. What you saw in the keynote and on Apple's website is exactly what you're gonna get. If you don't like it, fine, but to say it raises expectations too high is simply beyond the pale.
The fact is, this is the product that Microsoft should have come up with instead of it's me2 Zune copycat. Microsoft (and for that matter, other companies such as Sony) had the chance to seriously leapfrog Apple and the iPod if it managed to introduce a product like this. That is, if it had a single inventive, innovative, visionary bone in it's entire corporate body which it quite obviously doesn't. The iPod will ultimately give way to a successor, the next big thing - and it's looks like Apple is, once again, the only company that can realistically conceive of what the successor will be.
The iPod didn't take off because it was an mP3 player, it took off because it was the first mP3 player done right. Similarly, the iPhone will take off not because it's a smart-phone, but because it's the smart-phone done right. You can nic and pic all the way to June, but one thing about the iPhone isn't going to change: it has gargantuan mass-consumer appeal right out of the box. Jobs was all too clever in his keynote by introducing "three separate devices" before showing the iPhone. It established what will be the iPhone's biggest selling point: this isn't your grandfather's smart-phone - it's a new device that incorporates something of interest for everyone (the three products) all in one attractive, cleverly conceived and executed package.
Game. Set. Match.
I think the bigger issue is that the lead time (which is more likely to slip than accelerate) made it look like they didn't really have anything else to talk about and also, coupled with the name change, that they are in a big hurry to get out of the computer business before it becomes too obvious that they are stuck around 5 percent again. Jobs as much as said he'd rather have 1 percent of the phone market.
I would much rather have heard a renewed corporate push, as well as a universal OS X with separate binaries for Intel, PowerPC and maybe even a couple other things.
Linux is now the only general purpose operating system in the universe. I suspect dual binaries (or whatever they are called) will start to fade in a year or less and those of use with PPCs that we are perfectly happy with will have no choice but to switch to Linux or do without security updates. Fortunately there hasn't been a big need for such things.
In spite of all the commentary from those still feeling the effects of the Reality Distortion Field, it seems self-evident to me that the Iphone is a video Ipod that has some limited phone-like functionality -- not a phone in and of its own right.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
One company releases a product and completely eclipses thousands of new products at CES ? I don't see that as a mistake, that was a stroke of genius
This point is too often overlooked, the timing just as CES was ongoing was brilliant from the standpoint of overshadowing every other mobile phone launch. That means that a lot of new phones that might otherwise have been bought soon will be put on hold until the iPhone can be evaluated.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Welcome to the Apple fanboi club^H^H^H^H er, /. or any other web site that talks about Apple. If you don't support Apple's point of view somehow, your comments get modded to oblivion.
/. today about what should or could have been done for the keynote.
I continue to believe that the worst part of the iPhone is the hype, and I certainly include all the gibberish iterated here on
I've never even seen an iPhone, and will probably walk away without asking to look at it when I do see one. I'm tired of hearing about this product that doesn't yet exist. Instead, I'll learn about and play with products that do exist. More than that, I'm tired of hearing people spout off about how great it is.... they can't possibly know if it is great or not, not yet.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
"But what I think REALLY hurts is the Cingular tie in."
Indeed. What the hell was Apple thinking? Cingular is probably the most tasteless, beige, and customer-unfriendly of the mobile networks. It belongs to the company that ditched Saul Bass's iconic AT&T logo for a fucking cream puff with lowercase type because, in the words of the CEO, "they tell me it's more trendy and modern." Seriously, how much uglier can you get?
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
The Iphone on the other hand is jumping into a saturated market with plenty of REALLY good competition.
You have forgotten, that is exactly what the iPod entered into as well. A market that was fairly far along, with a lot of products that offered more features than the iPod.
Yet sometimes we don't want more features, we want something that works better. I have tried various pagers and smartphones, and I really do not like them. Currently I havea RAZR which I despised long before I knew Apple was even making a phone. Apple is entering into a field just as barren as the MP3 field was, in terms of user interaction with the device and integraton with computers. If they can improve upon that substantially then it doesn't matter if they do not have the same feature count as other smart phones, they will do quite well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Someone probably knows this: can you get FCC approval for a generic phone module component thingie (like my terminology?) instead of a whole product?
Seems like the thing to do, is have a mysterious subsidiary with a boring name, get approval for the phone part, and then Apple could have taken it and turned it into a product, all while keeping FCC-watchers from learning what was up.
'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones.'
That's a smug way of saying "I don't get it.".
The "many media-oriented virtues" blow every other smartphone out of the water on that front. Plenty of phones will play music, videos, photos -- but they universally do a poor job of it, either because the feature was just tacked on to be a bullet point on a feature list, or because it's designed as a cash cow for the wireless provider (Verizon's V Cast, etc.). Maybe they come with only 64MB of storage, or don't let you load your own content over Bluetooth, or only support tiny 3GPP video, or don't support playlists at all, or have that fuck-you 2.5mm headphone jack--I've seen all of these faults. The iPhone, on the other hand, does everything that the world's best-selling media player does, and more. Brushing all of that aside in a sentence is probably the dumbest thing I've read in weeks.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
This has to be the least impact and most important cellphone news of the past year, and no one seems to be able to remember it. New rules got passed last december. It was covered here and on most of the major tech sites. The telcos can't as in "NO", restrict the use of any phone as along as it is frequency capable. You can unlock them, they are now portable if you so choose. Apple saying it is cingular only is mass consumer FUD now. That might be their contract they have with AT&T, but it isn't the law for individuals. Tell your friend he shouldn't have to switch if the iPhone hardware is compatable. Scroll to section five, clear as day, cellphones are now portable, legally, they can't stop you
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/index.html
"5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network."
I have posted this a few times now on cellphone theads, hopefully it will stick this time
With that said, I would encourage anyone to support open moko and the neo1973 instead of the iPhone,it is pretty close to half the price, totally open, no restrictions of note, free as in speech.
Support hardware vendors who support open source (and it is a sharp looking phone, and there will be a ton of apps for it, unlike apple's big FU to consumers and devs)
...have overhung the entire cell phone market. Everyone even thinking about dropping some cash on a cell phone is now holding their breath until the fall. Just by announcing their product they've dipped into everyone else's market share. Even if they haven't gained any share yet, they've at least reserved their spot at the expense of other vendors.
My main point is that given that presentation anybody (like Nokia/Samsung/SonyEricsson/whatever with whatever decent carrier) right now could have just dissed Jobs in his presentation, like:
...
Jobs: Well iPhone does not have a keyboard and contact books are hard in other phones.
Anybody: Well are you retarded? Anybody can use contact book in a phone and call somebody and keyboards are nice for inputting text.
Jobs: But iPhone is like iPod.
Anybody: Well here you are probably right - iPhone plays music. We also do. But ours are not like iPod. Point for you.
Jobs: And we can do web browsing and email.
Anybody: Please Steve, stop being retarded - we do web browsing and email for ages. We also do this faster, like you now that 3G thingie.
Jobs: 3G? Well... no 3G here but we have this nice touch interface...
Anybody: And video calls? Can you do that?
Jobs: Vi...vi...video? No but we have these nice photos here that you can show your granny on this tiny screen...
Anybody: But no video calls? How about a high speed Internet access?
Jobs: We have these nice widgets here...
Anybody: So you cannot use your phone for high speed Internet access for your portable computer?
Jobs: Not really. But check it out - Google.
Etc.
Lack of 3G is the biggest mistake.
"will do far less than most existing smart phones"
For specific tricks, maybe. But it will apparently DO all the things all these other phones promised.
The Cisco situation is far from solved, and it's not a slam dunk for Cisco, they did made hay with it that day - it certainly served to promote something no one is buying.
Publishing this article on how the iPhone keynote was a mistake... was a mistake.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It doesn't matter what Jobs did or how he did it--or what he knew and when he knew it--the press just won't give Jobs a break!
I don't think the iphone announcement was badly timed. I'm not an apple fan at all. Yet I kept hitting refresh to see what was new. The buzz that surrounded the iPhone was tremendous and every time I saw a mockup the feaure list it advertised got longer. Apple almost had to announce it to keep peoples expectations reasonable. Did it distract from Apple TV - you betcha. Thats ok - there are other things out there like the AppleTV but nothing quite like the iPhone.
The best current gen smartphones (IMHO the HTC Hermes/TyTN or Cingular 8525) can do a lot of the same things but there is something to be said for the interface difference and I'm only referring to the smartphone capabilities here. Apple was right in focusing on the iPhone because it really is a unique smartphone. Yes the lack of an actual keyboard is probably going to hurt them some. The multitouch is cool with its nifty zooming and all but if I need to bang out an email I don't really wan't to be using a touchscreen. The non-user replaceable battery is going to hurt them much more. Its a phone - the rules are different. It has to work. If I have to carry an extra battery its o.k. It HAS to work. A lot of phones are locked to one carrier - doesn't really bother me. The media capabilities are nice and sure 8GB isn't much but then the 8525 doesn't even measure space in GBs. Think of it as a phone that can double as an video iPod nano and you are better off.
Yes I'd love to the see the knockoffs that we get which might have larger HDDs, keyboards and most importantly user replaceable batteries. But the point remains - they were right to focus on the iPhone because it will change the way we communicate. The product has its shortcomings but the bar has most definetly been raised and its a sign of how things will be soon. With something like that you would be crazy not to focus on it.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
I used to read /. to get the interesting news. You know "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."
/. has gone way downhill. I'm not trying to put out flamebait. I have excellent kharma. It just seems that any negative article about the iPhone makes it to the front page. To me.. this is not news. This is not interesting.. This is supposition about an unreleased product whose specifications are not completely fixed. Sure, apple has only just started preannouncing products.. so this is new territory to the "blogosphere", but come on... give me something interesting to read.
Why is this article news?
Ran out of modpoints... sorry!
"Jobs missed a golden opportunity at this keynote. Given the momentum and the increased buzz around Apple, their slowly increasing market share, more developers on board, Bootcamp etc. he could have finally presented Apple as a serious and viable alternative to Microsoft. For everyone. But instead he decided to go with a f**king phone"
I disagree. There's been so much buzz about the iPhone that only a few people have been asking about Macs and Leopard, and why Jobs didn't even so much as mention them. I must admit that I was pretty dazzled by the iPhone's interface, and it took me a couple days to start sorting out the implications.
I'm convinced that Leopard's new interface will support multi-touch technology (MTI). Am I the only person who believes that Apple has already thought of vastly more expansive uses for MTI than a mere smartphone display? Hello? Mac Tablet anyone? The iPhone interface is merely the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. Take a look at the video demo at the Multi-Touch Interaction Research group's site and imagine some or most of these capabilities, or even greater capabilities, in Leopard. Interestingly, there's a note on the site that says they saw the keynote, and that they have some more exciting stuff coming up soon.
Jobs said nothing about new Macs, new displays, or OS X 10.5 for one reason: he believes that what he has up his sleeve will make Vista look like ancient technology to Joe Consumer, and he's deliberately waiting for Microsoft to launch their expensive media blitz introducing Vista before dropping a Leopard-spotted nuke on them. His aim is to embarrass Microsoft. And I believe that Microsoft came to that conclusion while the keynote was going on, but they still have no choice but to kick Vista out the door.
Joe Consumer has already seen the iPhone's interface, courtesy the mainstream media. He'll be primed for multi-touch interface on a personal computer, and I foresee PC salespeople having an interesting time in the aftermath of Leopard's introduction: "Yeah, that's a pretty cheap machine, but how come I can't just drag things around with my finger like the guy at the Apple Store showed me?"
As many here have pointed out, Macs don't do anything that PC's can't do (much less if you count games and enterprise apps); iPods do less than many other available DAP's; the iPhone won't offer any capabilities unavailable on other, existing smartphones. The difference in all three cases is how Apple pulls the interface together in ways that appeal and make sense to average users i.e., non-Slashdot readers. I believe that Jobs has high hopes that Leopard will present an interface that will finally, clearly, distinguish Macs from PC's in the minds of the average consumer, in the same way that their respective interfaces distinguish the iPod and iPhone from competing devices. I believe that Jobs honestly feels that 2007 is the year of destiny for the Macintosh.
I agree, Apple must have another new iPod ready to announce and release in the months before June, to fill the gap created by the iPhone.
What better to do it than an iPod w/ a touch screen interface. Something that might leave the competition* in the dust - or at least kick it good-and-hard in the 'nads.
(* thinking Zune here)
It will do significantly less than other smart phones. The iPod does significantly less than many other MP3 players. The Mac runs significantly less software than a Windows PC. Apple stuff never succeeds because it does more, it succeeds because it does the actual important things better.
I don't know many people who have smartphones. Well, that's not true. I probably know more people with smartphones than anybody living outside northern California or Japan has any right to. I'm a nerd. I have nerd friends. We're into that stuff. For most people, a phone doesn't need to do any more than the iPhone does -- in fact, most people are probably using phones that do a hell of a lot less and are perfectly happy with it. Will the iPhone do those things better, and be a better video iPod to boot? Maybe. If it can pull that off, it will be a runaway success -- even at its premium pricepoint -- and Steve will look like a genius again and get a few more articles in Time magazine.
Game... blouses.
> The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones
...
... you will be schooled in its quality if you haven't been already. So you don't have to run a Java app to play MineSweeper ... you can play it off the Web. You don't have to run some proprietary software to download ring tones ... you just download them from the Web. Lots of the stuff that is on smart phones today is completely negated if you add the real Web.
... you're supposed to run it out of your pocket. Same for everything Google, ultimately. The reason so much of Google's stuff is in beta is that Google sees the whole Internet as being in beta. The iPhone probably represents some significant point in Google's business plans ... they've been waiting for it. The iPhone is the real "Pocket Web" in the same way that the iPod was the first real "Pocket Music".
...
Two words: "Pocket-W3" and "iPod-connector".
First, "Pocket-W3"
The iPhone does a lot more than any other smart phone because the iPhone has the actual World Wide Web in it. When you point it at amazon.com or any other site on the Web, there are no compromises. WebKit is world class desktop browsing, not smart phone class browsing. Your iPhone has complete (COMPLETE!) support for HTML 4.01, CSS 2.1, JavaScript 1.8, DOM Level 1, PNG 1.0, JPEG 1.0 and also there will probably be some MPEG-4 in there, as much as has been created yet (MPEG-4 is the standardization of QuickTime). It has the best typography you will see on a screen anywhere other than Mac OS X. (Typography is kind of an old science to completely forgo just because of digital, wouldn't you say? Shouldn't the Web have typography? Shit.) Also this is the third major version of WebKit (Panther, Tiger, Leopard) and it is open source
The reason the Google CEO was there joking about merging with Apple is that this is the device that Google wants people to have to correspond to their massive "cloud" servers. You aren't supposed to run Google Maps on a PC
Second, "iPod-connector"
The iPhone does a lot more than any other smart phone because it has an iPod dock connector which enables you to use something like 3000+ accessories just by plugging them in, or easily synchronize with iTunes to get music or movies or other data. There is no software to install, or drivers to install. You just plug stuff in and it works. iTunes manages the device in the same way as with iPods and other devices.
There will probably be over 100 iPhone-specific accessories by the June. They're designing and building them right now, wherever fine iPod accessories are made. If some kind of "missing" thing is identified, there will be a number of solutions that you can plug on in no time.
Finally, do not underestimate the value of the thing actually being oriented towards making calls as its number one app. The contacts list, the ability to conference with a single button push, even the ringer turning down music playback when you have a call, are all reasons why people will buy this just to use as a phone and everything else really will be extra. Although being able to go to the actual Web while on a call is a great calling-feature in its own right.
Long time Palm user, current Treo 700p owner.
The iPhone is not a PDA, it's an iPod with a phone and contact list integrated into it. There are no business applications, and until I see an ssh client and can test how well it works with that icky looking touch keyboard, it's just a toy to me.
I really hope the iPhone ends up with the applications it needs to take on business users as well as consumers with money to burn. Right now it really doesn't make me want to give up my Treo, let alone switch to a crappy cellular service provider.
"I've never even seen an iPhone, and will probably walk away without asking to look at it when I do see one... Instead, I'll learn about and play with products that do exist."
So which is it? When it exists you'll walk away or learn about it and play with it. This contradiction makes you sound biased.
I'd buy one if it were only a new iPod with wireless internet capability.
Saying that the iPhone is cool simply isn't original. So, how do you grab attention? The same way John C. Dvorak does in his columns: Be negative and speculate on disaster. That gets attention. It can even get you slashdotted.
I've heard complaints about the lack of a replaceable battery, 3G, CDMA, IR, GPS... even Wii-mote compatibility. This is version 1.0. There's plenty of new and unproven features to worry about. Who creates full featured products from scratch perfectly on their very first try? No one. That's an unbelievably lofty expectation for a first-generation product.
I have a feeling that if the iPhone also made breakfast, some people would complain that it didn't give them a blowjob afterward. If it did that too, then they'd complain that it didn't do it fast enough. If it did, someone would think it did too much. People just have to complain about shit they usually don't even own.
> You have forgotten, that is exactly what the iPod entered into as well. A market that was fairly far along, with
:) Five years from now Apple will be a third of unit sales at best, slowily sliding into their traditional Apple is entering into a field just as barren as the MP3 field was, in terms of user interaction with the device and integraton with computers.
> a lot of products that offered more features than the iPod.
Your memory has been rewritten by the Reality Distortion Field. Allow me to correct it.
When the iPod first appeared the MP3 player market was filled with half finished devices from a slew of asian third tier houses, Creative and Rio being the only ones with ANY name recognition and their stuff was about as bad as the generic stuff from China. Players came in two flavors, flash based units with too little space to be useful and big bulky players with laptop drives and lithium ion batteries. If you could find any music outside the warez scene it was from pathetic selections with the DRM flavor of the month. So unless you were computer literate enough to rip your own CD collection you had to be a warez trader. Combine all this and the IT crowd and hardcore music freak cap was buying in but it wasn't mainstream.
Then Apple introduced the iPod with the 1.8" drive, polished firmware, iTunes and the iTunes store and a slick marketing campaign and made portable music players a mainstream piece of consumer electronics. Yes others now offer players that work fairly sanely, everyone has a fairly level playing field in available components. Yes the DRM lock between iTunes Store and iPod is a terrible trap but 99% of their customers ain't bright enough to see it. Remember, they are selling to the massmarket consumer electronics market and diehard Mac faithful, neither are known for critical thinking.
The problem is their competitors are still selling mp3 players into a market looking for iPods. By essentially creating the market they defined it. For now. Sandisk looks like they are figuring out how to move units, others will follow. Eventually even Microsoft will figure out how to make a device people might want.
No, not quite. There are lots of good smartphones out there, judged by the only metric that counts, market penetration. When iPod appeared mp3 players were in less than a percent of the population's hot little hands, smartphones are already over that mark. And remember Apple isn't going to be able to have it's way with this market, the carriers rule their roost and aren't likely to be dumb enough to hand all of the profit centers over to Steve on a silver platter.
Democrat delenda est
Yes, because Macworld is not the place to talk about Macintoshes.
That is simply historical naming that does not reflect the new company name or need to split announcements across multiple events, and does not chage the general purpose nature of the event - next year it will most likley me renamed Appleworld, a new monikor to match the new company name. Some other venue or outlet will arise to talk about things Mac and OS X related.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who is this guy and from whence do his pontification garner it's steam? Perhaps a slip on the rope soap in his morning shower?
Iphone fulfills for 90%+ in that it's...
aesthetically pleasing... see zune to contrast a baseball card stuck to a damp turd
a phone... which is the PRIMARY reason folks sign up for that $600+/annum connectivity
a music player... which makes for one less gadget for our overloaded e-hipster to tote
for 90%+, anything else this thing does is gravy.
It might be personally disappointing to you, but if you think it will HURT them to have gone with a carrier, you are out of your mind. Furthermore, It stacks up on capacity with the Nano, which only happens to be the hottest selling iPod out there. Additionally, when compared to other phones in the market, the storage capacity just blows them out of the freaking water, hands down.
"Progress comes from the intelligent use of experience."
call 6 months of free advertising a "mistake"?
What?
The trouble, such as it was, was that nothing was ready to announce, which is to say, ship.
Remeber, Apple doesn't get to schedule Macworld around their product readiness, it's on the calendar a year ahead of time. If a product isn't ready, I'd rather them take the extra time to make it ready than to rush it out on a specific target date like so many other companies -- notorious for making shit products -- that I could name.
It's no baloney, it ain't a phony...
My cellular bananular phone!
That's as much a function of having a GSM phone as having a carrier with international agreements. The best thing about having a GSM phone is that when you go international you can pop the SIM out and buy a SIM card with a local number and prepaid minutes. Generally this will provide you with free incoming calls when your friends/family at home call you as well as provide you with cheaper outbound calls.
He went on to say that the iPhone keynote would also cause "Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky, rivers and seas boiling, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria."
... and then they built the supercollider.
"Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible; if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple." -- Charles Babbage, 1852.
I know several people who were about to get new phones.....and new phone service contracts before the Apple Keynote. They are holding off until the iPhone is released so they can get it instead. I am a Mac users and the phone made me drool. I can't afford one right now but if I could I would get one in a heartbeat. My two friends who went crazy after seeing the iPhone are Windows users and they are going to do anything to get one.
If Steve did not announce the iPhone I think he would have not had much to talk about during the keynote other than the AppleTV box. I think Apple is holding back on the iLife07 and iWork07 releases until 10.5 is closer to shipping. I am sure both program suites will make much use of all the new technologies in 10.5 and Steve did not want to spill the beans at Macworld. Since the iPhone is running OS X 10.5 it means that 10.5, iLife and iWork should be well worth the wait.
Then you aren't a smartphone user. Apple claims it's a computer that you put in your pocket then denies you the ability to use it as one by disallowing 3rd party software. If the excuse that you offer is that no one wants to do that anyway then who do you think wants a pocketable computer? Users of smartphones do and describing the iPhone as one is a misrepresentation.
If you don't care, ignore it. It's really not that hard. The point is that the article is based on... Nothing. It's as though Jack Thompson and John Ashcroft had a child; It would, quite possibly, not be made of matter.
Cingular is definitely "beige" as you state, but they have a better footprint than T-Mobile, more users (in the US), and more marketing budget. (Sadly, this is mainly because they charge more...)
It would have been foolish to go with Verizon or Sprint, since the phones can't travel internationally.
I would have preferred Apple as an MVNO (as an investor), but that would have been a challenge as well. At that point, the carriers have leverage against them...
That's some fine selective quoting son, works better if the original isn't like, right there in front of you though. Still, nice try eh!
The iPhone was clearly running a Leopard build, as it was making keen use of the resolution independent display. The performance they were squeezing out of a tiny device like the iPhone was impressive, and very likely reveals nice optimizations in several parts of the operating system. Power management in Leopard will undoubtedly be improved as a result of the iPhone work. Hardware innovations from the iPhone will probably appear in future Macintosh systems, too. Safari and Mail were running on the iPhone, which means that the performance and stability of those applications will receive additional attention, which they have sorely needed.
The fact that the iPhone runs Mac OS X will provide many benefits to Macintosh users of the platform.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I'm pretty sure the man can keep a secret, regardless of his personal level of enthusiams for a product.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you're going to be elitist, it would help to be elite.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I saw pictures of the interface patents like six months or a year ago. Now that we've seen the whole device and how impressive certain features are (multi-touch, real Web browsing) it is easy to forget that this was maybe the least secret Apple Keynote ever. In addition to iPhone you have AppleTV which was already introduced under a code name last year, and AirPort Extreme Base Station which is just a rev to an existing product. The biggest surprise with iPhone was that it is the "widescreen iPod with touch controls" that we already KNEW was coming, not just the phone that we knew was coming.
Macworld was definitely the last chance for Steve to pretend it was secret. The media coverage that they got that day was amazing.
...since my current contract is now in overtime. As it worked out, the whole thing was a bit of a disappointment. The pricing, on a tied contract, is just _too_ high, and a locked platform will stifle innovation.
Let's compare that with what FIC, Nokia and Motorola are all doing....despite their long involvement in the phone business (well, certainly the last two anyway), which you might expect would lead them to know which side their bread is buttered on, we see them all moving to _more_ open platforms. No-one would argue for MIDP being feature complete, but the capabilities of linux, the S60 platform and any number of other 'semi-open' environment are leading to some serious innovation in the mobile terminal world.
Hell, Nokia have just started a whole pitch for their devices as 'Multimedia Computers'...checkout the new N95 for an example of what _can_ be done on a semi-open platform (Nokia have a certificate based system to determine what resources you can use from the underlying platform, depending on how much they like you)...the battle is moving on from having a phone that can play snake.
I thank Apple for the iPhone - it will lead to improved UIs and some 'thinking outside of the box' for existing terminal manufacturers, but I doubt it'll sell the 12M units that they're asking for on this first rev(*), unless there are some pretty significant changes in the business model before rollout.
There again, I've been wrong before...
DAVE
(*) Apple Rev A hardware, anyone?
Ummmm...NeXT did not buy Apple. Apple bought NeXT.
You're kinda missing the important point that it's not the same people arguing the two sides, and it's for vastly different reasons. This time it's not someone whining "but I wanted (or didn't want) to know this early", but basically someone saying that Apple could have made more money by not pre-announcing this early. So lumping it all in a sort of a, "bah, people will whine no matter what Apple does" attitude is kinda missing the point.
Was pre-announcing the iPhone really a mistake? I guess we don't know yet. Sometimes pre-announcements and paper launches serve to keep people from buying the competitors' products. See MS who has a fine history of drumming up future products years in advance, and it actually worked. (Oh yeah, NT will be soo great. Any time now. Just wait for NT instead of buying OS/2 or a Novell server.) And recently both AMD and Intel, and both ATI and nVidia, are occasionally doing the same thing: pre-announcing things half a year in advance, or pretending to "launch" a product when noone except the review sites will be able to get one for the next half a year. Same idea. If you're busy waiting for Intel's next super-duper solves-all-worlds-problems CPU, you're not buying an AMD which is available right now, or viceversa.
Sure, you might lose a few customers who get bored and forget about your product in that time, as opposed to being able to buy it right now. But then, if it worked, you also gain a bunch of people who waited for your product instead of buying the competitions'.
Will it eat into iPod sales in this time? Obviously Jobs doesn't worry too much about that possibility, so maybe he knows better.
Will it give competitors the time to react? Maybe, but maybe not. The reason traditional phones do less isn't because the competition are drooling idiots. They've used a touch screen before, and the idea of a PDA phone isn't new either. The reason is: costs. Most phones are made for the larger market of people who want to get their phone for $1 with the contract, and sometimes get other freebies with it too. And there's only so much the telco will subsidize a phone. The iPhone is a rich nerd's high-tech toy, and it will be a niche product. Don't imagine that everyone who's on a McDonalds wage will blow half a grand on an iPhone and still end up with their arms and legs tied by a contract: they'll get a Nokia for $1 with the same contract. Think of iPhone vs mainstream phones a bit like in the graphics card arena: the 8800 GTX makes big headlines and pretty graphs on the news and review sites, but those slow 64 MB are what sells millions of chips and brings in the cash. Same here: just because Apple made an expensive high-end toy, doesn't mean everyone else will rush to replace their low end phones with expensive PDAs. Maybe they won't even react at all until they see how much of a market is there for such a toy.
Etc.
See? I'm not even a Mac fan, and it still wasn't too hard to come up with a smarter way of combatting TFA's worries than, basically, "people will whine about Apple either way."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Be very grateful that there was no leopard - it's just not ready yet. The features are there, but there are a lot of bugs still to shake out. It's coming along nicely, but I'd still rather wait until release before installing it on a production system :D
"The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones"
That's a good thing.
You've never heard that Apple paid NeXT to take them over?
Just ask Steve Jobs, Avie Tevanian, and Bertrand Serlet.
You don't understand the media "pundits", grasshopper. Their job is solely to sound all smart and knowledgeable, make all sorts of comments on a know-it-all tone, make some wild predictions and take credit only for the ones that come true.
E.g., if you predicted that Apple will make a PDA... some 5 years ago, do take the iPhone as confirmation that you're smart and predict stuff like the Oracle of Delphi. If you predicted that Intel will buy Apple (don't laugh, one idiot predicted just that), well, carry on as if that never happened.
And most of all, never forget the first rule for prophecies: give them an event _or_ give them a date, but never both.
E.g., if you predicted that someone will die of a heart attack (the event), don't tell them when, so you can still take credit for it 50 years later... when they're run over by a truck. Ok, tech ragazines and pundits predict about technology, not people, but the same metaphor applies verbatim. If you predicted in the 80's that the Mac will die because noone wants a graphics interface, feel free to act as if you were right all along when the slump happened at the end of the 90's, for completely different reasons. If you predicted that nVidia would buy ATI, feel free to act like you told everyone so when they get bought by AMD half a decade later.
E.g., conversely if you predicted that something will happen in 6 months, don't tell them exactly what. As a practical example: in this case we know when the iPhone will actually hit the shelves, so this guy has the date set for him. So all that's left is to make some vague comments and avoid anything quantifiable or falsifiable. No matter how many iPhones will actually sell, he can still pretend that his prophecy was right and Apple would have sold more without a pre-announce.
And again, be sure to sound like you're smart, knowledgeable, and can play Sherlock Holmes and pick the hints that everyone else missed. That's the stuff that sells ragazines. The more cryptic, far-fetched and conspiracy-theory-like it sounds, the more Joe Sixpack loves it. It makes him feel like he's learned some fantastic thing about technology and the technology companies. He suddenly feels like he's in the loop. He's suddenly no longer some frustrated guy sitting on the sideline, not knowing what happens and when will they finally ship a keyboard with an "ANY" key.
And the journals love it because it gets Joe Sixpack to read them or browse their ad-ladden website.
That's, in a nutshell, how all the Cringelys and Dvoraks and other bullshitters in tech journalism stay in business.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think the presentation lacked focus on humans and conversations. It was all about functionality and that's not what I want from Apple. I want design that no pc maker or mobile phone maker can match. Remember all those companies making translucent, colored computers after the first iMac was released? Remember how bad they were? If Apple doesn't distinguish itself from the regular phone makers there will be lots of alternatives, with all that functionality for one tenth of the price.
Here is an alternative design http://enklo.com/document.php?id=30 to the Macworld presentation (with pretty mockups and screenshots).
Regardless of what you might think, the thing is a smartphone. People who have used smartphones, be they Treos, Blackberries, or even the old Nokia flip-open communicator are going to be the first people who buy these phones. And, the article's whole point is that these people are likely to be sorely disappointed not by what the iPhone does, but what it doesn't.
OK, I've waited, I've read, and I really was determined not to comment but there's stuff I'm thinking that I'll let spill into this thread...
I doubt that the first people to buy (or consider buying) the iPhone will be the current smartphone crowd. I think there are three groups who'll be first purchasers: compulsive first-on-the-block buyers, current Apple product users and fed-up current phone users. Ignoring the first group as a given for anything new & shiny, I think the other two are orthogonal to current smartphone owners.
I fit several of the profiles discussed by many here: I am a Mac enthusiast. I own a Treo 650 smartphone. I own a Motorola RAZR. I'm an iPod user. I'm in IT. I make corporate purchasing decisions for communications tech as well as servers and desktops. I'm the one friends and family turn to for the scoop when considering gadget and tech purchases. And, tempering my fanboi credentials: I administer primarily non-Mac environments - Windows and Linux. I run a heterogenous household - five Mac laptops, two Windows desktops, one Windows 2000 server, one Linux server and one Sun Solaris workstation. I'm extremely intolerant of bloat, bad user interfaces, and Stuff That Doesn't Really Work As Hyped. I'm equally appreciative of an all-powerful command line and a comprehensive, easy GUI. I've moved from mainframe assembly language programming with 8K core memory available to PERL-and-damn-any-platform-specificity.
I passionately dislike Cingular - even moreso than my general dislike of the cell phone companies in general. They rank slightly below the RIAA on my contempt scale. Verizon's got the best USA coverage but their lock-down of handset features in order to force use of their extra pay-to-use services drove me over to T-Mobile. I got really tired of the limitation of my tech use being arbitrarily set by Verizon. I mean, WTF was it with the Bluetooth crippling?! So now my Treo is a glorified Palm that's available for emergency phone use or if I'm going to be away from T-Mobile coverage. The RAZR wal better than free when I switched and is a good enough phone. T-Mobile is not very restrictive and way less arrogant then Verizon.
And I'll probably get an iPhone upon release. Why? Well, I'll perhaps finally be able to properly sync my address book?? I have an address book with about 1500 contacts. For some of 'em I want more than just a raw number in the telephone field. For the contact that's my utility company, for example, I want to store the main number, emergency number, billing department number, etc. I also want to keep the numbers of useful contacts or last-resort facilitators. So I either can use custom labels or put the info in parentheses next to the number itself. [No, I'm not OK with putting the notes about each number into the comments section. When I pop the contact or get an incoming call , I won't see the info in context] The same thing pertains for personal contacts where I have the person and then numbers for various places they might be found - home, home unlisted, office direct line, office private line, main business, moonlighting job, spouse/partner/other romantic interest, getaway cabin, family place, etc. So what happens if I let anything sync this stuff to a phone? The custom labels or parenthetical notations get mangled. If the iPhone will preserve a full, uncompromised sync of the OS X Address Book, that'll be head and shoulders above anything else for me. Then comes the idea of intelligent handling at my ear: I'm on the train, perhaps working on a laptop or reading a book. My iPod's providing a good song. Call comes in. Get the phone out of my pocket, headphone out my ear,
Here's a gem from his greatest hits collection:
m mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003718&pageNumber =1
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co
"Why Microsoft's Zune scares Apple to the core"
Um - right - whatever. Enjoy the ratings lazywriter.
I always love it when guys who work at magazines get all huffy explaining how guys who built multibillion dollar companies, and have multiplied those companies' values many times in recent years, are complete idiots.
Elgan's article, translated: "I don't understand corporate strategy very well and haven't even caught up on all of the publicly available details, but I have a deadline to make."
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Agreed, but I am not willing to pay more than the cost of one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" smart phones for a decidedly dumb phone.
And iPhone for $200 would probably sell like hotcakes (I know I would get one), but Apple is dreaming if they think they are going to go up against Treos and Blackberries (same price point) with a video iPod that has a basic phone attached. If it doesn't sync with outlook you lose corporate Amercia (a HUGE demographic for $500+ phones) and if you cannot install 3rd party apps you lose the techie geeks who make up the rest of the $500+ phone buying demographic. Who is their target here? Spoiled rich kids who think every device is improved with a video/music player attached? Chances are they already have a Verizon music phone of some sort.
Finkployd
Anyone who says the iPhone is a smartphone doesn't get it. Steve Jobs said "the iPhone is three devices in one: a phone, an iPod and an internet communications device." That is the exact description of the iPhone. It has a great phone interface, is the most multimedia rich/savy iPod ever produced and it is a surf board for the internet. As far as we know, it is nothing else.
People trashing it because it isn't a mini Mac tablet cum mini Mac Office or mini iWork are just projecting their personal dream features onto a fictive iPhone.
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
Back then the amiga was king, nothing apple did was better than amiga.
Amiga had better graphics (which in hindsight a good engineer could have copied easily)
Amiga had all the hackers - now they work for sony , ie ps3
Even back then, amiga emulated (ie via rom) the apple faster than what apple could do, ie it hacked the macos roms to
achieve async IO to make it run faster than ANY apple ever at that time.
Apple reps/engineers were stunned , probably because they were too spec centric and not 'gung ho' hacker types.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
All I know it that it was successful enough to let the Apple TV go unnoticed, wich will render both Blueray and HD-DVD obsolete. THAT, is going to be the killer app.
That's some fine patronization, AC. Please explain to the rest of us half-wits how what he says doesn't contradict itself?
The iPhone (or applePhone) is a cool thing. And it is for people who buy iPods instead of other mp3-players or MacBooks instead of other Centrino laptops. It is for people who want a cool thingie. These people do not use Word for Windows and Outlook, they use Word for Mac and Mail.app on their MacBooks. So Mike Elgan is wrong in the point, that it would not meet the expectations of these people. A classic Blackberry user will not move to the iPhone. Why should he? But the classical Mac user will buy the iPhone. And wheen you see how many iPods are sold to people, just because it looks good and works. The same thing will happen to this iPhone. In addition it introduces a set of new usage concepts, which are not available on other smartphones. Even I am not sure if the iPhone counts as smartphone at all.
Another thing is, the 6 month delay between announcement and real availability. This time can be used to produce, test or announce software for other OS's to synchronize the iPhone. Also a better comparision can be made with other phones. This could help in refining things. Also it will create this "when is christmas?"-feeling, so everyone is eager to get it. And when the early adaptors start to get tired by the new look and feel and start counting the missing things, the iPhone2 comes out. And the iPhone nano. etc.
In my thinking that if they use the keynote correctly, they can make some necessary changes before the release.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Apple controls everything regarding the iPod. But the iPhone has to work with Cingular. Who knows how much Cingular will charge for service to use the features of the iPhone. I'm guessing somewhere around $100 per month at least. Thats a complete deal breaker for me. The only way the iPhone will be real success is for Apple to lease their own network and provide a flat rate to their subscribers. Because Cingular will do everything it can to screw its customers. Just like Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Alltel as well.
Go figure. Articles left and right about what's wrong with the iPhone. Many of them stuck on the name issue, i.e., the Cisco conflict. Some stuck on the features issue and some stuck on the price. Others worried about the size of the system and the lack of third party applications. Each of these is utterly meaningless. Completely without merit. The name could be anything. Who cares? Call it the rose-is-a-rose-by-any-other-name-Phone. The feature list is almost pure speculation and certainly bound to change. I've tried to use excel on a TREO. It sucks. (However, it also sucks to use google spreadsheets.) And MS Word? If you're using your smart phone for documents that are longer than email it's because you weren't prepared and didn't bring your laptop. And the price is a small fraction of any two-year contract. Even the Motorola Q and the Treo cost well over $2000 for a two year contract. We're talking a minimum of $60-$80 per month plus taxes and the initial phone costs. The OS could be on separate memory chips for all we know. And there is in fact speculation that Apple will let some developers release apps.
HOWEVER, I for one hope the negative press continues, driving the stock price down. I expect to buy AAPL at a low just before the iPhone is released and then reap great profit as the stock price goes up. Every reviewer who has actually touched the iPhone wants to buy one. And I want to buy one.
What this article fails to take into account is that Apple has always depended solely on their base of Apple Fanboys and girls, who are going to take every penny they've earned working at Starbucks this summer and buy the latest steaming pile of shit that comes out of Apple's factory.
Seriously, Apple could market a steaming pile of shit, the iShit, and fanboys and girls would pay whatever it cost to buy it. After all, they could then proclaim to all of their non-conformist friends that "My iShit doesn't stink!"
I can't see the iPhone (iFone?) being a huge hit in the corporate environment. It's pretty hard to justify a music player as a corporate expense (next for the expense account... a game boy and Xbox as "training tools").
It doesn't play well will corporate email (especially exchange) and doesn't (afaik) have remote wipe capability.
There's probably a big consumer and executive (got-to-have-it) market for it, but for the drones (who run up the big airtime bills) it's not the right product.
It will be a solid double, but not a home run.
When I first started reading about the IPhone I didnt think it was very special, so I watched the keynote speach, which changed my mind. Now after a few weeks of going articles and peoples posts on boards such as this I have come up with the conclusion that it will sell well with young people, however it will be a big disapointment with the business community.
The following points concern me.
1. Depending on what they do with Battery life / replacement
2. Lack of 3rd part applications
3. Lack of Outlook support. Outlook is the most used comminications application in the business world, it is not a good idea to simply ignore it.
When Apple decided to reinvent the phone they forgot to add some features some of us consider default behaviour. I do still like the plain jain phone features, they are a big improvement over other phones, however its simply becaause of the large UI, most of the features simply cannot be done on the currently phone style...
So apply simply re-invented how a phone looks.. And hopefully did a good job with the Patent
The functionality argument could always be made for the iPod as well. The iPod lacked features that could long be found in competing MP3 jukeboxes, and yet it was a commercial success. In fact, some of its comparative deficiencies are the same that were listed here for the iPhone. Yet consumers didn't reject it for the things it couldn't do. I think a big part of Apple's target market are people who want to have the cool gadget like an MP3 player or a smart phone, but who don't already have so much experience with them so as to expect specific features. I mean, who's the bigger market, people who already own Blackberrys, or people who have regular phones and are sick of not remembering how to set up a 3-way call, or which unlabeled button turns on speakerphone?
Overblown expectations AND the follow-up news of a lawsuit over a legal blunder by Apple? WHAT GREAT PUBLICITY! It sure is great smoke and mirrors for their other concerns, I guess...
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
My revolutionary phone from Cingular has an 'innovative' touch screen interface with onscreen keyboard (plus a slide out keyboard). It is a 'breakthrough' internet browsing device capable of browsing webpages at high speed. I too can make a call by simply pointing my finger at a name or number in my address book. It features bluetooth connectivity, has the ability to watch divx movies and store thousands of mp3s, uses a simple to use interface, and has the ability to view word, acrobat, and excel documents.
I does everything an iPhone can, except costs hundreds less, has a removable/upgradable battery and memory, a much faster 3G connection, 1,000's of 3rd party aps, and is available now. Instead of being called the iPhone, it's called the Cingular 8525, it's a great phone.
As much as the 6 month away iPhone looks cool, and no matter how much Apple hypes it up as being revolutionary, it isn't exactly groundbreaking. I don't mean this as FUD but I can't believe how much hype is generated (15 billion dollars worth in a stock jump) over a product that, according to its published stats, is already outclassed by current offerings. The one feature I find about the iPhone that looks to be innovative is the ability to use the GUI to listen to specific voicemails without having to hear the others - that would be awesome.
Sony ha
You can bet that a harddrive based iPod with the same interface as the iPhone comes out shortly. Before the iPhone is available. What I really want to see is one of these in a Nano form factor with 16 GB of storage. That would be enough for a few movies and would actually have more screen space than the current iPod does for movies.
Lasers Controlled Games!
AppleTV may have gotten the short-stick, but it was due to bad design decisions, not a bad keynote speech.
The iPod rip offs are called ghetto pods. Get ready for a swarm of ghetto phones. My cell phone, ~$180 costs about half that to fix if it breaks. Using that as a watermark, the cost to fix an iPhone will cost about $250 and will Apple be the only one to fix it? How long will the turnaround with phone service be?
As someone working in the IS department for a Fortune 30 company, I can say that I *wish* we used Exchange / Outlook, as Lotus Notes sucks worse.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
thanks for spreading FUD and starting out trolls but I don't think the iPhone is in somewhat bad shape nor expectations nor whatever.
What expectations can the fans have on a product of which there was no leak prior to its presentation ?
and, in regards to the price, have you underestimated the style factor ? I would gladly pay what it costs only for the style; I don't care if it does not have the latest gimmicks as long as the gimmicks it has are provided and integrated in a stylish manner and I think many will be sold only for that.
In short : stop the bull$hit and talk when it's out. I don't give a fracking frack until then.
The entire argument loses all credibility for me. The only company that is uniformly and consistantly guilty of failing to meet their stated goals is Microsoft. Witness the Zune. What a joke. This writer is acting as if Apple and Microsoft were on the same playing field, in the same league. They are not. When was the last time that Steve Jobs and Apple failed to deliver on their promises? When was the last time they not only delivered everything as promised, but also included even more than promised? Who here thinks that the iPhone will not only meeet its expectations but will no doubt have many additions come this June? Bank on it.
Grafitti had its day and if it were a superior technology it would still exist.
You mean if another company had not sued Palm into dropping Grafitti, it would still exist. You forget what made Plam drop Grafitti in the first place.
But I'm not even sure that is the best text entry mechanism, just that I liked it more than the keypad entry we have today on many phones - and more even than some small keyboards, especially on pagers. I think the keyboards on larger devices like the Treo OK (I can type on them pretty quickly) but do not like the space they take up or the bulk they add to the device.
It's funny that people get all excited about devices that beam a virtual keyboard onto flat surfaces for a Palm, then say categorically that virtual keyboards on an iPhone will be unacceptable without having used one. I think with the right sensor technology a virtual keyboard may well be a good compromise in a small device.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, I had no idea Macworld was not run by Apple and that is a powerful argument against the idea.
However, I do think it would make a lot of sense for them to make that transition.
Thanks for the concise clarification without demeaning overtones.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what you always wanted was a palm pilot you could not install apps onto?
First of all, how do you know at the very least users will not be able to define custom Dashcode widgets to put on the phone?
Secondly, no.
What I wanted was Palm to really advance PDAs (and Palm OS), instead of stagnate in the market and hardly improve the OS at all.
Look at the iPhone. It looks pretty cool from what we have seen but think if Palm had really evolved the device and OS to a significant degree this entire time - wouldn't we in fact be seeing something even more advanced than the iPhone at this point? At one point Palm had great designers as well but they lost their way. In particular the people that brought us graffiti and a touch sensitive screen should be doing a hell of a lot more with touch-screen gesture control than we have seen to date.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What about the people (like me) who may try to buy the iPhone anyway even if they can't use it as a cell? (Or who will wait until someone finds a way to unlock/hack it to work with other carriers.) I don't care much about Visual Voicemail (as cool as it is) but the rest of it would be a major boon and is completely attractive. Granted knowing apple, its Rev A will have issues so perhaps may wait anyway. I'm sure there's lots of techno nerds who are also stuck in contracts with other carriers and can't afford to drop them AND buy an iPhone who will be trying to do the same thing.
It wouldn't have cost them a dime to add a model to the Mac Pro lineup that uses the new Quad Core processors, or to upgrade the Mac Mini from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo. Both are drop-in upgrades to the existing line-up, and at least _something_ new would have been in the stores to buy right away.
After hearing that Apple intends to keep the iPhone closed as far as writing and loading you own software, I'm not interested. Isn't Mac OSX Supposed to secure one user from another? Couldn't they at least require your software to run as an unprivileged user?
Please tell me how the iPhone is doing it right right now. That was the point of my posting.
If you don get this, then you indeed are the target audience.
Fanboys crack me up.
Apple is a company that has a tremendous brand presence, one that influences brands in many other industries and has a "following" more unique and devoted than say Nokia or Motorola. People will be clamoring to dig up FCC filings on Apple's first foray into cell phones... but how many people are clamoring to find out what Motorola's next whiz-bang product is going to be? This is perhaps why the author didn't understand just how critical it is for Apple to come out and set the expectation. And that's another thing... The FCC filings put information out there that may be ambiguous and not set the proper expectations for consumers and developers. Apple was smart to take a lead on this and set the expectation according to what they want people to know about the upcoming product.
That being said, iPhone is not a strategic product. It's a tactical product in a much larger strategy. And this is something the press doesn't seem to grasp at all.
Yes, iPhone lacks this and that but do they need to "test the waters" to know the demand for 3G or other features they have yet to incorporate? No, of course not... there's plenty of industry data for these existing features. What they ARE testing that NO phone manufacturer yet has is multitouch capacitance sensors. This is a key to Apple's larger strategy, in my opinion.
Based on a closer examination of the technology (Synaptics Onyx Concept phone, Multitouch Demo at TED) it's clear that iPhone is only scratching the surface of what multitouch can do... and they have only begun tinkering with the UI, gestures, etc.
Note how everyone pissing and moaning about the lack of tactile contact is ignoring something critical in Apple's redefinition of the UI. One of the first things I noticed about the early iPod interfaces was that the scrollwheel seemed to possess both acceleration and some momentum... i.e. fast scrolling will keep up momentum for a second when you let go of the wheel. There's more feedback received by your senses than just tactile sensory input.
When you touch an object and move it with force, you expect momentum. You also expect to see the result of momentum... an object continuing to move once you let go. Also you expect proportional momentum... push harder, retained momentum is higher. Multitouch capacitance sensors have velocity, pressure and acceleration sensitivity and a smartly designed UI will mimic the physics of these behaviors. The end result is that the 2D simulation of 3D space behaves more as you would expect it to if it were a space of real objects. This is also feedback... except it's many layers of feedback telling you where you should expect objects to be, how much force you need to apply to achieve a given result, etc. A keyboard offers only one layer of feedback. And this puts most PDA's not just five years behind, but as far behind as typewriters in their ability to tell you something more substantive about the work space.
But most companies don't think this far. Apple, however, does. Apple's designers don't look at other PDA's and think "Hey, they have keyboards, people put up with them enough to buy them... let's make a physical keyboard." When people tell you they want feedback, they're not saying they want a tiny keyboard. They're saying they want feedback... but your combined sensory input gives you much more information about where you are in space and time and subconsciously what your brain needs to do to achieve certain results.
So what Apple's designers tend to do when faced with this is they will go to the root of the issue and research how people receive and perceive sensory input... and what that combination of
I just wanted to point out that if you think the iPhone is vaporware then you don't seem to know the definition of vaporware.
You see, a product is considered vaporware when that product is announced and then the release date constantly slips causing the eventual release of that product to be called into question.
Things that are vaporware: Duke Nukem Forever and the Phantom Game Console, even Windows Vista could have been called vaporware at one point because the release date did constantly slip and it was possible it might not be released at all (at least not in the form that it was originally intended to be).
The iPhone is not vaporware because it has a solid release date and there is no reason to believe that it won't be released.
Seeing another casualty at the hands of Apple fanbois reminds me of this great gig of Mad TV!
Where is this guy getting his information? Is it all opinion? Sure sounds like it...
1. Jobs raised buyer expectations too high.
OK, OK... Give me a second... I need to catch my breath... Gotta stop laughing... Yes, because Apple has such a history on not delivering on what it claims it's products can do. In fact, I've been extremely dissatisfied with all of the Apple products I've ever bought. Which is exactly why I keep coming back. Oh, wait, that makes no sense. It is my experience, via by my own perceptions and those of my friends (not exactly a panel of experts but still...), that Apple is very good at delivering exactly what people expect from them when they release something. Look at the MacBook Pro. A lot of us squealed like little girls when we first heard about it. You know what's funny? I own one now. I still squeal. It's every bit as great as I was lead to believe. Same with my 5G 30GB iPod. My mother had a new nano, she loves it. My mates with Macs are whole-heartedly in love with them. And in all cases, no matter how great they thought they were going to be before they got them, they thought it was even better when they finally had it.
2. Jobs raised Wall Street expectations too high.
Yes, because Apple has a major history of not delivering when they release something new. I mean, the iPod was a major flop, no matter how great Apple said it was going to be. And who uses an Intel Mac? No one. Not a one. In fact, Apple's sales have dropped since their release. Wait, no they haven't. They've been climbing higher and higher, just like Apple made out that they would. Hmmm... Interesting...
3. Jobs gave competitors a head start.
Another one, right on the mark. OK, let's clear this one up quickly.
4. Jobs undermined Apple TV hype.
You know what? I'll give him this one, sort of. The iPhone did take center stage to the Apple TV. However, which will sell more? The Apple TV? Or the iPhone? Good question... Hard to decide. There is a reason they focused on the iPhone over the Apple TV. Firstly, the Apple TV was announced already. This was just the launch. Why focus on the product everyone knows about? Second, the iPhone is new and needed to be shown. Focus on the new product, especially with all the speculation running around the net. Though he's right about this one, in a way, he still misses the major reasons why it was done.
5. Jobs put iPod sales at risk.
Just like they did to the iPod when they released the iPod Nano... And the iPod Shuffle... Oh wait, that's not how it happened at all. Sales have gone up! $499 for just what you're going to use as an iPod? Besides, big deal, your product that has 80% of the market will only have 70% of the market now, with the lost 10% going to your other product. Yeah, great loss. I'm sure Apple is really crying about losing sales to a cheaper product for a more expensive one. I mean, who wants more money? Not me.
6. Jobs wrecked Cisco talks.
This is true, but Cisco also found out they had no rights to the iPhone name anyway. So who cares? And, if the unthinkable should happen and i
WARNING PLEASE DONT READ In 1945, a young girl named katu lata kulu came over to America in a grey boat from Africa. A mysterious man killed her by cutting the word "LATUALATUKA" into her back. now that you have read this message, she will come to your house on a full moon and steal your soul unless you follow these directions: 1. Retype this message as a comment for 3 other stories.