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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?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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. --
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
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.
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.
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.
They've been taken out of AMD64 native mode, and they expect people to just use the NX bit for everything now.
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.
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."
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
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
'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.
As far as I can see, the only feature of the iPhone that makes it stand out from its fellow smartphones is the interface, which is pretty damn funky. Apple have, like they usually do, produced a great UI - the applications that it's the interface to, OTOH, don't seem to be anything new.
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.
"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."
"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.
> 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.
> 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
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.
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.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Right, that's the bummer. The reason is that RIM just basically doesn't support Macs, even as far as desktop software goes. You can sync iCal with your BB only with a 3rd party piece of software, I believe.
If you haven't already, google around about Pulse, its inception is kind of interesting. Basically, a bunch of users were bitching about not being able to use their BBs as bluetooth modems, so one of them opened a bounty for a developer who wanted to write it, on the condition that either a) the software was free, or b) anyone who donated to the bounty got a copy for free. Apparently, they chose b).
Sony ha
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.