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Newton's Ghost Haunts Apple's iPhone
PetManimal writes "David Haskin has looked back at why the Newton failed in the early PDA market, and warns that Apple may be setting itself up for a similar failure with the iPhone. The iPhone shares with the Newton a hefty starting price, and Joe Public may not be so keen on the cost, as recent survey data suggests. Moreover, the iPhone will have to deal with two additional factors that were not issues for the Newton: Competition, and wireless service providers: 'Besides overcharging for iPhone, Apple faces significant competition, something it didn't face in 1993 when it launched Newton. And you can bet that competition from the likes of Samsung and LG will both be good (although probably not as good as iPhone) and most assuredly cheaper... I'm more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular. If Apple doesn't respond quickly by lowering the price and making nice to AT&T..., iPhone may well become Apple's next Newton.'"
They've got it completely wrong about competition. In this case, it's better that they have competition than not.
With the Newton, it was an entirely new device, so it was that much more difficult to spur adoption. Whereas now, everyone knows what a cellphone is, so they can look at the iPhone and just say, "That's like my phone, only better."
They did the exact same thing with the iPod. Digital music players weren't new when the iPod came out, it was just the first of it's kind in terms of design and functionality. Suddenly everyone said, "THAT'S the digital music player I wanted to buy." I suspect the same thing will happen with the iPhone.
I don't care about the price, if I wanted one price would not have been my determining factor. It probably kills its for some others. One thing I didn't consider earlier is the number of people I know who won't get one because its too big. Its the old idea of, its a phone, if I wanted a pc I would get one.
The killer problem with the iPhone in my book, and it seems to get knocks from others I know as well, is the fact it doesn't have a battery you can changeout on the fly. I travel, and I don't always have access to a power outlet. Worse, the iPhone is designed to do things other than just being a phone, hence I will need to use it more often. So, whats with this fixed battery?
boneheaded.
Then again Apple is about looks more than anything in their consumer side. There are a few bright ideas in their PC group that seriously need to come over to the iPod/iPhone side.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Well, the iPhone has one advantage that the Newton, which I loved, did not. A net connection. It is most certainly not the same sort of device, with the iPod being closer in functionality. But, I suppose that we have to endure the endless chatter until "the thing" arrives. It's expensive, it's going to be shiny, and the most interesting aspects we won't know about at least until it ships. Namely, how will OS X for mobile effect the landscape.
The iPhone is surely intriguing. Slap in a terminal, and get a bluetooth keyboard. It's been a while since I used Pine.
why not offer a stripped down version?
The iMac/eMac of the iPhones!
The iPhone mini!
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
that you had to train and the way Apple hid this concept from consumers until they had already bought the product.
Kinda shameful that untrained hand writing recognition is still shit.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I really can't believe how bad the reaction has been to this latest product from Apple. Usually Apple products get at worst a 'yeah it's very nice but overpriced' type reactions. The iPhone is getting slammed all over the Net unlike any Apple product in a very long time.
I wouldn't want to be seen walking around with an iPhone. The product has already gotten a reputation as being something of a joke. Or something that only a diehard Apple fan would ever be seen with. There are too many other good phones out on the market or will be on the market. Unlike the portable digital music player market.
All of these were the 'next' newton at one point or another. I can't stress enough, that apple has a habit of picking markets where the higher price point is not well established and dominating that sector. Simply opining that because the iPhone will cost a significant amount more than a vanilla cell phone as an alternative, therefore it will be rejected by the populace is ahistorical and ridiculous. The iPhone is not going to cure cancer, it is not going to revolutionize the cell phone market, but I will be the farm that it will sell 10M units within a year, at least.
The armchair economists hard at work here seem to forget that apple (until recently) has made a business of selling branded, exclusive products at a hefty premium. To own a mac you had to be willing to part with more than a few hundred extra dollars, but for whatever reason, it was worth it. Whatever that reason may be: actual performance gains, better UI, susceptability to the RDF, who cares. It doesn't matter if 10M customers take leave of their senses and buy a 600 dollar phone with a cingular contract because of apple branding and market power or if they do so because it is a fundamentally better option. Either way, we are looking at a repeat of apple's succesful past history.
~2001 - An MP3 player for $300 when I can get one for $100? Apple is retarded.
This cartoon series which mocks Apple's TV ads sums up my thoughts pretty good, I wish I had drawn it.
Seems most everyone has an issue with the price, and I am not one to disagree. $500 is a lot of money. But there are several things to consider here:
1) I seem to recall that there are rumours AT&T/Cingular will reduce the price on the service plan. So instead of $80/mo + free phone, we may see $30/mo + $500 phone.
2) How much is a blackberry? This seems like it can easily capture blackberry users with its integrated email functionality -- does it compete well at this pricepoint?
The one problem I see is that it won't allow 3rd party apps. This means that it can't truly be compared against a PocketPC or palm.
Phones are only ever _really_ wanted by two categories of people - the gadget freaks (solo guys with big paychecks who also do something like kitesurfing on the side), and teens. All us other slobs just get boss issued phones, hand-me-downs from the wife, or whatever they had in the first phone shop that was the cheapest. I can't see a teenager going for this phone (it's too expensive), so they'll have to gamble that the gadget freak will want one. If you only have one product that's a big gamble.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
FTA:
Umm, if Apple does have hubris, it's just giving back the same hubris that the wireless carriers have been throwing around for years.
Exactly. The Newton was the first kid on the block, so it took competition a couple of years to appear, identify the flaws in the Newton, and beat it. That's the opposite of Apple: the smart phone market has been around for a few years, and Apple has identified the flaws in the existing offerings, and will beat them. It's like the iPod: hardly the first MP3 player, and certainly not the cheapest, but undoubtably the most succesful.
Probably the same kind of people who already spend $700+ on a so-called "smart phone" that does less, is harder to use, and looks less fashionable than the iPhone. And it doesn't really matter: if it makes a profit for Apple, then it's a good thing.
It's simple personal economics: if you don't want it, don't buy it.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
And here I was expecting to learn something about how Apple's iPhone is susceptible to minute changes in the gravimetric field..
/sigh, its early yet
Aikon-
More specifically which market. We've all read about the Asian markets and their love for new gadgets. That's where I'd start off. Then the EU, then US, Russia and whoever else wants it.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
But that's okay. If 99% of the people hate it and don't buy it then Apple will have reached its target goal.
Personally, I think opinions will change once people actually have the product to hold and look at. Then you will start seeing real opinions on whether people like it or dislike it. Until then, blah--it's all made up.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
who spend $2700 for an Apple monitor?
I dont know who this Newton guy is, but I ain't buying any phone with a ghost in it.
This is hardly "revolutionary" technology - I don't understand the appeal.
The iPhone is nothing special in Asia already... Its like re-introducing old and outdated technology
http://www.nokiausa.com/N800
It is too proprietary. It will never compete with the shear amount of software that is available for pocket pc's, and Palms. (What? This doesn't fill the same business shoes my Blackberry did?) Who wants to spend more money on something that doesn't allow you to easily add functionality?
This thing needs to be about $300 to compete.
I don't think that the iPhone is the best thing since sliced bread, but the price doesn't really matter.
There's plenty of margin on this device, and Apple is pretty good at playing the demand/price curve. iPods are always released at some ridiculous high price, then slashed 20-25% before its EOL.
My guess is that the iPhone will be the flagship product, and you'll have a touch iPod in the $300 price range that will bring people in.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Again, the iPhone isn't for sale yet, right? So this is all still speculation that no one will buy an expensive tech gadget. There is a market for high-end everything else, so why not for high-end phones? The newton was marketed wrong, I think Apple is on fire with their i-devices, and they will definitely sell some iPhones, even for $500.
stuff |
I, like everyone, else had for a long time about the mythical Apple iPhone rumors. When it finally got unveiled I was very shocked at how absolutely uninterested I was about the product.
I remember the jokes about handwriting recognition back in the Newton days, but there was a general feeling of excitement about the product even if people couldn't afford it.
With the iPhone the reaction I've noticed tends to be:
"Yeah, that's what a phone designed by Apple would look like"
"Would you buy it?"
"No"
Did it then appear as the ghost of Colonel Klink?
It's only priced so high so that it doesn't cannibalize ipod sales. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't seem to realize there's no reason to purchase a phone for such a premium price when you can get these:
Creative Zen Vision 30G $284.99 + Nokia 6103 $160 = $444.99
For less than this:
iPhone $499/4gb $599/8gb
Two superior devices (the best camera phone + the best portable HD based video player) for less than an overhyped, overpriced product... hmm. I wonder what people are going to buy.
I'm always puzzled by the oceans of ink wasted on speculations like this one. Obviously some people (presumably many at Apple) expect the iPhone to succeed and some expect it to fail. Some will be wrong and some will be right. I'm not sure what the point of articles like this is, unless it is an effort by those who would benefit by an iPhone failure to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, a negative buzz as it were.
"Apple doesn't have an unblemished record when it comes to introducing innovative new devices?" Well, big whoop. Neither does Microsoft (remember Microsoft Bob?), IBM (remember the four-inch floppy? No? Thought you didn't), whatever.
Innovation is always risky. And success or failure can turn on a hair. If a few breaks had gone Apple's way the Newton might have succeeded. Conversely, a few turns in the other direction and the Mac might have failed (anyone remember just how bleak things looked in late 1985?)
I still love Steve Jobs for saying that "the killer app for cell phones is making calls." Maybe that's just a slick Steve Jobs talking point... or maybe Apple's iPhone team believes it to the core, and they've made something that'sreally good for making calls. With all his blathering of whether it's innovative or not, and whether it's overpriced or not, David Haskins never addresses the question of how good it is for making calls.
People happily buy "overpriced" iPods because they're really good for listening to music. If it turns out that the average cell-phone user thinks iPhones are really good for making calls it will succeed. But we won't know that until a lot of iPhones are in the flesh-and-blood sweaty greasy hands of a lot of real customers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's more than just a pricing mistake. It's that, for example, if you say into the iPhone:
"Hello, my name is Steve Jobs"
it will come out on the other end as:
"Holler! My norm is stove robs!"
--- What?
There is a way to unlock it from the carrier out on the web. No way am I going to pay incredibly money for a phone that is locked.
I personally never buy a locked phone, but it looks like this one will only be available locked.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Its clear that the article forgot about the little thing called brand awareness. If the Newton was really the "iNewton" and it brought all of Apple's other services together in a nice neat package (and was sexy like the iPhone), then maybe it wouldn't be sitting here covered in dust on display in the PDA graveyard.
Leopard, Apple's forthcoming system, is to be released more or less at the same time as the iPhone. Leopard might well be thought of as in synch with the forthcoming iPhone. What the iPhone truly needs to succeed, in view of its obvious disadvantages (high price, limitation to Cingular, small memory for music/video, lack of voice dialing, etc.) is a KILLER APP. Such an app could well be DICTATION-OCR SOFTWARE (since a microphone is already present, and a stripped down OS X) . . . software that would let a user dictate an outgoing Email, or text that could go into a rudimentary word processor (like TEXTEDIT), and thence to a memory file or, by any one of several means, to a printer if desired. Then that device, trademark issues permiting, could be renamed the POCKET MAC ! And then that software could well be incorporated into LEOPARD, which would give it the boost needed to stand out as more than a slight improvement over TIGER !
If they're serious about selling ten million units, then they might want to think about reserving a special STD code just for iPhones. (This will require the co-operation of the telcos and the number issuing authority, but it's probably a big enough undertaking.) And plug it ceaselessly, so members of the general public know that all numbers with a particular prefix are iPhones. Or at least SIMs that were sold inside iPhones ..... I think people would be more likely to put the SIM out of a cheap phone into an expensive one than the other way around, though! (Except temporarily ..... I wouldn't take an iPhone to Glastonbury.)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
iPod Sales
... colors ;), better wireless, more networks, significantly increased battery life, and better applications.
The iPod was overpriced, underpowered, and in a wickedly restricted market. They were into their third year before they even began to see sales increases, fourth year before it was significant, and wasn't until the fifth and sixth year that it began defining the industry.
Give this phone time and changes. Initial adoption will be slim, but Apple just needs a foot in the door and the device will become more obtainable and universal.
The difference between the original iPod and the original iPhone is that the original iPod didn't kick ass. It was just another Mp3 player, but had a very small target audience. The iPhone can easily be used by anyone willing to cough up the cash, and is one of the most amazing devices we've seen. Starting out it's a better iPod than the original iPod!
Where in this post I picked on three factors the iPod had to deal with, I'll only pick on one for the iPhone.
Raise your hand if you can afford a $600 phone.
I'd give it two years and every feature will be dramatically improved on including the price. Better camera, more storage, higher resolution display, hell
In no way am I an early adopter, but I thank all the rich folk who pour money into the pockets of the developers so that they can improve a toy for me (:
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
The price of the iPhone is two thirds of what the Newton was (less than that in today's dollars), and it is something that people already spend money on, as opposed to something that they were not in the habit of buying.
Back then they didn't have the widespread popularity of the iPod or iTunes. They do now.
"iPhone, from the people who brought you iPod" will probably work wonders.
The iPhone shares with the Newton a hefty starting price, and Joe Public may not be so keen on the cost
So did the Apple II and the Macintosh. So did the iPod. So did the Palm Pilot, for that matter--which, unlike the iPod, enjoyed phenomenal immediate acceptance because it was one-of-a-kind and later faded away as imitators caught up to and surpassed it.
The main thing that was wrong with the Newton is that it was a product ahead of its time, with poor handwriting recognition and none of the PC-sync features that made the Palm Pilot such an open-ended hit. The iPhone is just right for its time--if anything, it's a little late to the game, like the first iPod was.
If there's one thing that will hinder the iPhone's initial acceptance, it will be the lack of third-party apps. The Palm Pilot encouraged third-party programming and still does; Apple wants to restrict third-party apps to those it approves as safe. This is reasonable to me, especially since the iPhone is several degrees of complexity above and beyond the Palm Pilot, but if a competitor can match the iPhone on features and style and provide better third-party support--like, say, Windows did with the original Macintosh--the iPhone will fail.
And, I'm afraid, drag the iPod with it.
I read this guy as saying that iPhone sales might NOT be very very super fantastic! This is an amazing conculsion from someone who has done his homework! [???]
Here's a brief summary for those who don't want to read the entire lousy article:
(1) iPhone has nothing in common with the Newton
(2) Newton was advanced, even by today's standards.
(3) Newton failed due to handwriting recognition and a $700 price.
(4) iPhone may fail due to price, supported by a survey by "Compete, Inc"
(5) The iPhone will have competition from cell phone vendors.
(6) Apple may have "excessive hubris".
Conclusion:
- Author is convinced iPhone sales will be "unspectacular" unless Apple lowers the price and caves into AT&T (Cingular) demands.
Apple is great at taking an existing product or set of technologies and figuring out how to make it "just work" in a way that's intuitive and easy. You'll pay for the convenience but for an increasing number of consumers it's worth it. I have full confidence that the iPhone will be more of the same.
I used to think Apple produced nothing but overpriced junk but that was primarily because my previous exposure to their products occurred in the 90's. Then several years ago when iTunes for Windows hit I was tired of managing my music collection in other programs and looking for an easier way so I gave it a shot after hearing rave reviews from Mac users and it was such an improvement over the other software I was using that I uninstalled the other programs immediately. iTunes worked so well that I decided to go for an iPod and it was (and still is) hands down the best MP3 player I've every owned. I gave the iTMS a try and the iPod / iTunes / iTMS combination worked so well together that when the Mac Mini was announced I decided to bite the bullet and try a Mac. I liked it so much I upgraded to an iMac within 6 months and have just convinced my boss to split the cost of a MacBook Pro for use at the office and when I'm on the road. I couldn't be happier after making the switch. I've got to deal with Windows based PC's all day at work and when I get home at night I want something that will just work.
I'm starting to feel the same way about cell phones. I'm tired of all of the crap you have to put up with. I got an LG phone for Christmas and it's the best cell phone that I've ever owned but that's not saying much. My cell phone has an mp3 player, but of course you can't use the mp3s as ring tones and the user interface absolutely sucks. It's got the best built in web browser of any cell phone I've used, but it still can't display half of the web sites I try to visit properly. Admittedly it handles web sties designed for mobile browser well, but often times I need to visit a site that hasn't been designed for mobile browsers. It's supposed to work with any Micro SD trans flash stick so I purchased a 2 GB stick and, of course, it doesn't work. A little research on the Internet revealed that even though they claim any chip will work just about no one can get the 2 GB stick working. I've had enough. I want a cell phone / mp3 player combo that just works. I want to be able to easily manage my music on the phone, I want to be able to easily find the tracks I want to play, I want to be able to use any thing on the mp3 player as a ring tone. I don't want to worry about buying the wrong kind of flash memory. I want my contacts and calender to sync with my computer easily, I want a web browser that won't mangle most regular web pages. Visual voice mail will be a handy feature and the integration with Google maps looks pretty awesome as well. In short, I want something that just works. I realize that other phones will be cheaper and may have more features but I don't care. A phone can have all of the features in the world but if they are poorly implemented and/or the UI sucks what's the point? I don't have time to fiddle with crap all day long. Life's to short. I want something that will just work and I'm willing to pay for it.
I'll skip the first generation to give Apple a chance to work the kinks out and to further improve the product but as soon as the second generation of the iPhone ships I'm buying one. I'll be ready for a new phone by then and I'll be happy to shell out $500 dollars if I know that at the end of the day I'll have a cellphone that does what I need it to do and "just works". If the iPhone lasts half as long as my and holds up half as well as my 3G iPod has then it will have been well worth the money.
If you measure your phones worth by a long list of features, then the iphone probably loses. However, the iphone is about being *easy* to use. Why do some phones require you to hit 14 buttons to get to the feature you want? Bad UI design.
The iphone is like the ipod (and IMO) the mac. It has the same power, but is easier to use. I'm willing to pay more for a better tool that will save me time and not frustrate me. Apple is about design and good design costs money.
who the hell is david raskin and why should anyone care a damn about anything he says?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It was ahead of its time, as were the General Magic devices, but they were novel and were still in the nether land for size.
GM also had very decent phone integration near the end - I spent a two week vacation without any computer use, using only their voice email (TTS from them to you, WAV voice messages from you to them).
I have three Palms in a drawer somewhere, none of which do significantly enough more than my phone to carry yet another thing.
I routinely troop out my old Newton and Magic Link for classes on technology, and have a hard time prying them out of the students' hands, whereas they look at the palm, shrug a bit of indifferent recognition, and move on.
I dare say the latest iteration of a Newton OS in a blackberry-sized case would still have some traction.
Unfortunately that traction might be under the wheels of the cell/smartphone bus.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Well, this is a mercifully short rant at least. Too bad it's totally disconnected and the points are each (separately) developed poorly. If his main point is really what it seems to be (that is, that Apple is making the same mistakes with iPhone as it did with Newton) then here's what I see wrong with it:
1)He compares the pricing of the two devices...but seems only to go as far as saying they both cost "too much." He doesn't seem to put together the fact that the Newton's $700 1993 price tag was almost exactly twice as expensive as the iPhone: $999.48 inflation adjusted. And that's for a much less capable device, with an untested interface that didn't work well.
2)He notes the real reasons why the Newton failed (large size, bad handwriting recognition, completely new product category), but doesn't attempt to claim that these will be problems for the iPhone. They won't, so he simply ignores them.
3)Evidently he considers competition to be a problem that the iPhone has in common with the Newton. This after he notes that the Newton was the first device of its kind, and therefore had absolutely no competition. Strong competition may or may not be problematic for the iPhone, but it certainly won't be a parallel to the Newton.
4)He totally misrepresents the only evidence he cites. Specifically, the study on how many people would buy at what prices. His link says "miniscule number." Yet the survey itself says 26% of respondents said they would be likely to buy it, and 1% of those would buy it at the launch price. Insofar as Apple itself has set a goal of only 1% market share, being able to sell a quarter of that volume for the launch price sounds extremely encouraging to me...imagine if a quarter of Sony's target market had thrown down $600 for a PS3. Also, the study makes specific note of the fact that they don't expect the price to stay that high; business as usual in the cell-phone world, but totally ignored by this author.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Although it might have been necessary for the FCC, and/or for building up anticipation, it also allows all the thumb-suckers to mold their arguments so they sound reasonable.
Like the Norwegian clowns who just happen to have the RIAA's stance in the upcoming music wars, how surprising that upshot of all this is that Apple will "have to give up its high-handed approach" to our brave businesses like AT&T wireless. And the survey. Gee, you want a lower price? Please accept the wireless subsidies. You just have to lock Bluetooth, and buy our ringtones.
The iPhone is 2G, thus any company endorsing it would effectively be discouraging the use of 3G and those lucrative MMS facilities. Even if it were possible to fit similar facilities onto a modified 2G iPhone (via GPRS, or whatever), it wouldn't be worth the hassle as a one-off, and it's still going against the pro-3G politics and general flow of the European marketplace.
It's probable that the operators would allow the sale of network-tied iPhones with their name on, but far less likely that they'd offer subsidised contract prices. Thus, the iPhone would appear very expensive next to the ("free" or cheap) competition. Contract mobile users here are used to getting shiny new phones at highly-subsidised prices, so I can't see this flying. One exception is pay-as-you-go (not usually subsidised anyway). However, since most PAYGers are light/occasional users (or possibly kids), I doubt that many of them would consider paying even half of the iPhone's price.
In short, if Apple wants the iPhone to be a success in Europe, they're going to have to come up with a 3G version.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"History does not repeat itself, except in the minds of those who do not know history" - Kahlil Gibran
I have my doubts too about the iPhone. The MP2000 cost $1000 in 1996. Not only was this a severe psychological threshold (adding an extra digit), but in current, 2007 dollars that is 2.5x as much as the iPhone. The base iPhone is under a psychological threshold (500), and in real terms much cheaper than the MP2000.
It's also simply not true that the Newton didn't have competition. In the same year that Apple introduced the 2000, the first MP that worked really well, Palm introduced the Pilot, which had a radically different view of a PDA. It didn't even recognize ordinary handwriting -- it didn't have the horsepower. But even though users had to learn graffitti, it got the most important thing right: form factor. A PDA must be something you don't mind carrying.
Finally -- and this is huge difference -- the MessagePad was a platform. You could buy it for its address list and notepad, but given the size of the box, you could just as practically use a paper planner. What it needed for success was developers and applications that would go beyond the paper planner, and which would integrate with the user's information infrastructure. As clunky as Palms HotSync architecture is, the Newton Connection manager was clunkier still. I worked with developers of Newton apps trying to convince them to work on streamlining the process of moving data back and forth to databases, but truth be told the Newton, without a built in network, wasn't a very attractive platform for this.
The iPhone is not a platform. It's a gadget. It could be a platform, but Apple has closed it. Personally, I think this is more draconian than necessary, but it makes Apple's intention clear: users will buy this thing for what's built in. It's a converged device for the uses which, after a decade of mobile technology, have been proven attractive to consumers.
There may be some wisdom here. I was in the computer store the other day to get a cable for my PDA, and I was shocked that the PDA display had shrunk from several counters of PDAs to a two shelves only eighteen inches wide, tucked under a counter. One shelf was for Palms and the other for Pocket PCs. All the space that used to be taken up by PDAs, and then some, was taken up by accessories for iPods. So why fight it? Why invite retailers to set it up next to a pocket PC phone, when you already have a category all to yourself?
Altogether, we're talking about a different scenario with the iPhone. The Newton was trying to create a new category of products, the iPhone is trying to muscle in on an existing category. It's risky, but if it fails, it won't be parallel to the Newton at all. Sure, you can always say if a device was cheaper, it would sell more. That doesn't explain anything at all. But if the Newton had been half the price, it probably would not have succeeded in the long run because it was too big for what it was immediately useful, too poorly connected for what it could have been useful for.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well...
Compared to Other Smart Phones such as the Sony Ericsson p990 which is not even distributed here and since it is not a quad band phone, the coverage would be iffy, the iPhone is really competitively priced.
Thing is, not a lot of people are going to pay big bucks for a really smart phone. However, Recalling how much the original iPod was, and how limited it was in the first place, I think the iPhone will succeed.
The Newton was a failure because Apple didn't want to develop the device further. Lots of changes were required which would have been very hard and very expensive in 1997. Color, long battery life, hard disk, synchronization with enterprise mail/schedule systems etc... The Newton OS 2.0 was a patchwork and was very hard to maintain. The Newton 2100 and 130 are still today way ahead of the Palm.
The iPhone is effectively the return of the Newton, fully rewritten, much more versatile and useful than the Newton. It's just too bad there is no handwriting recognition.
"I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary." Through the looking glass and what
Kinda shameful that untrained hand writing recognition is still shit.
Good thing the iPhone doesn't use any, then.
You're assuming that Apple won't upgrade the phone for the market. The unit technically has all the right software facilities, it just needs a smidge of different hardware. There's little doubt in my mind that when Apple is ready to crack the European market, they will have the necessary CDMA/TDMA hardware ready. Especially if they try and support the Sprint Nextel CDMA network before they make the move to Europe.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe this time Apple will learn something from Newton and stop falling on his head!
They'll never reach their 1% market share goal if they don't broaden their horizons beyond cingular and lower the price. Why? He said 1% is roughly 10 million units. Okay, so let's do some simple math. Cingular's customer base = ~50 million. So 1 in 5 Cingular customers will go out and buy the iphone? Bullshit. Not going to happen.
Actually, it may be easier since Europe uses GSM, and 3G here is UMTS (which is more or less GSM on steroids).
The iphone shuffle. It has no screen and only has one button, when pressed calls one of your contacts at random. If you really want to call some one specific, keep calling until they answer he phone, or conversely only store one contact.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
TO: Apple Marketing Dept
CC: Big Steve
SUBJECT: iPhone Pricing
Just a thought on the the iPhone pricing. If we release it at too low of a cost, we may never hit the sweet-spot for pricing. I think we could release it at tripple the cost and then lower it little by little until we get the numbers we want. Just hype it as "price cuts" when we release one of those hokey upgrades. It worked for the rest of our products.
S. Limey, Marketeer.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Your post was good until the last line. I hate to mention it once again to somebody else but, Steve Jobs did say in the Keynote that they will make a 3G version. I'm speaking under the assumption that nearly everybody on Slashdot watched the keynote or heard this fact spew from SJ's mouth from somebody else. If you didn't watch the keynote, then now you know. A 3G version is coming, Steve said so.
Jonathanjk.com
"if Apple wants the iPhone to be a success in Europe, they're going to have to come up with a 3G version."
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Most people in my workplace (me included) carry around a rather bulky, regularly crashing, integration nightmare, poor voice quality and snail slow 600 HTC (ex-Qtek) running Windows Mobile just to be able to carry their Outlook data with them.
Give me something that looks like an iPhone and has half the promised functionality, and you've got yourself a costumer. Actually, from the reaction at my workplace (Portugal's largest telecom), you've got yourself a LOAD of costumers
Apple is not just going for the blackberry crowd or some other niche market. They are going after everyone who has a cellphone. They packed everything you really need (phone, camera, music, video, internet); made it intuitive and easy to use, and beautifully packaged it into something that will be the envy of your peers. AT&T's ability to deliver smooth service will be the largest potential downfall of the device. The other major potential problem could be multi touch, but this is the same team that invented the (click)wheel so I'm pretty assured that this will work as promised.
> Kinda shameful that untrained hand writing recognition is still shit.
Go look at the handwriting of most people. 75% of them probably have handwriting that is shit, and is difficult to read. If a human can't read it easily, it's doubtful that a computer can. Even from printed text, OCR is still poor without throwing in dictionary lookups.
People keep mentioning the market survey as if it is now accepted fact that all of the public thinks the iPhone is too pricey. First, the survey was on conducted on 379 people. That's a rather small size. Not thousands, not tens of thousands. Also, IMHO, it was targeted to the wrong people. When doing any sort of statistically sampling you have to consider your sample population vs the target population. If you wanted to market a new kind of children's snack, you wouldn't target bachelors for a survey. You would target children and their parents, namely the parent that is in charge of buying groceries. In this case, they asked people who have heard of the iPhone and have/want an iPod. The problem with that is that it is not targeting the people who are in the market for a smart phone. Apple freely admitted that is the target they are seeking.
The same thing was said about the iPod. It is really too early to tell if the iPhone becomes the next Newton.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote.
Fair enough. I guess my issue then is that I don't understand what you're concerned about. The Apple phone in its current incarnation would be unlikely to sell, but I don't see any barriers to Apple designing a 3G version of the phone. Indeed, the only reason why the phone is as limited as it currently is, is due to Apple's contract with Cingular. They've already said that they will eventually branch out to other carriers, which means that the phone radio specs will change. (Not at all uncommon for mobile handsets.) So worrying about their phone being "only" 2G seems a bit pessimistic, doesn't it?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I always find it interesting when Apple, or another progressive company, does something and the first thing out of the "experts" mouth is... "they should be doing what X or Y is doing to succeed". And I can't help but think that's exactly the reason so many companies fail to stand out in the crowd.
Well, the Newton suffered from a bunch of problems, many of which the Palm series "got right" (price, size, easy docking, a very cheap story for application developers).
The Newt was also very difficult to develop for. NewtonScript rocked, as a language, but the tools weren't that great (hint: When you develop a new language, *do the debugger first!* -- you're going to need it anyway...). The GM of Newton actively discouraged developers with a "tax", requiring then to pay Apple a 1% cut (or more?) of a title's gross, and by charging (a LOT) for the development software.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
With a whopping 5% market share.
At the time I posted that comment, I didn't realise that Apple intended to launch a 3G version anyway, nor (supposedly) how easy the iPhone would be to adapt for 3G. I still don't know how significant that "smidge of different hardware" is in practice, but since they have it in mind, it's probably not an issue.
BTW, I never implied that limited specs were a problem per se, it was that the 2G iPhone wouldn't have supported the lucrative (and hyped) Euro-3G facilities.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Just one of a series of article from people speculating out their arses about how bad iPhone sales will be. It is subject to many of the same logical flaws as other articles of this kind.
First, rather than assume the obvious -- that this is just the first version of a product for which Apple already has a long-term plan -- it assumes that the price and capabilities that Apple has stated thus far are basically fixed. The iPod provides a reasonable example of how Apple will likely proceed. Start at the top of the market and get those customers who are willing to pay top dollar, introduce newer models down the road to target other segments of the market, add capabilities, bring down prices over time as components become less expensive.
Second, it argues that competition is just too high in this market for Apple to make inroads. This argument usually comes from those who compare lists of functions. Plays mp3s? Check. Email? Check. These people miss the fact that the key is making these features a pleasure to use rather than the province of geeks who love to tinker with gadgets all day. Sure there are phones that have these functions, but the companies that make them do not have Apple's UI design capabilities nor will they likely to keep up with Apple in terms of writing good software to link with the phone. There are plenty of people like me who will not buy the first iteration but most likely will buy future versions, with cheaper prices and more features.
As for hubris, I'll say this. The fact that Apple only needs to announce this phone in order to generate months of online speculation and arguments about its success is proof enough that interest in this phone far exceeds than in any other phone out there. People can always find some reason to criticize one aspect of the phone or another, but they are still arguing about it. If the iPhone truly represented nothing significant compared to what is out there already, there would be nowhere near so much attention. But people have seen the demo and know that this represents the next big thing in phones. . .
It's better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. Right now, I am failing forward.
Regards,
Casey Serin
http://iamfacingforeclosure.com/
Come on, it just isn't important for the iPhone to be "open".
Think of the iPhone as being closed in the same sense that the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP and DS are all "closed". Because that's exactly the sense in which it's going to be closed. It doesn't mean there will be no third-party developers. It means that all third-party products will have to pass Apple's technical certification requirements. It's quality control. Video game platforms have done this for decades.
The only drawback is that guys like you and me won't be able to write crappy homebrew software for the iPhone and upload it to whatever website. But Apple never promised us the ability to do that. So who cares? If you want to tinker with hardware, there's plenty of other hardware out there to tinker with. And besides, it's a safe bet the iPhone will be hacked open just like every other closed platform anyway. It just won't be authorized.
These people are not Apple users... they don't have Macs but they do use iTunes and they have iPods. This is a woman in her 30s, a man in his 40s and a 20 somethiing young woman. I didn't even ask them... they announced it with pride and excitement. I asked one about what they thought of the service plan and price, she said "Doesn't really matter, they're all the same any ways" (plan that is) and didn't even bother to answer about the price.
I think as long as it works and does what Apple claims, people will love it.
I OTOH am an AVID Apple PC user. I love OS X. I don't have an iPod (had a 3G but it was stolen, haven't replaced it) but then again I dont' have an alternate MP3 player either... and I have a phone that works (SonyEricson T610) and does all that I need it to do. I will be waiting for the 2G iPhone that you very much, before I lay out $600 for a new phone/PDA.
What I really want is a Tablet Mac that uses the iPhone multi-touch screen but also takes input from a stylus.
In any case iPhones are well beyond the early adopter market as far as interest goes and will be picked up by anyone who's enjoyed their iPod (milions).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Keep in mind, competition and the existence of a market go hand in hand. If there was no market for such a device, there wouldn't be much competition in that market.
On the price... Mac customers have been trained for years to pay a price premium simply because it's a Mac... and it's cool... I don't think this pavlovian conditioning was as widespread back in '93.
The Newton failed because it didn't work and needed its 4 (IIRC) AA batteries changed every couple of days.
The iPhone suffers from neither of these problems.
And just in case it hasn't come up yet, How many Newtons does it take to change a lightbulb? Axe! Mother hydrant umbrella monkey.
My current cellphone is from the last millennium and the cool aspects of being able to say that is losing to my desire for a display that actually has colours. So I'm in the market for a new phone, and all those persky rumours of an apple phone on the series of tubes certainly made me wait a little longer. At first glance I instantly knew my wait had been in vain, not because of anything mentioned in this article but because I've owned two ipods. The 20gb one, and then a shuffle when I realized how much of a hazzle carrying the big one around was.
So there you have it, I won't buy into an iphone (at least not untile they make iphone nano), not because it's twice the price of what I find reasonable for a cellphone, not because there are other choices but because it's simply not designed for pockets.
...provide me a list of these third party applications that people cannot live without and without which, the iPhone supposedly isn't smart. Because I can tell you in advance, being a "power user" that there are no killer apps for mobile phones (the phone is the killer app!) and the third party apps that so many critics seem to be flagellating themselves over do not matter one little bit to the consumer. Not even to consumers who use their phones for more than just making calls. The state of third party apps for phones is pathetic, and is not a driving force for why people purchase feature laden phones.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
The Newton was early, too early, entering something that could not even be called a PDA market.
The iPhone will be late, maybe too late, entering a highly competitive and highly saturated market, like Europe, towards the end of 2007, and even more so in Asia (think gadget loving Japan) where the iPhone will appear only sometime in 2008.
Eventually, the iPhone's fate might share some features with the Newton's in the long run nonetheless.
The misfeature described by the grandparent post was a standard part of the Motorola software for the main address book (not the mini address book on the SIM card). The same misfeature existed on many of their phones including the RAZR. Newer versions of the Motorola software, such as that on the KRZR have improved the way the address book works.
First of all, that survey is bullshit. I bet a survey taken before the iPod was introduced would have shown that no one would pay $400 for a 5 GB MP3 player. (No sense mentioning the infamous Slashdot coverage of its launch. Just curious--does Taco own an iPod? Or a Nomad?) In a quote attributed to Henry Ford, "If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." The iPhone is gorgeous, and its price is in line with its features. It will sell just fine. Furthermore, IT WILL GET BETTER. The first iPod cost $400, had 5 GB storage, played MP3s, and had a monochrome display. Today's $400 iPod--wait, sorry, there isn't one, the most expensive is $350--has 80 GB storage, shows pictures, plays videos, and has a larger full-color screen. Apple doesn't need to have a mindblowing success with the first iteration. Like all Apple products, it will start off nice and pricey, then it will get nicer and less expensive over time. By Fall or Winter 2008, they'll probably be 8 GB and 16 GB for $299 and $349, and lots of people will buy them. Maybe they'll even keep making the 4 GB model, which could be $199 by 2009. It's Apple's way: make one pass for all the people with money, then take another pass for the next group down, and so on and so on and so on.
Speaking of price, this guy says that the Newton was $700 when it was introduced 14 years ago and that the iPhone, at $500, is in danger. Well, $700 in 1994 was a LOT more than $500 is today. And the Newton tried to create a new market: it was looking for people who wanted to carry something the size of a paperback and wanted to take notes electronically. The iPhone is looking to go after a portion of existing markets: people who already pay hundreds of dollars for phones, PDAs, and MP3 players.
Speaking of market, he says "Apple faces significant competition, something it didn't face in 1993 when it launched Newton." Yeah, but I'd rather have 10% of a HUGE market than 100% of a tiny one. "And you can bet that competition from the likes of Samsung and LG will both be good (although probably not as good as iPhone) and most assuredly cheaper." Yeah, like all those cheap non-Apple MP3 players that dominate the market now. Oh, wait...
"It's also becoming clear that Apple may be suffering from excessive hubris. That is evident by its strong demands on its partner in the U.S., Cingular/AT&T. The demands, including a slice of the cellular revenues and control of the sales channel, were so strong that Verizon Wireless turned the deal down." Ha. Apple is doing Cingular a fucking FAVOR by dragging them into the late 20th century with great-but-freaking-OBVIOUS features like random-access voicemail. Apple is going to sell thousands of these phones on that feature ALONE. People who hate Apple AND hate Cingular but get tons of voicemail and want to deal with it easily will be crawling over people to get an iPhone. (Especially if they ever offer a web-based gateway to voicemail--wouldn't THAT be something. Maybe even with voice recognition to transcribe messages so you can 'preview' them as text and then listen if you want to verify details.) Apple is going to hurt Cingular the same way that VCRs hurt the movie industry. This could even change how phones get used. Caller ID + great voicemail means that businesspeople might start giving out their mobile number like candy, knowing that they can easily deal with a HUGE volume of calls. I forget if it was demo'ed or not, but I'm sure the iPhone will come with an option "don't make any noise for an incoming call unless it's someone in my address book." You could run a whole business off of an iPhone, but never be interrupted during dinner.
This reminds me of George Lucas. He made Star Wars, the single biggest movie of all time (at the time) and he still had to fight tooth-and-nail to get The Empire Strikes Back made. Apple has pretty much demonstrated what they do, and what they do well, in the last few years. Shiny, gorgeous, expensive-but-worth it gadgets with great UI. Why are
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The thing with the newton is that it wasn't something anybody really needed. It was bulky and it wasn't very good at what it did. On the other hand the IPhone, seemingly improves on what a lot of other products out there offer, and it's something people actually want.
As for the price, it's $150 more than the top end IPod. Is that really so astronomically expensive considering that it does so much more than a regular IPod?
Don't get me wrong, if the interface doesn't work as well as it appears, then it may very well bomb. But from what I've seen so far, the criticism mostly stems from concerns about price and having to switch cellphone carriers. I don't think that's really going to be the stumbling point.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Although you're being sarcastic, yours is the only comment I've seen in this thread which points out exactly why it's boneheaded to compare the 2007 iPhone with the 1993 Newton.
The Newton was based 100% on its handwriting recognition, and the handwriting recognition didn't work. The iPhone, on the other hand, is not based on handwriting recognition.
There's only one reason why anyone would write an article comparing the two devices, and that is, to be an ass.
Motorola obviously won't be able to step up to the plate, but LG and Samsung might. It really depends on what they come up with. Apple's got the apps (iTunes) and the pretty user interface experience (Mac), but price is also a big factor in phones along with usability (it's got to function well as a phone, and phones undergo much more abuse than iPods through sheer use).
While I understand Jobs' reasoning for locking into Cingular (more control over the network to implement desired features), there's also a big danger in leaving a player as aggressive and with as large as a market as Verizon Wireless. You can't possibly think that Verizon and LG aren't working overtime to put out a competing device that will likely also be cheaper to stem the tide of users switching to Cingular. Time will tell, of course. It should be an interesting summer. I look forward to looking to changing my phone maybe in December or January, once the dust starts to settle.
"iPhone may well become Apple's next Newton"
;-)
Hmmm, wait a minute...
"iPhone may well become Apple's first Zune"
Seems a bit better now.
I too have been desperately hoping that Apple would release an Apple tablet/drawing pad/note taker, something that students would kill for, if it was simple to use, a la Apple, looked cool, and weighed little. Something to replace the Newtons and E-Mates out there.
... you have a very short memory. The original, 5 gigabyte iPod came out in 2001 with an introductory price of $399. That's $456.04 in 2007 dollars. The original iPod had miserable battery life, low storage, a B/W screen and it wasn't -in addition- a smart-phone with EDGE, WiFi, a 3.5-inch color screen and a friggin' camera!
Slashdot editors, here is a newsflash: "Industry analysts" are analysts because the are to frigging stupid to actually make it in the industry they are analyzing. Don't post crap like this.
Those are third party applications. They just don't run on the phone, just like they don't run on your computer, but you use them anyway.
I went to Cingular's site (partly because I'm already a Cingular subscriber.) And I didn't need a calculator to do the math:
crackberry = ($300 Crackberry with 2 yr contract) + ($200 4GB iPod nano) = $500
treo = ($400 Treo 750 with 2 yr contract) + ($200 4GB iPod nano) = $600
cing = ($400 Cingular 8525 with 2 yr contract) + ($200 4GB iPod nano) = $600
iphone1 = (4GB iPhone with 2 yr contract) = $500
iphone2 = (8GB iPhone with 2 yr contract) = $600
therefore:
crackberry = iphone1
crackberry [lessthan] iphone2
treo > iphone1
treo = iphone2
cing > iphone1
cing = iphone2
Then comes accessories like car chargers and USB cables -- which most people already have for their iPods -- that will increase the overall total cost of the other "smart" phones. Oh, and the iphone2 configuration, since it's 8GB in capacity, while equal in price to the Cingular and Treo smartphones, is actually the better deal.
Personally, I'm interested in getting an iPhone, but I have an issue with being too tied to my phone, which I currently use only minimally anyway. (less than 30 minutes per month.) I have about 6 people in my phone's memory, use my 60GB iPod photo for appointment reminders and contact lookup, and my Newton MessagePad 2100 for note taking. (In addition, I have plenty of extra space on the iPod that I frequently use it to shuttle & backup files from Point A to Point B.) For me, it works fine, so no need to upgrade. My wife, on the other hand, will probably be getting one.
MacTacToe - for every problem, an elegant solution
This sounds like a planted story. Apple isnt targeting everyone with this phone yet. Its too expensive for most. I think that its an impressive device and innovative, but the everyman model will come later when the included technology has become cheaper.
Apple is not dumb on the electronic interface end either. Ives & Crew are no doubt into the design & Project Management stage for the 4th generation iPhone as we speak. Take a look at the iPod evolution through the half dozen iPod versions. Apple is not going to sit around like a soon to be dead duck, as so often suggested here on Slashdot. Come on guys, get your heads out of your screens.
I'll bet you see a USB/AC/DC charger, and a booster battery nearly simultaneously with the launch.
I wouldn't want to bet against new batteries being available from an Apple Store at some point.
I see the bitching about "No 3G". Obviously the next generation will have it, and Apple just confirmed that the other day for the EU.
No, always best to keep 'Soviet Russia' jokes totalitarian. IMO the joke should be:
In Soviet Russia phone i's you!!
I don't think they hid it. Also, the 2000's handwriting recognition did not need any training.
Almost everything I've read about the iPhone makes mention of how high priced it is and how that's going to be a detterent from people buying it. If this were a completely new type of product coming out of left field, I could see people wavering (before seeing the device) and not being sure that it will be worth the money. But they're not writing in a vacuum here... A little research will show you that there are plenty of phones on the market that are comparably priced.
As a disclaimer, this is no objective list of comparisons to features, just phones I found browsing around the internet. I also know that you can probably get them cheaper, especially when buying it with a 2-yr. contract. Please don't respond telling me how much you paid for your phone. I really don't care. I just present this to show that there are other phones on the market in this price range. Reporters have failed to say that (for instance) the Q does this or that that the iPhone doesn't, so it's worth it and the iPhone isn't. Rather, they've just stated how high priced it is, which is poor reporting in my opinion. All of these other companies seem to think there is a market for devices in this price range:
Nokia
N91 - $549.99
N80ie - $499.99
N800 - $399.99
7380 - $359.99
Sony Ericsson
W950i - $619.99 (reduced from $699.99!)
W710 - $399.00
K790 - $499.00
Motorola
Q - $449.99
KRZR K1 - $329.99
Samsung
BlackJack - $449.99
Blackberry
8700c - $399.99
8800 - $499.99
Pearl - $399.99
Cingular
8125 - $499.99
8525 - $549.99
Palm
Treo 680 - $449.00
Treo 700p - $649.99
Remember that the whole approach with the Apple iPhone has been desktop class functionality, with a familiar Mac OS X API on the backend for developers (if any are given the opportunity to do so).
... it even required its own special programing language (NewtonScript, based on Self).
With the Newton -- and I both owned and played around with development on a MessagePad 130 -- *everything* was different. The idea of how it would be used, the user interface, data storage model, the APIs
Few users wanted to pay a lot of money for something that couldn't run desktop applications and a lot of potential developers were turned off by the odd-ball APIs and NewtonScript (I don't know that you could port from C, more like re-write from C).
If Apple/Cingular could comes down off their high-horse and allow third party developers then iPhone could be everything that the Newton wasn't and really have a chance of being the next Apple, Macintosh, etc. It would be great to see the basic iPhone framework, for example, licensed to folks like Axiotron so that a real Mac OS X tablet computer could be made.
As it is, I hate to think that The Next Big Thing is some consumerist toy, instead of a general purpose computing device.
-- I browse at +5 with stripped sigs
The big difference with this "smidge" is battery life. But in any case, from what I've read, the 3G version won't be ready until early 2008, which gives the other guys (e.g., Samsung, Moto, LG, etc.) plenty of time to come up with a good competitor and it will already have 3G capabilities (since carriers are demanding this from the handset makers now). The big question will be: "Is the 3G iPhone late to the party?"
Sure, let the early adopters pay $500 for an iphone. My Razr cost me $50 with the contract. I've seen them for free now w/ contract recently. The iphone will come down.
Apple is on the right track with the interface. I have despised the interface on every cellphone I've ever had. My Razr is the worst of the bunch. I have to use over 10 keystrokes for at least a dozen different things I do on a regular basis. Unfortunately Apple is on the wrong track with keeping the platform closed. I'm sure that lots of original users of the Palm Pilot only used the included applications, but the overwhelming reason that the Palm platform is still around (10 years later!) is the profusion of third party applications. So I'm gonna wait for iPhone 2 or 3 when it uses a fast wireless protocol, someone has "opened" the platform, and there are good third party apps. Until then cost issues will keep me in cell phone user interface hell.
-- QED
Please excuse the noob questions. I've only used Sprint phones (CMDA?)...and not familiar with the GSM stuff. Can you explain or give some links about these differences between 2G and 3G phones? What is better with which one...what exactly does one do better on 3G in Europe than 2G here in the US?
I'd heard that the GSM phones have slower data speeds than the Sprint type networks...is this true?
Thanks in advance..still trying to sort this all out as I try to decide on going with the iPhone and switching providers for the first time ever.....
I've been happy with SprintPCS....decent pricing, good voice reception and coverage, and I like being able to easily tether my phone to my laptop via bluetooth when I need an internet connection, and I don't have to pay extra for it (works with the Vision package). Can you do that with GSM and GSM providers' packages?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In the time it took to plug my usb keyboard back in... I decided that
/.ish of me. Sorry.
:(
/. :)
what I had to say about this was not worth posting about...
How very UN
Whatever else you do in life... Make sure you're as honest with yourself and everyone about you.
That and the fact that ANYONE, given enough time and determination, can learn how to stop working FOR money and have MONEY work for YOU.
Has anyone ever taught you how to do that or were the people you grew up with as financially UN-educated as mine were?
My parents, and myself, were WORK educated. They are, by profession, a doctor and a Teacher. They are also 65+ and at retirement age and are STILL working FOR money. Wonderful people, atrocious financial education.
Are you a janitor? Security guard? Stoner? Clerk? Doctor? Lawyer? Candlestick Maker?
If you don't have assets (Things that pay YOU, regularly, every month or year)providing a 'passive' income, you most likely can't stop working without penalizing yourself.
Change that today. Search for topics on financial education and passive incomes, get the audio books "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki and "Lead the Field" by Earl Nightengale.
Just don't waste your time posting worthless junk on
Do yourself a favor, get started on your financial education today.
also, nobody would ever pay 200+ dollars for an mp3 players, and nobody would pay for music they can get for free.
"Contract mobile users here are used to getting shiny new phones at highly-subsidised prices..."
Sure, the lower middle clas does, but anybody who is smart with their money would not do this if they ahd a choice. Since Apples goes after high end electronic consumers it may not be an issue.
The market will tell wether or not the price is too high.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Good gawd. Half a dozen people outside Apple have actually had their hands on an iPhone, yet everyone is an expert on whether the device will succeed or fail. Stories like this are a great way to pump readership, though.
A few thoughts:
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
$600 for a cell phone (with AT&T/Cingular nonetheless....) and something that does virtually the same thing my $150 Palm VX does? No thanks. Way too expensive and I agree with those pointing out the bad decision to keep it a closed device. Open it up and allow the people to decide how to use it.
Nokia sold 50 million of their high-end N Series phones last year. Clearly people have money to splash out for fancy phones. I wonder if the author of the article did even some cursory research on the high-end phone market, or a comparison of what you get with an iPhone compared to a high end Nokia. Not everyone buys a basic silver painted plastic phone.
One phone with a comparable amount of technology content and bling is the Nokia N93, and you have to add as large a memory card as is currently available to even get within 1/2th the memory that comes in an iPhone. The off-plan list price for this phone is about $900. I haven't heard anyone question Nokia's sanity in pricing this phone.
Apple is taking some risks, like using a new OSX variant for a mobile device. But, for the most part, Apple simply provided a high-end product, with several unique and desirable features, for a large and established high-end market.
I wrote parts of this stuff
By contrast, the mobile phone market is established, and Apple is getting in much later in the game. "High-end" phones have been around for years, and have never sold in massive numbers; and whether the iPhone is considered worthy of the price remains to be seen. Sure, the lower middle clas does, but anybody who is smart with their money would not do this if they ahd a choice. The people you describe *do* have a choice. Even if they need a mobile for whatever reason, most don't "need" a new phone that often.
It's not necessarily stupid either, so long as you realise that the subsidised phone isn't really "free" and the plan you're buying it on is a good fit for what you'd be doing anyway. Since Apples goes after high end electronic consumers it may not be an issue. Smacks of elitism to me. Wake up; the iPod (which many will have in mind when considering the iPhone) is definitely a mass-market phenomenon, and you don't get that by targeting exclusively high-end consumers.
The market will tell Much as I'd like to see if you're proved wrong, it's not going to happen since (as others have mentioned, and I've acknowledged) Apple *are* planning on launching a 3G iPhone. So in that context, it's more likely to be subsidised by the operators in Europe after all. It'll probably still be more expensive than the competition, just not incredibly so, and Joe Pleb may well decide it's worth the (little) extra for the Apple cred.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
People like to press buttons without looking.
Tactile keyboard feedback is a beautiful thing.
It seems like the iPhone is going to be one of the more powerful smart phones on the market. It is a little surprise that it is $100 more than a typical smart phone. I would not call that overpriced, I would call that an expensive phone. A Porsche isn't "overpriced" it is a well built machine with a lot of smart people behind the design and a great deal of care and concern into the quality of each car. I'm not saying Apple's products are as good as Porsche's, because I can actually afford Apple products while I can't afford a Porsche. But it's the same idea, even a little bit of quality and ingenuity is expensive. And the price difference between similar phones is not even significant (I paid that much for my Treo years back, no difference in price at all!)
The real question is, are people really going to pay for Apple's take on a smart phone when the sales of other smart phones has been lukewarm in the past? Or will it really be another Newton? (I liked the Newton, never could afford one when they were actually selling them though)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The biggest problem I see is how will Apple handle the consumer expectation that the phone will be free in about a year, so just wait for it. There will be a wave of early adopters for sure, but the mass market will "wait for the price to drop" much like most of my family & friends did with gadgets like the Razor. To penetrate beyond the fan base they're going to have to work a lot harder.
I thought it was a good idea
Nokia lets you program their high end phones. That makes them a completely different kind of product from the locked-in no-SDK iPhone.
Surely you don't mean blackberries, windows mobile, and palm phones? They're not in the same class. I really can't even draw a line of comparison.
Apple's biggest mistake here is pairing with one wireless provider. Not having control over the service quality, and not having the ability to actually help the customer when things go wrong with the service rather than the device is the death nell. It doesn't matter how amazing the device is, or how cheap (or expensive.) If people run into problems with CingulATT, it's going to reflect on the handset, it always does.
Price is not a factor, apple products have ALWAYS been priced at a premium. The iPod still is, their top of the line computers still are, and they are more successful than ever. Apple has never had a target audience of "entry" or "budget."
I always thought they should just make an iPod with a screen on one whole face and put the click wheel on the back of the device. But hey they didn't ask me so what ever...
My main complaint is that they have closed the device to 3rd party software. No SkyPe or Gizmo project? Um great what's the point of WiFi then? I mean browsing porn on your fun is fun for all of 3 minutes.
I am currently in the middle east and my wife's Nokia e61 with WiFi and SIP VoIP is fantastic. She can also use SkyPe through Fring. Basically when you are in a WiFi area free calls to other users and $.01 international roaming. No our other home is Portland, OR. which has municipal WiFi so when we are at home we can be free of cell phone companies too. Can't beat that with the whole LAPD.
As to competition any device that can take a 4 GB SD card is a possible killer, and with the introduction of Bluetooth headphones the look and feel of the device becomes less important. It can really be just a block of possessing power and memory in your pocket.
If Apple wants it fly they need to open the device to 3rd party apps, full stop. A small touch screen OSX machine that you can't add software to is so intellectually offensive that it hurts.
That piece of crap RAZR was $200 with contract when it came out, and people ate that shit up. The iPhone costs more, though it is within the same order of magnitude, and it might actually be a halfway decent phone. Of course you're not going to be able to develop for it despite running "OS X" but the target market doesn't care.
It seems like the iPhone is going to be one of the more powerful smart phones on the market.
Balderdash.
No SDK means it's one of the least powerful.
I wonder if this would work: All cell phones have a vibrate mode, correct? So what if keypresses caused a short vibration? I realize it wouldn't be as good as a mechanical keyboard, but it might give enough tactile feedback to make it worthwhile.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
In Apple's defense, the iPhone's price isn't really all that different from buying any other phone without a service plan: the reason phones are so (seemingly) inexpensive is because they are subsidized by the service providers. Try buying an unlocked phone: they are generally $200 more expensive than the same phones, supplied by the service provider.
But I agree, iPhone will likely suffer the same exact fate as the Newton, simply because Apple refuses to acknowledge mistakes caused by the monopolistic strategy which permeates all things Apple. It's clearly why Apple software on Windows is always a clearly inferior version, and in many cases (like with Quicktime) will screw up Windows so badly as to necessitate a complete reinstall of the OS.
If Apple's programmers are so skilled, why has it taken them so long to get iTunes functioning on Vista, despite the fact that it has been available for almost a year, it was in release candidate status for almost a year before that, there were available beta versions for almost a year before that? That means Apple had three years to plan for a Vista compatible version of iTunes (Quicktime is so fundamentally flawed, on so many levels, that it isnt even worth mentioning)... but failed to do so. Why? So that Apple could have a big song and dance about "not advising people to use Vista", in a desperate attempt to sucker people into buying their pseudo-computers.
Apple isn't a technology company: they are a marketting company with obvious and fundamental monopolistic goals. Apple wants everyone tied into their products, without choice, and all dollars (at any level) leading to Apple. They have been trying to build a monopoly on Apple software, hardware, their "rental OS" (since you are, practically speaking, force to purchase a $150+ service pack every year), then they have expanded their monopoly into distribution, retail sales, and even support by making sure any smaller computer shops fixing their flawed products are either put out of business or "encouraged" to stop supporting Apple computers.
It's these, and many other reasons, why Apple will continue to make the same mistakes. Apple would rather have a brutal monopoly of a niche market than a fairly acquired piece of a vigorously competitive market.
That is why the iPhone is doomed to failure. Consumers would rather have a device which is "good enough", than to be locked into paying the Apple Tax.
Of course, this doesn't necessarily tell you which is best in practice. There are also issues like 2G vs. 3G network coverage, services offered by different operators, how much they charge, etc etc.
Anyway, the new European 3G facilities include the likes of video messaging, TV on demand to your phone, blah blah.... I don't know how well-developed two-way videophones are yet, but the network should be able to handle that. Note that the public's uptake of some of these services (espec. TV on demand) hasn't been as high as the operators had hoped; they're having to recoup some of the money that they paid for the 3G frequencies during the dotcom boom
But unless you're planning on living in Europe, you should buy what's best in the context of *your* market/networks, not ours.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Are you kidding me??? Lower the price??? That is not Apple's way!
If Apple lowers the price on anything, I'll eat my shirt! Apple has always been overpriced. The Apple II was overpriced, the Mac was/is overpriced, the iPod is overpriced. Overpricing is Apple's core business philosophy.
Thanks,
Mike
Do people forget these things this quickly?
When the RAZR launched (Cingular-only) in 2003, it was $500. WITH contract. And the sole reason for its price was style. At least Apple has SOME substance to go with their style.
I'm not defending the iPhone. When watching the keynote, I was, as most were, in Steve Jobs' "Reality Distortion Field". But upon seeing the actual specs, I know I won't be buying one. But it really isn't that outrageously priced, either.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
That's a sad admission. Your thoughts are mostly FUD.
are the voice of reason. I did own a Newton. It did rock. We paid over $1000 for those puppies (years ago!) and there was no wireless. Now, the iPhone will have wireless, internet and pda function... at 500-600ish in todays dollars... I think it has a very good chance.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
In which case, what will happen is that one of the smaller mobile operators like Virgin will offer a subsidised iPhone as a way to get market share.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
You need Mulder, not Scully, if something is haunted. I'm sure he'd know a good exorcist.
When the iPod was launched, the portable music player market was decades old, and there were high-end, hard-drive based MP3 players available that very few people were willing to pay for. I think his analogy works just fine.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Phones like the Motorola Star-Tac or the Motorola Razr weren't excellent performers - but they were stylish and unique. Because of that, they sold huge numbers of these phones at (initially) very high prices. Remember $1,000 Star-Tacs? I do...
I don't think anyone can deny that Apple has hit the mark for a stylish and trendy yet functional cell phone. It's got all the ingredients of a massive seller - and sufficient marketing (Apple and AT&T) behind it to insure success.
Watch for lines of customers with $600 in their hands at the doors of the AT&T stores on release day. Then, as time goes by the phone will be sold at a series of declining price points - pausing at each level to fill demand at that price.
How many Razrs have been sold at this point? The IPhone is a better product in every way.
Did anyone else have a vision of the ghostly shape of Issac Newton tormentting an iPhone? Maybe making it float around?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
This may be the great selling point for the iPhones, people who get their phone subsidized with a tax right-off or bought by their employer.
Note that I didn't claim Apple were first, either with HDD-based devices or with MP3 players in general. I said that they got in there early, before the mass-market had matured. (Yes, there were portable MP3 players around years before the iPod; 32MB devices that held the same amount of music as a C60 cassette, took ages to copy your music to- which you had to do repeatedly when it could only hold one album's worth- and cost a lot of money. They were expensive geek toys.)
Apple got in there before MP3 players went *mainstream*; and to some extent they were able to define the market, not just with their player, but with iTunes.
Put simply, I don't see that the mobile phone market is at the same stage unless the iPhone does something as fundamentally new (and as well) as the original iPods.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I project-managed a serious attempt at rolling out Newtons. They failed for one reason and one reason only: Unlike Palm, Apple couldn't be bothered to integrate the Newton into existing IT environments. It didn't synchronize. The result - it was worthless as a PDA. From what I can make out, the iPhone continues this tradition. The result: Those willing to spend the iPhone's purchase price will buy Treos, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile devices instead, for the simple reason that they fit into daily worklife. Steve Jobs has many fine qualities. He has never understood the importance of compatibility with the installed base. If you don't believe this, go back and look at the NeXT machine - a fine piece of equipment whose software was carefully crafted to be irrelevant to the corporate computing environments of its day.
Ultimately the [Get a Mac advertising] campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. That is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.
When the Newton came out, you had to explain to people what it was and why they wanted one.
... you pay full price for the hardware and the service is going to be discounted. So the service will seem to be cheaper than the competition.
When iPhone ships, it will be after about 3 years of iPod users demanding that Apple make an "iPod phone". Everybody knows what a phone is. It also has an iPod built in, and everybody knows what that is. Then you get desktop Web and email, which people are quite familiar with, and similarly Wi-Fi. That is a whole lot of stuff and you haven't even gotten to the Newtony parts yet, which are free. The stuff you bought a Newton for -- calendar, contacts, note-taking -- is all free on iPhone.
The iPhone is also sold differently than other phones
And LG's phone is $700 and runs a Flash UI so how is that competition for Apple's $499 phone that includes an iPod and Wi-Fi Web browser in addition to phone features?
Stupid, stupid article.
"By contrast, the mobile phone market is established..."
Yeah, it's established, with really crappy software and interfaces. I just love trying to dig six levels deep clicking through some menu tree trying to find some setting or option. I just love trying to type and send text messages on a ten-key pad. I just love trying to remember which number saves a voice mail message while I'm in the middle of listening to them.
"Even if they need a mobile for whatever reason, most don't "need" a new phone that often."
Maybe they don't, but the industry average is 18 months. New phones, new features, switching carriers, early cancellations, "style", phones that are dropped, damaged, or stolen, all contribute to earlier replacement.
"... targeting exclusively high-end consumers."
Who says they're going to exclusively target high-end customers? That's a really, really, really bad assumption. The first pod was expensive too, but now there's one at nearly any price point you care to mention. Besides, Apple has already stated that the iPhone is simply the first in a line of many future devices.
"Apple got in early enough and worked their magic."
From my perspective, and given the above, there's still plenty of time for Apple to work their magic. Especially since the market for convergence devices (phone, mp3, camera, internet) is still in it's infancy.
And if all it does is get the industry out of Lotus 1-2-3 hierarchical menu interfaces, it will still have been worth it.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If you'd actually bothered to read what I was saying, instead of just skimming and jumping on isolated snippets, it'd be obvious that I was paraphrasing the other guy's position in order to disagree with it.
They said that "Since Apples goes after high end electronic consumers it may not be an issue." (my emphasis).
I replied "Smacks of elitism to me. Wake up; the iPod (which many will have in mind when considering the iPhone) is definitely a mass-market phenomenon, and you don't get that by targeting exclusively high-end consumers." (Emphasis added).
Next time, try spending more than 3 seconds reading what you're supposedly replying to.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"People replace their phones often, but they don't *need* to, contrary to what the person I was replying to implied."
Actually, if you'd read *my* post, you would have seen that there's plenty of circumstances under which they NEED to replace their phone. Switching providers, lost phones, stolen phones, broken phones, all occur more often than one might think. In fact, I've gotten new phones for three of those four reasons alone.
Which still misses the point. Whether or not one needs one or wants one, I personally have no doubt Apple will sell as many of them as they can make.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Slightly different context though eh! 3.0 Ghz G5's didn't exist then and it was down to IBM (not Apple) to produce them. IBM failed. 3G chips for mobiles exists today and are a well established technology (in Europe anyway). So Apple's technical challenge is integration, not invention.
Beyond the silly handwriting recog issues, battery life was a significant issue for the Newton. If the iPhone doesn't have as good, if not better, battery life than competing phones in the class then it's doomed. Then again, since that time the public has become much more acquainted with the idea of having to keep their devices charging all the time. Who doesn't have a charger at work, at home, in the car, for travel and damn near everywhere else. Hell, hotels will even lend you a charger if you forgot yours (and will use your forgotten one for that purpose). This behaviour was nowhere near the case when it came to the Newton. It was a device truly well before it's time.
But hey, that's not what killed the Newton; a device Jobs himself dissed because 'real computers have keyboards'. What killed the Newton was managlement. Fortunately Apple seems to have wised up on the 'dealership' nonsense and is pimping their gear from all manner of sales outlets. They killed the Newton by failing to SELL IT. All that blather about developing markets and what-not was bullshit. It's about MOVING UNITS and they just didn't have people focusing on doing that. Fuck, they couldn't even SELL the damned division off.
The Newton was a fantastic concept and a brilliant implementation, but lacking effective management it was doomed to the fate it received.
It's sad to see the iPhone have no programmability. No doubt the management droids at apple seem to think it'll be too expensive to actually maintain a developer network for it. After all, that worked just dandy for the iPod right? But then again if it does manage to gain traction and there's sufficient OEM interest perhaps that will change. (think customized phones for specific markets). But, then again, that would require effective OEM, channel and enterprise sales, concepts that continue to be utterly foreign to Apple.
If anything the iPhone will be a market blip that at least succeeds in forcing the other phone vendors to "suck less".
That's inaccurate. The iPhone is 2G, but it supports the EDGE standard. Which is a high-speed 2.5G-style technology. So, the iPhone has the required technology to provide MMS support, but will it? I can't find any sources.
Stop the brainwash
They want to sell things like TV episodes and so on, I can't see them reworking the system just for a 2G iPhone, plus there's not really enough capacity for that sort of thing with 2G; or if they charged for it at the normal 2G data rates, it would be horrifically expensive.
Although this is irrelevant, because as someone said in one of the replies to my original message, Apple *are* planning on a 3G version of the iPhone.
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