How Big Will the iPhone Become?

palewook writes "Combine the best elements of an iPod with a BlackBerry's addictive usefulness, and you may just get Apple's Next Big Thing. Around 2009, when the lower cost version of iPhone appears, Business Week believes the yearly market for iPhones could be over 10 billion dollars a year. Its an interesting prediction; if those numbers come to pass, iPhone could become a bigger source of revenue than the traditional iPod. 'The answer may not come until 2009. By then, Apple should have begun creating lower-cost iPhone variants to reach consumers scared off by the introductory $499 price. It also will probably have moved into overseas markets and cut deals with more carriers to utilize higher-speed wireless networks. So while most analysts look for Apple to sell around 3 million units this year and 10 to 12 million in 2008, many figure that 20 million will move in 2009.'"

Comments

from Apple.com

[richdun]

Dimensions 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm

I doubt it will get much bigger. Maybe a little to fit a 3G radio in a future revision.

Next question.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you're doing it right. Try rubbing it.

Re:from Apple.com

[BewireNomali]

the key to the success of the iphone will be initial public perception once it's in the wild.

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magnitude - for a long time abroad (Europe, for example) and a bit more recently in the US. quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad. i don't have to wait for visual confirmation of a keystroke to continue texting.

the sidekick was popular with teens a couple of years ago for this very reason. It was one of the first phones to relatively inexpensively offer qwerty and seamless communications packages for texting, email, and IM. it didn't matter that the form factor was less than aesthetically pleasing, it mattered that the phone allowed you to communicate quickly and simply, and it also matter that providers soon offered a prepaid service that allowed teens to get the phone and buy minutes/data.

if this screen is somehow at least as tactile and responsive as keys are on a phone pad - then the iphone will dominate communications because apple understands how to woo consumers. this is clearly not a business device, so they need to dominate the consumer market. teens drive a lot of the consumer market and teens text more than they speak (let me expound: by teens i more aptly mean 13-24 market). at an unsubsidized $500, this might be a little high for this market, so apple might have to come downmarket fast. what's interesting here is that the fashion industry does this with runway lines - so called couture. those items are unrealistic for street wear and ridiculously priced - but that drives interest for the "ready to wear" stuff that shows up at your local department store.

the other issue that is interesting to me is that the phone can be used as a vanity phone. if usability is an issue - then people will want to have one, but have a more functional phone on hand for day to day and keep the iphone around when trolling for the ladies. so even if usability suffers you might see significant sales because it will be the it phone to have, even if for show. working in media, there are plenty of film execs who have blackberries but are totally unable to use them, but have them because this is the accessory a film producer is expected to have. so they carry it around and have an assistant check emails, etc.

-third part software is not an issue to the average user.
-battery life might be an issue to the average user, but it will not prevent him/her from buying the product.
-3g vs 2.5g, etc. this is also not an issue to the average user. they do not care about this. as long as it works - users are familiar with and expect slower bandwidth time on a handheld.

the average user is concerned with the following more than likely:

-does it look hot? will this make me look cooler? (CHECK)
-does it work? (?????) this is where the texting comes in. Your average user might say: "It's cool but texting on it makes me frustrated because i have to get used to doing it a new way" (this is important because at $500 you don't get downmarket uptake by the people most likely not to bristle at the new interface - kids/tweens/teens) - or - "It's too slow to text on this thing."

the ipod function will not get used because it will kill battery life. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway. the audience is simply not that interested in that kind of convergence. it increases complexity and the market doesn't want that.

Re:from Apple.com

[AKAImBatman]

quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad.

Ugh. I can't imagine using a Q for texting. Nokia makes a variety of keyboard phones with much better interfaces. I don't know what else you're using your Q for, but you might want to look into a few of the Nokia units next time you upgrade.

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magnitude - for a long time abroad (Europe, for example) and a bit more recently in the US.

Apple is well aware of the issue, and has installed predictive text software combined with an automated spell checker. It won't be possible to tell how effective the software is until the iPhone is released, but if the demos are any indication it's worth giving Apple the benefit of the doubt.

It is possible that Apple will screw up on texting, but I don't think it will impact the iPhone's sales much. There's a huge market of people who are interested more in the other features of the phone than its text input capabilities. For example, the ability to visually navigate your voice mail is a big selling point for me. In comparison, I barely ever send text messages. (It's 100x easier to temporarily excuse yourself from a meeting and hit "dial".)

Re:from Apple.com

[cayenne8]

"the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magnitude - for a long time abroad (Europe, for example) and a bit more recently in the US. quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad. i don't have to wait for visual confirmation of a keystroke to continue texting."

Really? I mean, I understand that at least in the past, in Europe, it was cheaper to txt than to use voice..dunno if that is still the same.

But, in the US...that txt'ing can really add up in extra charges...that's why I rarely use it, and don't know many people that DO txt on a regular basis. But, aside from that..how do you do all that txt'ing without looking to check for spelling, etc? I can touch type on a normal keyboard, but, even then, I have to look at the screen to catch errors...and that's with whole words, not T9 where it tries to guess what you're typing...

I guess it is what you are used to...but, in 'my world', I've not seen texting as THAT big of a deal maker/breaker with a phone. Most people I know primarily use it to TALK vocally to people.

:-)

Re:from Apple.com

[Silverstrike]

. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway

This is something I've never understood. Hasn't history taught us anything? There is always a vocal minority screaming that they don't want an "all-in-one" device. They first spoke up when the Smartphones were first coming out, the original Treos and Blackberry's. Most arguments were along the lines of, "the UI is too confusing", "the battery life sucks", "I can carry a cellphone and a pager and a PDA, my pockets are ENORMOUS", etc.

However, what they really mean is that they don't want a "poorly designed all-in-one device". That's a non-argument though, because it's true of ANY product. Of course we want it to be designed well.

Back to music though, of course people want their phones to have all their music. How great would that be? One less thing to carry. The trick is doing it without making the phone bigger/shorter battery/grossly more expensive. Do that, and it'll sell like hotcakes. Well, as long as its branded and marketed with an "i" in the beginning of its name.

Re:from Apple.com

[BewireNomali]

there are unlimited texting plans that cost $10-20 more on your bill per month.

texting/IM/email means you can communicate in meetings, in class, at work, in a theater, during dinner, etc., with marginal interruption of your task at hand. texting/IM/email means you also have record of convo and terms - etc. which you don't get intrinsically with voice. simply put there is a lot of upside to written communication vs. vocal all across the board. the other upside with texting is that you can have sensitive convos via text that you wouldn't want to have via IM on your work computer, or via IM on your shared home system. there is just a lot of upside. The trends point to marked increased US texting usage - probably for these very reasons, despite some of the economic disadvantages.

re: looking to check for spelling. texting on a qwerty pad is similar to typing on a keyboard. you look at the screen - not your fingers. you know you hit the key because you get tactile feedback from the keyboard upon depressing the key. This allows you to go on to the next key ostensibly before you've seen the previous key show up on screen. This is tactile feedback that prevents the need to LOOK AT THE KEYS TO MAKE SURE IT'S BEEN HIT. Without significant tactile feedback from a touchscreen - this slows down dramatically, IMO. So the screen will have to provide some kind of tactile feedback to make texting efficient - and this will introduce another point of complexity and presumably failure for the device.

Re:from Apple.com

[Vancorps]

I'm curious, how is leaving a meeting easier than texting during the meeting? With a standard qwerty keyboard that comes with the Q you don't need to look at the keys at all so you can do it discreetly and politely.

The big app is indeed texting or various forms of IM. If people just wanted to make calls then they would buy phones that make a whole lot more sense for that.

The general trend lately with phones is that they are getting bigger, not smaller, which is precisely to accomodate texting. Everything else could be put into smaller and smaller packages. Hell, with a 4gig SD-HC card my phone could store a ton of music if I were so inclined. Alternatively I can store powerpoints, reference diagrams, whatever I want. I can also throw it into any card reader on a computer and be good to go.

I think the iPhone is more about the coolness factor. I'm not sure how well the screen will hold up to the pain most cell phones go through. How careful do you have to be not to keep it in the same pocket with keys?

I rarely ever use predictive text on my phones because I've been buying smartphones lately and with the qwerty keyboard it's just not necessary and as always, predictive text usually just makes texting more difficult. Some people have no problems with it, good for them. The Treos, Q, Nokia e62, and the other smartphones are hands down better for business so I definitely see this being targeted towards teens. Everyone else uses their laptops to send the level of multimedia required. If you're in business then you want active sync with real-time access to your calendar, contacts, and of course email. The fact that my office phone voice mail goes to my email makes it even more important that I keep up with my email. Then of course there is the fact that I can as systems administrator restrict and manage the phones remotely and wirelessly. The iPhone may be able to do all this but OS X currently lacks these advanced management tools entirely for the desktop, so I won't hold my breath for the phone. If that is changed then it and OS X in general will be a hit, from what I hear, the phone lacks all of these business features, so I don't see it getting adopted too quickly until they make some pretty big changes.

Beyond the fact that it looks cool I can't see any compelling reason to get an iPhone at this point in time. That however, may be enough to great a trend.

Re:from Apple.com

[drinkypoo]

Now that Apple has announced that there will be a publicly available SDK, the only thing that would keep me from buying one of these is if someone came out with a Linux-based phone with useful multitouch that was the same price or cheaper. Well, that and that I'm going to have to buy a mac for development, eventually, because you know Xcode is going to be the only worthwhile way to fly. (Not that it will be the only solution.) But that can be a used system, so I don't care.

Re:from Apple.com

[cayenne8]

"you know you hit the key because you get tactile feedback from the keyboard upon depressing the key. This allows you to go on to the next key ostensibly before you've seen the previous key show up on screen. This is tactile feedback that prevents the need to LOOK AT THE KEYS TO MAKE SURE IT'S BEEN HIT."

I've not really had a 'tactile' feedback from a phone button since I've been playing with RAZR's or more recently, the Samsung Blade phone...those keys are just flat on the phone, and I have to look at where I'm pressing and see the screen to see if it got typed...not like a keyboard.

With all these thin phones out there which pretty much non-tactile keyboards, I don't see what all the complaints about the iPhone will be.

Well, with SprintPCS...I've paid the extra for the network connectivity..I used it for sending pics, or picture txt, which is included....I mostly keep that networking functionality for when I need it as a bluetooth portable modem to tether to my laptop...I had to use that a couple times past few hurricanes. Actually that is one aspect that will keep me from an iPhone, they stated clearly that you can't tether it to a laptop.

However, all that being said...I'm paying enough now for all that...and not gonna pay extra for unlimited texting...since I don't use it that often, and neither do any of my friends.

Re:from Apple.com

[BewireNomali]

i've had the blade phone as well as the samsung 610 on the sprint network. they both give tactile response to your fingers in the form of a slight depression and a clicking that confirms the keystroke. this is tactile response. on the blade or the 610, i don't have to look where i'm typing - because the little click i feel in my finger confirms that the keystroke occurred.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I hardly think they will be upset if texting gets harder. It's the whole point of nigga technology.

Re:from Apple.com

[AKAImBatman]

I'm curious, how is leaving a meeting easier than texting during the meeting?

Because a) your attention is divided and b) it's NEVER polite no matter what you think. There are times that it's a necessary evil, but that's not the same thing as "polite".

If people just wanted to make calls then they would buy phones that make a whole lot more sense for that.

What makes you think that people don't? The hottest phone on the market right now is the Motorola Razr. A phone that's valued more for its small size than its cunning text messaging features.

The general trend lately with phones is that they are getting bigger, not smaller, which is precisely to accomodate texting.

See paragraph above. If your statement was true, then the Razr wouldn't be so popular. You can't extrapolate your own specific wants/needs in high-end phones to the entire market if the data doesn't support it. Specifically, this engadget story lists the best selling phone as the Nokia 1100. A low-end candybar phone with a Black and White screen. The Razr trails behind with 50 million of its own sales. (According to the article.) "Big" phones like the Treo and Q don't even show up as a blip on the radar.

Re:from Apple.com

[thetable123]

the only thing that would keep me from buying one of these is if someone came out with a Linux-based phone with useful multitouch that was the same price or cheaper. Welcome the Neo1973. It looks like it should be released to the general public in September. I'm waiting.

Re:from Apple.com

[drinkypoo]

No EDGE, sorry. I should have mentioned that EDGE was mandatory.

Re:from Apple.com

[LoneGNUman]

Slashdotters tried that already - yep that is the biggest it gets......

Re:from Apple.com

[Vancorps]

In addition to my Treo for work I have a Samsung A900 phone which is as thin as the Razr but the phone itself is wider than my previous phones. I should have been more specific when I said it was bigger. Previous phones, Nokia is the biggest offender, were getting too small to text on so makers started producing wider phones which could be thinner.

The fact that it is wider means it is easier to text with. It's plain and simple. Look at the shear numbers of text messages being sent around Europe, Asia, and America. America is lagging a bit because texting wasn't as reliable as it was in Europe. That has begun to change so texting is growing in popularity.

As for being polite in a meeting, note taking is common practice, I don't know about you, but I take notes on my phone, so it is indistinguishable from note taking to the people around me and is definitely never considered impolite. If you're texting alot during a meeting then that would be different, but a simple, I'll be around to your desk as soon as the meeting is over is far better than getting up out of the meeting stopping what everyone is doing to make a phone call about something that could have waited. To me, that is simply rude especially if you're a big contributor to the meeting. Even if it couldn't wait, a simple, restart your computer or call repair service is far simpler than getting up to have a conversation with someone.

Perhaps most simply of all if you're a manual note taker. You can excuse yourself for a second and type a message, hit send, and continue. People do this all the time around here at least. It's usually a response to an email instead of a text message but the result is the same.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ipod function will most likely get used because think about it this way manyt cell phone cariers are making money off things such as vcast from verizon as well as other companies I know have similar items.

Re:from Apple.com

[HermMunster]

The initial and long term costs are quite high. $500 for the phone and then a long service contract. The power of the iPod features isn't there. The lack of 3g is an issue for me. If I want to internet browse by latching onto random wireless feeds could result in me ending up in jail due to that act. So, if I'm going to browse the web on it it will be internally done (at home or office) and will not be on a tiny screen which is hard to read and takes a lot more effort to use than a laptop.

If they put a hard drive in it and added 3g I'd pay $500 and would use it to browse the web. Only, tho, if they keep all other costs the same.

Re:from Apple.com

[GeckoX]

Glad someone mentioned that!

I've got a Sony Ericsson w810i...total convergence phone for sure. First phone I've ever owned that I actually give a shit about. Let me put it this way...being able to throw my phone in my jersey and head out on a trail on my bike, and TAKE CALLS WHILE RIDING...Well, it fucking rocks!!! Why would I ever want a phone again that ISN'T a music player?

Nah, never mind, they're right. Best solution is a dedicated music player, a dedicated cell phone, a dedicated PDA type thingie for texting/network stuff, a dedicated camera...stuff I now use every day...and I'm supposed to carry that all in which pocket of my jeans?

I don't even wear a watch anymore, what's the point?

Speaking of which, I hate what they put in cars these days. I don't want to pay for a radio, cd player, audio jack, power socket, alarm system, air conditioning, etc etc etc...those things have no business being rolled into cars today, it just pushes the price up and ensures that if one thing fails, we have to replace the whole darned thing!!!

Don't know why I'm carrying on, non-convergence is such a crackpot idea it's silly.

Re:from Apple.com

[DrVomact]

You have a point--I'd love to be able to use my phone as an MP3 player too. And in fact my Treo 680 is a pretty good MP3 player. The problem is that battery life on the Treo is already marginal (it gets dicey if I don't recharge it every day), so if I listen to music on it too, I risk losing my phone capability when I might really need it. So yes, if they could make a phone with a decent form factor (the Treo is already plenty big) that will also run for a week without recharging (like my Sandisk MP3 player), then I'll want this "all in one" device.

Now, what I really don't want is a phone that plays movies.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

The ipod was the simplest, most visible and familiar product in a market it helped create. Cell phones have always been around, and service has been the biggest selling point for phones. The iphone is expensive and doesn't have the storage capacity of most premium ipods, so you aren't going to get too many people to switch over who already own an ipod. Many varieties and price points of phones already exist pre-entry. Saying the iphone will bring in more cash than the ipod is really stretching it. Besides, who wants to have their phone/music device interrupt a party by ringing every minute? The music feature on the phone is nice, but the synergy of work and entertainment rarely works. This is why most businesses still buy PCs, as Macs are more entertainment oriented. It remains to be seen how practical the phone actually is, but their target market has little patience for cumbersome new technology. Many of the features are easily copyable, and competing phone manufacturers will soon/already have their media-centric answers to the iphone available. Some people are going crazy for the phone because it has a lower-case "i" in front, but a number of factors have to fall into place for the phone to become a reasonable purchase. 1)contract is up or expendable with current carrier 2)are willing to throw out five times as much cash or more as other phones 3)really need/want to have music capability on your phone 4)are unhappy with blackberry or treo, etc 5)want to show off (most likely of the above which is perfectly valid). Remember, analysts also predicted that PS3 would smoke xbox and nintendo. They really have no idea but opinions based off of the past, which in this case is a poor comparison to the ipod.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I was initially planning to avoid, at least to avoid 1.0, but it's getting harder to resist. Even my wife seems to like it, although she was turned off by the scenes of reading the NY Times in the ads. For everything else shown in the ads, we were both thrilled.

I got my Treo because of an encounter with an enthusiastic user, so I can understand the "in the wild" issue.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

the ipod function will not get used because it will kill battery life. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway. the audience is simply not that interested in that kind of convergence. it increases complexity and the market doesn't want that. You couldn't be more wrong. That is the selling point for many college students right now. It's been awhile since a new major Mp3 player was released, Ipod Video being the last major one, and Zune for some others. At this point people are thinking "Hey, I need a new Ipod", mines getting old and busted and are also thinking, "Why not get a new phone while I'm at it." This is basically whats going on in the mind of most college kids, me included. I'm ordering an Iphone for specifically the reason that I don't have to carry around a phone and an Mp3 player at the same time.

Re:from Apple.com

[timmyf2371]

Texting is a deal breaker for me and for the majority of my social group. Texting doesn't require all of my attention in the same way a phone call would, and it's very convenient for places where a phone call is inappropriate (e.g. cinema, public transport, at a party, etc).

You'd be surprised how easy texting can be if you don't have T9 enabled. I started texting 10 years ago when I got my first SMS-enabled phone and since then I've been hooked on Nokias. I've tried different brands from time to time and, working in the industry, I have ample opportunity to sample new models, and Nokias are by far the easiest phones to text on, either looking or texting "blind".

I've become quite adept in so-called multi-tap and I have beaten several friends, who swear upon T9 input, in races to see who can text the quickest.

Re:from Apple.com

[mh1997]

The deal breaker for me is that I just want a phone that sounds like POTS. Everybody wants a device to be all things, but I'd rather carry a high quality MP3 player, camera, phone, etc., than cram a bunch of crappy functions into one package.

That being said, in my experience, Apple makes quality products and the iphone will probably be a huge money maker without my purchase.

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[TheRealTerry]

If the iPhone stops just one person from during any of the above, Apple should get a Nobel Peace Prize. Nobody is so important that they should be Twittering it up or OMG ROTFL-ing during any meetings, class, work, theater, or dinners. People should grab your phone and toss it out the window if you are seen doing that. Disrespectful.

Re:from Apple.com

[BewireNomali]

convergence devices have been around for a while. ipods still sell very well, better than most devices that converge and have lower price points. the market doesn't lie.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

old fart alert.

Re:from Apple.com

[ruzel]

>the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons.

I come from the opposite end of the spectrum though, and I wonder how many people are out there like me. I use my cell phone less than my ipod. I make maybe two calls a day, and maybe a text every once in a while (mostly to twitter). If anything I want an iphone because its a damn fine ipod, not because it's a phone. So the lack of buttons and greater screen real estate in a small package is actually a big bonus.

Re:from Apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I take notes on my phone

Well I do know about me, and not only do I not take notes on my phone, nor have I ever considered it, I have never ever seen anyone take notes on their phone. Never even heard of it. I would venture that it is so rare, that if you were doing it in a meeting, people would assume you're sending texts.

In any event, you are taking what is a rare behaviour (needing to urgently text in the middle of a meeting) and extrapolating it to the entire business community. This is erroneous.

This phone is not for you. Doesn't mean it won't be the phone for a lot of other people who don't have such requirements.

Mind you, remote access to the Treo sounds cool and I did always want one, but I could never justify the cost at the time (don't need to read Word docs etc). The iPhone will sync all sorts of stuff from my Macs seamlessly so it's that bit more handier for me. Maybe the iPhone is not so much a "smart phone" as a "smart enough phone". Apple has always had the knack of getting something to do what most people wanted most of the time, but in a really slick package. They manage to leave out features that some people want (think of the iPod with no inbuilt radio or recording) but advance things at the same time.

Re:from Apple.com

[TheRealTerry]

I'm 30, and I guess that makes me just old enough to understand that there are situations where texting is inappropriate. Old fart alert, okay sure, but sound the klaxons for the inconsiderate jerk off that you must be then.

Re:from Apple.com

[Wah]

If you turn off the radio, your treo will last about as last as the Sandisk. This is the downside to convergence. Yes, you can have all your needs serviced by a single device...but then it is a single point of failure.

It's a tricky line to walk, but Apple could hit it right, if they do it.

IMHO, the screen won't be very good for typing and it will take another version before the BAD bugs get worked out. I know Apple is good at launching producent and manufacturing, but it took Treo/Palm about 3-4 versions before getting a working product...and it still has issues. I can't imagine Apple is going to solve all those problems, manufacturer a ton of a very high tech device, and make everyone happy with one product.

We'll see, but I'm predicting something of a wash on this version of the iP.

Re:from Apple.com

[petermgreen]

discalimer, i'm in the uk things may be different in the USA.

At least in my experiance when poeople text they don't bother about spelling right or using punctuation or full forms of words. They abbriviate as much as possible.

i don't text much either but it does have its uses. Texts can be sent far more discreetly than making a phone call and the recipiant can pick them up at thier leisure (yes there is voicemail but this often costs money to retrive and is generally a lot more hassle for the recipiant than a text, the combination of theese factors mean not everyone enables it). Also if the signal is poor texts often have a much better chance of getting through.

and i'd imagine mobile e-mail has much the same interface requirements as texting with the benifits of being much cheaper and able to contact anyone.

Re:from Apple.com

[Bastard of Subhumani]

At least in my experiance when poeople text they don't bother about spelling right or using punctuation or full forms of words. They abbriviate as much as possible.

did u post that from ur fone by n e ch4ns?

Re:from Apple.com

[Bastard of Subhumani]

However, what they really mean is that they don't want a "poorly designed all-in-one device".

The problem is that when you try to shoehorn too many functions (or perhaps certain combinations of functions) into one device, the design's odds on to be either bad or terrible.

Big enough for Mum to use?

[AmIAnAi]

With many of the recent comments on the iPhone suggesting the real acceptance test will be whether your Mum can use it, when I saw the article's title I thought - ah! now they're going to produce a 'large button' version for older users.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[LWATCDR]

While the big button idea is funny I don't think that the real acceptance test will be peoples Mothers or Grandmothers.
I see the target for the IPhone to be the Treo and Blackberry crowd. I really want to see one and the SDK. I hate AT&T and I am still trying to figure out why Apple went with them. The only thing I can figure out is that Apple made a deal about using AT&Ts pipes if net neutrality goes south.
I am going ready for a new phone in November and the IPhone is tempting if I can do development on it. It could be a great market to get into.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Maury Markowitz]

Maybe, but the big breakout happens if that's NOT true. Remember, there were lots of MP3 players out there when Apple stomped them. They did so by making a techno-geek device into something everyone _trusted_ they could actually use. And that's what "Apple" means now. That's important, if it is the case that people are not buying smartphones because they are too geeky (or people believe they are), then this could really smoke.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[powerlord]

As an aside, if you want a "Big Button Phone" for Mom/Grandma, look into the jitterbug.

Their bullet points are:

• Live, 24-hour operators provide personal service
  
• Dialing is easy with large, backlit buttons
  
• A soft ear cushion lets you hear every word
  
• Affordable rate plans from just $10 a month
  

Managing the phone number list is via the operator by talking to them or sending them an email or fax (or manage it yourself online soon).
They even have a "simple" phone where you just have the list of numbers, no dial buttons.

Its only available in the U.S. right now, but its a great idea for a service, and I believe Samsung makes the phones.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Divebus]

Once enough flash executives get their hands on it, AT&T and Apple will need to make good on making the iPhone a real business device. There's little that's currently attractive about the AT&T/Cingular network so many people are holding out until Verizon can get access to the iPhone. However, Verizon competes with everything about the iPhone so I don't know how portable business specific advances will be for the iPhone on Verizon. The only way this will work is if AT&T gets their act together and fixes the network reliability issues - then let the chair throwing begin.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[squiggleslash]

I see the target for the IPhone to be the Treo and Blackberry crowd. I really want to see one and the SDK.

I see it more aimed at the Sidekick crowd. Right now, it's unlikely Apple is going to offer more than "widget style" programming for the device, and it doesn't really connect to corporate mail systems. The type of people who want a Treo or Blackberry for that Organizer/business connectivity type environment are going to be put off by a device primarily aimed at multimedia and web browsing.

People (and I include myself) got too hung up on Jobs describing the thing as a "smartphone". It isn't really. It's a really, really, awesome multimedia phone. It's what the ROKR should have been. It's what you get if you take what the ROKR was supposed to be, marry it to what the Sidekick is supposed to be, and do it really, really, well. (Well, assuming it's as good as it's cracked up to be.)

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[LWATCDR]

I don't see Verizon getting it.
I hate Verizon and will not use them because they ruin perfectly good phones by locking out features and putting their own crappy interface on them.
I don't think Verizon would live with not controling the UI on the IPhone and Apple will never give up control over the UI of the IPhone.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Divebus]

I hate Verizon for the same reason - locking out phone features which only benefit Verizon. I just got a RAZR V3M and Verizon deliberately disabled the OBEX function (Object Exchange) which was enabled on the V3C. OBEX lets you browse the phone's file system, recover pictures, plant MP3 files as ringtones... But NOOOO!! Verizon turned all that off so they can sell your pictures back to you, sell ringtones etc. Everything the phone can do has been disabled and turned into a paid service. I'm done with any company that starts abusing customers.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[c00rdb]

I agree, how many Grandmothers really own an iPod?

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[letxa2000]

I'm part of the Treo crowd and I have no interest in an iPhone. As best as I can tell, the iPhone is a fancy, market-hyped phone that does about what I've been doing with my Treo for years. Sure, it makes MP3 playback easier but so what? I normally don't use my MP3 player at times when I want to have my phone on-hand and vice versa. I listen to my iPod when I'm doing some biking or sitting on a plane--in both cases, I have my phone with me but its stowed; in the case of biking, I don't want a relatively large (compared to my iPod Nano) $500 device strapped to my arm just waiting to wiggle loose and shatter into a million pieces on the street below me.

I'm sure the iPhone has a market, but I don't think it's the Blackberry/Treo crowd--except for maybe a few fringe convergence freaks and a few people where the teen/geek market overlaps with the productivity Blackberry/Treo crowd.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[DragonWriter]

I hate AT&T and I am still trying to figure out why Apple went with them.

I'm pretty sure articles were linked to in earlier /. threads on the issue in which it was explained that they went with Cingular (now AT&T) because other people they contacted wanted far less favorable financial terms, from Apple's perspective, for the deal.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[pyite]

I'm sure the iPhone has a market, but I don't think it's the Blackberry/Treo crowd--except for maybe a few fringe convergence freaks and a few people where the teen/geek market overlaps with the productivity Blackberry/Treo crowd.

I have a Treo for personal use and a BlackBerry for work. The BlackBerry makes me hate my Treo with a passion. If it weren't for the fact that you need a BlackBerry Enterprise Server to do push email with the BlackBerry, I would replace the Treo with one in a heartbeat. The Palm platform has died, even though it takes in a little breath of air every 6 months or so. The only thing that makes me think twice about getting an iPhone is the monthly cost. I pay $30/month with Sprint for unlimited data, unlimited texts, and 500 minutes. There won't be anything even close to that with the iPhone. The upfront cost doesn't bother me one bit. The iPhone appears to have a nice browser, and it looks like there will be 3rd party apps eventually, so maybe a decent GTD app will come to be.

Time will tell...

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[PygmySurfer]

Apparently Apple talked to Verizon, and your thought was exactly right - they couldn't agree with Apple's terms.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Helios1182]

What Sprint plan is that? It sounds great but I don't see it listed anywhere.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for the fact that you need a BlackBerry Enterprise Server to do push email with the BlackBerry, I would replace the Treo with one in a heartbeat. To an extent the BlackBerry offers "push" email for personal use via BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service), which is offered free through your carrier.
You may attain this via one of the following methods

- Partnerships for real time email with Yahoo (plus it's hosted email), gmail (and it's hosted domains). Simply add your account
- Work-around , configure a carrier.blackberry.com address (real time), and forward your email to this address. Reconfigure the "sent-from" header via the BIS ui, to display your personal address.

Assuming you're located in North America , try https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=CARRIER (carrier = sprint, rogers, telus, mycingular etc...), and sign up for an account.

- Zeus

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Apple choosing AT&T has something to do with the 62 million existing AT&T subscribers...

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[WarpSnotTheDark]

The iPod was successful because it did just enough of what it was designed to do to be useful, had simple menus and was given to enough MTV-Types to find its way into coolness - it's not actually superior to most of the alternatives out there, in fact; I never used the iPod I bought because there were so many less-irritating options available - I bought it because my wife wanted one - then I bought an Archos for less, with a better screen and more options. 50 Cent and J-Lo will get the iPhones and then the rest of the sheep will follow - not because it's better, but because it's "in". What's the point? Apple's stuff just isn't that cool - it is marketed really really well and they have established a base that will continue to buy their junk just because the commercials tell them to. How is the iPhone really that different from what's already available? I'm just waiting for Apple's iCall software to be released (would be similar to iTunes in that it allows you to pay Apple directly for things that don't really belong to them...like your phone calls maybe?) then that they can clever-menu my butt into paying more for less and have me feeling cool doing it.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Moridineas]

I got a verizon LG VX8600 (the chocolate flip) and can transfer tones/pics/etc via bluetooth. works quite nicely actually, I really like this phone.

never been a fan of motorolas. (or verizon..but I do like their data)

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[pyite]

It's called SERO (Sprint Employee Referral Offer). Sprint employees get a certain number of referrals they can use for this plan each year. Sprint opened it up to the general public for a short while if you know where to look. The text messaging plan was added on later as a special offer just for SERO customers.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Scudsucker]

I also have an 8600, and Bitpim works great for making ringtones. The only thing that pisses me off about the phone is there doesn't seem to be an external keyguard, so every once and a while it gets bumped in my pocket and starts playing mp3's or I have to erase a lot of pocket pictures and videos from the SD card.

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[Moridineas]

I haven't had that problem with the 8600 yet, but I definitely had it with an older LG that it replaced.

oh well!

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[trogdor8667]

Unfortunately, Verizon seems to have a monopoly on good coverage; there isn't another carrier worth using in this area, though we currently have 5 major cellular providers, and are a fairly large city.

Sadly, I wish US Cellular would expand down to here; they use Verizon's towers (as best as I can tell) so they have almost identical coverage to what Verizon can provide, they tend to have better customer service, and cost about the same as Verizon. And sadly, they're within 100 miles of us, but are not quite here.

I'm just guessing but...

[Anonymous Coward]

11.6mm thick, 2.4-inches wide, and 4.5-inches tall.

iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is going to extend thier lead over Microsoft using the iPhone like they did with all thier products - they simply took thier products usability beyond what Microsoft did. Microsoft includes what is enough while Apple includes what is enough plus what is nice to have...

Re:iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has a lead over Microsoft??

Re:iPhone

[molarmass192]

When it comes to software quality and user satisfaction, yes ... Hyundai sells way more cars than Porsche, but there's no disputing which one everybody would rather drive.

Re:iPhone

[Starteck81]

Microsoft includes what is enough while Apple includes what is enough plus what is nice to have...

I think MS is trying to one up Apple by coming out with their iPhone like Coffe Table. The only problem is, that true to form, it's bigger, more expensive, and in my opinion less than needed, than anything that an average consumer would want to adopt. I also don't see it coming down in price lower than $3,000 anytime in the next 10 years.

So in summary MS's answer to the iPhone is to build something bigger, more expensive and less useful. I know, I know, that's what they alwasy do but it's still funny to me.

Re:iPhone

[westlake]

Apple is going to extend thier lead over Microsoft using the iPhone like they did with all thier products

Apple currently has a half-dozen or so hardware-software products in the notoriously volatile consumer market space. It can win big and it lose big on any one of them.

In the broader PC market the Mac occupies essentially the same niche as it did in 1984 - while Microsoft supplies the conceptual and software framework for products from hundreds of vendors in hundreds of markets.

In this upscale village of 2,500 you'll find Microsoft in the home, in the hospital, in the car and at the garage, it powers the ATM, the terminal at point of sale...

Re:iPhone

[geekoid]

n this upscale village of 2,500 you'll find Microsoft in the home, in the hospital, in the car and at the garage, it powers the ATM, the terminal at point of sale...

theres a cry for help if there ever was one!

Predictions

[BlueOtto]

How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.

Re:Predictions

[trybywrench]

How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.

That's a good point. I really like Apple and have never been let down by their hardware but it's way too early to be making crazy predictions about the Iphone saving the world. Competitors are genuinely scared though, Microsoft had that FUD piece a while back about the Iphone being useless for business. I found that funny given the fact that the ipod is useless for business as well yet was still a success.

Overall I have no doubt the Iphone will do well but it's too early to make predictions 2 years down the road.

Re:Predictions

[cunamara]

How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.

It's interesting to read the pundits. Many of the computer industry people are predicting the iPhone will be a relative failure, while we have folks like Business Week predicting "blockbuster." I think many of the computer industry pundits are tired of Jobs and just want to see him get some egg on his face. Heck, I've been a Mac user since 1986 and I'm tired of Jobs. A little of his personality goes a long way.

As far as predicting the future goes, I think "blockbuster." The iPhone is in the same price range as phones people are already buying (Treo, etc) and those already made to look stodgy and last year by a product that isn't even for sale yet. The cool factor will triumph yet again. Maybe someday Apple will figure out how to sell computers as effectively as they sell music and phones.

Re:Predictions

[LO0G]

If the iPhone plans on taking on the Crackberry, then it's GOT to be useful for business. The thing that makes the Crackberry sell like crazy is that it sync's seamlessly with most business email systems.

If the iPhone can't do that, ultimately it will be relegated to a vanity toy.

Think about it - I know a bunch of people who are totally addicted their crackberries, will they really switch to the iPhone? Does the iPhone provide enough value to convince them to ditch their crackberry given that they'll lose 24x7 access to their email?

If the iPhone can't sync with corporate email systems seamlessly, then it's going to become a vanity toy and not the powerhouse that Apple (and the Apple fanboys) want it to be.

Re:Predictions

[timeOday]

I don't think the iPhone can compete with the Blackberry since the iPhone doesn't have a keyboard.

Re:Predictions

[Richthofen80]

I doubt that iPhones are going to sync with Corp. email so easily. The reason Blackberry has such a great sync with corporate email is because businesses have their own blackberry management servers (I don't know if the servers live at RIM or at the the local company's site, though) that tie into the corporate email servers. iPhone is not being launched as a business product, or as with a business 'edition'.

iPhone will probably have POP3 access to mailboxes like most current smartphones do.

I think small business/independent businessmen could use iPhone no problem; but they have to manage their own contacts and keep their own address book. Corporate Joe working at a firm with more than 100 users will probably just continue to use the solution handed down to him via his company; and the only decent enterprise system right now is RIMs.

Re:Predictions

[scrm]

The iPhone won't redefine the industry, but if it really can bring together what has become a fragmented set of mobile features (phone + web browsing / maps / PDA features), coupled with video/iPod functionality, into an easy-to-use interface, it will give Apple a good foothold in the market.

I'll hold out for an iPhone nano which does all of the above minus the video (who really needs it at this screen size?) in a truly pocketable package.

Re:Predictions

[lottameez]

I really like Apple and have never been let down by their hardware

[cough]Newton[cough]

Snide remarks aside, my somewhat techno-luddite wife saw an ad for the iPhone the other day and was completely enamored with it.

Re:Predictions

[BewireNomali]

i predict blockbuster too.

-price range: current smarphones are around $200. the Q, the blackjack, etc. even with added memory you come in way under the iphone price tag and still get the keypad which imo is a bonus, not a detriment.

the cool factor goes a LONG way. it will sell because it looks cool.

Re:Predictions

[anethema]

is that it sync's seamlessly with most business email systems.

If the iPhone can't do that, ultimately it will be relegated to a vanity toy. ...

If the iPhone can't sync with corporate email systems seamlessly, then it's going to become a vanity toy and not the powerhouse that Apple (and the Apple fanboys) want it to be.

This post brought to you from the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:Predictions

[UnknowingFool]

If I had modpoints, I would mod you up. All these articles are pure speculation. One side is predicting that the iPhone will end world hunger while the other side is predicting that the iPhone will cause a black hole and suck Apple's HQ and all of CA into it. :)

Re:Predictions

[mungtor]

it's a local server. Our Blackberry Enterprise Server logs into our Exchange servers and basically checks whether any of the users have mail. If they do, it forwards it out over the RIM network to the individual devices. It's exactly the same system that Good Inc uses for the GoodLink software you can run on Handspring Treos.

A Motorola Q with a data connection can get your e-mail over wireless broadband directly from the Exchange server, and I imagine that any other PDA phone with data capability can too.

The big difference is that the Blackberry and the GoodLink products are "push" systems where new e-mail is delivered as it is received. Other methods are "pull" systems where the PDA phone has to request the data. PHBs think there is some value to getting an e-mail "instantly" rather than waiting 10 minutes for the device to poll.

Re:Predictions

[soft_guy]

How were you let down by the Newton hardware? I own every single model of Newton and they don't have hardware problems.

Re:Predictions

[His Shadow]

This epistemological nonsense concerning the needs of business continues to amuse. Here is the simple fact: nobody cares. The iPhone will sell and sell big and almost no one will give a damn about "corporate email systems". And the idea that all the other features the iPhone provides (features that current "smartphones" can't match) will make it a "vanity toy" is ridiculous. It's an actual portable computer. For real. Not a simulacrum, not a free toy handed out with a two year contract. It, like the iPod, and unlike almost every single phone ever made, will have it's firmware and feature set upgraded by simply dropping it in it's cradle. It's software will change and upgrade and get more, not less useful, as the platform matures.

It's the end of the smart phone as we know it. And that's just fine.

Re:Predictions

[xjerky]

All you need is a client that supports IMAP IDLE for "push" capabilities, like ChatterMail for Treos.

Re:Predictions

[Shihar]

If the iPhone plans on taking on the Crackberry, then it's GOT to be useful for business. The thing that makes the Crackberry sell like crazy is that it sync's seamlessly with most business email systems.

If the iPhone can't do that, ultimately it will be relegated to a vanity toy. Apple is not gunning for Blackberry devices. They are not gunning for the business market. Hell, they will sell to businesses or anyone else for a chunk of change, but that really is not their goal.

I don't disagree with anything you say, but I think you misunderstand how big the 'vanity toy' market is. Apple computers, iPods, and most of Apple's stuff falls solidly in the 'vanity toy' market. College kids buy iBooks not because they have any deep philosophical beliefs about what makes a good OS, they just like shiny white plastic. People pick an iPod not because it is light years ahead of a Creative or Sandisk player (they are not these days), they pick an iPod because it is a cool ass 'vanity toy'. Apple is going to make a killing on the iPhone BECAUSE it is a 'vanity toy' and there are a tens of millions of Americans willing to shell out a few hundred dollars to get one. Apple releasing an ugly brown phone would be a thousands times more devastating to their profits then releasing a phone that doesn't sync well with business networks.

Re:Predictions

[mac123]

Which is fine, unless you want to sync calendar and contacts

Re:Predictions

[mypalmike]

This epistemological nonsense concerning the needs of gamers continues to amuse. Here is the simple fact: nobody cares. The Playstation 3 will sell and sell big and almost no one will give a damn about "price". And the idea that all the other features the Playstation 3 provides (features that current "next-gen consoles" can't match) will make it a "vanity toy" is ridiculous. It's an actual 8-core cell processor computer. For real. Not a simulacrum, not a snazzy-looking Atari 2600. It, like the Aibo robot, and unlike almost every console ever made, will have [its] firmware and feature set modified by simply dropping it on the floor.

Re:Predictions

[phantomfive]

You can wait if you want. I am betting that they will sell that many, so much so that I bought Apple stock. In fact, even if the iphone doesn't do well, Apple's profits are going up like crazy, and their stock is sure to follow. But since you asked, that is why predicting what will happen is important (although some people are just curious and like to make predictions, I'm sure).

Re:Predictions

[phantomfive]

But I'll bet you a dollar they WILL sync perfectly with the new open-source collection of mail/calendar software.

calendar

Mail

Notice how it is all open source, open standard, and imagine how wonderful life would be if these became the industry standard.

Re:Predictions

[bidule]

You don't understand the anal.yst business plan.

1. Make wild predictions
2. ???
3. Profit

Re:Predictions

[His Shadow]

...and I thought I had a lot of free time.

Re:Predictions

[jacobw]

How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.

I predict that nobody will do this.

In fact, I predict that by June 26--three days before the phone launches--iPhone-related predictions will be a $30 million dollar business, capturing a 5% market share in the fast-growing and lucrative Pulling Predictions Out Of Your Ass Industry. By June 27, market penetration will grow to 38.6%, and by 11:59PM on June 28, it will be at 110%: not only will every man, woman, and child on the planet will have a prediction about initial iPhone salesfigures. but so will most dogs and many goldfish.

More reliably, I predict that if anybody is right in their predictions, they will crow about it every time they make a future prediction. If they are wrong, they will gloss over the fact and go back to pulling more predictions out of their ass.

Re:Predictions

[GeckoX]

Playstation was never a 'vanity toy'. This is one of the worst and most contrived comparisons I've seen on /. I'm sure you realize that that is saying a lot.

Rather, the two are more like the antithesis of each other.

One is 'Ooh Look...Shiney!'
The other is 'Ooh Look...Techy!'

And what was really being said, which you've really just managed to lay more credence to, is that 'Ooh Look...Shiney!' sells, and sells a lot, whereas 'Ooh Look...Techy!' is much more fickle.

Re:Predictions

[Plutonite]

I find your rendering of the term "analyst" to be quite remarkable. I never before realized there was an "anal" in analyst! This proves that the anal.yst's main mode of operation is to excrete in your brain, and to get paid for it. You are a genius.

Re:Predictions

[jc42]

If the iPhone plans on taking on the Crackberry, then it's GOT to be useful for business. The thing that makes the Crackberry sell like crazy is that it syncs seamlessly with most business email systems.

Hmmm ... I just got rid of a BB that I've used for a couple of years, and which was purchased on a business-related account. My experience was that the BB was supremely unuseful for my job.

The first problem was that the people I worked for included a number of security experts. Their only comment about MS's Enterprise Server and Outlook was "No way!" They also vetoed my gmail account. They weren't interested in email that would allow a competitor to harvest our messages and use them for their own purposes. (However, they did approve the use of my mit.edu email account. ;-)

The big problem, however, was that the got the BB because they wanted our team to develop software for it that would access a number of our (mostly medical) databases remotely. The model BB that I got had the right specs for the job. But after a year or so of beating our heads against a wall, we gave up on it (and most other phones, too). Eventually, while talking to a Cingular support drone about an unrelated problem, I found the reason: They didn't support those features on that model. Huh? The specs say it would work. "But we don't support it." I.e., they had disabled those features, and then sold us the phone contract anyway, knowing full well that it wouldn't do what we'd bought it for. Grr ... But none of the phones that others got actually had any better success.

I'm now trying to get my hands on a linux-based phone, such as the openmoko gadget; maybe it'll actually allow us to develop our own software and use the phone system to let the guys in the emergency vehicles get at the data they need.

There was a bit of discussion of the iPhone when it was announced. But the discussion ended when "no user software development" was explained. Just this week, we've heard that Apple seems to be relenting a bit on this. But I wonder if this is just a ruse to get us to buy it, and then we'll find that we're again facing a brick wall when we try to get the info we need to make our apps work.

My advice is that we should concentrate on the linux-based phones. There's a good chance that one of them, probably the openmoko gang, will actually support our attempts to make software that literally "runs anywhere", or at least anywhere there's cell-phone service. We know we can develop the software; the question is whether the phone companies will let us use the gadget wherever we happen to be.

We sure wish the wifi people had had a bit more success with supplying widespread wireless net access. Either that, or the cell phones had cooperated with attempts by riff-raff like us to develop software that used their systems. Some lives could have been saved ...

Re:Predictions

[bidule]

Thank you, but I got this prononciation from Jean-Louis Gassée. He's the real genius here.

Re:Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

I... I think I love you!

Re:Predictions

[dr.badass]

iPhone will probably have POP3 access to mailboxes like most current smartphones do.

According to the keynote announcement, it also has push IMAP. If your business is built on open standards like IMAP, instead of (say) RIM and Exchange, you're golden. Also, for non-corporate users, Yahoo! and .Mac (at least) will support push IMAP on the iPhone.

Re:Predictions

[dreamchaser]

There are very few business larger than a couple of hundred users that aren't standardized on a proprietary email system, mostly Notes and Exchange.

Re:Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess businesses smaller than several hundred users don't count as businesses. God forbid there should be people that conduct business without being part of a large corporation.

I stand corrected

[rueger]

My previous comment may have been in error.

I now believe that the iPhone will sell 456 million units and will indeed Change the Face of Communications as We Know It.

Mmmmm... Kool-Aid....

Re:I stand corrected

[CastrTroy]

Personally, I can't see why people would want to spend $500 on a cell phone/music player. All the cell phones i've had, especially the flashy expensive ones have died in 2 years. Also, they are usually tied to the phone company. I'd rather spend $300 on a music player that isn't tied to some phone company and get the free phone when I sign up for the service. I know, I only get a free phone if I sign a contract, but I don't plan on switching phone companies every 3 months, and it's not like they give you a better monthly rate if you buy the phone.

Re:I stand corrected

[Divebus]

I agree. The same form factor without the phone inside (but still Wi-Fi enabled) would be cheaper, not require a service contract and would sell by the boat load as a fancy iPod/Video player. Most people have a phone already. However, when your phone wears out in two years, what are you going to look at first if you already know and love the fancy iPod? By then, other providers are scheduled to have access to it. Apple themselves would have to totally screw up somehow to keep 2009 from being a huge year for the iPhone.

Re:I stand corrected

[powerlord]

Personally, I can't see why people would want to spend $500 on a cell phone/music player

I agree, but the idea of a merged device, so you don't have to carry a cell phone and music player, makes a lot of sense.

The iPhone's ability to handle VoiceMail the way it does, will also make it popular to a lot of people who NEED to stay in touch. Heck, ditto for the integrated IM and SMS capabilities.

Think of it more as an SmartPhone with iTunes capabilities, rather than an iPod with SmartPhone capabilities.

Also, they are usually tied to the phone company.

I'm guessing you don't have a GSM phone (ATT/Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S.A.). Those phones are easy to go from carrier to carrier and will work around the world. Additionally, when you get a new phone, you can hold on to the old one as an "emergency backup". How do you switch phones? Just remove the SIM card and put it in whatever phone you want to use.

Re:I stand corrected

[Kymri]

They may have something in mind like this - the widescreen/WiFi/touchscreen iPod rumors have been churning like chum in the fanboy-infested waters for quite some time. Either way, I'm sure the iPhone will be a success. The ability to develop 3rd party apps and connect up with corporate email systems (as many others have pointed out before me) are the things that are likely to decide if the iPhone is a success or something that blows the competition out of the water.

I know some folks at Motorola who went home and were found the next morning rocking back and forth while curled up in the fetal position around a now-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, the night after the MacWorld keynote announcing the iPhone, so it's at least scary-in-concept to some of the existing players.

Re:I stand corrected

[mcmonkey]

I now believe that the iPhone will sell 456 million units and will indeed Replace the Segway!

Cities will be built around it! Temples will be built to it! People will spurn loved ones to be with it! Bow before its glory like the vermin you are! Look away! Your eyes are not worthy.

Daily supply of vitamin J in each glass, you say?

Re:I stand corrected

[Gompers]

Yes, but Cingular "locks" their GSM phones into their network, just like Sprint and Verizon do with their CDMA phones. Of course you can get them unlocked, and turn them into "world phones", but I can't see this happening en masse, since there really isn't much motiviation to do so, especially since "Carrier to carrier" in the US means "Cingular to T-Mobile" and vice-versa. I do like GSM more than CDMA, for the most part, but there isn't much point in having a GSM phone in the US if you never travel overseas (most neighboring US countries also have CDMA networks in addition to GSM).

IMO the real success/failure of the iPhone will be based on how many people will be willing to move to Cingular/ATT to get the phone, possibly breaking expensive contracts to do so. Sure the phone costs 500 bucks, but then you're going to have to pay a couple hundred more on top of that to get out of your contract with Verizon or Sprint/Nextel or US Cellular or T-Mobile or whatnot to get one. All of a sudden you are looking at 700 bucks just to own one, and probably another 65-70/month to use it. That will surely slow adoption in the first couple years of the phone. Most casual phone users aren't used to paying the 20-50 bucks a month for a data plan either, which will probably be necessary with the iPhone.

I'm a long-time "smartphone" user (Kyocera 6035 -> Kyocera 7135 -> Treo 650 -> Treo 755p), and I have to admit that I was tempted by the iPhone, but at the end of the day, my existing applications and uses for my phone just doesn't require the functionality of the iPhone. If I want an "immersive" web experience, I pull out my laptop and use the Treo as a modem over bluetooth and get EVDO speeds. If I just need to google something quick, or read a headline or two, the phone is fine for that. E-mail, calendar and contacts synch transparently with exchange, and if I have more than one voicemail in my mailbox, I haven't checked it often enough. Movian VPN gets me onto the VPN and with pssh I can do quite a bit of remote admin-type work. It's got a crappy MP3 player built-in, and is expandable with miniSD cards up to 4 gb. If that's not to my liking, I can just stream audio.

Do I have complaints? Sure. Lots of little nit-noid things, but they are mostly tradeoffs. I love the little keyboard, but that costs screen real-estate. I wish it was smaller, but then the screen would be even tinier. I wish the camera was better. I wish smartphone OSes didn't suck so much, etc.

Sure the iPhone has some nice bells and whistles, but it's nothing that I can see making a huge difference over my Palm-based smartphone lifestyle. That being said, the first time someone pulls one out on a flight I'm on, I can definitely see myself getting jealous.

Re:I stand corrected

[Achromatic1978]

(most neighboring US countries also have CDMA networks in addition to GSM).

How many countries do you think neighbor the US?

Let me guess...

[minginqunt]

Wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

YOU MARK MY WORDS.

Re:Let me guess...

[McFadden]

Wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Made me laugh - seems like it went over a lot of people's heads though from your -1 mod.

Don't see the allure..

[mulvane]

I want buttons.. Real touchy feely buttons. I can learn to navigate buttons in the dark, while driving and in numerous situations where I don't want to LOOK at the phone.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[LWATCDR]

"while driving and in numerous situations where I don't want to LOOK at the phone"
Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.

Heck if the IPhone stops people from using their cell while driving it may save thousands of lives!

Re:Don't see the allure..

[BodhiCat]

Can you really use a cell phone by touch? I never have, I have always had to have at least the back light on the keys. A desktop or laptop keyboard, yes, I can touch type on them, but the iPhone is not meant for typing any large amounts of text. Most execs and nurds have several computer/e-mail/text typing devices that they use for different situations. If you want to type your dissertation on the iPhone, good luck.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[mulvane]

My phone is patched through my radio so its hands free for that.. I just need to be able to answer without having to look at the phone. I hardly ever dial unless at a stop while in the car.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[mulvane]

I've always been able to use the number pad by touch. Usually the 5 key has a little different feel or a dot in it so you can associate all other numbers from it.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[everphilski]

Can you really use a cell phone by touch?

Yeah. The 1-9 is a 3x3 matrix of buttons with the middle button 'funny' (mine has a little nub on it). With your thumb on the middle key (5) it is pretty trivial to shift up and around (1-3) left (4) right (5) or down and around (5-9).

Re:Don't see the allure..

[icepick72]

Real touchy feely buttons. I can learn to navigate buttons in the dark

As for operation in the dark the backlit screen will suffice to solve that problem. For driving, well another post here helped you answer that one. No fear!

Re:Don't see the allure..

[garcia]

I still want to be able to feel the buttons when I'm driving and in the dark. I also touch type on my mobile device now because I get tactile feedback. I won't get that with the iPhone.

The other fancy dancy things rock but the lack of a keyboard sucks.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[foniksonik]

Hmmm I can touch type at about 90 words/min but it isn't the keyboard buttons that let me do that... it's the spatial memory in my hands or whatever part of my brain that holds spatial memory for my hands. I suspect that is true of a phone as well, ie: I've had the same phone for several years now, great buttons... but i can't touch dial it very well because I rarely use it for any length of time or at all really (I don't call people much, prefer email or just waiting til I see them) but I'm certain that a teen who texts all the time can do it behind their back in the dark with one hand...

Once you get used to the dimensions and location of where the input areas are on the iPhone, your local spatial memory for your hands will kick in the same as with a phone that has buttons, especially if you keep the audio feedback turned on while learning. In any case you're not going to hold the phone and reach your thumb all the way to the left of the device when you're wanting to type a 1, 4, or 7... likewise the 3, 6 and 9 will be found near the right edge and 2,5,8 will be in the middle... 123 at top, 456 in middle and 789 at bottom... not a very complicated grid to memorize really ;-p and I'm fairly certain you won't be using google maps using any 'buttons' no matter which phone you pick... and the rest of the capability is going to demand your attention by it's nature, rather than due to it's input method.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[Anonymous Coward]

I can touch type via T9. It's no where near as difficult as people think. Try it and you'll probably be able to do it.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[LWATCDR]

Bluetooth headset works great for that. Just tap the button on your headset and it pick up the phone. Not only that but my voice dialing works great for the few times I have to make a call when at the wheel.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[east coast]

Heck if the IPhone stops people from using their cell while driving it may save thousands of lives!

People already know that using a cellphone while driving is dangerous and it doesn't stop them.

Most people don't touch-type their cells as it is.

How the fuck is the iPhone going to remedy any of this?

Re:Don't see the allure..

[LWATCDR]

In the dark shouldn't be an issue since it has a back light. A keyboard might be nice. I really want an SSH client for my next cell phone but I that giving up the small size and ruggedness of my A900. Heck it even has a metal case so I can just stick in im ny jeans coin pocket and not worry about it.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[Zelos]

But then how often do you actually dial a number on a mobile? Most of the time it's just contacts->first letter of surname->call.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[mulvane]

Most military installations (where I work) do not allow headsets anymore either. You have to either have speaker phone or radio patch. Reason for this is that the headsets some people use cause reduced hearing even when not on the phone from the direction of the headset.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[soft_guy]

What tasks are you doing without looking at the phone? I will be surprised if it is anything other than dialing a speed dial number.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[DragonWriter]

Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.

Doesn't really make a difference. The source of danger from using a phone while driving is far more from tunnel vision that accompanies the conversation than anything else; while it is rather dangerous to talk on the phone while driving, its not substantially more dangerous to do so without a hands-free phone. Though, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a thought: maybe you shouldn't be screwing around with pushing buttons on a phone while you're driving.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you're absolutely perfect at dividing your attention, and it's just everybody else that can't manage to do it safely.

Re:Don't see the allure..

[RedElf]

Better yet don't answer the phone while you're driving or place calls.

In the past I rode with someone who answered the cell phone while driving in a 25mph zone, the change in the driving from being attentive to completely oblivious of anything not on the other end of the phone was perhaps the single scariest event this past year. Never have I felt less safe in a 25mph zone with almost no traffic, it's amazing I made it out alive.

Nothing is so important you need to put everyone else at risk instead of waiting a few minutes and picking up the voicemail later.

That's an easy prediction

[aadvancedGIR]

Apparently, with the amount Gabe from PA is willing to pay to have one on release date, it won't be that hard to reach those 10 B$.

Crystal Ball

[WaZiX]

If my Crystal Ball is any indication, we're in for a surprise.

Re:Crystal Ball

[foniksonik]

"Ask again later"? - oh wait that's the magic 8 ball, sorry.

Re:Crystal Ball

[Thumper_SVX]

If my balls turned to crystal, I'd be pretty surprised, too.

Focus

[TheLastStop]

I tend to think that additional features follow the law of diminishing returns: after a while extra crap becomes a burden rathern than a selling point. It's my opinion that people feel confused and overwhelmed by one device that "does it all." The beauty of the iPod was that it did what it was intended to do exceedingly well. It didn't have poorly conceived features tagged on to simply add more bullet points to the packaging. I really hope that the iPhone can walk the line between all-in-one usefullness and confusing novelty well.

Big

[Divebus]

By 2009, Steve Ballmer will be ordering chairs by the truckload.

Re:Big

[westlake]

By 2009, Steve Ballmer will be ordering chairs by the truckload.

More likely he will be joining Scrooge McDuck for a refreshing dip in the money bin.

Re:Big

[Anonymous Coward]

By 2009, Steve Ballmer will be ordering chairs by the truckload.

"In related news, Microsoft has announced plans for its 'Phune', expected to be released in the Spring of 2011."

Re:Big

[Anonymous Coward]

By 2009, Steve Ballmer will be ordering chairs by the truckload.

But how will he order those chairs? It's not as though the internet were some sort of "truck" onto which these chairs could be dumped. The internet is a series of tubes, hence it is only useful for making IKEA-type modernist tubular furniture.

Re:Big

[Anonymous Coward]

But how will he order those chairs?

With his iPhone.

No Verizon, No iphone

[Thesketchmaster]

It is really sad that the iphone will only be available for Cingular and not any other wireless service. I don't really care how great it is, I can't see changing from Verizon. I don't see why they wouldn't want to be on a much faster EV-DO network especially for "real" web-browsing, music downloads, etc.. And we don't even have EV-DO rev. B yet!!! Maybe I can acquire one from outside the country on Ebay.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[simong]

Don't worry, I can see Apple doing another 'exclusive' deal with Verizon, and another one with T-Mobile (apparently the European partner) in time. There's probably some loophole that will allow them to roll it out to other providers after six months or a year.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

I agree. I switched from Verizon to Cingular a couple of years ago because I had to have one of those new RAZRs. I loved the phone, but hated the service, and actually paid the early termination fee to go back. Now Verizon had RAZRs also, so even though I'm about as big of an Apple fanboy as they get, I will wait until they have their version of the iPhone before I get one.

At least that's what I keep saying to myself...

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[CensorshipDonkey]

I believe they approached Verizon initially, as they did a lot of carriers. However, Cingular was the only network at the time who were willing to partner with Apple on Apple's terms: Apple was to design the phone, control every aspect of it, and prevent the network from stuff their own software and logo all over it. That may seem reasonable from the perspective of a hardware designer, but must networks were used to stamping all approved phones with their own software/logo/etc. Blame Verizon for declining a reasonable partnership.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[MtViewGuy]

I think within a year we'll see iPhone models with these features:

1. More flash memory storage--probably in the 16-20 GB range.
2. Longer battery life.
3. Support for CDMA digital cellular phone service, which makes it possible for the iPhone to run on Verizon and Sprint networks, including full EV-DO support.

This second-generation iPhone will likely be available worldwide with either GSM or CDMA support.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[amigabill]

Verizon didn't go for the deal Apple was looking for.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-28-veriz on-iphone_x.htm

I don't know if I'd want an iPhone. I went for the LG9800 aka "The V" phone from Verizon as it was supposed to be their high-end gadget. It's a freakin POS. Terrible camera, short battery life, can't use standard headphnes to listen to music, mediocre phone, can't bluetooth pix I've taken to other phones like my roommate's phone can, and it drops calls very frequently at home. Roommates claim their phones work fine at home. I dont' use it for an mp3 player as my iPod Nano is much better for that with much larger capacity, but the 9800 seemed acceptable the couple songs I tried out for kicks. But it leaves me uninterested in expensive combo phones that don't do anything particularly well. I'll wait for some user reviews before I try to care. My next phone will be bought based on signal reception and battery life. But as Verizon reps can't/won't talk to me about what phones have better antennas and signal pickup than other phones, I'm not sure how to make that decision, and I still have this POS that I've hated since I got it. I find the idea of bailing out on cell phones completely quite tempting because I never really use it anyway, and it's an expensive monthly payment for something that works so poorly.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[CrackedButter]

I'm on Orange now but I hope to shit T-Mobile get the contract for the iPhone, they are one of the better and more flexible operators out over here.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[squiggleslash]

AT&T is rolling out UMTS, including HSDPA, at the moment, and Jobs has promised a 3G version of the phone is coming, so I wouldn't worry too much about the lack of EV-DO support.

FWIW, depending on what you read, Apple has committed to offering the iPhone to AT&T for the next two-five years exclusively of any other US carrier. So if you're hoping that a Verizon version is in the works, well, it isn't.

AT&T's network is poor at the moment because it's a botch of old analog and D-AMPS towers all now running GSM which has significantly different tower requirements. They now have a great deal of 3G spectrum, and are likely to overcome most of the problems they've had over the next two years, so don't expect AT&T's current poor performance to last very long, or be relevent when the 3G version of the iPhone appears.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[soft_guy]

Many of us already have AT&T (Cingular). I got my first cell phone with AT&T wireless in 2000 and I've never really thought much about changing carriers. For every "Verizon is great" story I've heard, I've heard two "Verizon are asshats" stories. Right now there are overriding business reasons to go with just one carrier and obviously they are going to choose the biggest one (AT&T).

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Verizon is going to want to hack up the user interface and replace it with their own crappy one, just like they do will all of their other phones.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[takotech]

This second-generation iPhone will likely be available worldwide with either GSM...

The iPhone is already a quad band GSM phone.

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples decision to use GSM was smart, not a miss. For the American audience who thinks multiple carriers is smart you must consider what you don't know. It isn't about the carrier so much as it is about the standard. Cingular, now ATT, and T-Mobile are the only two carriers in the US that offer GSM. Verizon offers CDMA and Sprint offers TDMA. Add to this that ATT enjoys the largest wireless subscriber base and footprint in the US.

Next off, the only place on the globe using TDMA and CDMA is right here in the US in any great number. The whole of Europe uses GSM by contrast.

So then, I must ask the ignorant, how does selecting the largest carrier in the US together with the most widely accepted wireless technology in the globe reflect a decision to not sell the most amount of phones? The decision is sound.

Secondly, for those who've taken the time to read, the exclusivity is only limited to US carriers per Cingular, now ATT. Logic would then dictate Apple are free to select which ever carrier they wish, so long as they are GSM based service providers, in international markets.

From the 3G.org: GSM is selected on the global landscape 10 to 1 over rival technologies. In the 12 months from 1Q 2005 to 1Q 2006, the GSM family of technologies showed continued growth throughout the Western Hemisphere, adding nearly 95 million new customers - 3.5 times as many as CDMA - and approaching a quarter of a billion customers in this region alone. CDMA's customer base in the region grew to a total of 169 million in the same time period with 27 million new customers and market share declining to 34.6%, along with TDMA to 11.6%.

Why would a company new to the space invest money to develop a product to penetrate a declining market? Business 101 people. I don't know how it would have made sense for Apple to consider anybody else to partner with or any other cell technology to employ. Finally, I'll restate the information in an earlier post, HSDPA is nearly as fast as EVDO and is on the edge of surpassing it...and to do so represented a soft change to the network. So GSM is in more places on an order of magnitude, nearly as fast, and cheaper to alter, represents Apple with one technology to go after 90% of the market, and they get to launch in the US with the largest wireless provider in the space. Homerun!

Re:No Verizon, No iphone

[Miamicanes]

> and Sprint offers TDMA

Argh! No! No! No! Sprint is CDMA.

(breathes)

Sorry. I couldn't help it. As much as I love to bitch about Sprint for not supporting R-UIM cards and/or allowing cool imported CDMA phones from Korea and China to be used, I just couldn't stand by and see Sprint be slandered so brutally. Call them nazis for refusing to activate non-Sprint phones, but for god's sake don't accuse them of something as gruesome and awful as TDMA ;-)

Battery life will kill it, hands down

[antifoidulus]

5 hours of talk/video time? (16 hours if you only play audio) I doubt that it is going to make that much of an impact with that kind of battery life. I know thats longer than the video play time of a video iPod, but if your iPod runs out of power, chances are you are going to be annoyed, but thats about it. If your phone dies, you could miss an important email/call/whatever. Then you will probably be much more pissed.

Just my 2 cents, I think its a great device otherwise, but great devices with no power are pretty much expensive bricks.

Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down

[powerlord]

If your phone dies, you could miss an important email/call/whatever.

Nah .. its easy ... you just carry a spare battery and when the iPhone battery gets low, you swap it out. ... oh wait ... the battery is built in ... and can't be swapped ... never mind.

Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down

[Penguin's Advocate]

That's a lot longer than my Treo 700p lasts, even with the extended battery. And the treo's interface sucks and it crashes all the time.

Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down

[soft_guy]

Dude: That's five hours of talk time - not standby.

I doubt my phone now has five hours of talk time.

This would only be a problem if you were going to use it for watching video on a long trip (perhaps a very long plane trip?) and were going to drain the battery completely. Still, I don't think it has enough storage to store enough video for a >5 hour trip. I guess maybe you could be on a flight to Hawaii and completely drain the battery playing Tetris while listening to music and then you'd have to be "super pissed" because you couldn't make a call without recharging when you land.

On the other hand, that could be a problem with pretty much any phone. I don't see it as much of an issue, really.

Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down

[porneL]

If battery life is an issue, it will just create bigger market for docking stations and on-the-go chargers - there are plenty of those for iPod already.

Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down

[daveon]

No, it probably won't, anymore than it has done for the billions of mobile phones already out there. Running out of charge on an iPod is a pain; people will view running out of power on a phone more critically.

Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down

[martinX]

I think that people will get used to the idea of "docking" the phone like they do with iPods. Get to work - dock your iPod (or plug it into a USB port). Get home, dock your iPod and sync. The iPhone is just the next step.

A new step in /. evolution

[bidule]

Now that slashdotters never RTFA, we're ready for the next step: only read the title. You, sir, not only deserve a +5 Funny, you truly deserve a +5 Insightful for this discovery.

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[eln]

I didn't RTFT, so maybe the answer is there, but I don't get the GP post's joke at all.

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

"I doubt it will get much bigger"
to which the poster replied:
"I don't think you're doing it right. Try rubbing it."

it == penis

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

"I doubt it will get much bigger"
to which the poster replied:
"I don't think you're doing it right. Try rubbing it." it == penis Almost right but not quite. You see since Apple is involved in this discussion the correct term is 'iPenis'....

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

... except the GP did not reply to the iPeen joke.

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

It has a very well patented "multi-touch" technology. So, try rubbing *it* with multiple fingers.

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[stonefry]

Title? I just read the 1st comment, and it was a doozy!

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[dlanod]

iPenis therefore iAm? Sexism in the Apple age!

Re:A new step in /. evolution

[RealGrouchy]

Now that slashdotters never RTFA, we're ready for the next step: only read the title.

Duh, it was a joke. Obviously by "bigger", they weren't referring to physical dimensions.

Really though, I don't see it getting any bigger than a Terabyte.

- RG>

How good are the others at playing catch up?

[Andy_R]

The iPhone doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apple have (arguably) raised the bar on screen quality, usability, features and memory size, and the people who currently have 100% of the mobile phone market won't be ignoring that. The question is how quickly their corporate cultures can switch round to building phones that are not just designed to tick boxes on a features checklist but are actually good at the things they can currently just about do.

Re:How good are the others at playing catch up?

[dr.badass]

The question is how quickly their corporate cultures can switch round...

Regardless of the industry, the answer to this question is consistently "not fast enough". When established market leaders (read: dinosaurs) get blind-sided by new entrants, they have a tendency to respond first by redoubling their efforts toward mediocrity, and second by simply trying to copy. Eventually, there are shifts in senior management, memos get passed around, and finally a new idea. It's as though nobody is willing to admit that they were wrong, that their products had been crappy all along, and that they have no idea what they are doing. Humility is not a word you hear often in corporate circles.

Re:How good are the others at playing catch up?

[jimicus]

Apple have (arguably) raised the bar on screen quality, usability, features and memory size

Really? So, how long have you had an iPhone?

My opinion.

[Pojut]

While my personal opinion is a negative one, I can see why people are excited about the iPhone. I must say, however, Apple's biggest mistake is choosing the Cingular/AT&T network. Restricting the phone to just that network is hardly a smart move...I mean, if they are gonna restrict it to one network, why restrict it to the network that has some of the most issues?

Re:My opinion.

[jzuska]

Just ask for the unlock code. They'll give you one.

Post on ebay as unlocked for $7000.00.

Profit.

Re:My opinion.

[powerlord]

Restricting it to Cingular/AT&T makes SOME sense.

Apple probably wants to market the phone Globally, so it makes sense to stick with GSM carriers (at least at first). They also need a certain amount of cooperation with the cell phone company to handle their take on Voice Mail and other things.

The only other GSM carrier in the U.S. is T-Mobile, and, since they are a more global company, they probably either wanted more money, and/or would relinquish less control to Apple, so AT&T it is.

If the iPhone gets bigger, then once the Exclusivity contract expires with AT&T, I'd expect them to be available on T-Mobile, and maybe Verizon (if/when they come out with a CDMA version of the phone).

Re:My opinion.

[Pojut]

Yeah, but one of the draws of the iPhone (as with any smart phone) is it's internet-browsing abilities...what's the point of browsing the net on a network that is marginally quicker than dial-up? Especially on your shiny brand new $500+ phone.

Re:My opinion.

[IdahoEv]

Apple's biggest mistake is choosing the Cingular/AT&T network.

They didn't have much choice: AT&T is the customer that was willing to reprogram their network to support the iPhone.

The nonlinear voicemail feature is one of the selling points of the iPhone - it shows you a visual list of your messages. You can click on any one and listen to just that one. All other systems require you to listen to all your messages in order.

That feature required significant redesigning of the mobile network architecture, including the ability to send packets listing all recorded messages as identified by their caller ID. AT&T was willing to do this, Verizon was not.

Re:My opinion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some iPhone features requires changes in the network, that means Apple needs to partner with cellphone service providers. Service providers won't like making such changes if they don't get an apparent advantage in doing so. Exclusivity is probably one of them. It may not be a smart move, but it's the only move.

Why AT&T then? Apple already said why: AT&T has the biggest coverage (if you restrict yourself to one exclusive network, you'd want a big one) and most importantly, AT&T agreed to let Apple be Apple. Verizon rejected that term, so they don't get the iPhone. Re: your last concern, Apple has received a patent to help with dropped calls and as rumor has it, AT&T is doing Operation Fine EDGE to help solve problems with network issues. It seems they are seriously going to use the iPhone to advertise changes in their service. We'll see.

Re:My opinion.

[Achromatic1978]

All other systems require you to listen to all your messages in order.

No they don't. "To skip to the next message, press 6. To return to the previous message press 5".

There's little redesign in this part. You press a button and dollars to donuts it's sending a DTMF tone.

The list of actual messages would just come down via GPRS, at the start. The whole "we rebuilt it from the ground up" is marketing spin, not much more.

Re:My opinion.

[Anonymous Coward]

All other systems require you to listen to all your messages in order.

No they don't. "To skip to the next message, press 6. To return to the previous message press 5".

Wha?? Skip to the next/previous message is "listening in order". Don't be so literal in interpreting that you have to listen all messages in its entirety in order. Say you want to listen to a message somewhere around number 10 on the list. You'll have to press 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, listen, 6, listen, 6, listen to the whole message. That's in sequence, no?

The iPhone way: You get a list of all messages with proper tags. You take a look at the list around number 10. Find it, touch it and listen.

Re:My opinion.

[otomo_1001]

I browse the net off my phone and through it quite often. It is only edge yeah, but 30k/s to 20k/s is more than fast enough for my needs when I am mobile.

Works for ssh too, vnc is a pain, but doable.

Downloading iso images would be a pain, but I doubt you would be doing that on the phone. Through it perhaps, but reality is most people that aren't geeks won't care about 3g.

Don't believe me on the 3g thing? Go ask a 10 random people in the mall if a phone lacking 3g will be a deal breaker to buying the phone.

Tell me how many know what the hell you just asked.

Re:My opinion.

[ptudor]

6, listen, 6, listen, 6, listen to the whole message.

Satan!

But thank you for making the larger point. Can you imagine having to read your email inbox sequentially?

Bigger than my...

[packetmon]

Largest calculated number of 23928756932486075467586738596735346542654298347586 53568590875689035634523452345 * 1...

Does it make a difference on this site... I thought it was news for nerds... Did the slogan change to news for stock analysts and tradersv

It will get big...

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

...once the price comes down. Also, I think that more carriers will need to offer the iPhone. Just Cingular isn't enough.

I could see buying one if they were in the $300 range and I could pick which wireless company I want to use. Just look at the RAZR. Weren't those originally offered by just one carrier (in the States) and pretty pricey to boot? Now every wireless company offers them and nearly everyone I know has one (except me, I like candy-bar style phones).

Also now that it's been announced that 3rd party programs can be developed for the iPhone, I see that as a big plus in expanding its capabilities.

In summary, as long as the price comes down and it's offered my multiple carriers and good apps are developed for it, I do think that it will be a big success.

I'll buy one if. . .

[kimvette]

* I can install whatever software I want on it (wow, just like a Microsoft smartphone or a PDA)
* I can play ogg-vorbis, mp3, avi, and other media formats on it
* It comes with a standard stereo headphone jack in addition to a headset one
* It comes with 3G and bluetooth is not locked down at ALL

If I buy something with all the capabilities of a PDA, I'd want it to replace my PDA, not be locked down. I've avoided smartphones and stuck with a separate PDA due to the limited nature of PDA+phone models so far.

Re:I'll buy one if. . .

[mlk]

limited nature of PDA+phone models so far. What limits have you encountered with PDA/phone combos? The only two in your list my Wizard suffers from would be "standard stereo jack" (which is a big pain in the bum I agree), and 3G (but the upgrade to mine has this).

Re:I'll buy one if. . .

[toQDuj]

Actually, I don't think you will buy one, even if it could do that.

A large fraction of the people on this planet are apparently built to complain and fuss. It's true that it is much easier to see downsides than upsides.
However, zen-like though it may be, once you learn to appreciate that which you have, can do most of what you want, without giving you too much frustration, life is just a little more pleasureable.

Good luck!

B.

Re:I'll buy one if. . .

[kimvette]

Actually, the day they announced it I was going to cancel the order for my new iPAQ (my old one finally needed replacing). The next day, I was rather glad I didn't when they followed up with an "oh, by the way, you won't be able to install third-party applications." That instantly killed any interest I had in the iPhone, so I (im)patiently awaited the arrival of my new iPAQ. Considering that the iPAQ has both WiFi and Bluetooth, AND 64MB of RAM (going to have it expanded to 128MB), AND 320MB of internal flash ROM, AND CF + SD slots, I'm glad I stuck with that purchase because it doesn't matter WHAT phone I get providing it has bluetooth.

Would I buy the iPhone were it not locked down? Yes. Am I in the market for a new phone? In a month or two I will be, I'm getting fed up with continually fixing the side volume buttons on my V400.

Re:I'll buy one if. . .

[toQDuj]

Firsrt of all, let me say that I'm glad the comment wasn't assumed flamebait right away.

Well, third party applications are nice, I have Opera and Gmail installed on my phone as well. However, they are installed because the phone itself lacks a decent browser and e-mail reader. So on the one hand, I wouldn't have had to install those programs anyway.

On the other hand, I can see how it would come in handy for the quintessential geek, willing to spend a few hours cooking something up so he can check whether his door is open or closed (done that). But to be honest, I'm a little too busy for such things nowadays.

On the third hand, I can see Apple's insistence on controlling what's put onto their "baby". If an app works in a completely different manner than the UI guidelines dictate, it would throw people off. I can see the purpose of their quality control.

All in all, it will be a nice phone, with remarkable ease-of-use. It won't, however, be a phone that can do everything. I myself will be waiting for rev. 2 :).

B.

Re:I'll buy one if. . .

[Stu Charlton]

* I can install whatever software I want on it (wow, just like a Microsoft smartphone or a PDA)

Probably will happen once they figure out the security model.

* I can play ogg-vorbis, mp3, avi, and other media formats on it

Check. It is OS X, so a VLC port may not be far off. Remember, they ported Linux to the iPod.

The interesting question is if you can use the navigation features for music/movies and then use VLC to render them. Somehow I doubt it. Alternatively, someone would have to create a seperate "navigation application". A lot of this depends on if Apple's SDK will be extensible.

* It comes with a standard stereo headphone jack in addition to a headset one

Check. It is an iPod. I do expect to use my high-end Shure earplugs.

* It comes with 3G and bluetooth is not locked down at ALL

Bluetooth 2.0 today, 3G by Late 2008. EDGE isn't awful, I use it on my BlackBerry often enough. Plain GPRS was awful.

As for locked down, time will tell. Likely it will be locked down for AT&T but that like any phone model, that rarely lasts. Europeans won't stand for lock downs, either, so that model will differ as well. So, by 2008, I could see other GSM networks gaining illegitimate iPhone access though they'd lack some of the exclusive features like visual voicemail.

It will bomb

[jzuska]

Just saying, I'm not interested in it.... and i'm a geek.

I think it's a PS3, Lonts of nice pretty technology... but in the end it's waaaaay the fuck too expensive.

Re:It will bomb

[Dan Ost]

If the PS3 had been an Apple product, then people would be raving about how successful it's been.

Re:It will bomb

[kencurry]

... but in the end it's waaaaay the fuck too expensive. Original iPod was $399; I still have mine.

Yeah, it was way too expensive then, and I knew it. Thing was, it blew away my Rio Diamond; it also blew away the 6 CD changer in my lexus that I had spent $3K on.

I knew then it would be huge, and I bought apple stock at $14. I think that was around 2001. It took a couple of years for APPL to get some traction, but today is at $127.

Apple sees long term better than most tech companies today, in my opinion. The iPhone will take off just like the iPod did.

Anyways

Re:It will bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

"No Wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame"

Re:It will bomb

[cayenne8]

"... but in the end it's waaaaay the fuck too expensive."

There's plenty of people out here that have been out of college for more than a couple of years...and $500 isn't THAT much money to us. To many people out here...$500 is easily a disposable amount of income for a new toy.

Re:It will bomb

[twinberettas]

That's why so many people are glued to their HDTVs watching BluRay movies on their PS3s.

Re:It will bomb

[cayenne8]

"That's why so many people are glued to their HDTVs watching BluRay movies on their PS3s."

Heheh..well, just because you CAN afford some decent toys...doesn't mean you always buy crap.

I will say, lots of folks have HDTVs.........but, I put the bluray and PS3's in the crap category...

Re:It will bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew then it would be huge, and I bought apple stock at $14. I think that was around 2001. It took a couple of years for APPL to get some traction, but today is at $127.

Well, at least you practiced full disclosure and admitted your opinions are based on the fact that you own Apple stock and want people to keep buying Apple....

Re:It will bomb

[kencurry]

I knew then it would be huge, and I bought apple stock at $14. I think that was around 2001. It took a couple of years for APPL to get some traction, but today is at $127.

Well, at least you practiced full disclosure and admitted your opinions are based on the fact that you own Apple stock and want people to keep buying Apple.... wrong, sold it a while ago.

nice try though, AC

Re:It will bomb

[ggvaidya]

I think the same thing too, but remember what the opinion on the iPod was when it was released: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

I suppose we'll have to see what Apple's famous marketing dept will do with this.

scared off by the introductory $499 price???

[Anonymous Coward]

scared off by the introductory $499 price??? Over here we have people *battling* to buy the new Nokia phone (N90 or something) at ~750 euros!! Talk about logic...

The iPhone Hype Is Getting Desperate

[Anonymous Coward]

It is getting to be painful to watch sites try to hype the iPhone and the general non-Apple fan crowd continue to be completely unimpressed.

Sites: Hey everybody! It's yet another iPhone hype article
People: Yawn...
Sites: Hey everybody! You really are hyped for the iPhone even if you don't think you are
People: No we're not
Sites: Come on, Apple is paying us big bucks to hype this thing until you want one. Here's another iPhone hype article
People: Still not interested ...

It might struggle in Europe

[clickclickdrone]

Whilst people will buy it as a fashion statement, it's going to struggle as it's previous generation in some ways. It's biggest problem is it doesn't support 3G which for many people is a must have feature.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's biggest problem is it doesn't support 3G which for many people is a must have feature.

I can assure you that the majority of people don't even know what 3G is, let alone that it's a "must have" feature.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[CrackedButter]

Oh fuck off, I'm sick of this being mentioned in every iphone news story, Its common knowledge, even at the Keynote Apple said they were releasing a 3G version, stop fucking trolling.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[clickclickdrone]

I'm sure they are - just this version isn't it which is kind of the point Mr stroppy.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

He said EUROPE. We know.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[clickclickdrone]

I can assure you that the majority of people don't even know what 3G is, let alone that it's a "must have" feature

Possibly true for your average Joe but amongst the demographic the Phone is aimed at, they know. I'm sitting here at work surrounded by people talking about their latest phone and it's buzzword city - blah blah GPS blah blah 3G blah blah HSDPA blah quad band etc. Heck some of them are upgrading their 3G's to something with even more bells and whistles.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[CrackedButter]

From all accounts, Apple didn't do a 3G for the US phone market straight away because the infrastructure isn't there so there's no point yet. It doesn't mean however they wouldn't accommodate other markets outside the US they do have a goal to achieve after all.

On a sidenote, I don't get stroppy, I'm just sick of the same shit being repeated all the time because people don't know what they are talking about. I seriously doubt Apple is going to blunder into the European and Asian markets without 3G.

Re:It might struggle in Europe

[djrogers]

Possibly true for your average Joe but amongst the demographic the Phone is aimed at, they know.

The iPhone *is* aimed at the average joe. It's not aimed at the BB/PalmOS/WinMo toting geeks, apple recognized that those phones while popular with us make up a TINY fraction of US and worldwide phone sales. Apple is going after a chunk of the other 97%, and if they drag some of us along with them so much the better.

I swear, it's like the iPod all over again - geeks whining about what it doesn't do, while the other 97% of people see that it *does* what they want it to, and well. Why are we geeks so blind to the real world?

It won't be the number sold that counts

[Billosaur]

It will be reliability. This isn't an iPod; you're iPod breaks and so you can't listen to music or watch videos, that's a shame. But people are wedded to their mobile phones -- if these things can't stand up to the pounding that a normal mobile phone takes in the course of a day, you're going to see sales tail off pretty damned fast.

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[PrescriptionWarning]

you forget about the real money makers: those that produce all the iPod "stuff", like jackets and protectors and other accessories. Oh they'll be making a killing turning the iPhone into what looks like a ribbed rubber brick for her pleasure.

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[Rodness]

And this is the one thing that concerns me. You break your Macbook [Pro], you gotta ship it to AppleCare and be without it for 3 or 4 days.

Fuck that with my phone... If I have to pay another 150 bucks for an AppleCare service plan, that's fine, but if it breaks, I better be able to get an Apple or AT&T store to swap my SIM card (or whatever) into a new one right there without a fight and walk out with a new phone (without forking out another 600 bucks). I don't think the general public is going to accept being without their phone for 3 days.

Sending in your ipod, it's no big deal. Notebook, it's a major inconvenience. Phone becomes a potential safety/security issue on top of an extreme inconvenience.

Their repair/replacement strategy is pretty much going to make or break the deal for me.

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[Billosaur]

Even if you can just show up at an Apple store and swap a defective phone for a new one, they stand to take a bath if the phone is unreliable. Imagine the number of times they will have to make free replacements of defective/non-functional phones, and how quickly that will eat into profits.

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[blhack]

I still remember exactly what convinced me to never buy a different phone than the blackberry. My dads bike had a dead battery, so naturally he was like "Son, PUSH ME DOWN THE FREAKING STREET"....so there i go, sprinting behind his bike down the pavement, blackberry on my hip. When we reached the peak of our speed (probably a blistering 3-4 miles an hour...it is a big HUGE cruising harley), my BB flew off of my belt and started tumbling down the street. After we got the bike started, i walked back up and found it. When i did there wasn't a SCRATCH ON IT. The thing was still turned on, and still receiving calls/emails. I've tumbled over the handlebars and down the trail on my mountain bike with the thing in my pack, i've dropped it down onto the concrete, had a fly apart etc etc etc. The thing has got ONE scratch on the back of the battery cover.

Somehow i doubt this thing could stand up to that...

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[mblase]

if these things can't stand up to the pounding that a normal mobile phone takes in the course of a day, you're going to see sales tail off pretty damned fast.

Wow. Y'know, I'll bet Apple -- who for years has been making their iPods durable enough that you can drop it six feet while jogging without causing any internal damage -- never even thought about that when they designed this thing.

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[Billosaur]

Sarcasm aside, testing something in the lab is not the same as knocking about in the real world. And it's not dropping it that is necessarily the bugaboo. A co-worker told me today how his daughter's video iPod has now twice locked up and refused to work, to be replaced by a new unit each time. Reliability is not something that can be tested -- it has to be built in. Apple's products are good, but they are not flawless, and while a person might conceivably live without an iPod for a period of time, many people would be helpless without their mobile phone.

Re:It won't be the number sold that counts

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't an iPod; you're iPod breaks

Really? When did I become "iPod breaks?"

Or

[everphilski]

maybe the number is $10B because Ballmer switches to throwing iPhones?

Ahhhhh!

it will be?

[vx922]

but the iTimeMachine will be bigger we just have to wait for Mr Jobs to bring it out of hideing (he hides it in his freezer)

Kiss of Death

[pudknocker]

Nothing really new, just put a bunch of things together in one package and add the Apple logo... what's clever/ingenious about that?

This much hype is almost always the "Kiss of Death" for a tech product. I'm thinking Segway..... However, Apple has the power of "hip" which should never be underestimated.

Re:Kiss of Death

[LynnwoodRooster]

Even beyond that, I'm not sure I see anything novel over the Samsung Anycall i718. Video, music, monster dynamic touchscreen, bluetooth, PDA functionality. Except the i718 has buttons on the very bottom for the most common functions, a very smart move...

Only 8GB?

[Vosschenstijn]

I was unhappily surprised by the iPhone's 8GB capacity. A device that plays video should at least have 20GB. And Apple surely has the technology to fit that amount of memory into a flash architecture. So why the trimmed down 8GB? I hope the device's processor will be as snappy as the quicktours or whatever they are called on Apple's website suggest. It blazes through photo's and music like a 5-year old on a sugar-buzz.

Re:Only 8GB?

[geekoid]

Because there are a lot of demand on a little device. I suspect it has to do with battery time.

Re:Only 8GB?

[Vosschenstijn]

Battery life seems hardly an issue to me. Compared to the energy usage of the large and bright touchscreen, the obviously snappy CPU, and the ability to stay permanently connected to telecom networks, the battery use of a, say, 20GB flash chip, is not that big a deal.

If so it will buck the market trends.

[supersnail]

This year more than half of Nokia's revenues come from sub 50 Euro phones.

And this percentage is increasing.

I personally can see why. I want a phone to be a phone nothing more nothing less.

I've has a treo [great palm pilot - lousy phone) and was bought a p800 (lousy PDA, lousy phone).

I now have a Nokia 5nnn thingy with the bouncy rubber case which comes with a camera I
have never used, an FM radio I have never used, a compass! which I have used and some other
bells and whistles but it works very well as a phone.

I will spend even less money the next time I buy one and get more of what I really
want from the thing -- simple user interface and long battery life.

Re:If so it will buck the market trends.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I personally can see why. I want a phone to be a phone nothing more nothing less. I've has a treo [great palm pilot - lousy phone) and was bought a p800 (lousy PDA, lousy phone).

You have bought devices that had functionality you did not use. I suspect a lot of us have. I have a very basic phone right now and it still does not do a very good job as a phone. The iPhone will succeed if it works really well as a phone and is easier to use than other phones. The iPhone will crush the competition and be an enormous success if works really well as a phone and for 5-10 other common tasks that currently suck balls to do on other phones. I know a dozen people right off the top of my head who don't use SMS, or e-mail, mp3 playing, web browsing, or maps on their phone/PDA not because they aren't willing to pay for those features, but because learning them and using them every day is a pain in the ass because of the poorly designed interfaces. Hell, to call a number from the phonebook in my current phone is 5 button presses at the very minimum. That is terrible usability.

I doubt I'll be buying an iPhone anytime soon because of my phone contract and expense, but if Apple has managed another really polished UI, a lot of people will be buying it and a whole lot more than that in a few more years.

I don't want "just a phone" because I'm cheap. I want something that works as a phone really, really well and if it works as other things really really well too, I'll pay for that. If it does other things kinda sorta the way many phones and PDAs do now, I don't really care to pay for it.

Re:If so it will buck the market trends.

[Anonymous Coward]

This year more than half of Nokia's revenues come from sub 50 Euro phones. And this percentage is increasing. I personally can see why. I want a phone to be a phone nothing more nothing less.

I see why, too: All phones suck, and if I'm going to buy something that sucks, I'm going to spend as little as possible. Who spent $400 on an MP3 player before the iPod?

I will spend even less money the next time I buy one and get more of what I really
want from the thing -- simple user interface and long battery life.

One can only hope that step 2 of Apple's business plan is not "sell 10 million phones to 'supersnail' on slashdot".

Re:If so it will buck the market trends.

[GeckoX]

I don't get this '5 button presses to call from phonebook' thing...that's whack. It takes me two, and it simply can't get any less than that. Just as fast as using voice dialing or speed dialing. (W850)

Phone Book Dialing: 'Down' opens phone book and selects first entry. 'Enter' calls.
Voice Dialing: Click voice dial button...wait...say name.
Speed dial: Hold appropriate speed dial button for a couple seconds.

All take about the same amount of time. Two require setup steps that are beyond a lot of users. (Though also very easy)

If I bought a phone that required 5 key presses to get into the phone book, I'd take it back. That's simply pathetic.

Re:If so it will buck the market trends.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If I bought a phone that required 5 key presses to get into the phone book, I'd take it back. That's simply pathetic. Free phone that came with my service, like 90% of people have. The method is left: down: left: 2: call - in order to call the first person on my list. I can call people faster if they are in my speed dial list, but I think last time I paid attention my average button press for other calls was 8. My last phone was actually worse and the one before that better at only 4. Those are about par for the course with average, current phones and operations that are less common are often much worse. There is a lot of room for the iPhone to blow away the average phone for usability and features people can actually use.

Re:If so it will buck the market trends.

[GeckoX]

Or...it'll be worse.

From what I can tell, you'll have to select the 'phone' icon first...THEN you have to dig through contacts.

Just speculation of course as I don't have one here in my hands to try it with.

IMHO...

[ricky-road-flats]

...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all.

The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase. There are huge, competent companies churning out amazingly sophisticated models of all types (just this quarter, the SonyEricsson W880 and the Nokia N95 are great examples), and they are refreshing those models at a furious pace.

The mobile markets differ around the world, but the Western European model essentially removes the purchase price from the end-user. I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.

Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world. Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well. My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on. It's very hard to get right the phone bit, and nothign of what I've read about the iPhone tells me it'll be any good at that. It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.

Apple might talk about a low-cost verion in 2009, but the others will have cheaper phones that do far more in 2007, let alone 2008 or 2009.

They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere. I might be wrong - it might have a neat feature that'll make it a must-have - but I'll be very surprised if they do - and the second it's out, the competitors will be throwing together better competing phones.

Re:IMHO...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm, was just thinking that it works for me. I'm not into fancy phones and stuff. I know exactly the features iPhone has and want one, SonyEricsson W880 and the Nokia N95 sound like random phones to me.

And I'm positive a trip to the Apple store will be a lot more fun than a trip to the Sprint store.

Re:IMHO...

[MtViewGuy]

While Apple obvious doesn't have the experience of SonyEricsson or Nokia making cellphones, it has one major thing in its favor: the interface of the iPhone is a potential major leap forward compared to the Nokia N95 or SonyEricsson W880i, both of which still have a lot of buttons to deal with.

Re:IMHO...

[nine-times]

The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years.

Not true. There were plenty of MP3 players on the market before the iPod, some with more space ("Less space than a nomad"). I even know lots of geeks who owned MP3 players. Most people didn't own them because-- well, for a lot of reasons but mostly because they *sucked*. They worked, by which I mean it was entirely possible to play music on them, but the experience of using them sucked hard-core. They were annoying to operate, had nonsensical interfaces, and the programs that transfered music to the players were total crap.

Re:IMHO...

[SuperKendall]

The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

Amazing how Apple just happened to jump into a market, just as it started to boom! Never mind that 80% of the boom was from devices Apple sold. It's not like Apple took a market that was growing at a snails pace and infused a breath of fresh air into it. No way can Apple be responsible for growth.

The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase.

How much of a percentage are smartphones to the general phone population today? Huh.

Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world.

Why? Why is it that much harder in the phone world? The iPod today already can browse lists of things well. It can even review contacts. Why is it so much different to have an iPod you can hold to your head? Apple knows interface design very well, and knowing how to help people with complex tasks on small devices is really not that much of a different task from a music player to a phone.

Is Apple not familiar with radio equipment? Never mind every computer comes with Bluetooth and WiFi. Are they not good with power management? Never mind that iPods get pretty good battery life. I'm just not seeing what about phones is so much harder that APple cannot use the experience they have to do a very good job right out of the gate.

It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.

That might matter to me a little more if my very large metra area (Denver) even had 3G or was scheduled to have it anytime soon. But it doesn't matter, because I have used EDGE and it's OK. Mainly for any extended browsing I would be using the WiFi that is pretty much ubiquitous in my day to day life, far faster than 3G and with better battery usage. SO I hardly think this rules out technical users at all (and we already know Apple will use 3G in places it makes sense, like Europe later on).

They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere.

That's because you can't see a slight redesign for other markets coming. You can't even see the growth of the iPod for what it was, I guess it's little surprise you can't see the potential of the iPhone given what exists today.

Re:IMHO...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all. The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

You have to think about markets in terms of consumers and uses. When the iPod came out there were already a lot of people trying to sell digital players, but none of them were very well designed, none of them did a good job of accommodating the entire workflow, none of them were really easy to learn and use. There were players with better stats and more features, but the adoption was very limited. Most people were sticking with portable CD players as a result. The iPod changed that both by providing the right package and through good marketing.

Now take a look at the market the iPod is targeting. It is aimed at the smartphone market, which has a lot of existing products, but fairly small adoption of those products. Most people are sticking with cheap, low end cell phones and a lot of people are not happy with those either. For the iPhone to be huge they need to repeat what they did with the iPod. Apple needs to provide the entire workflow and they need to do it so it is learnable and easy and they need to market it right. I think the marketing is working so far. The question is, can Apple provide a good user experience and will AT&T hold up their end of that experience?

The mobile phone market is completely different to this.

Apple is aiming at the smartphone market, not just the phone market. As with the iPod they hope to take a significant chunk of that market and they hope to pull people in from the lower end phone market, much as the iPod pulled in people from the Discman market.

I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.

In 2001, how many people had paid more than $100 for their portable music player (usually a CD player)? I'm guessing less than 1% of the market.

Apple have no experience at making phones.

They had no experience at making portable music players.

They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world.

It is hard in the music player market too, which is why it is still really hard to find an iPod competitor that is as easy or nice to use. I don't even own an iPod, but I've used them without a problem. Apple is good at UIs and usability testing to create a polished user experience.

Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well.

To not be a flop, they need to be a better phone. That shouldn't be hard. It takes a minimum of 5 key presses to call a number in my phonebook using my very "simple, just a phone" cell phone. To do well they need to be as good an iPod as the iPod with a permissible slightly larger learning curve. To revolutionize the market, they need to perform a few other functions just as well and just as easily and they need to keep the user experience clean and easy (AT&T may be a problem here).

My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on.

The W850 is maybe a bit better than par for the course, which is to say 99% of all people do not want to spend the time messing around with it even enough to learn to use the browser, e-mail, or alarm clock. 50% of people probably do not even want to take the time to learn to use SMS or the camera on it and most people just buy a cheaper phone or ignore all those features you talk about. This is

Re:IMHO...

[antibryce]

Others have pointed out your error in assuming Apple jumped in at just the right time, however this part bears comment:

The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

The iTunes Music Store didn't come along until 2003, the iPod was released in 2001. Ergo there was no real "tie-in" until well after the iPod had taken off. Unless you want to argue that it was "tied-in" with the software used to update the iPod, in which case nearly every MP3 player was "tied-in" to some software.

I think the cell market is actually very similar to the early mp3 player market (although bigger) in that it has a bunch of products that all have terrible interfaces. If nothing else maybe Apple will shake things up enough that someone out there will actually innovate with phone design, as opposed to just cramming more in.

Re:IMHO...

[PygmySurfer]

Apple have no experience at making phones.

Apple had no experience making MP3 players, either.

Re:IMHO...

[geekoid]

If I can sit down at my computer, plug the [phone into it via USB cable, and load ring tones, music, picture, etc... using an iTunes like application, I will buy one.

Re:IMHO...

[GeckoX]

Valid arguments, just want to counter the specific example of the W850, most other convergence phones and you'd have made a good point. The W850 however has an excellent UI. It would be hard NOT to figure out how to use the walkman or camera features, each has obvious dedicated buttons for this. It Just Works. I've had 3 friends/family members go out and get this phone after playing with mine for a couple of minutes because of the convergence features and the immediately obvious ease of use of these features.

Granted though, just about every other convergence phone I've tried is a useless brick hiding a checklist of 'features'. Times they are a changing though.

Re:IMHO...

[GeckoX]

Um...just because they're icons on the screen (that change, move etc depending on context...not necessarily a 'useability' feature btw) doesn't mean it doesn't have buttons. FYI, those ARE the buttons.

At least you qualified that with the term 'potential'.

Number of buttons != useability, or lack thereof.

Blackberries have WAY more buttons, but if you're into using text features, that increases useability, not decreases.

IPod's have WAY less buttons, but if you're into just hitting play/stop, that increases useability.

Right tool for the job and all that.

Re:IMHO...

[daveon]

Why is it that much harder in the phone world? I suppose "because it is" is a little glib? Part of the problem is in the radio module and stack design and why celular networks are much more complex than Bluetooth and Wifi. They don't have to worry about constantly monitoring the radio landscape, looking at the cell sites and handling the hand off between different Base Stations all while handling data and/or voice traffic. I believe that Apple have tried to get around this by buying in a 3rd party radio module. While I've seen this work ok(ish) on data enabled devices, generally speaking the results have been less satisfactory for actual mobile phones. The problems tend not to be obvious at first glance, but I suspect users will soon find that the IP stack will hang randomly and not notice that its not working until they try to re-use it. As you can't take the battery out, then they'll need some way of doing a reboot easily. The other problem you see is in the communications between the UI and the radio - so you can have a lot of problems answering calls, handling 3-way calling and that sort of thing. It will be very interesting to see what these devices behave like on the real networks. I know for a fact that as recently as 3 months ago AT&T were not being allowed to do network field trials and were still in the lab. That alone rings alarm bells for me, as typically, even with phone platforms built from the ground up to be a phone (like you get from Nokia and Sony Ericsson) they'll have at least 3 months in the field testing the radio performance. That isn't to say Apple can't solve these problems but I'm prepared to bet its going to cause them huge pain and negative PR. Regarding the battery life; the problem is down to the natural conflict between radio power management and applications. Another thing I've seen on radio module based devices is there isn't a huge amount of optimisation for power consumption on the radio i.e. turning off the frequency band sweeps when you're out of coverage, so in poor signal areas the phone just runs through the battery until its all gone rather than knowing to stop bothering until the user touches it. All of this is orders of magnitude harder to get right than Wifi and Bluetooth. Oh, and touchscreen only phones also generally suck too.

Re:IMHO...

[SuperKendall]

An interesting post, we'll see if any of the predicted problems occur - I have to say though everything you've mentioned has occurred for me with other very popular phones, like the RAZR and Ericcson (especially the weak network sweep, kills my phones all the time). So frankly all Apple can do as far as I am concerned is improve on things, it wouldn't be that hard to be a step above what is around today.

I don't think it would be released in a state that required a reboot often, if at all...

Your last sentence bears correction - touchscreen phones generally suck, but the iPhone looks to take away the things about them that do suck. I had no problems with keyboardless Palm devices for many years, so I can't see where working with the iPhone is going to be any kind of problem - the addition of keyboards is what removed any desire I had to buy a Treo.

Re:IMHO...

[daveon]

Interesting points; I'm not surprised to hear that about the RAZR (nobody in the industry likes it) but I am surprised by the Ericsson comment - I've had 3 SEMCs (P910i, T68, T610) and they all had amazing radio power management. They're pretty much the best in the business in my experience. Most of the Windows Mobile problems have been down to under estimating the effectiveness of modules versus ground up phones.

I've already bet some friend's outside of the industry about the reboot frequency. Even if the device works flawlessly on your test cases, I just don't hear that Apple have been running live network field trials and without those they're going to be in a world of hurt.

I still reserve the right to be unimpressed with the touchscreen. No amount of clever design will stop my ears being greasy (uck, I know) and if, as I suspect, they use a tactile feedback on the touchscreen then that will bleed power over time - not to mention the need for a back light to actually see anything on every occasion.

Re:IMHO...

[Dripdry]

It takes you five key presses at a minimum to dial a number? How old is your phone? Minimum is 2 (call it 3)for mine and all the phones I've used in the past, with 1 for speed dial. Really, can Apple make 2 button presses THAT much more exciting that I'll want to spend $450 more? I better get a happy ending every time too, at that price point. You made the assumption that many people are unhappy with their phones, yet give nothing to back this up. The basic experience of dialing a phone has been nailed down. Press one key (for me it's pressing the down arrow) to get your list of numbers, then select the first character of the name you want. Scroll down if necessary, dial. It's fairly straightforward, although who is to say that something new can't be devised? I would argue that the reason people are unhappy with their phones is that the features promised by the phone are unintuitive and hard to learn/use, or not up to par with their expectations. Apple under promised and overdelivered as the Little Music Player That Could. At least, peoples' expectations of the iPod were low. This time, Apple is promising all sorts of bells and whistles, lots of functionality. They're going to save the cell phone/PDA world, apparently. However, they've already told us the shortcomings: 5 hour battery life. So now, as a phone, what do I do? I forget my charger for a weekend trip and suddenly I can't do much business or personal talking because I'm worried the phone will die. But wait! It plays music too! But hold on a minute, it has 8GB, which is a handsome size... but I just put a few episodes of my favorite show on there since I heard this thing plays video... which I don't want to watch now because my phone might die this weekend, especially if I watch a 2 hour movie on the road... so I can only listen to a few things. Well darn it. In short, while this argument hangs on forgetting the charger (and believe me, I have it happen to myself, friends, and clients *all* the time) it still highlights the fact that the features each on their own could be great and really slick (like the iPod doing one thing, but doing it well), but has cramming them all together diminished Apple's ability to make a modern, usable product instead of just a pretty hunk of tech? It's a classic tech question that's already been covered here, I see. Mod me down. In terms of Apple making a phone that "has good workflow": Maybe this is the key. If the experience is good enough, will people ignore its shortcomings in actually usability? Will people take "feel good vibes" over logical utility? Civilization typically seems to as long as it is marketed well to them. (I tentatively reference Jared Diamond's book "Collapse") We'll see.

Re:IMHO...

[Dripdry]

P.S. Just mod me down to 0 for not formatting it in plain text. yuck.

Re:IMHO...

[Cyno]

You call yourself a technophile? When I think of audiophile I don't think of someone technically competent about audio equipment, I think of someone who buys brand name cables at 3x the price because they believe it sounds better to their ears. Fine by me, but I'm a geek. I haven't even looked at a SonyEricsson or Nokia phone. The last phone I had was the Motorola 680i. The next one I get will be the Fic Neo 1973, hopefully with Java FX and some lovely hardware surprises.

But aside from all that I agree with you, the iPhone is overhyped, IMO. How much do you want to pay for graphics vs. useful features? In fact, it looks like the cell phone market might cannibalize the iPod market, this can't be good for Apple unless they take the lead.

Re:IMHO...

[SuperKendall]

The Ericcson was better powerwise, but had an even more aggravating UI than the RAZR and much worse reception (I just recently tried switching back in fact from the RAZR so I know that for sure!). So I was never sure if it was better power managed, or just put forth less power to the task of getting a signal.

I know what you mean about testing, but Apple is generally pretty good about those things... so I am imagining it will be better tested than you might think even if not in the hands of AT&T people. Still, I'll bet there's a good firmware update about two weeks from launch to resolve some of those initial issues you speak of...

Re:IMHO...

[ben there...]

When the iPod came out there were already a lot of people trying to sell digital players, but none of them were very well designed, none of them did a good job of accommodating the entire workflow, none of them were really easy to learn and use. There were players with better stats and more features, but the adoption was very limited. Most people were sticking with portable CD players as a result. The iPod changed that both by providing the right package and through good marketing.

No there weren't. The competition was basically Rio, with its fairly large flash players, with tiny memory capacity. I had one that was 32 MB. It held about a CD's worth, for $200. There was no other mass-produced hard drive player available in the US.*

Apple initially succeeded in the market because they used a hard drive and had an established brand. The brand from a fairly unrelated market helped the general public realize that mp3 players (as they were called at the time) even existed. The market still would have grown quickly as small size, large capacity hard drives and flash memory were introduced. Apple joined at the right time.

They've continued succeeding because of other factors, such as style and intuitive interface. But that is not the initial reason for their success.

* From what I've read, HP owned a small company in Asia that had released a hard drive player, but it was not available in the US. They didn't capitalize on it like Apple did.

Re:IMHO...

[daveon]

I'm going to wait and see. I've been working in the phone industry for 7 years now and I've not seen anybody fix a new device issue that quickly. I've seen lots of failed launches and multi-month delays though. If Apple haven't used AT&T for the field testing (and some contacts tell me that is the case) then they've a problem.

Re:IMHO...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

No there weren't. The competition was basically Rio

The players I know were on the market and selling when the iPod cam out out in 2001 were: Sensory Science's Rave MP2300, the I-Jam IJ-100, Creative Labs Nomad, Compaq PJB, Rio, and iRiver. That is six different players on the market prior to the iPod. How can a Slashdot reader not remember the Nomad, given the infamous quote that has been recirculating here ever since?

Apple initially succeeded in the market because they used a hard drive and had an established brand. The brand from a fairly unrelated market helped the general public realize that mp3 players (as they were called at the time) even existed.

That is not enough. There were already hardware based players and Sony entered the market shortly after Apple. Compaq entered before them and had an established brand.

The market still would have grown quickly as small size, large capacity hard drives and flash memory were introduced. Apple joined at the right time.

I disagree. The market was waiting for someone to make the functionality easy enough for the common man to use. Ripping music from CD may seem easy to you, but I know numerous people who could not figure out how to rip a CD before iTunes. Bigger, cheaper drives don't matter if there is no way for a normal person to get music onto the device. The iTunes software and the iTMS were Apple addressing that part of the problem and making it possible for normal users instead of just geeks to use such a device.

Right now, that is the situation with smartphones too. They are too complex and hard to use and no one has addressed the workflow to make it simple and easy and fast. If Apple can do so, they can open up the smartphone market to more than just the geeks that use them now (there are also some non-geeks now who ignore 90% of the features).

How Big? Do the math

[Anonymous Coward]

Take every single Mac user x iPhone$. Then +
15% every single Windows user x iPhone$. There you have the first 18mo. rollout.
Then take every single laptop user x 1.25(iPhone$)= Apple iPhone v2.0 revenues over 3yrs. WAIT... there's more!
Now take...
every single cell phone user x .66(iPhone$)= Apple iPhone v3.0 revenues AFTER they rebrand/takeover a carrier like CRICKET.
That's the exit strategy for Steve Jobs.

Re:How Big? Do the math

[JamesRose]

Yes, meanwhile the dozen current multibillion dollar phone companies that DO have compatibility with networks which are better and wrok everywhere just close down? Look at google, amazing search engine, not the market leader in almost anything else (unless they bought a company like youtube which was already market leader) Look at apple, good ipod, amazingly successful (personally i think disproportionately so), their computer business? Niche. How long will it take before people stop assuming that because a company has done well in one market that it will be any good in another market. This is exacerbated by the fact the ipod came first, the market came second, the reason they became popular is because no one wanted a hard disk player before. The iPhone market? Already absolutely full off competition, completely packed, apple cannot use the strategy that bought them success in the music player market (and to some degree the computer market for a while)

Not hot-swappable

[nerdstrap]

Until the iPhone has a swappable carrier model, it will never be as huge as the iPod. Why can't the phone network access be abstracted to the point that a phone just has a different .dll for each network? Someone create a Cell Phone Software Factory!

Re:Not hot-swappable

[soft_guy]

I think there are more serious differences between CDMA and GSM that a DLL. I think it requires an actual different radio.

Its all in the data plan

[KevDude]

For me, whether or not to get an iPhone all hinges on how much the data plan is going to cost. I'd gladly pay $1000 or more for a single device that could be a usable network terminal, music player, gps, and phone, but I'm not going to pay 30-70 dollars every month for the life of the device to use it.

Considering that decent home broadband is now 25-60 dollars most places here, I really can't see paying more than 5-10 dollars for the bandwidth, and maybe another $5-10 for the portable aspect. But then isn't that already built into my base cell plan? So we'll see if AT&T comes up with a reasonably priced plan or not.

Blackberry?

[mnmn]

The iPhone doesn't look like it can be a Blackberry. The whole attraction of the Blackberry is really email and text messages.

I cringe at the thought of typing on a small touchscreen.

Re:Blackberry?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone doesn't look like it can be a Blackberry. The whole attraction of the Blackberry is really email and text messages.

I cringe at the thought of typing on a small touchscreen.

Are you on crack??? The keyboard will be bigger than a crackberry's.

More asinine stuff on the FP

[br14n420]

The answer may not come until 2009

Then you should remove your article full of guesswork and write a new one in 2009 when you know the answers.

All these articles end up ever being is more hype for an unreleased product. Free advertising for the manufacturer, and setting up future buyers to be disappointed due to hyped expectations. Then, within a month of it's release, the attitude of articles posted by /. will go from this to years of "Is this the next iPhone killer?" and thus more hype, this time negative, over any minor limitations or design errors.

Re:More asinine stuff on the FP

[PygmySurfer]

There's already a slew of "iPhone Killer" articles out there, which is pretty sad considering the iPhone hasn't even shipped yet.

Re:More asinine stuff on the FP

[Achromatic1978]

Haha. You do realize the utter hypocrisy of what you just said, right?

I'll give you a hint, let's do a find and replace...

There's already a slew of "Nokia Killer" articles out there, which is pretty sad considering the iPhone hasn't even shipped yet.

Eliminating Schlepping the MacBook

[BoRegardless]

Using an iPhone may indeed let me leave the MBPro in the office much of the time. For these types of users, iPhone makes a BIG difference with the iphone in a pocket rather than a ten pound bag with charger and extension cord. People hereabouts have complained about only 1 cell provider, no 3G, no 20 gig memory, no EU sales, but to fully debug everything before going global, Apple has picked it right to limit it to N. America. Obviously the rest of the options will come, as the 3rd party applications will. Hey, the phone is not even out, and everyone has statements about various forms of failure. If you want to see failures, take a look at all the losing products from MS over the last 10 years. MS has existed profitably because of two long standing products, and those financed the losses on all the "new" products.

Re:Eliminating Schlepping the MacBook

[GeckoX]

Um, forgive me, but how is the iPhone going to replace your MacBook? You use your MacBook as a phone? Or you mean you actually drag your laptop on the off chance that you'll run across wireless right at the moment you have an urge to look up some minutia online that couldn't wait until later?

Not trying to detract from your own personal scenario, just pointing out that the way you present that implies that you believe the iPhone is an actual laptop replacement, which is to put it bluntly, simply asinine.

If the lower-cost version is already planned....

[PHAEDRU5]

...why buy the high-priced version?

I'll just wait.

p.s. If enough people take this tack, then there will be no iPhone at all.

I'm not convinced

[hairykrishna]

The ipod was a huge success because it was introduced before a lot of people owned portable mp3 players, it looked better than the competitors and (most importantly) most of the alternatives had rubbish interfaces. None of these things are true for the phone market.

What do I know though? I won't pay over the odds for a piece of technology just because it looks cool. I don't think I'm the target market.

Network compatibilities?

[vigmeister]

Assuming the iPhone is a hit amongst GSM users, to truly expand, Sprint, Verizon and all the CDMA networks may be the biggest obstacle to iPhone's success. Once people get addicted to their iPhones, at it's pricing, they'd want to keep it for a while. Will that be possible?

The best solution IMO, is for them to build in the hardware for all the major networks into the device (which ought to be possible). I'd buy a phone just for that capability. Then perhaps you can have phone usage on one network and data plans on another.

Alternatively, akin to something I am considering, one could buy a phone with 3Gness and run a VoIP service or Skype on it 24/7 and thereby use it as a phone... If the iPhone manages that, who knows...

Cheers!

Answer: It will be gone by 2009

[pboyd2004]

Ok Apple fan boys go ahead and mod me troll.

But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?

Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be. The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.

So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.

Ok I'm done burning my karma now.

Re:Answer: It will be gone by 2009

[aztektum]

Preface: I worked as a service jerkoff for Sprint for over a year and dealt with a lot of dumb customers trying to learn their devices. Now on with the show!

The thing that kicks ass to much about the iPhone is the effort Apple has put in to designing the UI to REMOVE much of complication from doing things. It takes half a dozen key presses do anything other than get to the contacts list or open a text message on most phones.

I'm all about function over form and function is where Apple kicks ass. That said, there is no way I'm going to switch to Cingular/AT&T whatever. Among wireless providers, they can kiss my arse. If Verizon hadn't turned down Apple I might have switched to them. Oh wells. I should say I only stuck with Sprint after leaving because I have a cheap plan with everything included.

Re:Answer: It will be gone by 2009

[Achromatic1978]

The thing that kicks ass to much about the iPhone is the effort Apple has put in to designing the UI to REMOVE much of complication from doing things. It takes half a dozen key presses do anything other than get to the contacts list or open a text message on most phones.

Like, say, the Sony Ericsson K790? Let's see, main menu. We have a button for Web. We have a button for Messaging. We have a button for Calendar. We have a button for Media. We have a button for Camera.

Damn, what a complicated interface.

haptic feedback, tactile response from touchscreen

[Gary W. Longsine]

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons.

This article nicely describes a mechanism for tricking the brain with smart vibrations of the cell phone, providing a sense of tactile response on touch screens which might solve the issue with lack of tactile response for many touch screen use cases: How it works: Touch Screen Cell

business users

[EccentricAnomaly]

I don't understand why business users won't use it... Technical business people at least will want it. Since it runs OS X, it's only a matter of time until we get to run ssh on it... heck maybe even X Windows. And it already runs the web which lets you use wikis and other web-based goodies. The only thing it doesn't have is office... but it does have everything that google generation puts out or will put out just by having a web-browser. And it wouldn't suprise me if it gets iWork shortly too.

Re:business users

[toleraen]

1) No synching with Outlook.
2) No synching with enterprise email services.

Re:business users

[Vancorps]

You can run SSH on several smart-phones already so I don't know why technical people would want it over any Windows Mobile or other smart-phone.

Last I checked the thing had no mechanism for ActiveSync, so no real-time synchronization with email, calendars, contacts. In my phone I don't have Outlook contacts and regular contacts. I have one place, if I add it to my contacts in Outlook it will appear on my phone almost instantly depending on the time of the day. Alternatively if I add a contact while I'm out in the field it will automatically be in Outlook where it is safely backed up.

Storage on the smart-phones is simple as well, a simple SD card and you can have a good chunk of music, or lots of reference material, or in my case, a password database.

Emailing while out in the field has become a big app too, from what I'm seeing the iPhone won't hold up real well to texting. Besides the fact that the screen would get dirty I don't know how it would stand up to regular cell phone abuse. How many times have I dropped my Treo? Many, and it's still fine, the phone isn't as pretty as it once was but it's still fully functional.

Lastly, and the biggest reason why the iPhone is not for business. As systems administrator I can't remotely manage and secure the phones for my organization. If a Treo is lost and there are important sensitive documents on the phone I can simply erase everything on it so that any person they may find it on a park bench somewhere will not see that sensitive information. I can do this all wireless and in real-time.

Considering OS X for the desktop still lacks these advanced management, monitoring, and security tools I don't think the phone is going to get it anytime soon. I will admit, the day that Apple does close this whole I imagine their market share will rise much faster. Combine that with binary compatibility with Windows and Apple would have all it needs to become dominant. I don't see it happening though, Apple has always seemed content to be a smaller player in the field of business.

Re:business users

[hedwards]

Could you please explain to me why a business user would use an expensive phone which doesn't include the applications which most businesses are using?

iPhone is getting a bit better in that now 3rd party developers are going to be allowed to program for it. But last time I checked the phone is still $200 more than the competition due to the lack of a rebate program. When you combine that with the lack of business applications, I fail to see why any business would use something which is designed more for the home market.

In that sense the new venture that has been set up to compete will likely have more success. I wish I could recall off the top of my head who exactly was doing it, but iirc it involved MS and a few other companies. But it will have proper office applications for integrating into a normal corporate environment.

If the iPhone is a hit, it is unlikely to be so with corporate users. It just doesn't yet have the applications to integrate into the standard work environment. If Apple announces some means of dealing with that, then they may yet gain access to business customers, but right now it is unlikely.

Re:business users

[EccentricAnomaly]

Last I checked the thing had no mechanism for ActiveSync, so no real-time synchronization with email, calendars, contacts. In my phone I don't have Outlook contacts and regular contacts. you've been able to check one? :) iSync already synchronizes my contacts on my Razr, I see no reason why it wouldn't work with an iPhone, IMAP will take care of email sync. Calendaring is the only thing left... but with the iCal icon in all of the iphone pictures, I gotta think they have something for that too.

I have one place, if I add it to my contacts in Outlook it will appear on my phone almost instantly depending on the time of the day. Alternatively if I add a contact while I'm out in the field it will automatically be in Outlook where it is safely backed up. iSync does this if you just bring your phone into bluetooth range.

Storage on the smart-phones is simple as well, a simple SD card and you can have a good chunk of music, or lots of reference material, or in my case, a password database. SD cards are nice... but Apple could have a different solution for this with wifi.

Emailing while out in the field has become a big app too, from what I'm seeing the iPhone won't hold up real well to texting. Besides the fact that the screen would get dirty I don't know how it would stand up to regular cell phone abuse. How many times have I dropped my Treo? Many, and it's still fine, the phone isn't as pretty as it once was but it's still fully functional. this should be an issue for consumers more than business... most business people aren't out in the field, just in meeting all day. The iphone interface should work fine in a meeting... and be less conspicuous than a laptop.

Lastly, and the biggest reason why the iPhone is not for business. As systems administrator I can't remotely manage and secure the phones for my organization. If a Treo is lost and there are important sensitive documents on the phone I can simply erase everything on it so that any person they may find it on a park bench somewhere will not see that sensitive information. I can do this all wireless and in real-time.

There's no way to know about this until after the iphone is out... and with running OS X, Apple could concievably allow you to ssh into an iPhone or maybe even run remote desktop.... though I doubt they've had time to get such features ready for launch. But I see no reason why they couldn't in a year or so. I also bet the iphone can lock its data from the casual snoop like an ipod can already.

Considering OS X for the desktop still lacks these advanced management, monitoring, and security tools I don't think the phone is going to get it anytime soon. I will admit, the day that Apple does close this whole I imagine their market share will rise much faster. Combine that with binary compatibility with Windows and Apple would have all it needs to become dominant. I don't see it happening though, Apple has always seemed content to be a smaller player in the field of business.

Did you write the above just to troll? OS X Server has had this sort of stuff for years... plus you can easily get ports of most of the Linux utilities as well. I thought this sort of stuff would be common knowledge by now. OS X is a Unix... the shared libraries are weird, but you can still port all of the wonderful FOSS stuff over.

And "Apple" and Windows are not binary compatible, you can just dual boot Windows and OS X on a mac now.

p.s. I'm not a fanboi, just trying to understand the "iPhone bad for business" meme, 'cuz everyone I work with wants to get one for business... but we're kinda unique in not using MS Office much and using mostly Linux stuff instead.

Re:business users

[Vancorps]

I don't have to be within bluetooth range. I can be anywhere with cell coverage and everything stays synchronized. It's the same case with a blackberry or any Windows Mobile device. The iPhone simply lacks this feature. This may change but I doubt it considering RIM had to make their own server platform to allow it work with varying mail environments.

Wifi is a great feature to have but it is no replacement for an SD card. An SD card can be removed from the phone and plugged into a computer when you get to where you are going where the files can be transferred. Relying on Internet access is never a good idea although it is more and more reliable these days on phones.

You're right, I won't know about deployment details of the iPhone until it is out. Considering it is coming out this month and there is still no word on deployment details that leads me to believe the phone is not meant to be deployed in business. Every other maker would have reference materials available so guys like me could actually put these things to use.

I'm sorry you think that OS X Server is remotely as capable as a SUSE ES deployment or a Windows environment. You're simply wrong. Xen on SUSE is incredibly powerful and allows you to remotely customize the user experience not per computer, but per user. SMS on Windows is the same way. Both offer remote application deployment, compliance monitoring, patch management, custom application management, and are platform agnostic. SMS can manage Linux,Unix, and Windows, no OS X in there for probably obvious reasons. SUSE with Xen will operate under the same platform restrictions because Apple has never had an interest in the advanced management and monitoring capabilities that truly enterprise class environments offer.

I'm sorry you think someone saying Apple is lacking is trolling. I feel real bad for your employer as he or she is probably missing on out on some truly great technology. Apple's SAN technology is similarly lacking opting to manage individually instead of consolidating with other vendors.

You only need to look at the success of Net Appliance to realize that creating more islands is a bad idea and that consolidating storage and management is a great idea.

Also, I did not say that OS X had binary compatibility with Windows. In fact, I said specifically the opposite adding that if Apple did add it then it would be a force to be reckoned with.

This are lots of free and open-source tools out there that can fill in the gaps but they are no in one or even ten packages so they will not be widely deployed. That has always been the resistence to Linux in the business world because people are afraid of having to go and look for tools which invariably will have problems until they find the one tool that does what they need.

I'm not saying it's impossible to use it for business. Just that it's not very well suited for it. For a year I used my Samsung A900 phone for business, it worked, but my Treo works a hell of a lot better because it was actually designed with business in mind.

Re:business users

[Achromatic1978]

You're missing the point. ActiveSync isn't just "BT/IR/USB, run an app, press a button, look, synced contacts", it's "push", or scheduled content synchronization with whatever method of connectivity you have. I plug my smartphone in via USB, it syncs. Connect via BT, it syncs. And /then/, I wander off with it, and just as transparently it syncs over my cellular network. iSync isn't comparable.

Re:business users

[bob_herrick]

Wifi is a great feature to have but it is no replacement for an SD card. An SD card can be removed from the phone and plugged into a computer when you get to where you are going where the files can be transferred. Personally, the SD card in my Treo is quite the PITA. True, a bit of scotch tape fixes it up, but that is at least inelegant.

Oft are the times I wished it simply had a couple of gigs for music and file storage, rather than the prone to pop SD card.

Re:business users

[p0tat03]

Addition: iSync does sync your iCal onto your phone. I have a Motorola V635 and iSync works perfectly with it.

Re:business users

[EccentricAnomaly]

Could you please explain to me why a business user would use an expensive phone which doesn't include the applications which most businesses are using? I'm trying to figure out what those apps would be. I don't think it would be Excel or Word.... who want's to run those to edit documents or spreadsheets on a teeny screen, I have enough pain doing that on my laptop's screen. Powerpoint I could see... but not really to edit, but to display and take notes on the slides.

In that sense the new venture that has been set up to compete will likely have more success. I wish I could recall off the top of my head who exactly was doing it, but iirc it involved MS and a few other companies. But it will have proper office applications for integrating into a normal corporate environment. If your concept of proper application is MS apps then you've pretty much already made up your mind to only use smartphones running windows. For the engineers I work with the killler apps are: calendar, email, wiki, and ssh. An Os X or Linuc smartphone could do those thing well.

If the iPhone is a hit, it is unlikely to be so with corporate users. It just doesn't yet have the applications to integrate into the standard work environment. If Apple announces some means of dealing with that, then they may yet gain access to business customers, but right now it is unlikely. I guess I'm trying to understand if "standard work environment" is just code for "MS Office"

Re:business users

[Vancorps]

I have an SD wallet where I keep the majority of my cards. One has my password database and a few other pieces of reference material like encryption keys and whatnot. Another has music, another has just documents and mail attachments. I keep that one in the majority of the time. I don't have an issue with the card popping out but I do know a few people do have a problem with that. I guess there should be some kind of lock added to prevent that.

Re:business users

[Divebus]

Jobs: "Hey, Bill... have you seen this?"
Gates: "Wow... that's really slick. Are you shipping any enterprise apps with it?"
Jobs: "Not unless your bunch can write a compact version of Office."
Gates: "Oh, idunno - what are the sales projections like on these gadgets?"
Jobs: "They figure about 10 or 20 million units a year once it ramps up."
Gates: "[silence]...... Uh...... can I borrow that? I've got a phone call to make."

Re:business users

[EccentricAnomaly]

I don't have to be within bluetooth range. I can be anywhere with cell coverage and everything stays synchronized. It's the same case with a blackberry or any Windows Mobile device. The iPhone simply lacks this feature. This may change but I doubt it considering RIM had to make their own server platform to allow it work with varying mail environments.

I'm not very big on proprietary systems.... IMAP is nice for keeping mail synced, and Leopard will implement an open standard to sync calendar data over the net. Both will work on the iPhone.

Wifi is a great feature to have but it is no replacement for an SD card. An SD card can be removed from the phone and plugged into a computer when you get to where you are going where the files can be transferred. Relying on Internet access is never a good idea although it is more and more reliable these days on phones. If you're close enough to plug in an SD card, you're close enough for a bluetooth or wifi connection to the computer. You don't need internet for this.

I'm sorry you think that OS X Server is remotely as capable as a SUSE ES deployment or a Windows environment. You're simply wrong. Xen on SUSE is incredibly powerful and allows you to remotely customize the user experience not per computer, but per user. SMS on Windows is the same way. Both offer remote application deployment, compliance monitoring, patch management, custom application management, and are platform agnostic. SMS can manage Linux,Unix, and Windows, no OS X in there for probably obvious reasons. SUSE with Xen will operate under the same platform restrictions because Apple has never had an interest in the advanced management and monitoring capabilities that truly enterprise class environments offer. your post didn't say what you thought OS X was lacking... you just threw in an OS X canard on the end of an iphone post. And, no, OS X doesn't run windows.
But OS X server _can_ manage multiple types of systems remotely... and os x systems can be managed from linux remotely. Anyway I'm asking about what business users need on a phone, not what a sysadmin would need on a phone to adminiser machines remotely

I'm sorry you think someone saying Apple is lacking is trolling. The trolling was to throw in an off-topic dig on OS X that could touch off a flamewar and derail the discussion.

Also, I did not say that OS X had binary compatibility with Windows. In fact, I said specifically the opposite adding that if Apple did add it then it would be a force to be reckoned with. I didn't know what you were saying. Anyway, if youre saying you don't like OS X because it doesnt run Windows apps... fine. I don't see the big deal there, or what that has to do with the iphone.

This are lots of free and open-source tools out there that can fill in the gaps but they are no in one or even ten packages so they will not be widely deployed. That has always been the resistence to Linux in the business world because people are afraid of having to go and look for tools which invariably will have problems until they find the one tool that does what they need. Well I work for a place that has been running Unix systems for as long as there's been Unix, and our Sysadmins have no desire to convert to Windows... and have been quite content in a recent conversion from Suns to Linux boxen.

I'm not saying it's impossible to use it for business. Just that it's not very well suited for it. For a year I used my Samsung A900 phone for business, it worked, but my Treo works a hell of a lot better because it was actually designed with business in mind. I'll grant you that the Iphone isn't a good choice for windows sysadmins... what about the rest of the business world? What about people who aren't sysadmins and who don't pick a phone based on what is easiest for their sysadmin? It seems like MS Office is the only thing the iphone is lacking for those people... and I don't think it will ever get MS Office. That was the thought I was trying to either have verified or refuted with my original question.

Re:business users

[bob_herrick]

I don't have enought SD cards (did I say cards? I have one) for a wallet. I use USB sticks for the same thing you use SD cards, mostly because my office equipment has tons of USB ports and zero SD slots. I can see the SD cards being less bulky than the sticks, but perhaps less durable. I am pretty sure I don't want another wallet any more than another 'device' but another object on my keyring is not so bad.

Re:business users

[dr.badass]

Wifi is a great feature to have but it is no replacement for an SD card. An SD card can be removed from the phone and plugged into a computer when you get to where you are going where the files can be transferred. Relying on Internet access is never a good idea although it is more and more reliable these days on phones.

Are you saying that WiFi is less common than SD card slots? Or do you just carry around an SD card reader everywhere you go? If it's the former, you're nuts. If it's the latter, you're I don't understand how you can make a generalization.

Re:business users

[Vancorps]

The wallet is pretty much the size of a memory stick. I also use a memory stick on my keychain. Basically I'm never without the ability to transfer files haha

I more or less meant this was a great mechanism to share files from a phone to a PC, functionality you won't get with the iPhone unless I'm mistaken which is certainly possible.

Re:business users

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. I have a Palm TX.

On the one hand, I do like having an SD card. As much storage as you want. No popping-problems here.

On the other hand, the TX has The Wi Fi, and I do prefer to use The Wi Fi to transfer my stuffs to the SD card, rather than plugging in via USB or swapping out the card.

Re:business users

[Vancorps]

How many desktop computers have either wifi or bluetooth? Now how many have USB that I can plug my card reader into?

Perhaps you missed the whole part about the iPhone being based on OS X which is why the discussion about OS X happened. You also don't seem to have an understanding of enterprise management and that I manage phones and computers with SMS. There are linux based alternatives but there is no centralized management with patch deployment in the OS X platform which is just one of many enterprise features. Remote lockout is not a security mechanism worth deploying, remotely erasing the content is since the data is stored on the central server there is no risk of loss of data. Additionally I can deploy software to phones such as camera control software, Picsel, or just updating root certificates.

A system could be kludged together that would work but it would be nowhere near as elegant as a blackberry setup or even better, the Exchange/SMS/ActiveSync method.

Open standards are great and all but a very very large portion of the world is based on Exchange when it comes to their mailboxes. That is the reality of business today all over the world. That means Windows Mobile on the cheap on Blackberry Enterprise on the expensive end. The iPhone doesn't live up to either the Blackberry or Windows Mobile in regards to enterprise management and monitoring which is just me repeating myself.

I'm sorry you can't see what a sysadmin has to do with deploying phones. As for people picking their phones, most business phones are purchased and supported by the company, which means the company is going to choose phones that it can manage. Why would a company allow it's email and other resources to be moved to untrusted devices off campus? The iPhone would qualify as untrusted as it can't live up to deployment of two enterprise mobile OS's in regards to security and access controls. I can prevent users from removing software for instance.

Last thing I'll add is that you have poor reading comprehension skills. I never said OS X had binary compatibility and I never said I didn't like OS X. I said specifically that it was lacking enterprise features. When those features are added and when combined with binary compatibility OS X would have what it needs to take over. I'm just repeating myself again though. You seem eager to write me off as a troll. In any case, I'd suggest you make less assumptions and read what is written.

Re:business users

[Vancorps]

I do carry around a card reader with me. USB is far more common than desktop computers with WIFI. Most of the time I get away with a USB memory stick but sometimes I'm working on a project on my phone, for those situations SD is portable and very simple to use. It also works from phone to phone if I need to share with someone else while we're away.

Setting up proper security for a P2P setup seems like more work than plugging in a card reader. Could just be my whacked out opinion though. /p?

Re:business users

[stripes]

How many times have I dropped my Treo? Many, and it's still fine, the phone isn't as pretty as it once was but it's still fully functional.

Either you are very lucky, or I'm unlucky, or both. Many times my Treo has fallen out of my shirt pocket onto asphalt and wacked one of it's keys hard enough that the bit of tinfoil it has under each key gets dinted backwards. That leaves a treo that has no keyboard, and is apparently spending so much of it's CPU dealing with keyboard interrupts that it is pretty unresponsive to the stylus.

It is an easy fix, I (or more likely my wife) open the case and move a circle of foil from my "dead, for parts" 650 into the wounded 650 to 700. However the Treo is basically unusable until the fix is made. I'm running low on foil bits now, and getting the supply cost me dearly. Fortunately I broke myself of the habit of keeping the phone in a shirt pocket except while driving.

I can already see the rants

[Nuffsaid]

In 2010 Slashdot will be full of people lamenting that it has become impossible to buy a simple ipod without all the useless phone functions thrown in.

Wrong Market

[Shihar]

I think you have the target market entirely wrong. The iPhone is not going to compete with a Blackberry wielded by a businessman. The Blackberry market is a fairly small market that really focuses on young professionals. Your average teenager or college student doesn't have a Blackberry. The iPhone is targeted solidly at the same market as the iPod, which is to say the holy grail of throwing money into the wind to score trendiness, 12-24. Obviously there is going to be plenty of spill over to other markets, but the bread and butter will be a young crowd looking for something 'hip' and new. The iPhone is going to have to be pretty and 'cool' first and functional second. Your Blackberry on the other hand could be the ugliest phone on the face of the planet, yet be kept for its functionality. The iPhone will have no such luxury.

Functionality will of course be important, especially if this market opens up a little, but the 'cool' factor will be paramount. Apple already has a head start on this though. Apple has a killer marketing campaign already in place for the iPod that will be studied religiously by marketing people for years to come. The iPhone with its close relation to the iPod will likely be able to ride off the marketing inertia that the iPod already has. Throw on top of this marketing a spiffy looking product with enough functionality to beat the competition, and you have a winner. Apple also has the advantage in that the cell phone/MP3 hybrid market right now is pathetic. Cell phone markers are just now starting to pull their shit together and make decent hybrid devices, but I am deeply skeptical that they will have enough inertia to compete by the time the iPhone comes out.

If they had another year or two more the competitors to Apple might be able to put up a fight, but as things stand now I personally think that they are screwed and about to get the same kind of beating that device makers in the MP3 market got. It will be another 5 years before good non-Apple mp3/phone devices begin slowly claw their way back. You can see this in the MP3 player market. When Apple hit the mp3 player market, it was the best and it soundly thrashed the competition. Even today, with other companies putting out great non-Apple MP3 devices Apple continues to dominate because the thrashing gave early MP3 player markers was so thorough. I predict the same thing to happen the MP3 player/phone hybrid market.

Re:Wrong Market

[toleraen]

The iPhone will no doubt provide a significantly better multimedia device than current mp3/phone hybrids. However most mp3 player/phone devices cost 1/5 of what the iPhone will cost, and even a few hundred dollars more than 'comparable' devices (for the 'hip' crowd) like the sidekick. That's a HUGE difference. I don't recall exact pricing, but I don't think the ipod cost that much more than other comparable devices when it was released. For sure it couldn't have cost 2.5x.

Even though this is an MP3 playing phone, I just don't see it overtaking the current feature phone market for it's media capabilities. I know a lot (most?) consumers are idiots, but right now you can pick up an mp3 phone for ~$100, toss in a 4GB card, and still have $300 left. For $500 they still have to hit the PDA phone crowd, and a big chunk of that market are business users.

Re:Wrong Market

[Achromatic1978]

Sorry, you lost me at

The Blackberry market is a fairly small market that really focuses on young professionals.

The Blackberry is a small market, is it? That's why we rarely hear of it, right?

Re:Wrong Market

[ruzel]

In the mobile phone market, yes, Blackberry has a VERY small market share.

Mobile Phone Market Share:
Nokia: 35%
Motorola: 16%
Samsung: 12%
LG: 7.2%

Smartphones generally account for 3% of the mobile phone market. However, 25% of current American mobile phone owners would like to have a smartphone, but apparently are waiting for something. Hmmm... considering that the iPhone will work perfectly fine as a phone, and considering that it does a bunch of other *consumer* oriented stuff, like photos and movies, this is probably the market that Apple is attempting to capture, not the Blackberry suits.

Stats from:
http://www.itfacts.biz/

Re:Wrong Market

[Shihar]

The Blackberry owns a large part of a small market. If your market is 'all mobile phones', then a Blackberry barely registers. If your market is businessmen and IT professional who make over 80K, then it owns a substantial, but still less then dominating market share. If your market is 'smart phones', then of course, the Blackberry is king.

The iPhone is ignoring the later two markets in favor of the a sizable segment of the first market. While I doubt that the iPhone is going to tear into Nokia in terms of total phones sold, you better believe that they are going to trounce the 'everything that isn't a standard phone and isn't for professionals' market. Further, the iPhone is going to vastly expand the 'more then a standard phone' market. While they might not hit the numbers that Nokia might hit, they will certainly make a pile of money.

Apple has an eye for moving into markets with no fashion sense, slapping some white plastic down, running a marketing blitz, and making a product in that market that is more the just function, but "cool". Hey, don't get me wrong. I see it as utterly mindless consumerism with a thin layer of functionality, but I am not the target audience. Apple is going to make a killing. It would take an incredible failure in marketing and functionality to ruin the iPhone. Personally, I don't think the rest of the market stands even a slim shot in hell trying to play the trendy game. Apple is trendy. Nokia has all the trendiness of an IBM work station.

And is this version the one going to Europe?

[SuperKendall]

I'm sure they are - just this version isn't it which is kind of the point Mr stroppy.

The original point was about Europe. The version is coming to the US. Pretty clear difference, even if Google does say you can simply swim from one to the other.

Apple already stated other markets would see a redesign of some features that made sense - like 3G, which is actually in wide deployment in Europe.

So Mr. Drone, you might want ot think a bit harder before unleashing the sarcastic replies.

One word

[sirindex]

Overhype.

20 million in 2 years is nothing

[thaig]

Symbian sells 50 million a year at the moment.

The dominant mobile platform will not be an iPhone if that's the best it can do.

All thumbs?

[fahrbot-bot]

Anyone notice that the iPhone commercial shows the person using two hands, one to hold and one to operate. I wonder how usable all these slidy operations are and if the phone is usable when held in one hand and operated with the thumb -- like I see many people do with their current phones and music players?

I don't know if I want a device that requires two hands to make it useful...

Re:All thumbs?

[jaysones]

... I don't know if I want a device that requires two hands to make it useful... Like a Blackberry?

Re:All thumbs?

[fahrbot-bot]

Like a Blackberry?

I don't know, I've seen people use their Crackberrys one-handed. With the flat touchscreen and touch gestures (like sliding) shown on the iPhone commercials, I don't know if it will be as usable in one hand, especially without looking at the screen.

Don't get me wrong, the iPhone looks really cool and I like the flexibility of touchscreens. I'm just saying that there could be a downside. There are already enough monkeys driving and fiddling with their current phones that have buttons they can feel...

Where are you for five hours with no power

[SuperKendall]

I can think of few instances where I would be listening to the device and making calls for five hours straight, that had no access to power. For longer road trips I already have a car charger for my iPod (and hey, since the dock connector is the same I already have one for the iPhone). If I go to a gym I'm not there for five hours. At work I have ready access to power and/or a dock.

I just don't see five hours as an issue, if I just plug in in here or there - realistically I envision charging it about once every other day or so.

Better than that.

[SuperKendall]

Yeah, but one of the draws of the iPhone (as with any smart phone) is it's internet-browsing abilities...what's the point of browsing the net on a network that is marginally quicker than dial-up?

There would be no point, happily EDGE is about 4x dialup speeds, and mostly I'd be using WiFi which is far faster than 3G anyway. I guess that's the point. To have a really fast network connection much of the time, and the most widespread data connection possible the rest of the time so at least you have something, even if a little slower.

Monthly cost

[Morinaga]

The article doesn't mention the required monthly charge to use the features on the iphone. A quick internet search doesn't reveal the cost either. Why is this such a big secret? People keep comparing the ipod to the iphone but because one of the devices requires a regular monthly payment to make it function I think they are two completely different markets. Ipods didn't take any initial investment to use or maintain use if you ripped your own CD collection. The iphone is a paperweight without the service plan that is offered through only one provider. So why hasn't the monthly service cost been given yet? AT&T doesn't even have a iphone website yet, even though one of the first Google paid ads shown are for AT&T wireless services.

Why mod you down?

[SuperKendall]

Ok Apple fan boys go ahead and mod me troll.

Why do that? Why not mod you up and up and up... to make it easier to find your post later. There is a large difference between being a troll, and being wrong. I'm sure you sincerely believe what you say.

But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?

On the other hand, what if consumer push is more interesting to more people than business email push? The Yahoo push mail is an interesting option. Does everyone on earth really have more interest in their business email than the personal stuff?

Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be.

Sounds like a a great idea then is to take a complicated device and make it much simpler. I'm not sure I know any company that has any experience at that.

The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.

Does the average person really like the phone they have?

So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.
Ok I'm done burning my karma now.

You misspelled "credibility". Brave of you to post where we can all read your thoughts in a year.

Three Hurdles

[Lawrence_Bird]

In order of increasing import:

1) most people dont need/want all it (supposedly) can do

2) battery life - not very useful if using it for tunes ends
   up meaning you get 30 mins talk time

3) greasy fingers.   touch screens + greasy fingers = eventual dissatisfaction

Re:Three Hurdles

[geekoid]

Wow, that is pretty much the exact same post from back when the iPod was new.

Instead of touch screen, it was touch wheel.

touch screens + greasy fingers = Cleaning the screen. Shocking, I know.

Re:Three Hurdles

[Lawrence_Bird]

kinda detracts from its use for video no? and web browsing.. and well basically everything.  When you
have to wipe it off almost everytime you use it things get tired real fast, not to mention people wont
be using specially designed wipes which wont scratch.

As to ipod comparision - thats a bogus comparison as ipod (at least the first 3 versions) did only
one thing and did it well - play music.  They also had decent (perhaps not leading) battery life. So
lets see some real world testing of this iphone as iphone is not ipod.

Niches

[SuperKendall]

their computer business? Niche.

Really? When you look at the areas of largest growth (Laptops) Apple is doing extremely well, like 15% of all laptop sales in the US. That is more than a niche as it's a higher percentage than other large computer makers manage.

Why do people assume that just because a market with a huge degree of locking factor (desktop computers) Apple has made slower headway than the wide open music player market, that Apple can be any less successful in a market where it's equally easy to change devices (now that we have number portability). Sure some people are in contracts they cannot get out of, but all contracts expire eventually. And when they do there is a high degree of device fungibility. Apple has shown they can thrive in that environment.

iPhone will be huge but I'm holding out...

[dbdweeb]

This is not a wish list but a need list:

• 40G of flash memory
• 3G wireless
• Blue tooth features
  • auto-sync when in the presence of my laptop
  • auto display when in the presence of screen display
  • full functionality when in the presence of keyboard/mouse devices
  • interface to light weight, normal looking sunglasses. (I'm 50+ and small text is annoying)
  • voice recognition with voice commands
  • hell... just give me secure thought recognition with thought commands

Re:iPhone will be huge but I'm holding out...

[dbdweeb]

Oh, I left out that it must be powered by a fuel cell only needing to be recharged twice per year.

Locked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know whether an iPhone purchased at an Apple store will be carrier locked to ATT?

Why did Apple partner with AT&T? HSPDA vs EVDO

[Gary W. Longsine]

This story seems to provide a pretty reasonable background on the deal: How Steve Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth: In Deal With Cingular He Called The Shots; Flirting With Verizon . It provides some clues as to the complexity of the negotiations that Apple engaged in. It doesn't cover everything, though.

1. Retail channel
There were many big problems to solve simultaneously, perhaps including one that couldn't be solved any other way, than partnering with at least one carrier: consumers today buy cell phones from wireless providers. That meant that Apple had to get the iPhone into wireless stores to really break into the market with anything other than a hobbyist handset maker niche. AT&T has over 2000 stores in the U.S., apparently. Other large wireless providers are similar in scale of retail presence. Wireless providers have stores in airports, big malls, little malls, downtown areas, inside of other stores like Radio Shack, Costco, etc. Apple couldn't build that kind of retail network in time to sell the iPhone, it needed to get the device into places where people were already looking for phones.

2. Give and Take of Negotiations & Shaking the Industry
I suspect that Apple would have preferred to be able to secure deals with multiple vendors in the U.S. However, the cell phone industry is seriously distorted, globally, not merely in the U.S. The handset makers think that the wireless carrier is the customer, which is the ultimate cause of cell phone suckage. Cell phones are camels designed by committes of people who have never even imagined a desert oasis, let alone been to one. Apple probably had to grant a period of exclusivity to Cingular / AT&T in order to get the rest of the things Apple needed for the iPhone to be an industry shaker -- which it already has been, despite the fact that it won't even be in consumer hands for a few more weeks. And Apple got a whole lot of stuff, some of it unprecedented including changes to the provider's network to support "visual voicemail". Companies like Verizon, even though they may provide good service to their customers, also are wed to the distorted market. They perceive bluetooth as a competitive threat, and cripple it in their phones to lock their customers into their ringtone sales engine and into paying extra to transfer photos from the phone to their computer. Apple's insistance that the iPhone not be hobbled by the carrier led Verizon to say "Thanks, we'll try it our way." But the Djinni is out of the bottle, on June 29. As consumers learn what these devices can really do, they'll be demanding blue tooth sync, 802.11 connection to their PCs, and other iPhone features from Verizon. Verizon will see its subscriber base shrink if they don't provide similar, un-hobbled capability to their customers.

3. HSPDA vs. EVDO
There's another interesting tidbit regarding the 3G network market in the U.S. that might be a factor. AT&T/T-Mobile/MISC GSM Vendors appear to be seriously lagging behind Verizon/Sprint/Alltell, which blanketed the U.S. Market with 2.4 Mbit EVDO data service many months ago. In fact this seems to be "common wisdom" amongst Slashdot / Gizmodo / Engadget geeks. As everyone knows, AT&T and the many other network providers around the globe are betting on the other major 3G network technology, HSPDA. What seems to have been overlooked, in the frustration with the slow pace of 3G rollout from the GSM vendors, is that HSPDA seems on the brink of crushing EVDO in terms of bandwidth. According to that wikipedia page "Current HSDPA deployments now support 1.8 Mbit/s, 3.6 Mbit/s, 7.2 Mbit/s and 14.4 Mbit/s in downlink." One of my gadget geek friends was able to confirm that HSPDA service is available in his

What about the iPod?

[cob666]

I think that the new form factor for the iPhone is great. My only problem is that I already have a phone that I like and wouldn't switch cell providers just to get a new phone. What I really want is an iPod with the wide screen form factor that was rumored for the last 2 years to finally show up. But I realize that actually introducing such a device would most likely eat into the sales figures for the iPhone. What do you think are the odds of finally getting a widescreen iPod?

Re:IMHO...[iPhone will not be big at all]

[Steffan]

...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all.

I disagree.

The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years.

You could say the same thing about a BMW vs. a Model T.

e.g."The Model T was / is huge because it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size..."

Shouldn't we have already saturated the market for automobiles? Why would *anyone* pay USD $100,000 for a Mercedes S-class when you can get a Kia or Hyundai for 1/10th the cost? I just don't think there is a market for a $10,000+ automobile.

In comparison, perhaps you can see how your statement on the iPhone stands.

Apple doesn't need to (or, I suspect) want to take over the low end of the market [yet]. There are enough people that will pay the premium to get the latest-greatest. In addition to the novelty factor, I think it really will be much easier to use than existing phones, lack of tactile feedback notwithstanding.

The target market for this product is someone with the disposable income to purchase a product at this price point, looking for extreme ease of use, but still wanting some of the gee-whiz features that previously required a difficult-to-use smartphone.

Plenty of people are paying $349 for a product that is roughly the same size and has far fewer functions (iPod 60G). I don't think it's a big deal to pay an extra $150 and get a phone along with it. I believe that ten million people will agree with me.

Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[EccentricAnomaly]

1) No synching with Outlook. 2) No synching with enterprise email services. isn't IMAP enough for this? I've never used an outlook mail server so I don't know what other stuff it does... If you're talking about calendaring stuff I think that is in the works with leopard's iCal in terms of syncing with meeting maker at least.

Do all of the 'bad for business' arguments really boil down to issues with MS proprietary stuff?

Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[toleraen]

Well, simply? Yes. It isn't just MS stuff though, if a business already has PDA phones in use they also are likely to have Blackberry services as well. From what I can find the iPhone doesn't support that either.

Let me preface this with "I'm not a hardcore business user." I don't sit at home answering work emails. I sync my phone with Outlook primarily to get my calendar items and contacts. If I couldn't do that, there would be zero business use for my phone. Having my meetings on my phone has saved my skin on multiple occasions...it's definitely a must have feature for me. As far as I can tell, the iPhone doesn't allow me to do this.

I don't know about this iCal deal, but if it's in leopard that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hit the iPhone, or does it?

Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[djdavetrouble]

At our enterprise, we have several thousand people using lotus notes.
We are locked into Blackberry big time.
Our experimental imap server went away 2 years ago.
Noone is interested in maintaining another device / email system
for an enterprise with enough complications. Already there is one
guy who does almost nothing but blackberry stuff full time.
They got to the enterprise first, and we are stuck with them.

Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[Juanvaldes]

iCal is apples calendaring app. It has been shipping standard since 10.2 (I think). It is due to get a nice upgrade in Leopard (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/ical.html) and will be a part of their server offerings (http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/icalse rver.html). Hope that helps.

Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[geekoid]

And if Apple developed a server that took 75% time and money to maintain?

Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[calciphus]

That's a mighty big "IF" - is it really 75% if you have to retrain your workforce, find all new support contacts, new suppliers and distributors, and be locked to a single hardware AND software vendor?

75% sounds like a marketing catchphrase.

Think about the people who's job it is to decide what hardware goes in a building to serve thousands of employees. They're not likely to change even if it is slightly less work to maintain - because it's THEIR job to maintain the existing systems. They'd be buying themselves out of work.

Fighting an entrenched competitor is not so easy as being marginally better / slightly different.

Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business"

[allscan]

We seem to forget that most decision makers (i.e. the ones with the money) assume that the biggest (MS, IBM many years ago, etc) are the best at what they do.

My next phone!

[gone.fishing]

Until last week I would never have dreamed of owning an iPod or iPhone now, I am seriously considering the iPhone. What caused this change? My daughter graduated and for a graduation present, I bought her a 30GB iPod. I've always felt that while Apple products have some unique features that they were overpriced and not all that much better than their other-brand or no-brand counterparts. I've never been one to pay extra for style or "bling" and that is exactly what I thought Apple brought to the party. Still my daughter was celebrating a major accomplishment, she wanted an iPod and I wanted to give her a special present for her big day.

The iPod surprised me. I was impressed with virtually everything about it. I liked the simple controls. The sound clarity was top notch. The screen was crisp and clear. Even the battery charged quickly! "Fit and finish" were awesome. I went out to the iTunes store and bought Alice Cooper's "Schools Out" and made that the first song put on the iPod (a symbolic gesture); even that was faster and far easier than I expected! In little time at all I had 500+ songs on it (and told her the rest of her CD collection was up to her to put on).

Now, I'm a believer. While paying several hundred bucks for a tiny electronic object that is nothing more than an entertainment device still feels kind of steep, I can finally understand why many (including my daughter) like it so much. When I started seeing the iPhone commercials, I was very impressed and really think that Apple may just be the company with the experience and foresight to actually build the right all-inclusive portable device for communications and entertainment. While I may balk at the hefty price, I have to say that I am at least tempted and can certainly understand why some people will rush out to buy one of these "phones" (they really aren't a phone anymore, that is just one of many functions). I'll probably wait for a few months but, I think that my next phone will probably be an iPhone.

Re:My next phone!

[geekoid]

"Old guy gets glimps of what the young people are going on about" Could have summed that up.

Yes, I'm old too..sigh.

Re:My next phone!

[sussane]

I have already booked one IPHONE for me. Ohh i won't need my heavy laptop to carry around now.

I already have one.

[tiedyejeremy]

it's called an Ipaq. I paid $200 for a refurb. It's a gps (tomtom) unit, with camera, internet, email, MS Office, plays games and videos AND has 4 GB of storage. I don't get the iPhone hype.

Re:I already have one.

[geekoid]

The iPhone is prettier, and has(in theory) better input.

Due to the iPod success, a lot of analyst are paying more attention to Apple, which adds to the hype.

Re:I already have one.

[Darth_brooks]

And I'll bet that iPaq has NEVER, EVER dropped a call in the middle of a conversation.....

business users will love the iPhone

[Gary W. Longsine]

It's not about ssh, X Windows, or iWork. The current "smart phone" industry is providing people with a big heavy feature they don't presently want -- MS Office on their phone. Yeah, it makes for dramatic commercials where spreadsheets are edited at the last second before a big meeting and a billion dollar merger is saved. In practice, people running billion dollar mergers don't really care what's in the spreadsheet. They don't read them, they have people who have people who read them for them. This feature was added to smart phones by Microsoft because Excel is what they had lying about to sell, and because it makes for dramatic advertisements.

The iPhone is about a balance of features that people really want. Business people would love an iPod in their phone, because they spend a fair bit of time on airplanes, in hotels, in airports, in taxi cabs. They also would love an easy to use map system that could help them find a decent restaurant nearby. The Apple iPhone commercials don't look like they target business users, but they nail squarely what a business user wants from a phone. They want to carry less shit with them. They want to be able to quickly look up something on the internet, or bookmark something they heard about for reference later. They're going to buy an iPhone and their older iPod and Palm Pilot will be in a drawer.

The biggest thing, however, will be ease of use. If the Address book doesn't have some asinine limit of 500 contact numbers (it wont') and if it syncs easily and reliably (it will) and if the web browser really works and if Google Maps are easy to use on the iPhone, these things are going to be the hottest new business gadget since the original Palm Pilot.

It's about efficiency. Carry one or two fewer devices everywhere I go. Carry one device that's easy to learn and easy to use, rather than so hard to learn that many users don't even know about the advanced features and so hard to use that the advanced features they know about rarely get touched. Sending text messages, checking email, and placing and receiving calls need to work well.

A few business people I know are going to get an iPhone for one feature: visual voicemail (random access to voicemail queue). They calculate that the time and annoyance they will save with that single feature more than justifies the cost of the device.

The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[encoderer]

I'm just as awed by the beauty of the iPhone as the next guy, but I do agree that this is a little bit of a problem.

Right now I can text without looking at my phone. Maybe, after many many hours of texting one will develop enough muscle memory based on the placement of the virtual buttons on the device itself, but best case scenario you'll have your phone for a while before that's possible.

I'm not saying that this isn't a worthy trade-off. But part of me thinks it's just aesthetics, like the lack of battery access on an iPod. And that means I'm sacrificing function for form and I'm paying a premium to do so.

Apple has gotten where it is not by creating beautiful products. ANYONE can hire some designers, give them complete autonomy, and create a beautiful product. No, Apple has gotten where it is by creating products that are incredibly easy to use and uncompromisingly good at what they do that just so happen to be stylish and beautiful.

Maybe Apple has a vision of what texting SHOULD BE that departs from its reality. Maybe this will turn out to be a genius innovation. But right now a part of me things they lost their way a bit with this one.

Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[Gary W. Longsine]

It's definitely not just about aesthetics of the device. The primary driver behind the iPhone form factor is efficient use of device front real-estate. Buttons have been proliferating like mad on "smart phones for years, and it's not helping them sell to the broader market. Why? Well, the devices intimidate some users. Other users find them to be cumbersome. 40% of the surface is keypad, leaving only a tiny screen you can't really use for much besides text messages. They buttons can't be changed after they are stamped out. You may want QUERTY, somebody else might want right-hand-Dvorak. Somebody else wants a two-thumb layout. You may want a numeric keypad layout when you're dialing, but no other time.

Yes, the touch screen could be seen as a design risk, and it's possible that it will be rejected by the market. There are undoubtedly other people like you who are adicted to buttons, and dialing in the dark. I suspect that even most of those people will find that they can adapt to the iPhone easily enough, particularly if it provides haptic feedback as a user preference. (Some people might want that turned off -- something you can't do with a button.)

Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[zippthorne]

Also, if it happens to have the voice-recognition that's so common on today's phones, dialing-in-the-dark is just, "tap the screen, say the number." which is even easier than mashing buttons by feel.

But $500 is a bit much for a device that's small enough to accidentally go through the wash. And if it's not that small, it's really too big for me to buy as a cell phone. Fortunately for Apple, there are plenty of geeks just waiting to stick a radio-linked personal computer in a holster.

Well I use sprint, so it's unlikely the iPhone will even be available for another 8 months...

Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[Achromatic1978]

Also, if it happens to have the voice-recognition that's so common on today's phones, dialing-in-the-dark is just, "tap the screen, say the number." which is even easier than mashing buttons by feel.

Do you spot the flaw in your theory? In that despite that voice recognition, so common on today's phones, mashing buttons by feel is still the usual order of the day?

Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dialing in the dark, eh? Personally, I think finding that one "activate" button and then speaking "Call 1-5-5-5-1-2-3-4-5-6-7" produces better results than fumbling around to hit 10 keys with no mistakes. Certainly it's more safe and less distracting while driving, and even easier if you have a headset.

Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[burns210]

"You may want QUERTY, somebody else might want right-hand-Dvorak"

Look at your keyboard. There is a reason it is called the Q-W-E-R-T-Y layout.

Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Buttons have been proliferating like mad on "smart phones for years, and it's not helping them sell to the broader market. Why? Well, the devices intimidate some users.

Perhaps those users should stick to dumb phones?

I'm still waiting ......

[big-giant-head]

For one of those 'lower cost' Macs and it's been 20 years??? How long do we have to wait for a lower cost iPhone again??

Re:I'm still waiting ......

[geekoid]

How long did you have to wait for low cost iPods?
As soon as the iPhone sales saturate the high end market, that is when we will see lower cost alternatives.

there have been lower cost Macs. Or did tyou mean you want superiour hardware and for factor for 100 bucks? yeah, keep waiting.

Re:I'm still waiting ......

[big-giant-head]

Id be happy with something similar to what PC's offer. I Have an athlon64 3200, 1 gig ram, DVD RW and 160gig hard drive. I bought 18 months ago for $495 with XP on it. It now has Ubuntu on it. Why should I have to pay almost $700 for a crappy little mac mini with half the memory and hard drive space and no Keyboard or Mouse?? I know I can hook up any old USB keyboard and Mouse to it but for 700.00 you would think they could include those? Form factor should not cost and arm and a leg.

Re:I'm still waiting ......

[Yonzie]

You could have gotten a Mac Mini but you choose to bitch and moan...
Yes, Apple hardware is expensive but if you compare it fairly it isn't bad. Especially not when you factor in OS X.

Re:I'm still waiting ......

[cephal0p0d]

Not waiting due to lack of availability merely due to ignorance: Mac Mini = $599 * 1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo * 512MB memory * 60GB hard drive1 http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=B1BE7C42&no de=home/desktop/mac_mini iMac = $999 Image * 512MB memory * 160GB hard drive1 * 24x Combo drive http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=CFF34D5F&no de=home/desktop/imac Next.

problems with the iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a Pocket PC for quite awhile now so I've had a bit of experience with the touch screen. While the Pocket PC makes for a great pda with mobile ssh access to all my servers, it's a really bad phone. Ergonomicly, the rectangular design is uncomfortable when using it as a phone but the bluetooth headset solves that problem.

The biggest problem is that it doesn't have buttons so you need to look at it to dial. Add to that the fact that the touch screen doesn't work very well with fingers. It will be interesting to see how Apple addresses these problems. I have no doubt that Apples touch screen will work much better than the Pocket PC touch screen but will it be better enough. I'm also interested in seeing how Apples vibrations will simulate tactical feedback.

Other than that, Apple still has problems with:
- Limited battery life. Probably less than 6 hours if you are using it.
- No easily servicable battery. I can't carry a spare and swap it out.
- No external storage. Why does Apple still do this when mini sd cards take up hardly any room at all?
- Only on AT&T. I'm sure that one won't last forever.

It sure looks like a cool toy but I don't see a huge improvement over products that have been on the market for quite some time. Still, Apple sure knows how to market so I'm sure it will be successful. Now where can I get a bluetooth enabled external storage device?

A phone that takes both hands?

[Animats]

The last thing we need is a phone that takes both hands to operate.

In California, using a non-hands-free phone while driving becomes a moving violation in mid-2008. Washington State is doing this too. (That was enacted right after a 5-car collision caused by a Blackberry user.) I've had my truck rear-ended twice by people on cell phones. One said to the cop, afterwards, "I was just finishing my call". Had a near miss two weeks ago; someone pulling out of a parking space on a busy street was using a phone, so they couldn't turn the wheel fast enough and drove across two lanes of traffic before straightening out.

Remember the iDrive, from BMW? That was a disaster, hated by many owners. Too much "head down" time, looking at the display instead of the road.

The future is hands-free, not two-handed.

Re:A phone that takes both hands?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last thing we need is a phone that takes both hands to operate.

On the contrary, this is great. People will simply be unable to drive and call at that same time. No more accidents!

Re:A phone that takes both hands?

[Anonymous Coward]

The future is hands-free, not two-handed.

Is there some reason that the Bluetooth-equipped iPhone can not be used hands-free? Also, don't you think people will be a little less likely to attempt to drive with a phone that requires both hands to operate?

How big will it become?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be as big as the average American bum. That's plenty big enough.

EDGE...

[Savage-Rabbit]

Whilst people will buy it as a fashion statement, it's going to struggle as it's previous generation in some ways. It's biggest problem is it doesn't support 3G which for many people is a must have feature. I really don't see what all the hullabaloo about 3G is all about. Yes it's faster than EDGE and yes it's being hyped^W marketed quite furiously. However, when I think about it, I know very few people who use their GSM phone for more than occasional surfing. Surfing generally sucks on GSM phones. Firstly because of screen size restrictions, even on PDA phones with large screens web browsers are of limited use. Secondly many websites simply become useless when accessed from mobile browsers because they use features these browsers don't support. Admittedly this would be less of a problem if providers of material and services that appeal to the mobile browsing public such as ticket-resellers, news papers, TV stations, various information directories, companies that offer online street-map services, etc... were more aggressive at creating versions of their sites and services optimized for mobile customers. Hell, even the public transport company where I live doesn't offer a website where I can access bus and subway schedules in a format easily readable and searchable from a Mobile browser. Yes, I know that some players in the industries I named do offer mobile optimized sites and services but they are far to few and not everybody lives in major cities like San Francisco or New York which are the markets to which these companies often limit their attention. Basically I think that the iPhone won't really take off until the price drops or the 'iPhone Nano' hits the streets which ever happens first. When that happens I fail to see why it shouldn't enjoy at least a modest amount of popularity especially with Mac zealots such as myself. The iPhone will be fully integrated into OS X and up to and including the ability to update the firmware which is something no other GSM phone to my knowledge can offer at the moment. As for 3G I can't really see how anybody would really __need__ it unless they are planning to watch TV on their phone. For the needs of most mobile internet users EDGE is pretty adequate and will remain adequate for the likely 3-4 year lifetime of a first generation iPhone.

Re:EDGE...

[Arun]

Firstly because of screen size restrictions, even on PDA phones with large screens web browsers are of limited use. Secondly many websites simply become useless when accessed from mobile browsers because they use features these browsers don't support. Admittedly this would be less of a problem if providers of material and services that appeal to the mobile browsing public such as ticket-resellers, news papers, TV stations, various information directories, companies that offer online street-map services, etc... were more aggressive at creating versions of their sites and services optimized for mobile customers. Hell, even the public transport company where I live doesn't offer a website where I can access bus and subway schedules in a format easily readable and searchable from a Mobile browser. You haven't seen what Nokia's port of WebKit to the Symbian OS can do - the browser on their Series 60 3rd edition phones is freaking awesome. It renders almost anything you can throw at it except for Flash-heavy pages.

The iPhone will be fully integrated into OS X and up to and including the ability to update the firmware which is something no other GSM phone to my knowledge can offer at the moment. Again, welcome to 2003. Nokia's Series 60 phones have had upgradeable firmware for at least that long. To be honest, the cretins that pass for carriers in the US are responsible for this sort of ignorance. Explore Nokia's N-series and E-series phones to get some idea of the kind of features Apple will be rolling out in the iPhone over the next few years (if at all).

Re:No Verizon, No iphone (and I'm glad)

[blackchiney]

I think it's great the Apple/Verizon deal didn't work out. This cuts down the delay for international release. You see Verizon doesn't get all the great phones that come out of Sweden or South Korea anymore. They get what's already been on the market for a while. After the develoment costs have been recovered they'll get a CDMA version. Example the blackberry 8800, Nokia (who has completely dropped CDMA development now), and Samsung isn't giving them exclusives (okay, they're "exclusive" to the CDMA network).

If Apple had went with Verizon they would be working with a niche network on niche technology (by international standards). And the development costs would have taken much longer to recover.

I'm not going to go into the pros and cons of CDMA over GSM but as a mac user knows, software gets developed for windows first and everyone else later.

+1 - I'm with you, baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

spot on!

the same trend you mention is also happening with digital snapshot cameras: movie recording, rom'd arcade games, mp3 player, note-taking, etc...

all while manufacturers get diverted from providing better optics, post-processing, internal storage, ergonomics, and flash performance...

i just want a good digital camera, not a swiss army image processor...

oh, i'm an Apple fan, but i'll never buy an iPhone... know why? 'cause i don't have any need for a cellphone and consider the current service poor, services overpriced, and connectivity poor...

Those laws are wrong and uneeded

[geekoid]

We already have laws, it is called 'reckless driving'. It covers all behavious like this. What next? a no putting on make up? no shaving? no reading? all monumentally stupid to do while driving, but you can not create laws for everything someone could possibly have. No officer, I wasn't using a cell phone, I was selecting music on my iPod.

If someone rear ends you, there are already at fault, no matter what. Again, this law does nothing.

My Fiancee...

[Cyno01]

is kind of a geek, but a non-techie, she resisted when i bought her a 19" LCD as a gift, but last night we were watching TV and a commercial for the iPhone came on. She was like, "Oh my god, what is that?!?" I kept my mouth shut untill the end of the ad and she asked how much it was. "$600." "Thats it?!". In fact as i was typing this she was on apples website and asked me if the student discount would be availible on iPhones. I think Apple's got a winner on their hands.

Re:My Fiancee...

[Anonymous Coward]

and that is EXACTLY the point. to the typical /. user it makes no sense. to EVERYONE else this is a must have. ...and you are modded troll for that! lol!

Re:haptic feedback, tactile response from touchscr

[Altus]

I could see this being very effective. I have noticed that the tactile feedback given by the vibration feature in the Nintendo Wii's controller is fantastic. It doens't have to be overwhelming to let you know that something is going on.

I'm not sure how well this will work with the iPhone but I could see it solving the tactile keyboard feedback problem. This is the first I had heard about this feature.

2 year = no sale

[Duncan3]

The iPhone is awesome. Everything my iBook has including WiFi for VoIP.

Too bad they partnered with AT&T so at minimum it's going to cost you 600(+tax) plus another $100/month at least. At $3,000 for a phone that won't even work in my house, or lab, or many other places because the monopoly AT&T has no reason to make it work - I live in silicon valley so even less reason AT&T should make anything work. AT&T can just go screw themselves and take Apple along with them.

When you can buy it without the completely useless AT&T plan, it will sell faster then they possibly make them for many years to come.

Poor Apple, gonna catch an STD getting screwed by a dirty whore like AT&T.

Re:2 year = no sale

[Moridineas]

AT&T wireless has a monopoly? It's my understanding that they have neither the most subscribers nor the largest coverage area...how are they a monopoly?

Yoda?

[will.perdikakis]

Yoda: How Big Will the iPhone Become? Translation: How Big Will became the iPhone. Who the hell is Big Will anyways?

Replace the iPod? I hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's going to happen when the masses are putting pirated mp3s on their phones, and the RIAA and Apple start blowing each other?

Dealing with 2 ghosts

[Anonymous Coward]

With ipod u deal with one ghost
with iphone u deal with two ghosts

hope apple will release unlocked version!!

I've about had it with PDA Phones

[photomonkey]

I had a phone with Windows mobile on it. It sucked ass big time. There wasn't really one thing it did well other than crash.

Then, I got a Blackberry. Their desktop 'push' concept sucks, although to be fair, it worked pretty reliably. The service was bloody expensive though. Also there was no DUN support at the time, which is my biggest need in a phone.

Now I have a Treo 650. It sucks the least, but still sucks pretty bad. The DUN support is good, although the cell company was useless support-wise, the email works via IMAP and the software isn't too bad. Seriously though. Palm, I'm looking at you. You've had products on the market for 10 years now. The product itself has usually been pretty decent. Your syncing software, and the whole notion of conduits, is not only bad, it's pathetic. No Palm device I've ever had has synched reliably with any OS, let alone one that's not MS. But, I hear you boys are going over to linux. That might maybe possibly help. We'll see.

My point is, if the iPhone sucks anywhere close to as much ass as the other ones AND lacks a keypad, thereby limiting texting potential, it'll be DOA.

Re:I've about had it with PDA Phones

[ElitistWhiner]

You are wrong but right about everything in your post. What makes the excellent post right is the snapshot in time from which it is taken.
This cellular market has been a hog trough in the US. Jobs is about push these behemoths over in their sleep, like cows. iPhone is about building bridges. Apple will use iPhone to bridge the service gap the behemoths have so long ignored, unlike EU cellular markets.
Turn the marketplace upside down and you have smartphones now at the top and cheap handhelds at the bottom of the pyramid, reversed. To do that trick, the iPhone will bridge people's "eye candy" to their "connected" needs. What once was the purveiw of the big phone company, iPhone will empower the user to take ownership.
Voicemail control at the phone. Calendar control at the phone. Email control at the phone. Pretty soon CORPS realize that the device is more than a pretty (inter)face, but eliminates entire departments in the org. iPhone==5FTE (fulltime equiv).
Business will do a "let's roll" and sweep into the category for the savings it can bring to the org.
I've had it with my Crackberry. Its old clunky and causes me to lose calls and mail because of my inability to work the wheel thingie when I'm in a hurry. I was there at the moment Apple chose to "go after" Napster's market. The rest is history...
Be happy you get to witness another moment in history!

Re:I've about had it with PDA Phones

[mark99]

I have exactly the opposite experience. I am way more organized now than ever before in my life, and it is because I can track appointments, contacts, and e-mail in Outlook, and sync them to my WM5 phone, and stay up-to-date even though I travel about 60 percent of the time.

It is way cool being more ogranized than my partner, who is naturally organized, but not so tech-oriented. Who knows, I might have even gotten good grades in school if I had had one of these things long ago.

It could be better of course, the phone hangs about once a week for no apparent reason (reminds me of Win 3.1 or 95), it is really not a very good phone, and the battery life is less than 2 days always even though I really do not phone much (but I do sync a lot).

But the upsides are brilliant, being organized and in-touch no matter where I am is invaluable.

I am sure I could do this with Blackberry too (they pioneered this after all), but we have an Outlook/Exchange setup. I am sceptical that an iPhone will be any better than WM5 for someone who is tied to that monolith, as are most enterprises to my experience.

I am sure the iPhone will be a mediocre phone. But it might be fine for hipsters who don't need to co-ordinate with many people. It certainly looks cool, and will probably do a great job playing music.

what? Bigger?

[UtSupra]

I don't think they plan to make it bigger is big enough as it is. But I believe the iPhone will suffer a big backlash from all the hype it's getting. My advice? Don't buy the iPhone.

QUERTY

[HaiLHaiL]

that mwst be qwite the keyboard configwration ;)

Re:Those laws are wrong and unneeded

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that is very correct. In fact some states even have laws in addition to reckless driving, called distracted driving. These cover doing your make up, playing with audio devices, reading, eating food etc while driving. But because these are usually not enforced and ignored. politicians under pressure are passing additional cell phone laws on top of those.

I want to see an iPod with WiFi, but no phone

[mcwop]

That would rock, probably coming.

Re:Those laws are wrong and unneeded

[geekoid]

A rare response to an AC.

OK, a distracted driving law that covers all that is cool.

The politician should be saying "We have a law, law enforcement needs to enforce it."

That covers their Ass, and focuses this public attention elsewhere.

That said, is an anti cell phone law going to be enforced anymore then a distracted driving law? no. Unless there is a police man watching all cars all the time it is impossible to do so.

Re:It might struggle in Europe...I wish

[blackchiney]

Tell that to blackberry. I've been waiting for a month for my provider to get the 8800 in stock. And according to the sales rep it's going to be a few more months. And it doesn't have 3G, wi-fi, or bluetooth 2.0.

OBEX disabled on Verizon RAZR V3M

[Gary W. Longsine]

I just got a RAZR V3M and Verizon deliberately disabled the OBEX function (Object Exchange) which was probably enabled by accident on the V3C, since it's been diabled on most of the other Verizon phones since it was invented.

There. I fixed it for you.

Re:OBEX disabled on Verizon RAZR V3M

[Divebus]

Saw that - Verizon somehow stuffed the Genie back in the bottle, accidentally leaving OBEX enabled on previous versions of the RAZR then cutting it off later like nothing happened... dohh-de-dohh... dumm-de-dumm... who me?

Funny, though, if your V3C RAZR has version 02 software (OBEX enabled), you can get an update to the latest 04 patch and OBEX will still work. However, if you bought an original V3M RAZR with version 03 software (OBEX disabled), running the 04 patch will not enable OBEX. So, if you had OBEX enabled already, it stays on with the 04 patch but you're out of luck otherwise. Abuse like a true monopolist. AT&T/Cingular is looking better all the time.

She kinna take much more, Cap'n Jobs!

[constantnormal]

... the hype storm is overloading the dilithium crystals --

    She's gonna blow!

iPhone will have push email

[Stu Charlton]

Via Push-IMAP. Though only Yahoo! mail will be initially supported, apparently. I definitely could see this extended to Exchange, as some have speculated.

A lot of the "zomg it's so hard to support business email" is FUD generated by Research in Motion, due to the complexity of the Blackberry Enterprise Server. BES originally was needed because the original BlackBerries used the Mobitex network, and didn't have IP connectivity. So, BES or the Desktop Redirector had to chat to RIM's centralized servers (on the IP network), which would translate/push the email to Mobitex.

Nowadays, GPRS or EDGE devices can be "on" the Internet, so there's not really a need for an add-on server. You just need to register the client for Push-IMAP.

The major obstacle I could see is the need for VPN connectivity on the iPhone since many businesses only allow IMAP or POP3 access on a private network. This may change, depending on the growth. I think a lot of business executives that are into "fashion" (how many own BMW's?) will get an iPhone for vanity and demand their email on it eventually.

Re:Why did Apple partner with AT&T? HSPDA vs E

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also interesting that Sprint is starting to deploy WiMax. It seems odd they would do so if EVDO is so great -- my guess WiMax is their counter to HSPDA.

My Palm Ike ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Slashdot nick is about wacking off someone named Ike? That's a little more odd than normal.

Is Ike aware of your obsession?

No texting == dead in Europe

[LKM]

It is possible that Apple will screw up on texting, but I don't think it will impact the iPhone's sales much.

You think wrong. No texting == dead in Europe.

All the people I know use their phones mainly for writing SMS messages. Making phone calls is the secondary feature, not the primary feature. I write and receive at least 10-20 sms per day. I make at most a phone call per day.

If Apple screws up text entry, the iPhone is dead over here.

Not that I worry. The people who've already tried an iPhone say it works at about as well as cell phones with real qerty keyboards.

Re:haptic feedback, tactile response from touchscr

[Moochman]

I honestly don't get it. The whole deal with tactile feedback isn't just the sensation of pressing buttons, but also the ability to feel where the buttons are in reference to each other. Vibrational feedback won't allow for this, thus texting still won't be possible without looking at the screen.

yet again, windows mobile can already do this..

[RMH101]

...and it sucks. vibrating when you tap an onscreen key just doesn't really give you proper tactile feedback. it's no better than a "click" noise. sounds great, doesn't work in practice.

Convergence is good and not complex.

[cheekyboy]

I personally think its more complex to have two devices.

2 interfaces
2 chargers
2 pockets
2 things to loose

All I wish apple started using is microSD cards in all ipods/iphones. Your ipod too small? plug in an 8gig microSD, they are small and dirt cheap and i mean dirt
cheap, 1gig costs the price of 2 large beers or one dvd.

iPhone Design

[wpope1]

I am a senior citizen(retired softy) and have been watching this market. The iPhone is the best thing I have seen yet bar none! I expect it will have great success. The graphics interface with sliding menus will be its forte.

Re:haptic feedback, tactile response from touchscr

[Altus]

Obviously I haven't used this device, but its possible that the phone responds with a micro vibration when you run your finger over the spot where a key is. This would require that running your finger over a button didn't click that button but a lift and tap motion would click the button.

Its quite a bit different from how the Wii works but when you pass the pointer over a button on the Wii it vibrates the remote just a bit.

I'm not sold on this or anything, but its possible that this would work quite well.

this is the wrong time to give up

[overbom]

You're totally right -- PalmOS will be replaced by a Linux OS made directly by Palm. That's not the one that was made by the Access Linux Project, which appears to be dead in the water (for the North American continent anyway). If Palm's new Linux OS is as good as Trolltech's QTopia, things will be very, very good for Palm.

Syncing conduits, to be fair, suck on all platforms. I generally think of Palm conduits as the worst, but Apple's Sync Services and Microsoft's ActiveSync aren't exactly winners either -- they just look newer than Palm Desktop. I have had suspiciously similar problems with all of them. My hope is that Palm Desktop dies first.

WRT the iPhone sucking: it probably will suck a lot less than dumbphones, and it will probably raise the bar for smartphone interfaces in general too, which is why there's so much hype about it -- smartphone software interfaces currently suck, and quite a bit. It will be a market success even if only fanbois get it.

It is just marketing

[regisb]

It is amusing to see so much comment about the iPhone' potential penetration into the market. The principles which come into play are simple. The hard part is to guess what people will like or dislike about the iPhone. The principles are: The best set of features means nothing if there is a single "pain" point for the buyer Pain points can be: too expensive, a missing feature, or a feature which is unacceptable Virtually all market surveys look for likes and miss the pain points The best value proposition for an "improved" product is the removal of an existing pain point from the current selection of products without adding any new ones Early adopters will tolerate a much higher pain level, but the volume sales require the average consumer who will not accept "pain". The responses in this set of postings cover many positive and negative points about the iPhone. The positives are why someone will look at the iPhone. The negatives are the short circuits which will keep someone from buying. So the question is what is the "spice" here? This is what creates the potential market. How many people buy a handheld PDA in order to browse the web? If this is as small of a market as it appears when I look at my broad range of contacts, the market is small and capturing any of it is of little consequence. The general consensus from all of the feedback appears to be that the only large value proposition that is being delivered is the move from an iPod and regular phone to a single iPhone. Non-iPod users have had VCast (I know it is nowhere as friendly as iTunes but it works for them) to give them MP3 capability with their phone. These people probably would not have paid the up charge to VCast if they had already had an iPod they liked. So the market is a subset of iPod users who also have a phone. Think about this - this is a segmentation of the market, not a market growth. Worse yet this market is canibializing the regular iPod sales. Who needs a new iPod AND an iPhone? What do these demographics look like? Probably the majority are in the 13 to 30 age range. This group is very interested in text messaging. So unless this is very easy, this group will view difficult text messaging as a true "pain" point regardless how well the iPod and phone work otherwise. If you read John C. Dvorak's comments on this, he claims that the keyboard function is just a pain. So my prediction is that the iPhone will be another Newton. It is a great idea, but the pendants who are predicting a great release are not talking to the market who will have to ante up the big price while giving up text messaging. This age group will balk and resist.

because you are a geek

[Anonymous Coward]

that is the point, you are not interested, and you are a geek. ...but the 5 nines of the population that aren't geeks are freeking wild about it.

if basing your sales on what geeks want was a good idea, linux would rule the earth.

Nextel

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you've got it lucky. I use Nextel, where the cheapest camera phone is $150. (i850)

No new features...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. except the User Interface
Here in Asia (SEA) Nokia/SonyEricsson/Motorala/etc already offers various 3G capable phones starting from around $230 (N6280).
MP3 phones starting at $130. Teens are already able make video calls, and operators are starting to offer HSDPA.
I doubt it will be popular here, except for Apple fans.

Amen!

[Weezul]

iPhone offers nothing Nokia, Samsung, etc. don't sell already, not one single feature. Infact all other similarly priced phones obliterate the iPhone in features (and 3rd party software).

iPhone's success depends entirely upon people making real feature sacrifices for Apple's user interface. Apple knows UI but don't ever gamble on UI beating features.

I might love the iPhone, I might not, but a replacable sim card is essential in Europe, cuz you need sims for multiple countries, so I'll never even try an iPhone. I don't mind, N95s are infinite superior in every way. And N95s will cost the same as an iPhone soon enough.

It's Verizon I'd be worried about

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't rush in order to be the first one to have it. Verizon will cripple the hell out of it anyway, so I'd have to wait 6 mos to a year until the proprietary program is leaked, or until someone figures out how to flash/flex it, so I can mod it myself and gain the full utility the phone was designed for in the first place. I seriously don't know why they bother. I'm not going use their fucking V-Cast service to purchase ringtones that I can easily create from CD's I ALREADY FUCKING OWN!! It only takes a few minutes to Google up the info you need to be able to hack your phone.

Mod your phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I got a V3m, too. You can find all the info you need to modify your phone at motomodders.

I'll stay with Verizon because I get a signal almost anywhere, as long as I know I can mod my phone to be able to use the all the features it is supposed to be capable of.

Verizon can take their crappy V-Cast service and shove it up their ass. If they want me to buy their ringtones, wouldn't it make sense that they actually have ringtones worth buying? Why disable OBEX? Why disable the mp3 capability? Now I have the best of both worlds - service wherever I go, on a phone that works like it's supposed to.

How many devices do you want to carry?

[bodland]

Three, four, five...or one?

Apple iPhone will be huge. I am buying one later this year so I can get rid of two pagers, a cell phone and a laptop. And I still don't have a iPod...so that is a huge bonus.