iPhone Interest Still Going Strong

Even though the iPhone has already been released into the wild, the amount of excitement surrounding this device doesn't seem to be subsiding by any measurable degree. Many readers have submitted their favorite reactions to the shiny new gizmo including a BusinessWeek report that suggests the iPhone only costs around $220 to make, a user review from MacScoop, one user's top 10 interface mistakes, a roundup of early security concerns, and details on the hardware behind the phone. Read on for more details.

Only $220 to Make an iPhone. Bomarc writes to tell us BuinessWeek is reporting that according to a recent analysis the new iPhone only costs Apple in the neighborhood of $200 ($220 for the 8-gigabyte model) to manufacture.

iPhone User Review. Alexandros Roussos writes "It has been an unforgettable week-end for the first iPhone buyers and MacScoop will now put the focus on one of them who provided to a complete review of Apple's very anticipated gizmo."

Mistakes in the iPhone Interface. Rakesh writes "I love the iPhone. It 's here to stay as my primary cell phone. But I've come across a bunch of things that make me think Apple rushed at the end to get this thing out there. Here's my list of the top 10 mistakes Apple made with the iPhone interface."

iPhone Security Roundup. An anonymous reader writes "Although some security researchers noted problems getting their iPhone activated, others wasted no time tearing the new device apart. Seth Fogie, from Airscanner, reported passwords can be found for the device from running strings obtained from the backup images through a password cracker. Robert Graham, from Errata Security, writes about Safari and Bluetooth bugs on their blog."

iPhone Hardware Details. abdulzis writes "Engadget has the scoop on the iPhone's hardware specs through a leaked firmware. 'Sascha at Gear Log seems to think given the recently discovered Samsung chip in the iPhone, perhaps the processor in question is a Samsung S3C6400, a recently-produced 667MHz ARM1176JZF-based CPU that seems to fit the bill.'"

Comments

No, really?

[borizz]

It's been out for what, a day or two? Longer? I wouldn't have expected it to die out so soon. Especially because it's an Apple product and they really rule at building up some hype.

$220 to buy the parts, not "to make"

[timster]

Big difference, unless you'd be happy with a big 'ol bag of iPhone parts.

Re:$220 to buy the parts, not "to make"

[timster]

those R&D folks should be canned for making so many obvious mistakes and omissions on the released product

Actually, I wonder if many other product designers fall into a trap of non-omission, that is, a need to include everything. After a few days with an iPhone I can say, sure, there are things that aren't there, but the things that are included are very good. For instance, there is no MMS, but the SMS is great. I figure that every product design team has limited resources, and maybe it was better to have great SMS that doesn't support MMS than to have mediocre SMS with MMS included.

Of course every product is a trade-off, but every criticism of the iPhone I hear seems to be a lot of anger about missing features that I, personally, don't really have a use for. To me, it's better to have a great product that is incomplete in some ways than a product that is complete and poorly-done, but that's just me.

Re:$220 to buy the parts, not "to make"

[Overzeetop]

At $5/GB of flash ($20 for the extra 4GB of flash in the 8GB iPhone), I presume they are taking bulk purchasing into account.

220 - Yeah right...

[arivanov]

That does not include essential and unavoidable licenses which in the GSM world push the BOM by further 30-40$ (depending on volumes). Add to that licenses related to digital media playback (encoders, decoders) and the phone BOM approaches 300+. That is all before the cost of developing the software. So while the margins are very "applelike", they are nowhere as obscene as the article suggests.

Still going strong?!?

[RealGrouchy]

Are you kidding me? It's been three fucking days!

Has society's attention span gotten so short that we are surprised when news reports on a high-profile new product spans past the Friday it was introduced through the weekend following its introduction?

Or are we just surprised that the iPhone has managed to steal a few seconds of airtime from the whole Paris Hilton thing?

- RG>

Re:Still going strong?!?

[Altus]

Im sorry but I really think the hype over the iPhone has gone way past apples marketing. People keep acting like apple is driving this hype machine but they really aren't. They barely talk about the iPhone compared to how much everyone else seems to talk about it.

Apple doesnt drive that hype machine because they don't have to. Not since the iPod came out.

Re:Still going strong?!?

[Lemmy Caution]

Look, it's "ad hominem" because it is, in fact, the people that give me a creepy feeling. It's not controversial that there's a broad-based fan community that enthusiastically promotes Apple products. This isn't a claim that Apple is either good or bad - in general, I think their designs are OK - but just as "even though you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you," just because Apple makes decent products that fill a need doesn't mean that there isn't a disturbing enthusiasm among its consumers.

I mean, there's a couple brands of coffee, orange juice, and shoes that I regularly buy, but I don't go around breathlessly extolling them, wearing items of clothing that advertising those brands - my shoes are non-self-advertising, or respond defensively to criticisms of them. It's creepy. Like I've said elsewhere, fannism is a kind of cultural servitude, a deference and admiration for a producer as brand that far exceeds the utility of the objects that producer creates. I find it sad.

If you can't see fanboism, it's probably because you've drank so much Kool-Aid, you're swimming in it. You also see it with Nintendo - and I buy a lot of Nintendo products, as a matter of fact - and it's just as disturbing.

Re:Who cares really?

[joe 155]

no really sure why you earned the "flamebait" mod, other than the fact the the most rabid Apple fanboy might have taken your post as a slur on their beloved company.

You bring up a good point. I don't have an iPhone, nor will I be buying one (I couldn't even if I wanted to...) and I assume that I'm not in the minority here. So what is the need for not just about 10 stories in the past 4 days, but now about another 5 stuck in one as a form of digest.
Give it a rest.

I bet the software development cost a pretty penny

[EccentricAnomaly]

Apple clearly spent a lot on development of the device and on the software especially... not to mention all of the prime-time ads. I bet it will take a while before those costs are covered and they start raking in the big bucks with the $380 'mark-up'.

What I find funny is...

[lena_10326]

...so many slashdot readers are praying for iPhone to go down in flames.

Who cares. It's another product. It'll make some people happy, some not. Don't get so wrapped up in the drama.

(And no, I won't provide links or references. This is my opinion. I don't have to prove it.)

Re:What I find funny is...

[glesga_kiss]

...so many slashdot readers are praying for iPhone to go down in flames.

They are a vocal minority. The phrase I heard recently to describe everyone else was "circle-jerk". That's never something I'd ever even considered and I promised myself that I'd use the phrase again.

It's not that people like me want to see it go down in flames. Quite the contrary, I've been waiting for a device like the iPhone for many years. My problem is that I got that device two and a half years ago and I'm still happy with it. I welcome the competition in the market and I value Apple's UI design highly so hopefully they will drag the entire industry forward with them. I've been a mobile early adopter since GSM first came out, so to hear that another large, respected manufacturer has entered the industry is fantastic.

What annoys some of us is that it's being presented as revolutionary. It's not. It might be, if it takes off and in the future changes most peoples outlook on phones. It took the iPod to bring mp3 players to the masses but it wasn't really an evolution change in technology. It was more marketing and design, such as the white headphones serving as a constant "join us, it's great!" advertisement.

The iPhone seems to be advertised to be a leap forward. Now, it may not be Apple doing this, there is a lot of grassroots support for it as is clear based on the volume of news around it, and they may be generating this meme that it's all powerful. The problem is it's not. It would be a downgrade for me. From what I hear it has the same UI problems as the first smartphones. Having to write down numbers for example as there is no cut and paste or hyper-linking of phone numbers in text. Lot's of little quirks have been ironed out over the years; I've been running homebrew ROMs on my mine, so I've seen it at it's worst and at it's best. From reading about people using it, some of the UI is an improvement but it needs work in many places.

This is what annoys us. Sure, for most people the iPhone is a leap forward and it's sure silenced most of the "a phone is just a phone" crowd that I have discussed this with on many previous occasions on Slashdot whenever there is a story about new phone technology. So, for the majority of people, great! Enjoy it. Having the internet in your pocket is awesome, as is the lack of needing to carry around a separate media player. The integration of SMS and email is also very handy. Google maps is great, though personally I prefer things like TomTom that keep the data locally. And so on, there are so many things you can do with a device with this.

Just stop making it sound like you are the first to be doing it! :-)

Re:What I find funny is...

[Dekortage]

What annoys some of us is that it's being presented as revolutionary. It's not. It might be, if it takes off and in the future changes most peoples outlook on phones. It took the iPod to bring mp3 players to the masses but it wasn't really an evolution change in technology. It was more marketing and design, such as the white headphones serving as a constant "join us, it's great!" advertisement.

Actually the iPod starting its dramatic take-off before the slick advertising began, but you can remember it your way if it helps.

The "design" is exactly the revolution. With the iPod, Apple made something was small, ridiculously simple to use, and did what 90% of the world wanted it to do. The iPhone is the same. The revolution is not in the technology. It's in the usability. Next you're going to tell me that the automatic transmission wasn't revolutionary because it was just an improvement on the manual transmission. And, frankly, the latter offers more precise control and better fuel efficiency. But the former made automobiles much more "user friendly" for the masses. It revolutionized the way American society used cars. This, on a different scale, is what makes the iPod and iPhone revolutionary: not that they were the first ever in the world, or even the most full-featured, but they changed the way a large mass of people looked at the technology. That's a revolution.

I am happy the iPhone is doing well

[backslashdot]

I bought the iPhone, but I don't own apple stock. I am happy the iPhone is doing well. I hope it spurs the industry to have a spurt of innovation.
It seems that other manufacturers "test the waters" by making a half-ass web feature enabled phone .. obviously it fails with zero sales.. and then they assume nobody wants to web browse on the phone and stop innovating.

Come on, a high res screen for web browsing and touchscreen.. we've been wanting that for a while .. why didn't the other manufacturers come out with a decent one?

Re:I am happy the iPhone is doing well

[d3vi1]

Actually only the cell-phones in the US are half-ass web featured ones. Two years ago, the coolest cell in the US was the brain-dead, RAZR, granted it was sexy, but it was also brain-dead. On the other side of the planet, there were touch-screen phones that ran Linux and had Opera 7.5 as a pretty decent browser. They still rule because they can run Doom and Quake, and can render most pages without a problem. Come to think about-it, most of what the iPhone brings, you can get from a Nokia N800 with a basic GSM phone that also has Bluetooth in parallel. Actually the N800 is a lot better than the iPhone. I have an excelent IMAP client on it (Claws), I have Pidgin for IM, I have a very decent Opera 9 with flash and a lot of other goodies. The great thing about-it is that it only takes an incredibly small amount of time to port ANY gtk application to the Maemo platform that the N800 uses. The multitude of applications that have been ported to the N800 only proves that it's a better platform than most of the others.

I will give the iPhone the following:
1) Multi-touch. It sounds like it's more than a simple touch-screen. The Nokia N800 has a nice feature that detects if you touch with the stick or a finger and adjusts the input method and the menus accordingly, but I doubt that it's as cool as the one on the iPhone. I am sure that the Nokia N800+1 could easily implement something like this.
2) Screen rotation sensor.
3) Phone

Flame follows: (3) is actually one that can be put in both good and bad. The iPhone is an Edge phone on a 3G world. Granted that the network coverage for 3G in the US is a joke compared to Europe or Asia. Actually, the network coverage in the US is more like a joke. In Romania, the country that only a few years ago was under communist ruling, we have basically 100% coverage for the cell phone networks, and a lot of 3G, and nation-wide GPRS on Vodaphone (they are introducing 7.something Mbps HSUPA later this year) and EDGE on Orange (same as Vodafone). Vodafone currently has 2.8 Mbps HSDPA, and Orange has 3.6 Mbps HSDPA. In Germany it's even more impressing, you have almost full 3G coverage for the whole country.

Zapp, our only CDMA operator, has EVDO 2.4 Mbps since 2004, and they are going for an upgrade later this year. Now, allow me to be disappointed by the lame EDGE options available to the US market. I am also disappointed by the fact that Apple didn't allow the buying of unlocked phones and gave AT&T exclusivity.

BTW: The rates for Cell phone is the US are also huge. In 2005, a prepaid card from Cingular gave me "free calls" in the US, but having to pay an airtime rate of $.25/min for both outgoing and incoming calls. In Romania in 2005 the prepaid rates were somewhere around $.20 for outgoing calls, and free for incoming. I also found the fact that you get charged from the second that you make the call, even if the other party doesn't answer, to be a little disturbing, especially since a call to Romania costed around $.90 + airtime tax, and would usually take around 45s to connect to the Bucharest based operators. I've called Cingular and asked for my money back for the situations in which it didn't connect at all. Based on their pricing details I expected to be charged $0.25 in that minute until the person answers and until the call connects, and after that $0.25 + $0.90 for the call, but I was charged almost an extra dollar for each call. I find this wierd because in Europe, if the person doesn't answer, you don't pay anything, and if you receive a call (except for roaming), you don't pay anything. In the US, if someone hates you they simply have to send you a lot of Text messages, because they also cost if you receive them.

Anyway, to make a long story short, in the US the mobile phones are a lot more expensive and dumb (literally), the rates are a lot worst and the network coverage is a joke. This is coming from a guy that lives in Romania, not in the UK or France or Germany. I talk my ass off on my cell phone (and we all have a cell phone), and I never exceed than $45, except when I'm out of the country.

Coverage information is available at Coverage Maps.

Huh

[suv4x4]

Only $220 to Make an iPhone. Bomarc writes to tell us BuinessWeek is reporting that according to a recent analysis the new iPhone only costs Apple in the neighborhood of $200 ($220 for the 8-gigabyte model) to manufacture.

Someone's forgetting software development, R&D, support, distributing, warranties, shipping, licenses, patents, and around a 50-60 other things like that, which go into a product you buy from the local shop.

Re:First iPhone user to get laid because of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess with all the hype, even working girls know the price and will accept it as payment...

Re:Who cares really?

[node 3]

Because we are Slashdotters, we have watched Star Trek and already own a device that does everything the iPhone does. Examples?

Using the iPhone is like using something *from* Star Trek. The iPhone is the single most amazing device I've ever used, although I'm more than willing to be amazed by something else and eagerly await some suggestions.

I mean, if there are existing devices that do everything the iPhone does, and I'm so utterly amazed by the iPhone, I can hardly wait!

However, I suspect a list of the usual suspects that, in comparison to the iPhone, are like using Lynx compared to Firefox (and I don't mean lack of graphics), or DOS vs Macintosh (and here I *do* mean like going from keyboard to mouse). It might be able to do the same tasks, but *how* it does it makes all the difference.

Re:Top 10 Mistakes

[topherhenk]

"8. No emoticons on the virtual keyboard: Apple someone stole the emoticons from your virtual keyboard! Seriously, it just seems like an Apple thing to do to include a few emoticons on the virtual keyboard."

God please no. I hate those critters. :)

Time to get a new icon...

[fm6]

The main icon for this story is the one for the handhelds category. Which makes sense, except that the icon is a photo of a Palm V, or something similar. Sadly, a pure PDA is no longer a representative handheld. More typically, a PDA is some kind of feature-bloated "smart phone." The iPhone's a good example of that, and probably the best candidate for the new handhelds icon.

Not to trash the iPhone. It just isn't something I'm ever going to want. I want a simple phone, with easy-to-use PDA functionality. (I'd prefer to have separate phone and PDA, but that train has left the station.) If I want to watch video, I'll get out my LE 1600.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[gnuman99]

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/aa714410 .aspx

Says about $90/device for Windows XP Embedded.

For Qtopia, it is somewhat less but I can't find any info on TT's site about the actual pricing. It is about $200 for the SDK. I *think* I saw that it was about $20-$30 per device some time ago. Much cheaper than Windows.

Of course, you could just hack X+Gnome and be 100% "free" (not really for free, costs money to hack the thing for a phone). But I guess some other WM would be better than having Gnome there.

As for Apple Stock, it actually fell 0.6% today to $121. Their P/E ratio is about 38 which means even if they have a 30% jump in profit, that means their P/E ratio will drop to about 29. That is still relatively high. Companies like Microsoft and IBM have their P/E ratios at about 21 and 16 respectfully. Currently there seems to be a 15% anticipated increase in profits for next year over current year. If that does not materialize, Apple stock will drop.

Apple may be a better company to invest in today than MSFT though. I'm not sure if the price is warranted though (they'll need to double their earnings to be at the same price as MSFT is right now)

Re:iPhone users are willing beta testers

[cowscows]

Microsoft has been making OS's for decades, has insane resources, and spent many years getting vista out the door. They also promised the moon and a half for Vista back in the early longhorn days, and delivered something with a way-trimmed down feature list, and it still didn't work all that great for a lot of people. Sure, many complained, but many are also using Vista and being happy with it.

Apple is making their first mobile phone ever, and while only the foolish expect it to be perfect, there are already tons of people talking about how much better the interface is than any other phone they've ever had. Many of them are also sharing what they see as the flaws in the device. And while I have no doubt that many of those people waiting in line were hardcore Apple fanboys, they're probably closing in on one million phones sold already, and I doubt there are that many Apple fanatics in the US.

To sum it up, MS needed around five years to put out a mediocre new version of their flagship product, after tons of feature cutting and multiple embarassing delays. I don't know how long Apple had been working on the iPhone, but it came out the day they said it would come out, and people seem to be genuinely impressed by it.

Apple has made it to where they are primarily by developing products that its customers think are great. MS has made it to where they are by developing products that are just good enough (and some wise business decisions). The two companies are judged differently, sure, but only because each has earned its reputation.

Re:I bet the software development cost a pretty pe

[Dachannien]

I don't see why they needed to spend any money on advertising, with all the free news coverage they've been getting.

Re:Who cares really?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

"Bigger than the GPL3 license?"

In a mall, stop and ask 20 people which they're more excited about GPL3 or the iPhone.

Re:Who cares really?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Well, considering how every story posted ends up having a Windows vs Linux vs OS X discussion brought up in the comments...

Software Updates?

[ShamrawkNRoll88]

On a different forum that I post on I brought up an (I like to think) interesting (if speculative) point. The iPhone is OS X people, and its totally under Apple's control, they can do whatever they want with the hardware they have by releasing software upgrades... and in a lot of cases the hardware is there, they just need to release the software. The bluetooth isn't physically limited, its limited by software, so syncing can be added. A whole bunch of other goodies can be tossed in using the Apple Updater that comes with iTunes. Which brings up another interesting point to ponder, Apple took teams away from Leopard so that the iPhone would be somewhat stable and usable for its release, and most of its bigger core functions are in place. Which isn't to say that everything that was supposed to make it in by June 29th actually did make it. I imagine we'll be seeing quite a few updates in the close future, and probably a few new features from the Apple and the Google side of things that were supposed to be on the phone originally but didn't make the cut or ran out of time. Personally, I believe Apple has vested too much interest in the iPhone to leave it (software or hardware) in the state it is in at the present time. And we'll probably see numerous (and better) revisions in the months to come. If, however, that is the case, it makes me wonder about Apple's release schedule/marketing strategy.

Re:It's a phone

[Enrique1218]

Let me guess. You also can't understand why consumers will still pay money for Windows when they can have Linux for free.

Re:Who cares really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then ask those same 20 people whether they have ever heard of slashdot.

Talk about missing the point...

Re:Geeks Should Care!

[bismark.a]

1) No voice dialing.

Have you really tried shitty voice dialling in a busy, noisy place? Or even in the comfort of your home? I wonder how many calls you make using your stylus or address book compared to voice? And BTW, how many buttons do you press, before the phone;s toy voice dialling brings up voice recognition?

2) No IM clients.

This I hope would be available in iPhone in an update soon. It already has IM like interface for SMS ...

3) No Outlook syncing.

It does synch Contacts etc from Outlook. Maybe more would be available soon. Thats the beauty of having a software enabled device and is more prominently applicable in *A Software Enabled Interface*.

4) No easily swappable battery.

At 6-8 hours a charge and 400-500 charges, that would be at least 3-4 years before my battery runs out.
And considering that I can carry my charger wherever I go, Do I even care?

Re:Who cares really?

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

In a mall, stop and ask 20 people which they're more excited about GPL3 or the iPhone.

Fortunately, slashdot is not a mall. That's why most of us are here.

Though it is beginning to seem more and more like a mall, as evidenced by your other reply in this thread.

Re:Who cares really?

[node 3]

Consider me curious then - what features of the iPhone are like that portrayed in Star Trek, that aren't in existing phones? Feature-wise, there really isn't anything major. I mean, there's visual voicemail, but that's just voicemail, which all phones have. There's the iPod app, which is the best I've ever used, but that's still just audio and video, right? Safari, Mail, phonebook listings, etc, are all superb and better than anything else out there, but they are all available on most every other phone, and certainly every smart phone.

With current phones, from a capability point of view, they all do things that seem like they are from Star Trek, I fully agree with you on that. Where they all fall short is in the interface. That's what I mean by it actually *feels* like using something from Star Trek, and not just "has the capabilities" of something from Star Trek.

Essentially, doing something on a standard smart phone (or cell phone in general) takes quite a bit of effort. That's why most people don't do much beyond calling, taking photos, and SMS/MMSing. As geeks and technology enthusiasts, most of us here on Slashdot enjoy doing those things enough to overcome effort required--sometimes we enjoy it so much that we even completely ignore the effort, or count it as "part of the fun". With the iPhone (and all things Apple, in general), the effort is so minimized that the interface becomes almost invisible.

Take the task of multi-party calling. Pretty much every phone can do it, and I've done it on every phone I've ever had, but I've *only* done it when I really, *really* wanted to, because the interface was so limited. The process usually involved multiple, "are you there?"s because you're never quite sure who exactly is on hold, who is connected, and who you might have accidentally hung up on. With the iPhone, even though it's the exact same feature, it's so effortless that I am sure I'll use this feature more during the next year than I have on all my past phones combined. The same goes for web browsing, email, etc. With the iPhone, the actual *experience* of using it--every one one of its features--is fun and easy. With all other phones, it's quite impressive to *have* all those features, but using them can be called *many* things other than "fun", and beyond the first time, "hey, this is cool", a large portion of those features will go unused--not because they are not worthwhile features that one might want to use, but because they aren't worth the trouble.

The iPhone is the first phone (or device in general) that I've used that has me feeling confident about leaving my notebook behind, and *that* says a lot.

It's all about the experience. I suggest playing with one at an Apple Store (an AT&T store will do in a pinch). 5 minutes trying out Safari, the iPod, YouTube and the phone features will convey far more than my post possibly could. Even if, after that, you don't think the iPhone is worth $600, or that the features don't match your needs, or that you're going to wait for 3G, or any other number of things, I'm pretty sure you'll know exactly what I meant by my Star Trek comment.