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.

Re:No, really?

[borizz]

I know that. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm not natively English speaking.

Re:No, really?

[arunthealmighty]

Iphone sale really rocks!!!checkout the people queue to get Iphone... http://www.toondoo.com/View.toon?param=30793 Arun.

$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"

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Are they even taking into account bulk purchasing??? Obviously the manufacturer is buying the parts in bulk, if the estimated cost of the parts is based on the cost of each part individually, then the total cost of the iphones parts may be significantly less when those parts are purchased in bulk.

Of course the cost of the parts does not take into account assembly, or the research and development that went into the iphone, which if you ask me, those R&D folks should be canned for making so many obvious mistakes and omissions on the released product, but thats just my opinion.

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.

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

[shmlco]

Especially since it can be updated later through iTunes. Remember, Apple is spreading out the income over two years so it can provide updates and new features to existing phones.

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

[ScriptedReplay]

Look, how much manufacturing cost difference is there between fitting 4GB and 8GB in the phone? the parts cost difference is estimated at $20 yet the retail prices differ by is $100. It looks to me a hell of a lot like the extra $80 are money in the bank for Apple. To which I say, good for them. Their target market can bear this, why shouldn't they pocket the cash? Especially since some of it will go towards coming up with a cheaper version of the phone.

However, looking at this particular difference, it does suggest that Apple is making a neat profit off the phone regardless of how much manufacturing and other logistics end up costing. So while you have a point about this being only parts it's not as strong an argument as you'd like, especially since Apple uses cheap Asian production. I'd be surprised if they don't make in excess of 30% profit for the 4GB model alone.

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

[MCSEBear]

I kind of think an iPhone user would have to be retarded to want to use SMS or MMS at all.

There is an unlimited data provision for email in all the iPhone plans. You can send email instead of SMS or email with a photo attachment instead of MMS all day long and pay no additional fees. Using SMS or MMS just removes money from your pocket and sticks it into AT&T's.

Happily, the iPhone is software upgradeable, so you can look forward to the addition of an IM client to give you even more free ways to sling text around.

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

[servognome]

if you ask me, those R&D folks should be canned for making so many obvious mistakes and omissions on the released product, but thats just my opinion

I would put this squarely on the marketing dept. It was obvious when Apple pulled Leopard resources to work on the iPhone. Reminds me of the launch of Star Wars Galaxies, where basically meeting a launch date (also right before the end of June to meet Q2 deadline) was more important than having everything ready. The same excuse was probably used, the system is "comparable to other products on the market in terms of feature readiness"

I definately can see the massive potential of the iPhone, the platform is ready, the specific apps are not. It just needs a few months of tweaking to go from good to great.

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

[gig]

It's amazing how if you ask Microsoft why their products suck they will tell you that software is "hard" and it is "expensive" and their are "security barriers" and "support issues" but apparently over at Apple software just appears out of thin air when you assemble an arbitrary $220 collection of parts.

Going by this logic, one should be able to buy a $220 phone from Motorola and just reconfigure it into an iPhone with a screwdriver.

Using this same logic, Windows Vista is $1 in parts (DVD) and $2 of packaging (retail bubble pack) and should have taken one guy at Microsoft less than an hour to make.

The Mona Lisa? A $20 art canvas and a $20 set of paints at the art store is clearly the same thing.

I actually like when the software in a device is completely ignored, I think you give the whole device credit or blame for either functioning or not, never mind how it was made, and that is what 99% of humanity does with stuff. Whether the video is decoded on a chip or in software is a design decision just like any other. But you can't go one step further and pretend that there is no software in a device, that it did not need to be developed, or that it just appeared like magic.

Also, saying the iPhone is $220 in parts implies that all the parts are off-the-shelf. There are at least two chips with Apple logos in there and the multi-touch display technology is Apple's also, acquired when they bought Fingerworks. OS X is almost completely unique.

The people who must laugh at this the most are like Nokia designers who are working on a new model that has a $220 parts budget per unit and can't get around the deficiencies of Symbian or Flash Lite or JavaFX or Windows Mobile. Those guys know that you can have $1000 in parts and if you have to run Windows Mobile on it in the end it will still be awful.

Finally, the whole point of the Intel Mac is to use the exact same commodity PC hardware as all other PC makers, so that Apple's costs and supplies of e.g. CPU's are the same as everyone else. Shortages at Intel hurt everyone, bugs in Core 2 Duo hurt everyone. With iPhone, same strategy. They could have put an Intel chip in iPhone and made the software part easier but inside iPhone it is a phone. So if you ignore the software and do a hardware tear down and you realize "why, it's just a PC inside" or "why, it's just a smart phone inside" then well, duh.

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

[adona1]

Not everyone I SMS/MMS can receive emails on their phones though...

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

[Lerc]

If you could buy something like this for $220 from someone else, I'd jump at the chance. I wouldn't even care if it wasn't a phone or lacked OSX. A nice touchscreen display with a fairly spiffy ARM. would make a nice cousin for the GP2x.

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

[coolGuyZak]

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.

Granted, I have yet to get one, but I agree for all complaints thus far, except 2:

1. GPS support in Google Maps (using cell tower triangulation, most likely). This may come around through software, but I'd rather have seen the iPhone debut with it instead of YouTube.
2. Multiple calendar support in the calendar app (also fixable through software updates). I'm not asking for a monsterous number of calendars, but at least separate business and personal activities...

Neither of these are show stoppers for me, but each would be absolutely wonderful to have out of the box.

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

[MCSEBear]

Giving you an excellent chance to berate them for their poor choice of phones!

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

[Cerberus911]

I'm guessing you don't have many friends.

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

[Megatimes]

Marginal cost, people; Marginal cost! I expect better from BusinessWeek.

Good profit margin

[jshriverWVU]

suggests the iPhone only costs around $220 to make

This shows how Apple is really good at playing the game, where it's often about cheaper is better. They show style and quality is worth it. Most people will buy Fords, but some with the money will pay a premium to own a Mercedes. Apple is just the Mercedes of computing.

Re:Good profit margin

[dcskier]

$220 to make I'm sure is just a figure of the parts, maybe the manufacture too. But remember they had a lot of engineers working on this for a while and that wasn't cheap so each unit is really more than just $220. I'm sure they are still making a killing off of it but a product costs more than just the sum of its parts.

Re:Good profit margin

[grasshoppa]

This shows how Apple is really good at playing the game, where it's often about cheaper is better. They show style and quality is worth it. Most people will buy Fords, but some with the money will pay a premium to own a Mercedes. Apple is just the Mercedes of computing.

Funny, I was thinking more along the lines of new cloths for the Emperor.

To each their own, I guess.

Re:Good profit margin

[AndersOSU]

You must not have been paying attention. Most people buy Toyotas*, a few shell out for the Ford and get hosed, while fewer still fork over the big bucks for the Mercedes and are generally happy.

*ok really most people (in the US) still buy GMs, but Toyota is second, Ford is third, but my way is funnier

Re:Good profit margin

[Reaperducer]

That would be funny if it were true, but it's not.

Re:Good profit margin

[ceeam]

If anything that would some other company from North-West corner of US.

Re:Good profit margin

[MightyYar]

You'd be pretty disappointed with hand-made electronics... Even Hans, Klaus, and Georg aren't that good with tweezers and a soldering iron.

Re:Good profit margin

[MightyYar]

Toyotas, Fords, GMs... no matter - that's what the rabble drive - the free phone that comes with your plan, if you will. :)

(I don't even have a car, so I'm lower than rabble I guess.)

Re:Good profit margin

[Goaway]

Weird isn't it?

Not really, no, seeing as how that has nothing at all to do with DRM.

Re:Good profit margin

[Grishnakh]

No, not really.

I'm completely against DRM on my computer, and I run Linux at home. I have no interest in most closed-source software for use at home or at work (most of my work is also on Linux machines).

But I looked at the iPhone this weekend and was quite impressed. It did everything a so-called "smart phone" should do, only it does it right. It was easy to use Google maps to find directions, to take notes, to play music, to watch Youtube videos, to surf the web, and lots more.

You see, an open-source Linux-y solution just isn't feasible for phones, at least not yet. The problem is the carriers, and also the handsets. You can't expect someone to roll together a phone that can do Google maps and stuff like that, and have it work really well with one of the American cellular providers due to the way they operate.

I currently have some piece-of-shit Audiovox (LG) phone with Verizon, and I hate it. It was the cheapest flip-phone I could get at the time, and I had no interest in any other features because it seems most American providers want to nickel-and-dime you to death with them, instead of just selling you a phone with lots of useful features that work well, and don't incur some ridiculous monthly or per-use charge. The phone totally sucks because hitting the camera button on the side a few times will put it into photo-taking mode, turning on the LCD screen inside and burning up the battery. Since I usually carry the POS in my pocket (because the POS plastic holster it came with broke), these buttons get inadvertently pressed, and next thing I know my battery is dead. What kind of idiot would design a phone this way? If I want to take a photo, I'll open the handset first.

So in the store, this iPhone looked really useful. I'm constantly wishing I could look up phone numbers or directions online, or surf the web, just using my phone which I already constantly carry with me anyway. I didn't get a chance to investigate further, but my only concern is what the data charges are, since carriers like Verizon like to charge more for a few bytes of data than for the high bandwidth that voice transmission requires. If it costs a fortune just to surf the web or send data, then something like this is useless.

Re:Good profit margin

[WilliamSChips]

Except that nowadays that makes it better than a real Mercedes.

Re:Good profit margin

[WilliamSChips]

No, no, no.
You see, the people complaining about DRM in Vista are Linux fanboys.
The people praising the iPhone like a technological Jesus are Apple fanboys.
These aren't the same people, most of the time.

Re:Good profit margin

[erikvcl]

Your comment made my day. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Re:Good profit margin

[nitehorse]

They force you to sign up for a $20/month 'iPhone data' package for whatever plan you sign up for, and this package includes unlimited data access on the EDGE network. (Not unlimited SMS messages, mind you.)

But you can browse Google's Maps and YouTube all day long on it and never have to worry about how many kilobytes you've used up.

Re:Good profit margin

[MCSEBear]

Awww now... Don't think of yourself as rabble... You're Eco-Tastic!

Re:Good profit margin

[Ceriel Nosforit]

You see, an open-source Linux-y solution just isn't feasible for phones, at least not yet. You are wrong: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re:Good profit margin

[GuyverDH]

Considering the piss-poor physical construction of everything i-Pod, I'd say it's based in the realm of truth. I've known too many people who've gone through 5 iPods in 3 months just from sitting on their desks. I can't imagine that they've actually improved quality on the iPhone. It's not flame-bait when it's fact.

Re:Good profit margin

[Grishnakh]

Interesting. But will it work on phones in the USA? I can already tell it won't work on CDMA phones, which eliminates two of the largest providers.

Remember, things in cellular-land are really screwed up here in the USA, compared to the rest of the world.

Re:Good profit margin

[Ceriel Nosforit]

*Smacks hand on forehead.

Good thing I live in Nokia-land. :)

Re:Who cares really?

[utopianfiat]

*drool*
I'm sorry, did you say something?

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.

Re:220 - Yeah right...

[jcr]

I don't know what the licenses are for AAC offhand, but the H.264 license is extremely cheap. It's around a nickel per codec.

-jcr

Re:220 - Yeah right...

[glesga_kiss]

It wouldn't surprise me if it was selling at near-cost at retail once you factored in the costs of activation on the network, the store supply chain, tax and so on. If Apple have a good deal with the telco then they may be getting a cut of the network fees. The exclusivity suggests this might be the case; even if it's not most phones on contract are effectively subsedised by the telco and they recoup this semi-loan over the term of the contract. And then there's iTunes, ring tones, accessories and what not. The after-sales market is where it's at with the iPhone IMHO.

Re:220 - Yeah right...

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Not to mention the R&D to create the phone, write the software, and create a new business unit to manage and market the device. The money has to come from somewhere.

Re:220 - Yeah right...

[megaditto]

220 for parts, 80 to licenses, 100 in R&D, and 200 for the marketing/astroturfing hype... Sounds about right once you add the iMusicStore & the two-year Cingular lockin.

Re:220 - Yeah right...

[hxnwix]

$399 for a product with near zero per-unit production costs would be obscene. Imagine: the product's design & engineering costs could be covered by a small number of sales. Every sale thereafter = pure profit.

Wouldn't it be nice to be Microsoft? Nobody who'd actually pay would complain, being so accustomed to taking it up the rear. And those who did would be moderated down by sore-ass moderators.

So have at it, mods. We know who your daddy is.

Re:220 - Yeah right...

[jcr]

You have that reversed. The MPEG-4 file format allows the use of many different codecs. AAC is a codec.

-jcr

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?!?

[veganboyjosh]

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

OHNOES!! What's going on with paris?!!!one11 /me=off to teh googles/...

Re:Still going strong?!?

[truthsearch]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: yes. (I'd post more but my attention span is too short)

Re:Still going strong?!?

[glesga_kiss]

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?

What does attention span have to do with paid-for advertisements? The Apple marketing campaign for the iPhone has been stellar, it's a thing that they truly excel at.

Re:Still going strong?!?

[Kohath]

This post is still modded up?

I know it seemed Insightful at first, but that was so half-an-hour ago.

I'm going out for a latte.

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]

Apple has a fan base that exceeds that of the Commodore and OS/2. And I get the same creepy feeling from the Apple fans that I did from the others.

Re:Still going strong?!?

[revscat]

And I get the same creepy feeling from the Apple fans that I did from the others.

Ad hominem, as I'm sure you're aware.

Apple's products -- like anyone's -- will succeed or fail based upon a variety of factors. Based upon my experience Apple makes high-quality products that I have been happy with over time. Others feel similarly. Complaints about "fanboism" are vapid at best, and cannot fully -- or even partially -- explain Apple's continued success. In fact, it seems that complaints about mythical fanbois have become more common than the actual appearance of said fanbois.

People want these phones because they fit a need.

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:Still going strong?!?

[lennier]

"Has society's attention span gotten so short that "

YES

Next!

Re:Still going strong?!?

[Lemmy Caution]

Did I hit a nerve?

Re:Still going strong?!?

[the_humeister]

Apple has a fan base that exceeds that of the Commodore and OS/2. And I get the same creepy feeling from the Apple fans that I did from the others.

The other thing that I think is weird is that there's such a huge following for a >$100 billion company! Imagine Exxon having that kind of enthusiastic fan base.

Bob: "Yo, you should really try this Exxon gasoline! It makes your ride so much smoother!"
Glen: "I'll stick with Shell, but thanks any way."
Bob: "But let met tell you why Exxon gasoline is so much better than Shell, or even BP... *blah* *blah* *blah*..."
Glen: *shoots head 2 hours later*

Re:Still going strong?!?

[dwater]

> the whole Paris Hilton thing?

Eh? What Paris Hilton thing? Who's Paris Hilton?

Re:Still going strong?!?

[dedazo]

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

No, she's also still going strong - unfortunately.

Re:Still going strong?!?

[gig]

First of all, every fanboy who is not the same kind of fanboy as you will seem creepy.

But more importantly, you overestimate the Apple fanboy effect. Many people buy Apple products because they're the only ones they can use because they're doctors or lawyers not CS grads. Many buy them for specific unique features such as CoreAudio for a music and audio pro, or the built-in iLife consumer media suite, or the best typography and publishing features. Many buy them because they tried one and liked it. Later they have positive opinions of the products because they work as advertised and there really isn't anything better out there for them if they need those features. HP and Dell make typewriters, that is very quaint but not appealing to an artist.

The people I watch out for are the ones who fill every computing need with a Windows PC by reflex and tell you all computers are the same. That is much worse than being a fanboy, who at least picked one thing out and said "I think that's better."

Re:Still going strong?!?

[gig]

Exxon and Shell is the same like HP and Dell, your little drama is equivalent to Bob trying to get Glen to give up his Dell and buy an HP. What's the incentive?

If there were just ONE gas station that filled up your tank with clear liquid that gave you 100 miles to the gallon and zero pollution, now that would be something to tell your friends about, even recommend they give up spoiling the planet with gasoline.

Re:Still going strong?!?

[jon287]

Or are we just surprised that the iPhone has managed to steal a few seconds of airtime from the whole Paris Hilton thing?
Wait! What!? Is Hilty in trouble again?!!? Whars mah frikin remote?! Damn iPhone distracted me from the important stuff!!

Re:Still going strong?!?

[Lemmy Caution]

This is ridiculous. You really think that Apple has created zero-emission, 100 mpg auto fuel?

You're insane. Seriously, you need help. I'm a veteran of the OS/2 advocacy wars (a bystander, really - I used to us OS/2, but when I saw it was a religion rather than an OS, I backed away slowly), and I've seen the same reality distortion lens.

Maybe Apple has "Techron." Oh boy! Techron!

Re:Still going strong?!?

[gig]

> You really think that Apple has created zero-emission, 100 mpg auto fuel?

I didn't start the ridiculous car/gasoline analogy. I have no idea what next-generation auto fuel is, I don't even know how to drive a car. The point was that Apple's stuff is next generation over the competition and that is a reason not only to buy it over something else but to recommend it over something else.

Do you really think the Web 0.5 (WML or just the text from a page) on current mobiles is equivalent to the Web 2.0 desktop-level rendering and better than IE Windows features on the iPhone? Or is it "next-generation"? I know "mobile" Web developers who put down their Web 0.5 tools last January never to pick them up again and now they are making Web 2.0 mobile apps for iPhone knowing that Nokia and everyone else will run them eventually also. Forget about Web 1.0, that never came to mobiles at all.

Mobiles are not dominated by any one company like the PC, and they also vastly outnumber the PC. Within a few years the PC will be a small minority of Web clients. The iPhone signals the end of a single vendor dominating the Web.

No more gasoline.

> Maybe Apple has "Techron." Oh boy! Techron!

No, Techron is Pocket IE, more marketing than technology. Web 2.0 on mobiles changes the entire Web. Nokia is using the same browser engine as Apple because it's open source. All phone makers are making Web 2.0 browsers because that is how the mobile apps are being made right now, a Web 1.0 browser on a mobile can't run the iPhone-optimized apps that are coming out right now, months before the other phone makers catch up.

> I'm a veteran of the OS/2 advocacy wars

Then you know what it's like to try and replace v1 with v1.1 and nobody's buying. You have to make stuff 10x better, clearly next-generation, to replace an entrenched standard. iPhone is clearly 10x better than a WML browser, Mac OS X is clearly 10x better than Windows Vista in every way except hardware-partner-licensing.

I don't advocate any technology. However I'm a creative professional, and I actually use about 20 features of the Mac that simply don't exist anywhere else. I can demonstrate the productivity gains I get from running Photoshop on Mac instead of Windows. If you use an Art Tablet, Exposé's activation corners are the corners of the Art Tablet, it is ridiculously fast and productive, worth switching to Mac for alone, never mind color management and AppleScript and so many other things.

What I WANT to know is...

[svendsen]

Where is the article that does the in-indepth coverage of:

1. First iPhone user looking at porn
2. First iPhone user sitting on toilet and surfing web
3. First iPhone user to get laid because of it (those with significant others don't count).
4. First person to have an orgasm just by touching it (it being the iPhone you sicko)

Re:What I WANT to know is...

[Reaperducer]

Where is the article that does the in-indepth coverage of:
1. First iPhone user looking at porn

I'll let you handle that.

2. First iPhone user sitting on toilet and surfing web

Mission accomplished.

3. First iPhone user to get laid because of it (those with significant others don't count).

Done.

4. First person to have an orgasm just by touching it (it being the iPhone you sicko)

I'll let you handle that one, too.

Re:What I WANT to know is...

[ModernGeek]

3. First iPhone user to get laid because of it (those with significant others don't count).

Those who purchase an iPhone and have a significant other will probably NOT get laid because of purchasing it.

Re:What I WANT to know is...

[Achromatic1978]

Definitely. In my experience, a large part of the content on YouTube does a very good job at giving me the shits...

Re:What I WANT to know is...

[i_got_an_iphone]

well, I think I got 4... Anyway I did get myself a new /. uid
by the way posting from my iphone

Re:What I WANT to know is...

[xouumalperxe]

4. First person to have an orgasm just by touching it (it being the iPhone you sicko) You're the onewho suggested having an orgasm over touching a mobile phone, and you have the gall of calling other people sick?

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.

Re:Who cares really?

[sokoban]

Unless you have Apple stock, I don't think any Slashdotter is salivating. I do and have for several years. And I am.

Thanks Apple for paying for my college education and a house.

Stop it already

[duggi]

Somebody please say "There is nothing to see here... Move along".

We can have a realistic discussion about IPhone after 2 months, not before that.

Re:STFU!

[include($dysmas)]

amen,. the intertubes need one big "STFU" notice stapling somewhere ... i mean really, its a world leader in dumb smartphones, can we please get back to news for nerds, rather than news from pr.

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...

[Kohath]

You don't understand how important their opinions are. The iPhone has to succeed/fail. Because they want it that way and their opinions matter.

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...

[Dan Ost]

Can you give us the details of the hardware + software that you're currently using?

I haven't delved into mobile computing yet and am curious where to begin. I'm afraid of the iPhone mostly because it's useless to me if I can't open an ssh connection from it.

Re:What I find funny is...

[lena_10326]

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

I think Job's attitude is they're the first to do it in style. Style is half packaging and half marketing. It may also be fancy bullshit, but that strategy sells units. People like it.

Anyway.

I'm glad to see phones (in general) feature complex functionality and come with applications previously found on the desktop. There'll be a day when your cell phone is your laptop. Plug in a standard keyboard, mouse, and monitor and away you go. No need to sync data or applications, and the programs are the exact same version running on the same machine that you use in the office, or commuting on the plane, or giving a presentation. Your laptop will always be in your pocket. We're only a few years away from that. Phones like the Treo, Blackberry, and iPhone are the precursors.

Re:What I find funny is...

[glesga_kiss]

Can you give us the details of the hardware + software that you're currently using?

I've got an HTC Blue Angel, which is also known as a Orange SPV2000 or T-Mobile MDA2s. I think! The problem is that the company that makes them (HTC) has only recently began selling phones under it's own brand. The rebranding from telcos makes it complicated and has definitely killed brand recognition in their products. Don't bother with this one, it's not far off being three years old now and there are better ones available. My next one would be likely be the HTC TyTN as wifi is essential to me.

Quick feature rundown is: slide-out qwerty keyboard, wifi, bluetooth, 128meg storage (it's old), sd-card. Built in email supports imaps, which I waited years to get on a phone. SSL is essential IMHO and pop is useless for accessing mail from multiple locations. I just run my own mail server (courier-imaps on debian). Connection speed is GPRS but the one I linked is 3G. Keyboard is also essential IMHO, if you want to write anything longer than a 160-character text message. SSH on a touch-screen keyboard is horrible; the dictionary doesn't help obviously and using vi is a nightmare without a keyboard.

I also have OpenVNC set up to hook up to my router, meaning that on-the-road I get an IP on my LAN. This is handy for copying files and uploading data as you can just drag & drop onto windows shares etc. There is free software for the usual traceroute/dns queries, the one I use even has a basic port scanner.

One cool thing you can do is use it as a network access device. I've not tried it, but in theory you can use it to share a GPRS data connection over an ad-hoc wifi network. You can off course use it as a traditonal BT modem for retro dial-up fun. This is more of a novelty for me, if I had one of the 3G versions using the same platform it would likely be something I'd use all the time.

it's useless to me if I can't open an ssh connection from it.

He he, I'm sure I once saw a terminal server for mine once. There are several remote-management tools you can get; I use SSH and VNC a lot, though you can also use RDP. I mentioned the network analysis tools earlier. You can even get a serial cable so you can use it as a dumb-terminal. I heard someone suggest once that it could be used as a remote-access device hooked up to a server, giving you remote console.

Re:What I find funny is...

[lena_10326]

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.

Thought of something else.

I say let the Lemm... errr... early adopters work that out. They'll find the glitches, complain to Apple, and Apple will probably get around to fixing the problems. Meanwhile, I lay in wait lurking for the right time to buy. Maybe a year from now, or two. The price drops, the bugs are fixed and I move in for the buy.

Or...

A competitor wakes up and pushes out a better phone, a more reliable one, for 1/3rd the price. Either way, I'll have options if I wait. $500 is beyond my threshold.

Sometimes there are benefits to being a late adopter and not feeling the need to own the current fashion device. :D

Re:What I find funny is...

[ad0gg]

Some us hope it fails because of the people who go out and buy a phone from at&t with a two year contract at full retail price of the phone. I'm not anti iphone, i think its actually a nice phone with sleek form factor and cool features, i'm just anti stupid consumers who would wait in line for hours to buy a phone at full price with a two year contract from a telecom company that facilitates spying on its customers.

Re:What I find funny is...

[dfghjk]

"It's not that people like me want to see it go down in flames."

Only fools wish for such things.

"What annoys some of us is that it's being presented as revolutionary. It's not."

That and they're inclined to not learn from the mistakes of others. Apple's arrogance is generally what annoys people, that and the fanboys who buy into it.

"From what I hear it has the same UI problems as the first smartphones."

No, not really. It has problems but it's pretty much unique. Cut and paste is a problem for some smartphones but not all.

"From reading about people using it, some of the UI is an improvement but it needs work in many places."

That's more like 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."

Lots of smartphones give you the internet in your pocket and an integrated media player. Media functions of the iPhone are clearly better than what we've seen before but I'm not convinced Safari is. There are plenty of things it cannot do such as configuring my home page! You cannot drag and drop in Safari. The iPhone doesn't integrate SMS and email in any way.

Frankly, I see integration of a GPS receiver to be a compelling feature that they excluded. Google maps with GPS on the iPhone would be great.

Re:What I find funny is...

[dfghjk]

If Jobs would say it like that it would be fine.

It is good that phones increasingly compete with computers but the iPhone is not one of those. It may have the most sophisticated OS of any phone but, unlike computers and other smartphones, the iPhone is strictly fixed-function.

Re:What I find funny is...

[Grishnakh]

i'm just anti stupid consumers who would wait in line for hours to buy a phone at full price with a two year contract from a telecom company that facilitates spying on its customers.

There's not exactly a lot of alternatives for cellular providers. There's a handful of providers, and they all really suck. It's like complaining about the Democrats or the Republicans; you only have two realistic choices, and they both really suck. The alternative, of course, is to go without a phone (landline providers suck too so don't offer that as an alternative), but having a phone is pretty essential in the modern world, just like electricity and running water.

Re:What I find funny is...

[stewbacca]

Arrogant is a stupid adjective to put on an entire organization, especially when it is unfounded in your post. Examples, please? Just because Apple has the corporate identity of demanding really good products, and not selling out with cheapie crap, doesn't make them arrogant. It isn't that Apple (or Apple customers) think they are better than anbody else, they are just comfortable in knowing they have a good product, REGARDLESS of everyone else's beliefs about technology. See, we Apple fanbois really don't care what you think, but it is kind of fun seeing the masses of people "see the light" and start drinking the kool-aid with us. The more the merrier, and more demand means more product, which only makes life as a Mac-using, iPod toting nerd that much better. Maybe I'll get more good games other than World of Warcraft now.

Re:What I find funny is...

[rainer_d]

> ssh, vnc, vi ...

> etc.pp.

All useless to the general public. Apple probably sold more iPhones in the first 90 minutes than there are people who need those features.
The HTC phone my co-worker has seems to have a very bad voice-quality.
Personally, I bought a Siemens SK65, specifically for the quert-Keyboard - it also has quite a nice form-factor in that it isn't to wide (but rather thick). I even managed to get it so sync with iSync last week ;-)
Using it for anything else than phoning and SMSing is a nightmare, though - but those two use-cases are all I need to do, mostly, so it's OK and I'm not sure I need an iPhone. I will probably get one, when
a) my employer continues to pay the monthly fees, as he does for my current phone.
b) it's actually available from the telco where our company has the business-contract (in Switzerland, I should add)

I'm not going to to spend big bucks on the monthly contract just for fun, or to impress co-workers.
But I'll also avoid a Windoze-phone like the plague, I have to admit that ;-)

Re:What I find funny is...

[sethstorm]

Good luck with that. Nokia, Motorola, Sony none of these build anything that competes with Apple products on par.
With 70% and change, they're going to not get to Nokia anytime soon. Series 40, 60, 80 and the 770/800 make for quite well-made phones.

Not all that Sony makes will flop. Where Nokia does well with well-rounded smartphones, they've been able to do well at multimedia phones.

Motorola on the other hand, you can see that they aren't ashamed of the low quality of Chinese manufacturing. Outside of the RAZR (except for the other iFailure), it shows well. They just do without the Apple disguise.

Apple will dominate...
Apple might as well be content that they're little more than just someone who makes a crippled "Internet Tablet knockoff".

AT&T won't kill the i****e, but it's going to pen it in a very, very small corner. As for Verizon, they'll be just fine without it.

The only right move would have been to make it with those missing features, and put AT&T to the task of building up 3G to more places.

Re:What I find funny is...

[dangitman]

It took the iPod to bring mp3 players to the masses but it wasn't really an evolution change in technology.

Actually, it was a significant evolutionary step. It was the first MP3 player with high-speed transfer. It had Firewire, while all the others had USB1.1, making them painfully slow to use. It was also the first with such a compact form factor for so much storage. Devices with comparable storage were like bricks. Additionally, it was the first player to properly integrate the desktop software in a satisfying manner. iTunes is a huge part of what made the iPod so attractive to consumers.

It was more marketing and design, such as the white headphones serving as a constant "join us, it's great!" advertisement.

Hang on, isn't design an important part of any technology product? Probably the most significant advances in computers have come because of design. I don't understand why you would lump design in with "marketing." If anything, it belongs with "technology," because technology has to be designed, after all.

Anyway, I think you are mistaken about the marketing. The early iPod ads starred a dorky Jeff Goldblum, for fuck's sake! The blitz of silhouette ads didn't begin until the iPod was already successful as a product. The first wave was almost all word-of-mouth among satisfied users. There's no way it's all just due to marketing. If the iPod was a sucky device, it wouldn't matter how much advertising there was. People don't tend to buy expensive devices just because an ad told them too. Microsoft can blitz the world with "Wow" ads, but nobody thinks that Vista is cool because of it.

If you look at the history, I think it's pretty clear that Apple only really ramped up the marketing once it was already a phenomenon. I don't think that Apple themselves had any idea just how successful the iPod was going to be. If it had been less successful, it probably would have stayed Mac-only and been a niche product.

Re:What I find funny is...

[Fred Ferrigno]

All useless to the general public. Apple probably sold more iPhones in the first 90 minutes than there are people who need those features. That's why not having the SDK is such a buzz kill. Only a fraction of people need any specific feature, but pretty much everyone is going to find something lacking out of the box. Why not let those with the inclination and ability to fix their issue for themselves?

Re:What I find funny is...

[Knara]

See, we Apple fanbois really don't care what you think, but it is kind of fun seeing the masses of people "see the light" and start drinking the kool-aid with us Wow... just... wow. "Drinking the kool-aide with us"... just... I can't even find the words for how amazingly stupid that is.

Re:What I find funny is...

[rainer_d]

> Why not let those with the inclination and ability to fix their issue for themselves?

Only very few people would be in a position to do something sensible with an SDK, other than mess-up their iPhone.
The iPhone is like a lot of other Apple-products: a compromise. Judging from initial feedback, the compromise satisfies most people.
We'll see how many annoyances creep-up after weeks of usage and how many people get fed-up by the appliance-style of the iPhone.
But due to the fact that it does a few things *very* well and those few things match with what more than 95% like to do most (phoning, SMS, email, web-browsing and now even youtube), I can't imagine many re-stockings.

Nevertheless, I also believe, there is an SDK in the works - it's just that Apple may want to get it right, again, first-time.
Of course, it's also about control. Apple doesn't want mediocre software to water-down the brand and reputation they have spend years of work and billions of dollars to build.
Still, other manufacturers will have a hard-time. The iPhone is already the gold-standard in a lot of categories that any other phone (cheap or expensive) will have to measure up to - and it is the first version of the first phone from a manufacturer who has never released one before (if you agree that the newton wasn't a phone and thus cannot be counted fully...) - and it has been on sale for half a week.

Re:What I find funny is...

[Fred Ferrigno]

Only very few people would be in a position to do something sensible with an SDK, other than mess-up their iPhone. Meh. I doubt those people will even bother trying to screw up their phone. The people who know what they're doing write the apps and release them to the rest of us. Even as a programmer myself, I haven't ever bothered to code for my PDA. There are enough well-written applications out there already.

Unless you've got some info I haven't seen, I rather doubt there will ever be an SDK for precisely one reason: VoIP. A phone that can handle Skype calls as easily as normal calls is pretty much AT&T's worst nightmare. The iPhone is the first AT&T phone that has WiFi. For previous phones, like the Nokia E61, AT&T demanded that they remove WiFi functionality, so we have the Nokia E62 in the US. I'd bet that in exchange for allowing Apple to include WiFi, Apple promised not to allow third party apps that might actually use 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.

Re:What I find funny is...

[MCSEBear]

I totally love you.

Re:What I find funny is...

[stewbacca]

Its the sarcasm, stupid! Or maybe you are new here and don't see all the insulting, insecure anti-mac comments after insulting insecure anti-mac comment: drinking the kool-aid being one of their fave (and most lame, one step above fabnoi).

Re:What I find funny is...

[gig]

> What annoys some of us is that it's being presented as revolutionary. It's not.

No, what you're missing is that the iPhone IS a revolutionary device, but it IS NOT a revolutionary phone.

Phone in your pocket? Yawn.

iPod in your pocket? Yawn.

Email in your pocket? Yawn.

Desktop-level Web 2.0 in your pocket? Huge fucking deal. There has not even been desktop-level Web 1.0 in a phone yet. Nobody has done the equivalent of Internet Explorer 5 for Windows on a phone, that is Web 1.0 circa 2000 and here in 2007 we don't have that on a phone yet. What Apple just did was put Safari 3 in a phone, that is Web 2.0 2008 in a phone.

So what?

If the Web is confined to the PC, it is dominated by Microsoft. The biggest competitor to Web 2.0 is Microsoft Internet Explorer's Web 1.0. One company is holding back the whole Web right now because they see the Web as one piece of the PC. However, the iPhone reveals that it is the other way around: the PC is one part of the Web. Microsoft's domination of the Web is over, they are back to just dominating the typewriter market.

Phones are 4:1 over PC's right now, in a few years that is 8:1 and most of those phones will have Web 2.0 browsers, because Web 2.0 has replaced WML as the "mobile" Web standard. There are many mobile-oriented Web 2.0 "iPhone apps" right now and more to come and the only thing stopping any phone manufacturer from running them is their lack of a Web 2.0 browser. Well, WebKit and Mozilla are both Web 2.0 and open source so that isn't a very large hill to climb when your users are demanding pocket Web browsing. People are going to start using these iPhone apps on their phones and on their PC's they will have to start using Safari or Firefox in order to see them there, they won't work in Internet Explorer for Windows. IE will be seen to be the odd one out same as Windows is the odd one out in operating systems, everyone else is Unix compatible.

Microsoft relies on their PC market dominance to get Web developers to write lowest-common-denominator stuff that works in their quirky, non-standard, buggy, Web 1.0 browser which lacked active developers for 5 years. Between now and 2010, Internet Explorer will gradually drop from it's current 75% Web market share to under 50%, even if it maintains its dominance on the PC. People will have 2-3 Web browsers in their lives at that point, one in the phone, one on the TV, one on the PC, and they're going to see IE fucking up like it does because developers, especially small ones and bloggers, are not going to make a second site so that Windows users can avoid downloading 8 MB of Safari or 17 MB of Firefox.

Microsoft has not even started their Web 2.0 browser yet. Web rendering engines are like operating system kernels in that you put a small team to work for a number of years along with lots of feedback from users and finally you get something that works. You can't put 10,000 coders to work for a month and get back a new Web rendering engine with Web 2.0 standards support.

I've been making Web sites for years, and the only browser a client ever asked me specifically to support was Internet Explorer for Windows. A couple of days after the iPhone debut last January, six months before it shipped, a client asked me to make sure what we were making runs on iPhone. The torch is passed.

Re:What I find funny is...

[gig]

> That's why not having the SDK is such a buzz kill.

Everything in iPhone runs as root right now. The buzz kill would be third-party software that dials 900 numbers and you can't make it stop.

Re:What I find funny is...

[gig]

> The iPhone is like a lot of other Apple-products: a compromise

It's called "design." The same principles are behind it as "pick two: fast, easy, or cheap." It's less about compromise and more about reality.

Everything on iPhone runs as root, it is like Windows XP in there. Apple is not going to replicate what Windows XP did to the Internet and Microsoft's reputation (such as it was) with iPhone. If you get some malware on your phone, the way you may find out is your monthly bill comes and you've got $10,000 in 900 calls that you didn't know about. Or your phone service will be cut off and you'll call AT&T saying "what the hell?" and they'll say your credit is hosed brother, put down that iPhone, no more phone sex for you.

The iPhone supports Web 2.0, iPod dock connector, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi accessories. That is a lot more love than many pocket devices. There are 3000 iPod accessories that already work with iPhone, even a sex toy.

The native apps thing strikes me as the same as the internal battery controversy. I read an article where the guy said the reason he doesn't like the internal battery is that you can't carry a spare. But he is entirely and completely wrong. The iPod also has an internal battery, yet you can buy a dock with a built-in battery that lasts for days and days. There are huge battery packs like a briefcase with an iPod connector coming off them. They all work on iPhone. The internal battery only removes the ability to run with zero batteries, it doesn't stop you from running with 8 or 10 and you can just plug them on, not opening a case, not fucking around, and maybe the best part is that when the external battery dies, your internal battery is fully charged, it acts like a reserve battery, you won't even have to stop your current call or movie. If the guy complaining about not having a spare really wanted a spare battery he would have asked "can I get a spare battery for my iPhone?" but I think he really just wanted to complain about the iPhone.

Re:What I find funny is...

[gig]

> Lots of smartphones give you the internet in your pocket

Yes, they give you INTERNET but they do not give you the World Wide Web. They most especially do not give you Web 2.0 or the same rendering engine from a PC. Only nerds can use the Internet without the Web. Do not try to tell me that Web 1994 from other phones is equivalent to Web 2007 on the iPhone, it is not. You go to Flickr on iPhone and it is Flickr. A child would recognize it and can use it. Saying that non-iPhone phones "have the Web" is disingenuous and ALWAYS disappoints consumers, who are not impressed that you retrieved 1/3 of a Web site and showed them the text from it. They simply do not consider that to be the Web any more than a storyboard is a movie.

You can complain about the phone, email, iPod, not being revolutionary all you want, fair enough, but it is patently absurd to deny that the browser in iPhone is novel and unique. It has changed Web development entirely, even now. In December 2006 we had Web 1.0 for PC's and WML for mobiles, in January 2007 that changed to Web 2.0 for both mobiles and PC's. The reason is that phones already outnumber PC's by 4:1 and it is expected to be 8:1 by 2010, and phones are adding Web 2.0 browsers, not Web 1.0 like Microsoft, because they want to run "iPhone apps", the new mobile apps being created specifically for iPhone using the Web 2.0 specifications. Nokia is closest to running them on a phone after Apple, so watch for them, but all of the phone manufacturers have already said they're working on "iPhone-style Web browsing" for their phones because that's the part of iPhone that people are going crazy for. Nokia is using WebKit, the same engine as iPhone uses, others are using Firefox no doubt. There is no Microsoft product for them to choose from, even Microsoft's PC browser cannot run "iPhone apps."

Developers, developers, developers ... all rushing right now to make content for a Web that is 10x the size of the current one within 5 years. What helps is many of us learned Web 2.0 already for Safari/Firefox 1 and 2, now we feel like we are turned loose by the iPhone.

Re:What I find funny is...

[FrkyD]

Forget the TyTn. It's my fourth "smart"phone, the second one running windows mobile, and the closest thing to star trek that I have yet owned, but you really don't want one.

To begin with, it is shipped with WM5. That's bad. Even worse are the BT drivers. Like the idea of stereo bluetooth? I do. But I couldn't do it with the software straight out of the box. Well, that's not really true. I could pair with a device, and evn get some audio, but it sounded like crap and suffered from massive dropouts. Using the TyTn as an ipod replacement with bluetooth headphones isn't going to happen with WM5.

Of course, you could upgrade to WM6. Something I would actually advise you to do if you want to get some use out of the hardware you paid for. The trouble is, that no one officially supports WM6 on TyTn. You will have to jump through some hoops and void your warranty in order to get it running. Microsoft puts the responsibility of releasing software upgrades on the networks, and the networks stop paying attention to your phone as soon as the next great thing is out. If you get a TyTn, you will need to join two sites to get some decent (if unofficial) support. XDA-Developers and 4winmobile.

So assuming you buy the hardware, void your warranty, risk bricking your device, and finally have a phone that almost does what was promised, you will find out that it's still only really stable as long as you don't add too many third-party apps. And your battery life will suck. And the interface will still look like win98 in a fancy dress. Unless you install third party software. But that might make things shaky again.

In other words, yes, you could buy another phone that does most (or more) of what the iPhone can do. But you can't buy one that will do it well. I don't know if the iPhone can do it well either, but if it has longer battery life, the radio stack doesn't crash and safari can load a webpage with more then ten elements, then it will have beaten any current windows mobile device.

I love the idea of my TyTn. I just really hate the reality.

Re:What I find funny is...

[glesga_kiss]

Yes, they give you INTERNET but they do not give you the World Wide Web. They most especially do not give you Web 2.0 or the same rendering engine from a PC.

You are completely wrong. The web browsers on mobiles are fully functional. I use Opera myself, it renders as well as if not better than Safari. It's a mature product and the UI is good.

the new mobile apps being created specifically for iPhone using the Web 2.0 specifications.

There is no such thing as "Web 2.0 specifications". It's just a moniker for user-submitted content.

Re:What I find funny is...

[clanky]

"What annoys some of us is that it's being presented as revolutionary. It's not. "

It is. Let me explain why, without the need for fanboy arm waving.

I've read this "it's not revolutionary, like it's being touted" argument before, and it seems to miss the essential point of what makes something "revolutionary." That is to say, capable of starting a revolution.

The ipod was, indeed, revolutionary. And the reason was simple -- not marketing (though most would agree apple did a pretty good job marketing it), and not, as you somewhat humorously suggest, the zombie-like effect of white headphones. The ipod essentially created the mp3 market, and with it, the online music business by taking on products that were *godawful* in design and, rather than focus on feature lists to beat them, devoted their attention exclusively to the few features that are were essential (ie. rip or buy and then locally listen to music) actually work. Sure, there's a bunch of innovation in the design (i.e. the accellerating scroll wheel) but the fact is that it's the whole package of the interface that makes the thing revolutionary. And this is what many folks on slashdot miss -- it's *not* about features. It's about usability. And making things usable is nontrivial. In short, just because the engineering team loves it, doesn't mean it's done. I'm glad you like your two year old SuperNerdPhone, but just because it has a complete feature set does not make it revolutionary. Because in order to start a revolution, you've got to have a mob. Apple's good at making products the mob can use (and occasionally enjoy, but that's really beside the point).

I also tire of the media's somewhat inane characterization of the iphone's interface as "fun" -- as in "other phones have done this before, but the iphone makes it fun!" It might be fun, but the real point is that people can use the damn features in the first place. They're having fun because they're not frustrated, as they've grown to expect when using non-basic features on phones.

I'm responsible for user experience at an online education company. A few months ago our board had an outside consultant compare our online platform to four other competitors. From the looks of the feature checklist, we were in a lot of trouble. The board looked at it and shook their heads. "We need to invest in our technology group to make ourselves more competitive!" they all screamed in unison. I shrugged when I heard this and sent my CEO a similar chart comparing the ipod to the other music players on the market. Based on this chart, the ipod was by far the least capable player. And yet it holds onto 80%+ of the marketplace. Hmm.

I never tire of reminding my engineer buddies about this basic tenet of product design: It's the interface, stupid. KISS indeed.

Re:What I find funny is...

[Knara]

Yes, obviously I am new here.

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

[Red Flayer]

I bought the iPhone

You bastard! What are the rest of us going to do now? And why did Apple only make one of them?

All joking aside, the way you phrased that says something interesting about how a lot of consumers view the iPhone. Not as a commodity (I bought a monitor) but as a singularity (I bought the iPhone). Maybe I'm reading into a bit too deeply, but it seems to me that it reflects a valuation of the iPhone as something more than a thing.

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.

Re:I am happy the iPhone is doing well

[Spyky]

Interesting observation.

I also puchased an iPhone, and I noticed myself referring to it as an "iPhone". As in, "I left my iPhone upstairs, let me go grab it, then we can leave". I didn't refer to my previous phone(s) by brand or model name, instead just referring to it as a "phone" or "cell phone". Somehow the term phone seems inadequate to describe the iPhone. Or maybe it's all just a result of me being indoctrinated by the very successful marketing campaign by Apple.

For what it's worth it's a really great device. For all the haters out there I bet you you can't try using it and not want one.

-Spyky

Re:I am happy the iPhone is doing well

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, there may have been smartphones around before the iPhone, but they all sucked since they ran Windows operating systems. Come on, a "start" menu on a tiny phone screen? Having to use a stylus for everything? There's a reason those phone didn't sell well, and it's all about the software they ran. Everyone already hates using Windows on their regular computers; they certainly don't want to mess with it on their phone. This isn't just my opinion; check out the long lines of people waiting to buy Vista when it came out, or the lack thereof.

News Flash!

[EMeta]

Breaking story: Apple employs some of best UI developers, programmers in world, saves money to pay them (as well as assemblers, shippers, distributors, management, etc). This kind of mark-up is rather typical for brand name products with warrenties.

Re:News Flash!

[sethstorm]

(as well as assemblers, shippers, distributors, management, etc)
Wouldnt be surprised if Apple had things running like this in China.

Re:STFU!

[Red Flayer]

Would you rather have one meta-story with links to a multitude of articles, or would you rather have all the iPhone stories interspersed throughout the meaningful content all day? I prefer we throw the iPhone junkies a bone, but keep on with the regular content the rest of the day.

Also, if you don't want to read TFA, you don't have to. You could, you know, STFU & GBTW, as your comment's subject would suggest.

Also, I'd just like to note that, for the record, I watch little TV, and I have barely noticed the hype that everyone is freaking out about. Maybe it's because I know enough to tune it out (while recognizing that *sometimes* there's an informative or interesting piece about the iPhone), or maybe it's because I choose to avoid the hype factories of morning TV network 'news'.

At any rate, it only bothers you if you let it... so take a chill pill and ignore it.

Re:Who cares really?

[2nd Post!]

How can you be a Slashdotter, not watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, and NOT want an iPhone?

Re:STFU!

[eln]

Posting a story that is an aggregate of other stories would require the Slashdot editors to, you know, edit. That's not really their thing.

Bawwwwing

[jb.hl.com]

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.

Perhaps "the amount of media hype and saturation" would be a better description... Going by Slashdot's reaction, you'd think they'd invented an orgasmatron or something.

Re:Bawwwwing

[Macthorpe]

Agreed.

I'm worried about reading the comments when this thing comes out.

Dealing with Apple geeks is one thing, dealing with Linux geeks with their own OSS phone will be quite another.

Re:Bawwwwing

[jb.hl.com]

The only wonky Linux geek that matters is most likely getting all hot and bothered over the Neo right at this moment, at least judging by his comments about it.... ;)

Re:Who cares really?

[glesga_kiss]

How can you be a Slashdotter, not watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, and NOT want an iPhone?

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

Granted it doesn't have a cool logo and look as pretty, but as geeks we aren't supposed to care about such things!

Re:Who cares really?

[i_like_spam]

FYI: If those with Apple stock, shares are down as we speak (and maybe for the day).

Possibly not an issue with the iPhone

[SuperKendall]

Since the iPhone stores vmail locally, will this security problem with AT&T in general even be an issue with the iPhone I wonder? I'm not sure if the vmail is still held on the server after the phone receives it.

---> Kendall

Re:Voicemail Vulnerability

[glesga_kiss]

security concern that's the fault of weak authentication in the AT&T/Cingular voicemail system

While it's interesting, it's no big deal. Voicemail is notoriously insecure. Most people don't even realise that it can usually be accessed from any line and therefore do not change the default password for this.

Several UK reporters were arrested a year or so ago for doing this to the Royal Families phones to hear their messages. Initially the story seemed to be about some hi-tech uber-hack but in the end it came down to that.

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:Huh

[night_flyer]

that include that stuff... you have to figure labor to build them in China amounts to about $0.50

Re:Huh

[Microlith]

Slashbots like to reduce things to the cost of physical materials and labor involved only.

Why do you think that movies/music/games are worth only the cost of physical media to them?

Development? R&D? Nah, all that's free. Only the PRESSING costs money. According to the slashbots.

Re:Huh

[sethstorm]

Well, they're the textbook example of what happens when you export the Singapore model of things to a 1.4bn population. No real freedom unless you're a business - not the way to go.

You're probably overestimating that labor too, as it's not above that country to use tactics reserved by union busters in the early 20th century.

Firmware

[TubeSteak]

IIRC, the firmware is available from an Apple website
And they've cracked the root password for the iPhone OS

Re:Firmware

[mrzaph0d]

was it "AT&T engineers are weenies!"?

Re:Who cares really?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

They've already sold more iPhones than there are active Slashdot users.

The prediction is they will move 10+ million by the end of the year.

That's who cares. It's tech. This is a tech news site. It's the biggest thing techy to happen in the past week.

He's modded flamebait because he was baiting flame.

AT&T Network (EDGE) +iPhone

[ryanw]

The night before the launch I noticed several reports of people saying AT&T seemed to have opened up their network quite a bit. I have been searching for any confirmed network speeds on the phone.

Also, would like to know if anyone has been able to make the thing work as a bluetooth modem for internet on a laptop.

Re:AT&T Network (EDGE) +iPhone

[Charliems]

I did a speed test today, got around 190kbs, no idea what it was before in my area. As for the bluetooth, no it can not be used as a modem. It actually can't do anything with bluetooth except a headphone. According to the apple bluetooth wizard thing, there are no services at all the laptop can use.

Re:AT&T Network (EDGE) +iPhone

[ryanw]

That sux about the bluetooth modem thing. Probably that way because AT&T feared their network would melt with the surge of iPhone net users... I would hope that over time once the network usage stabalizes that this restriction is lifted.

Re:AT&T Network (EDGE) +iPhone

[Lodragandraoidh]

Remember -- the really powerful aspect of this phone is that Apple can push OS/software updates to the phone.

This means that you won't have to throw away your iPhone 1.0 because the interface and underlying applications can be modified as they get more experience/perfect more services. I am sure they will partner with other companies to do this (Cisco VPN anyone?).

I can see a bluetooth portable keyboard for data input (foldable into a small bundle that fits in your bag) for those of us that write alot while out on the town - sipping a latte and writing the next installment of your travelogue or great American novel(tm).

Re:Who cares really?

[kemapa]

The share price is only down a small amount, which can be attributed to normal market noise. This is actually an indicator that the iPhone is performing (over 500,000 sold) just about where financial analysts expected it to. If it had outperformed expectations you'd see huge abnormal gains, and if it had underperformed you'd see enormous capital losses. These two scenarios can still occur as more information comes out about the iPhone's sales, but for the moment it appears that analysts predicted sales fairly accurately and began pricing their estimates into Apple stock from when the product was first announced.

Personally, I short sold (bet against) a large amount of Apple stock last Friday. I feel like the iPhone has been over-hyped and the Apple loyalists are influencing the share price more than they should be in a relatively efficient market.

For those who are more risk averse than I am, it's potentially a bad security to be holding at the moment. Large fluctuations in share price are certainly possible in the coming weeks if analysts turn out to be wrong in either direction.

Re:STFU!

[JamesRose]

Firstly, from what I've seen so far, this story has been in conjunction with other iPhone stories (I'm in the UK, so I may see several in a day that are posted actually over 2 half days, not that there's much difference). Secondly, its a self fulfilling article its an article saying, there are lots of articles about the iphone, and by doing that, its adding to the number of articles, and amount of hype there is, if you don't draw the line at how many iphone articles, draw it at lets just keep them simple and no articles about the hype etc...

What are the real costs?

[TheBearBear]

hey guys i'm curious. Does the "$220 to make" include only the manufacturing and material aspect, or also shipping and marketing and all that. in other words, does all of that $220 including paying back for R&D and sales and all sorts, and the other $380 or $280 is pure profit? Thanks

Re:What are the real costs?

[aengblom]

It doesn't even include putting the parts together let alone, shipping, marketing, R&D, sales or Steve Job's jet.

Ugh

[guspasho]

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.

And when did the product come out? Oh that's right - yesterday! I know it's just an introduction and it's just tech "reporting" (read: hummers) but stupidity like that should be painful. Should the general population become bored with a product as soon as it has launched? No, and we would all prefer it if the tech media wasn't either. I, for one, am sick of seeing all hype and no follow-up. How does it actually work? How did people who actually tried using it like it? What was their overall experience so far? Heaven forbid anybody keep track of that in case some of us may want to consider the product based on real-world experiences rather than OMG-factor.

Top 10 Mistakes

[T-Bone-T]

Some of the "mistakes" are just silly!

"2. ...Having to click on an icon in the far upper left upper corner of the screen is a pain."

Haha. I suppose it the far bottom left corner is less painful? He is right about the period being on a separate screen in the keyboard. That is an actual mistake.

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. :)

Re:Top 10 Mistakes

[ddocjohn]

"2. ...Having to click on an icon in the far upper left upper corner of the screen is a pain." For lefties, on the other hand, it's the far right corner that's the problem. Can't please everyone.

Re:Top 10 Mistakes

[Achromatic1978]

All carriers count multipart SMS as multiple billing units, as multiple SMSes are sent.

Re:Top 10 Mistakes

[dfghjk]

Funny, I thought he was absolutely dead-on accurate.

If there wasn't an advantage to the bottom row apps, then why did Apple make them special? Those apps are supposed to be the main ones and I, like the author of that comment, believe that SMS is more important than Mail. I don't really even care about email at all personally.

So what other of his listed mistakes are silly?

Re:Top 10 Mistakes

[dfghjk]

Regardless of how the iPhone or AT&T handle SMS, the person receiving your message may not comprehend what you send when the message is broken up and pieced together automatically. Not everyone you are talking to is using AT&T or the iPhone and it is important to me to avoid sending SMS messages that are too long. It sucks that Apple doesn't provide such basic assistance. It could have been an optional setting for those of us who care about what others are using.

Re:Top 10 Mistakes

[dfghjk]

The best location for apps is the bottom row. I don't think its a leftie/rightie thing at all. SMS for me will get far, far more use than the Mail app will. I'm a leftie and it really annoys me.

Re:STFU!

[Red Flayer]

Hm, I never thought of Slashdot having original articles. It's an aggregator/meta site...

At any rate, I'd much rather have all the hype on one easily-avoidable story for people who are sick of it, instead of constantly.

Keep in mind though, that some people do want to see the iPhone stuff, and it's completely up to you whether or not you want to waste your time on them.

Configured my bosses - impressive

[mergy]

I didn't buy into all the hype but my boss came in today with it and after setting it up on our WPA wireless network, getting his mail running to our servers via IMAPS, etc. it is a VERY nice device.

The EDGE network blows. But, browsing off of it from our wireless network is a breeze. The screen is solid and I was amazed at the clarity of the screen with fonts, images when zooming really close. After setting it up on the network, it does need a few things.

1. ActiveSync or something to sync to our mailserver so the user can get contacts, calendar and mail.
2. IPSec VPN ability - maybe Cisco will get a client in this?
3. Open Office documents (Excel, Word)
4. Open PDF docs.

I am sure this will get better as it goes. But, far far better than I would have expected as a first gen device. It does make my Treo 700p look poor.

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[mergy]

"God are you a loser."

Ah, great that the kids are out on summer vacation isn't it? Now go back to myspace or youtube and try to cope with your stressful life.

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[soft_guy]

1. ActiveSync or something to sync to our mailserver so the user can get contacts, calendar and mail.
2. IPSec VPN ability - maybe Cisco will get a client in this?
3. Open Office documents (Excel, Word)
4. Open PDF docs. 1. It already syncs with Outlook. Although I'm guessing you want it to pull these directly from Exchange. Still, you can put Outlook contacts onto iPhone.
2. I have no idea.
3. Already opens Word/Excel files.
4. Already opens PDF.

I heard there was a bug related to PDF, but not sure about that as I haven't tried it yet. I would expect a bug fix software update for several issues soon.

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[mergy]

Thanks.

I was unable to get it to handle Word and Excel attachments but will try again.

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[m0nkyman]

3. Already opens Word/Excel files.
4. Already opens PDF.

Only as email attachments. There is no way to directly transfer documents to the phone and read them....

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[SoulRider]

Ahh I see the astro-turfers are out in full swing. MS wants to generate as much bad publicity for the iPhone as they can because mobile windows sucks so bad. Hence the AC posting.

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[soft_guy]

I believe that you can read such documents via Safari if they are on the web (as PDFs commonly are.)

Re:Configured my bosses - impressive

[Gompers]

There's a big difference between "syncs with Outlook" and "syncs with Exchange".

One requires a desktop computer running an e-mail client, and the other just requires the same e-mail service that everyone else uses. Also, Exchange ActiveSync gives you push e-mail (as well as contacts and calendar) and it works fairly well.

By the way, the 4 things that are mentioned work flawlessly on my Treo 755.

Not bashing the iPhone, really, but to me it doesn't seem like it was built with corporate users in mind. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely shows in the things they've focused on.

WTH is wrong with the media?

[pavon]

I mean it has been three days and we still do not know if Paris Hilton has purchased an iPhone.

And they call themselves journalists.

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?

[blowdart]

How can you be a Slashdotter, not watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, and NOT want an iPhone?

Because it doesn't come with a poster of Natalie Portman naked, petrified and covered in grits. Darned newbies, just don't get what makes us tick.

Boneheaded Built-in Battery

[SpeedBump0619]

The number one design choice I don't get so far is the non-replacable battery. From the tear-downs it seems like a trival (and relatively inexpensive) bit of engineering to have altered the back shell to allow for a clip-in battery. Is Apple really that desperate for their cut of battery replacements? They could even have designed around a smaller battery trusting that heavy users would buy a backup anyway.

Re:Boneheaded Built-in Battery

[stewbacca]

Have you not noticed the entire industry of third party iPod accessories? What makes you think the iPhone will be any different? Also, where are you going to be that you won't be charging an iPhone after 8 hours of use? I know my car and nearly every room in my house has some sort of iPod charging device. Planes have them now too. I just don't understand why I'd need more than 8 hours at a stint.

Interface blog entry worth the read.

[harl]

The interface blog entry is worth the read. If only for the dicking er the clicking.

I don't know if it's my layout or what but the font he uses has literally no whitespace between a 'v' and the next letter. So clicking becomes . . .

Re:Interface blog entry worth the read.

[CatPieMan]

It is the wordpress 'classic' theme.

For whatever reason, they put in "letter-spacing: -1px;" for the p tag.

Classic is actually a fantastic theme, if you comment out that one line, which is about line 150 in [wp install]/wp-content/themes/classic/style.css .

iPhone Interest Still Going Strong

[Colin Smith]

Not here it isn't.

Geeks Should Care!

[LKM]

The question is not what it does, it's how it does it. Are you excited about Jeff Han's multitouch displays? Then why are you not excited about having one in your pocket?

Re:Geeks Should Care!

[thesolo]

Are you excited about Jeff Han's multitouch displays? Then why are you not excited about having one in your pocket?

I loved Han's presentation at TED 2006, but that does not make me want to go out and get an iPhone.

Plain & simple, it simply does not do things that I can currently do with my existing Windows Mobile-based smartphone, namely:
1) No voice dialing.
2) No IM clients.
3) No Outlook syncing.
4) No easily swappable battery.

Don't get me wrong, it's a slick phone, the interface is top notch, the size is excellent, but it doesn't do things my current phone does, and it's not available for my carrier (Verizon). I'd have to pay a fee for early service termination, plus pay the $600+ for an iPhone, just to lose features to which I'm already acclimated.

On top of that, I'd still need to carry an iPod, because I have over 600 CDs, and an 8 GB iPhone is not going to hold even a fraction of my collection. I have an 80 GB iPod, and it only has 8 gigs free on it.

So until the iPhone can actually replace my phone and iPod, I simply won't buy it, no matter how skinny it is or how cool the multi-touch display looks.

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:Geeks Should Care!

[nitehorse]

Actually, it does sync with your Outlook contacts. And your Outlook calendar. It doesn't do proper Exchange integration via ActiveSync or ActivePush or whatever Microsoft's bullshit is called, but it does work with IMAP pretty well. The syncing goes through iTunes, which is retarded, but it does properly sync to Outlook data stores (on PCs, anyway. On the Mac, it syncs with the systemwide addressbook, iCal, etc)

Re:Geeks Should Care!

[LKM]

I wasn't saying that everyone should buy one. It's not the right phone for everyone. I was simply stating that saying that geeks shouldn't care about it is absurd.

Re:Geeks Should Care!

[dgatwood]

The only thing I disagree with there is voice dialing. Most people would not be using it in a really noisy place. Most people use it in their cars. I know the whole "shut up and drive" reaction is a common response, but I'd still rather have people using voice dialing than looking down at an iPhone screen.. which some people will do in the absence of voice dialing. You know they will. ;-D

Also, I suspect voice dialing would work in noisy places if you are using a headset with an ear canal pickup.

Re:Geeks Should Care!

[hoppo]

You make a very good point. If I wasn't already with AT&T I would not have even considered it. Same goes for its use as a media device -- I'll likely never use it as a music or video player, which is why I purchased the 4GB unit. Really, I was looking for a new phone. I have two important factors in that regard -- sound quality and phone book management. I thought both were exemplary with the iPhone. That's why I bought it. I'm probably in the minority of buyers -- I could give a crap about all the features and am willing to pay good money for a cell phone if it fits my needs.

Re:Geeks Should Care!

[toleraen]

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? Yes (Football stadium with 50k people), yes, roughly 6:1 (voice:contacts), one button.

This I hope would be available in iPhone in an update soon. People also hoped for replaceable batteries. Isn't Apple the only source for an update like this too? Here's to hoping!

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*. Yeah, a software enabled device that only a single company can actually develop for.

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? Yeah, because batteries never go bad. I'd rather pay the $30 for a spare battery than have to send my phone in for warranty repair (is that free warranty good for 4 years?).

Who needs it?

[SuperKendall]

If I want a longer use duration (say, international flight), I can use one of the many iPod external battery packs.

Otherwise, who really needs to replace the battery that easily? I fully expect to get many years of use out of this one. I don't see making the case less sealed than it might be a good tradeoff for something I will almost never want to do.

I thought the same thing, back when I purchased my Palm V - I had no need for a removable battery then, nor do I now. I prefer the longer battery life that a sealed solution invariable gives, along with the smaller form factor. It takes space to engineer a robust doorway into a device!

Re:Who needs it?

[adisakp]

Apple estimates 300-400 full charges before your battery needs to be replaced. If you use your iPhone heavily and recharge daily, you could need a new battery in as little as one year. Oh, and you do get locked into that pesky little 2 year contract for the device -- really the battery should either outlast your contract or be user replaceable.

Re:Who needs it?

[SuperKendall]

If it does only last a year (which I doubt, as those estimates are usually conservative) I'll just have Apple replace it. Obviously you can't be without a phone for long, but they have a year to figure out how to do a timely replacement - I envision something along the lines of a loaner phone using the SIM from your own. Since everything is synced from the computer, it's practical to do just that...

Re:Who needs it?

[pho3nixtar]

Why would I want to PAY Apple to do something I could do myself!? So all the genius little Apple Techs down at the Mac store can scarf up whatever music and/or pictures I've got stored on my device?? Screw that! I'll just stick with using my standard cell phone... and use my laptop for everything else... and replace the battery myself when I need to.

Re:Who needs it?

[SuperKendall]

Why would I want to PAY Apple to do something I could do myself!?

Lots of people ask just that with the iPod, and in fact do it themselves.

After watching the taking apart video, I'd say - pass on that.

But if the battery is really gone in a year as people are claiming, you'll not be paying anyone anything as Apple will have to replace it under warranty.

Considering you might have to do this every two years or so (I'm thinking longer) I don't see what the big deal is for a device that is already expensive.

Apple's Profit Margin: Alwyays 20-30%

[LKM]

This shows how Apple is really good at playing the game

No, it shows that the people who figured it cost 220 bucks have no clue. Apple's profit margins have always been around 20-30%. I would be extremely surprised if they suddenly sold a 220 bucks device for 600 bucks.

People always guesstimate iPod margins way too high, and invariably, they turn out to be wrong during the next Apple analyst call.

Re:Apple's Profit Margin: Alwyays 20-30%

[gig]

There is no hardware with 50% or more profit margin, that is ludicrous.

Attacking Apple's profit-margins is an age-old form of Microsoft FUD, anybody who does it is either disingenuous or clueless.

The way the scam works is you count the cost of Microsoft software as an expense for HP, Dell, Palm, etc. not as a profit for Microsoft. Then on the Apple side, the hardware profit (the HP/Dell/Palm part) is combined with Apple's software profit (the Microsoft part) to form a profit margin that every PC maker wishes they had but doesn't because they gave up making computers in order to be a Microsoft Hardware Partner, that is not as profitable as making computers. Software has much, much higher profit margins than hardware. If you don't even count the software profit on a non-Apple PC (the part that goes to Microsoft, the most profitable company ever in history with the largest cash hoard) then you are a disingenuous liar or a complete fool or both. You are not just hiding Microsoft's profit, you're hiding their 95% profit margin. It is very, very significant information to leave out, it is enough that you are lying by omission.

Same parts in a Mac as a PC, same parts in an iPhone as a Treo, on hardware it is a level playing field, not just by accident but because Apple wanted it that way. They could use any chip in a Mac, any chip in the iPhone, but they chose the same chip as every other PC maker, every other smart phone maker, it is level on parts and supplies and everything else. If you want to include the software profits, though, you have to bring Microsoft into the comparison.

Re:Apple's Profit Margin: Alwyays 20-30%

[Weedlekin]

"There is no hardware with 50% or more profit margin, that is ludicrous."

It's only naive Slashdotters who believe that having a parts list that totals 50% profit on each item. This is based on the Geek theory of economics, which assumes that large corporations operate from their parents' basements, and therefore have zero operating costs, so everything they aren't spending on parts must obviously be profit.

Re:Apple's Profit Margin: Alwyays 20-30%

[Weedlekin]

Damn -- I should have previewed to prevent sodding Slashdot from removing everything after a "less than" sign. The first sentence of the above should have said:

It's only naive Slashdotters who believe that having a parts list that totals less than 50% of the price a manufacturer sells something for means that they more than 50% profit on each item.

Re:Who cares really?

[SatanicPuppy]

Meh. I never buy short term...All you get is capital gains tax and heartache. Buy a blue chip, and stick with them.

That being said...Apple is up about 30% since February, and that screams SELL to my mind. On the other hand, they're not seriously overcapitalized, they've got cash reserves, and their P/E is normal for a tech company (Lower mid 30s), and last time their stock hit 60 bucks a share they split it (and it's twice that value now).

I'll probably ride it out for a while. If they can really pull off the iPhone (and so far so good) it'll be worth it, and if they can't I'm not so exposed on their stock that I can't afford to take a bit of a hit. The drop right now suggests that a lot of people woke up this morning and realized (like you did) that Apple was WAY the hell up for the year, and their big product release was released, and this might be a good time to get out...Still, this is a the first generation iPhone and people are losing their minds; remember the difference between 1st gen iPod and 2nd gen iPod? If they improve it on that level, the stock will only increase.

It's all gambling though.

Re:Who cares really?

[Teifion]

I mean at least who on Slashdot cares? Unless you have Apple stock, I don't think any Slashdotter is salivating.
Slashdot is a news site, a geek news site at that. This is news, it's also geek news so it most certainly belongs here. However, aside from those of us that have shares in Apple, who would care? Well, anybody following the progress of the iPhone would care.

let's assume a 10% profit margin

[goombah99]

First I agree. There's more to the phone than a bag-o-parts. In addition to all the engineering and custom software they are leveraging the enormous implicit value of the already developed OS. The latter is free to them but would cost a competitor plenty. (how much do other phones pay to use windows?). Also factor in the giant risk costs. What if there's a defect that requires a recall. What if it's craters like a newton. Not every project succeeds and you have to amortize the losses over the ones that succeed. And of course one has to keep the lights on in the store. One has to pay the interest on the borrowed capital to make the device (even if you borrowed it from yourself--it's still lost earnings). Lastly if this is like other Apple and NExt Product then they usually are selling initially at a loss to keep the price reasonable while using expensive advanced tech, and expecting the component prices to fall swiftly enough to make all the profit on the tail end. In any case assume once the risks amortize then the price settles to a profit margin of 10% like other apple products. Now that would be about 60 dollars a unit. Now if they actually achieve their stated goal of ten million in a year, then that's 0.6 billion dollars profit. apple's net profit last year was 1.9 billion. so thats about a 30% increase in the company in one years time. holy shit. That would drop their price to earnings ratio down to to the 20's, which is way too low for any innovative company, let alone apple. So we should expect to see a huge jump in apple stock price when they report their quarterly earnings.

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:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[jaseuk]

Windows XP Embedded is a cut down version of Windows XP and is generally used in POS / Instrumentation / Appliances etc.

The Smartphone / CE / PocketPC OS can't realistically be any more than $5 a unit.

Anyway don't fool yourself that the iPhone is OSX. It's running on an ARM device, iPhone is as much OsX as windows smartphone is windows XP.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[Chabil Ha']

Windows XP Embedded is a cut down version of Windows XP and is generally used in POS...

Yes, pieces of sh...oh wait, you mean Point of Sales...heh

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[bucky0]

Anyway don't fool yourself that the iPhone is OSX. It's running on an ARM device, iPhone is as much OsX as windows smartphone is windows XP.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that. Apple engineered OSX to be very portable, that foresight allowed them to transition macs from ppc to x86. Whatever they did to enable that, probably worked for moving it to ARM.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[Watts Martin]

Your observation is fairly, well, obvious, but important to state -- the iPhone's OS is called "OS X 1.0" (it sends back crash reports through iTunes that someone's already dissected, of course), and it clearly has the same heritage as Mac OS X, just like Windows Mobile has the same heritage as other Windows. Windows Mobile has a lot of the same API as "real" Windows, but, well, it's hardly identical, and the crash reports show intriguing differences from iPhone OS X to Mac OS X (and intriguing similarities).

This is important to note, if nothing else, for those who go around saying things like, "If it's OS X, I should be able to load Mac applications on it." Yeah, we'll get back to you on that after you load World of Warcraft on your Treo, Einstein.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[bommai]

While I agree that Apple stock is going to go up and their sales are going to go up, I disagree with your calculations. You are assuming that iPod market share and their units are going to stay constant. They might actually drop a little because many of the iPhone customers could be buying iPods if not for the iPhone. So, no everything is constant.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[Paradise Pete]

't fool yourself that the iPhone is OSX. It's running on an ARM device

Considering that it already runs on two completely different processors, why does running on an ARM make it not OS X?

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[phantomfive]

So then, the question is can Apple double their profits? I think the answer is yes, and so do a lot of other people. The iPhone is just one small part of the company. Computer sales make up ~38% of their revenue, and sales have been increasing dramatically. The version of OSX coming out next year is going to be completely amazing (according to Steve Jobs, but I don't see any reason not to think he's right at this point), and the competition is Vista. Vista is of course here to stay, but does it seem unreasonable that Apple will get 15% of the marketshare by the end of next year? In addition to that, ipod sales are booming and increasing dramatically every year, and their music business is growing (although it's doubtful they make much profit off that). They are a well managed company with excellent engineers, a strong direction, and multiple avenues to expand their profits.

Furthermore, while their stock has been skyrocketing the past few months, the P/E ratio has actually gone down, because profits have been increasing even faster. Do you have any reason to think this trend will not continue? All signs say no, Apple is a rising star. And I am not a fanboy, just a happy investor.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[scolbert]

re: Newton investment. did you know that Apple invested less than $20M in ARM and made over $800M in ARM stock? the $800 well covered the investment in Newton.

Sammy at Personafile

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[aaarrrgggh]

If you think AAPL has a high PE, check out RIMM. They are pushing 100 now if memory serves me. MSFT and IBM are in single digit growth. Apple should hit about 30% for the just finished quarter, and likely 40% for the current quarter.

RIM on the other hand is in for some troubles...

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[gig]

> the enormous implicit value of the already developed OS. The latter is free to them

Not really. It's not just sitting there "done" and they just install it. OS X is an ongoing development project that is funded by Apple and costs them a certain amount per year to maintain even if they never ship a new product with it all that year. Customizing it to port it to iPhone, AppleTV, and coming soon the iPod also had a significant cost. They even call it "OS X v1.0" in the iPhone although it is Leopard-related. There are new frameworks such as CoreTelephony and CoreSurface which do not exist on the Mac yet. They had to design that stuff and build it, not just buy it from someone else as a plug-in part.

(Yes, at the recent D conference Steve Jobs was running CoreSurface in his pocket when Bill Gates demoed the "innovative" Microsoft Surface retail kiosk platform.)

I don't think the leverage they have with OS X is in cost but rather in the ability to customize the entire device because they're building on so many mature and feature-rich frameworks. Whatever feature they want to add, the answer never comes back "Windows Mobile doesn't support that yet" or "you can't do that on Symbian." Also, Apple can "fine tune" the device, make software changes to work around hardware deficiencies. They can also introduce a feature in software when it makes sense or in hardware when it makes sense.

Other phone makers are like Web developers who only know HTML and CSS, no JavaScript ... they will make a convoluted solution out of "pure" CSS that barely works when they could have used 10 lines of JavaScript to do it exactly right. If you look at a device as one thing, or the Web browser as one thing, then you want to get at every layer of it so you can build the best stuff. Apple takes a huge quality advantage by working with the whole device.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[gig]

> Anyway don't fool yourself that the iPhone is OSX. It's running on an ARM device, iPhone is as much OsX as windows smartphone is windows XP.

This is all just semantics. If you cut out some of Windows XP and call it "Windows XP Embedded" (Windows XP for embedding) or you cut out some of "Mac OS X" and call it "OS X" (OS X without the Mac) it is just a naming convention.

However I will say that iPhone looks like OS X to me, and I'm using Mac OS X every day since 2001. If Apple called it "iPhone OS" we would be saying that is just OS X ported to iPhone, not some new iPhone OS, who are you trying to fool? The Web rendering, typography, resolution-independent interface, animation, Unix flavors, compatibility with standards, even the little dock at the bottom all say "here is your OS X to go." If another company other than Apple did iPhone we would be saying iPhone is very OS X -inspired. Also, from the OS X crash logs you can clearly see that CoreFoundation and CoreAudio and other friends are there. iPhone also runs LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) to fool parts of OS X into thinking they're on a PC so that they didn't have to be rewritten.

Also notice that Mac OS X is about 2 GB and OS X is about 0.7 GB, so it is cut-down but not terribly so, because all of the devices OS X runs on (iPhone, AppleTV, next iPod) all have large storage. The Windows phone systems have storage measured in kilobytes or megabytes, not gigabytes. At the same time, OS X is much leaner than Windows, compare Safari on Windows (8 MB download) to Internet Explorer for Windows, and keep in mind Safari for Windows brings its own graphics and text rendering libraries from the Mac. So my point is that Apple's cut-down OS maintains much more of its original flavor. And from what I understand Windows and Windows CE are separate code bases, they are not the same except where they fool you into thinking they are. With OS X, where it is the same as the Mac it is because it actually still is the same. Where it is different there is a reason for it, e.g. only 8 Web pages open at once on iPhone due to limited resources, whereas on the Mac you can open 80 quite easily.

On the other hand,

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[gnuman99]

"telecom analysts estimated 500,000 to 700,000 devices totaling $250 million were sold by Sunday after three days of sales, USA Today reported."

So, their stock is up today. I don't know. Maybe they will go up and up for a while. If you want to bet that apple will go up because iPhone will be a huge success, then buy some options. They should have their profits out by 2008, so buying some calls (buys) at $25 per $110 share should be a bargain. If stock continues like it has in the last 6 months, it'll be closer to $200 than $100 by January.

But this depends if the demand continues or dries up.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[gnuman99]

That is why I would *never* buy RIMM stock. Well, maybe it is worth getting some long term puts on the stock. But I would not bet on puts for AAPL even though they are at 40 P/E. The current sales of iPhones, if continue, will bring in a lot of cash for Apple.

Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin

[phantomfive]

Honestly, I don't think the main growth in Apple stock has come from the phone. After they announced the iPhone, their stock went up around $10, which is substantial, but it was last quarter's financial reports that really drove the stock up the next $30. If the iPhone does poorly then perhaps the stock will go down somewhat, at which point I would buy more stock if I could because the longterm outlook for Apple is really, really good. The phone is just icing on the cake.

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:STFU!

[dave562]

Also, I'd just like to note that, for the record, I watch little TV, and I have barely noticed the hype that everyone is freaking out about.

I'm in the same boat that you are. I don't watch TV in my own home and only see it when I happen to be at someone else's house who has it on. I saw a grand total of one iTunes advertisement two times. I didn't see any billboards for it, or bus advertisements. I don't listen to the radio either, so I can't comment on whether or not there was any advertising done in that medium.

all the same

[Budenny]

All the same, I never saw a chart that said "distribution" more clearly than this one:

http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/intchart.a sp?symb=AAPL&sid=609&dist=TQP_chart_date&freq=1&ti me=3mo

"But don't take my word for it, go and see for yourself" (RD Laing).

Re:Who cares really?

[MoxFulder]

Honestly... why would I pay $700 for the privilege of having not one but TWO large companies dictate to me how I can use a piece of hardware. Till I can buy a phone that lets me do whatever I want with it, they're all crap to me.

The iPhone craze has truly reduced epic proportions... so much so that my GRANDMA emails me and says she wants to buy me one. I mean, I don't want to be ungrateful, I'm probably the only person I know who actively DOES NOT WANT an iPhone, I should take advantage of my most-favored-grandson status, but.... yeeesssh!

Re:Who cares really?

[soft_guy]

I believe the latin name for this condition is "assus hattus".

Still Don't have Answers

[Greyfox]

Will they work with stereo bluetooth headphones for music playing? And can you use one with bluetooth to browse the Internet with a Laptop? Seems pretty certain now that there isn't a SIP client on 'em which you could connect to an arbitrary VOIP provider while connected to wifi. Nor does it seem likely that a third party will be making one anytime soon.

I'd be willing to consider one if they had bluetooth laptop tethering but that doesn't really sound like the sort of thing that AT&T would go for.

Re:Still Don't have Answers

[Thumper_SVX]

But AT&T *does* go for that. I'm posting this on my Macbook Pro, tethered through my HTC TyTN on AT&T/Cingular's network (3G is cool!) through Bluetooth (cables are for losers! :) ). It's Apple who doesn't want to go for that... they don't allow that with the iPhone, and it seems unlikely they ever will.

As much as I want to say that AT&T suck in many respects, they're not the only bad guy in this partnership.

Re:Still Don't have Answers

[Thumper_SVX]

And before the fanbois jump all over me, when I say they probably never will note that I'm referring to rumors posted on Fanboi sites. I could be wrong, and I hope I am... but to be honest I wouldn't WANT to tether my laptop through EDGE even if I could. I've done it with my TyTN and it was truly a painful experience. ISDN speed with Satellite latency.

iPhone users are willing beta testers

[dave562]

I've been thinking about this for the last day or two. When Microsoft releases a product, lets call it Vista, large segments of the computing world whine about what an unfinished product is. They laugh at Microsoft users and call them beta testers for an unfinished product that was pushed out the door sooner than it should have been.

Lets contrast that with Apple, and their beta product, the iPhone. It is still lacking some features. Other features aren't polished. Very few people clown the iPhone adopters and even the adopters themselves are comfortable justifying their purchase in terms of, "Well, I don't really need those features." I think that Apple is relying on the fact that their users are complete fanatics who will put up with a beta product. I predict that what we are going to see is Apple will eventually push out updates for the phone, and Apple users are going to say, "See, Apple is a great company. They LISTEN to what I have to say. They implement the features that I tell them that I want. I love Apple." Very few are going to point out that the features weren't even there in the first place.

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:iPhone users are willing beta testers

[CatOne]

I'm not sure what you're really trying to say? There's a "1.0" product and there's a beta product, and I don't know if your intent is to blur the definition.

But... in development (software and hardware), it's very difficult (lo, let's say impossible), to product a product, which:

1) Has every feature that everyone wants
2) Is bug free
3) Actually ships

Usually, you can pick 2 of these, but not all 3 (and, yes, "bug free" apparently is the domain of but one single app -- Tex). So with that said, shipping something that's well featured and relatively stable and truly revolutionary (and, of all things, the screen and hardware/software interaction most certainly IS revolutionary on the iPhone) is a very good initial effort. Some things could certainly be improved in the software (e.g. a to-do list!), some in hardware (people will eventually want 3G), but not sure why this means each of the 500,000 to 700,000 estimated folks that bought the iPhone the first weekend is a "beta tester."

Re:iPhone users are willing beta testers

[stewbacca]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. I bet you think iPods suck to, eh? Millions of us iPod and Mac users have grown accustom to products that are generally far better than, let's say Microsoft, since you brought it up. So what if the iPhone has a few shortcomings? Those who will be saying, "see, Apple is a great company", will be saying so out of years of experience with Apple. Why should I expect Apple NOT to refine the iPhone as it goes along, given my 20+ year history of using their (generally) great products? If the iPhone is a rare stinker, then oh well, on to the next product. But I'm pretty sure anyone who thinks the iPhone is going to be a failure will be eating their hat.

I'm one of those people who won't point out something wasn't there in the first place, ESPECIALLY when it is something that is insignificant to me (MMS, for example). If Apple lacked the major features I needed...and this is a big surprise...I WOULDN'T BUY IT!!! I think your contention that Apple users will just buy it (i.e. drink the kool-aid) regardless of how well it works, is both insulting and disengenious.

Re:iPhone users are willing beta testers

[dave562]

I think your contention that Apple users will just buy it (i.e. drink the kool-aid) regardless of how well it works, is both insulting and disengenious.

I'm just pointing out the distinction in the perception of the products. The main point I wanted to make is that iPhone users are going to be happy when Apple puts out software updates for the phone, and they will view those updates in the context of Apple "responding to consumer demand." That can be contrasted to the response when Microsoft puts out software updates, "Too little, too late." or "It's about damn time."

I didn't say anything about the reasons people use to justify their purchases.

Re:STFU!

[djh101010]

amen,. the intertubes need one big "STFU" notice stapling somewhere ... i mean really, its a world leader in dumb smartphones, can we please get back to news for nerds, rather than news from pr. If only there was some way to show what the contents of an article are without having to read it to find out if it's something you don't care about. Like maybe a headline and summary about it or something.

If only...

Re:Who cares really?

[dr00g911]

Right genre, wrong title IMO.

After playing with mine for the weekend, I'll be designing my own cover with "Don't Panic" written on it... in large, friendly letters.

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:Who cares really?

[GnarlyDoug]

Ditto, though I'm a more recent stock holder.

Is Linux running on it yet?

[peter303]

Out for four days and no ones put Linux on it yet?
(I believe OS is some version of Apple UNIX.)

Re:Is Linux running on it yet?

[CatOne]

In fact it is! The OS on the iPhone is this UNIX variant called Mac OS X. Ever heard of it? It's pretty cool!

Re:Who cares really?

[Thwomp]

You can submit a story, write in your journal and suppress Apple stories. Problem solved?

Re:It's a phone

[cowscows]

The thousands of geeks who have posted on the various iphone articles on /. over the past few months would seem to disagree with you. You are but one of many, and you don't get to decide what the rest of us are interested in. Many agree with you, many do not. Your opinion is noted, but not really that important.

Mistakes in the iPhone Interface - SMS Charges?

[787style]

There was a reference to the idea of iPhone - iPhone texts should be free. I know on my 1000 message plan that all ATT-ATT text messages are free, and unlimited.

There's a call from Nokia for you...

[sethstorm]

I'm glad to see phones (in general) feature complex functionality and come with applications previously found on the desktop. There'll be a day when your cell phone is your laptop. Plug in a standard keyboard, mouse, and monitor and away you go.

Unfortunately the N770/N800 beat them to the punch with that. The only thing missing with those is the cellphone's radio. Unlike the i****e, you're not locked in, and they dont mind being open.

Phones like the Treo, Blackberry, and Nokia Communicators are the precursors..
Fixed that for you.

With a good chunk of the "smartphone" base (and a sizable part of the rest), they have to be doing something right consistently.

Re:There's a call from Nokia for you...

[lena_10326]

Unfortunately the N770/N800 beat them to the punch with that.

Almost. No video out. Also, if there was an XP or MacOS "full version" version it would catch on faster.

I suppose a USB/VGA converter could be used, although the resolution sucks for anything but presentations on a projector. 800x480.

Phones like the Treo, Blackberry, and Nokia Communicators are the precursors.. Fixed that for you.

Thanks.

The N800 does look like an interesting tablet.

Re:iphone

[Jerry Rivers]

"No wireless"

?

Speak for yourself.

[CatOne]

A little reading around here would appear to contradict you.

In fact, as does this "geek":

http://www.macworld.com/2007/07/firstlooks/iphone_ tech/index.php?pf=1

Re:Who cares really?

[QRDeNameland]

No, that's the predecessor to Apple's next killer device...the iPhuckMyself.

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:I bet the software development cost a pretty pe

[arunkv]

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'. Well, Apple's hoping to sell 10 million iPhones by 2008 which only gets them a 1% share of the mobile phone market. Let's say the parts cost $220 exactly as per the Business Week article. Then Apple's making 10 million phone X $300/phone approx. = $3 billion (yes, billion with a b). Even if they spend a couple of billion (that's a high end estimate) on R&D, software development, advertising, packaging, shipping, etc. they are going to make a cool billion in profits.

Re:Who cares really?

[feranick]

Quote: "The prediction is they will move 10+ million by the end of the year." MS sells way more copies of Windows. By your standards /. should have a post about windows every millisecond. Thank god that does not happen.

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:Who cares really?

[mdwh2]

But I don't recall loads of stories for all the other successful phones out there such as the RAZR (Motorola sell up to 10 million in a single quarter, never mind a year!). Obviously it deserves a story, but even big-thing-of-the-week only needs to be posted once.

Honestly, it's bad when the Slashdot dupes become intentional :/

Re:I bet the software development cost a pretty pe

[NatasRevol]

You mean like selling ~500,000 units in a weekend?

Raking in (500,000x$550=) $275m in said weekend. Before costs, of course, but that's still probably enough to cover all the R&D and advertising for the iPhone.

Re:Who cares really?

[mdwh2]

Using the iPhone is like using something *from* Star Trek.

Consider me curious then - what features of the iPhone are like that portrayed in Star Trek, that aren't in existing phones?

(I mean, I'd say using mobile phones in general is like using something from Star Trek - so obviously I'm curious what is specifically new about the iPhone here.)

are like using Lynx compared to Firefox (and I don't mean lack of graphics)

What do you mean? I mean, okay, I appreciate analogies, but if you didn't mean that, what did you mean?

or DOS vs Macintosh (and here I *do* mean like going from keyboard to mouse).

Well some of us were using platforms where you could use both ;)

Sounds like the coverage on Paris Hilton...

[pimpimpim]

In summary, the iPhone is the nerd-media equivalent of Paris Hilton. I am actually fed up with being confronted with more no-stories about the both of them, let alone the both combined, the horror!

The iPhone Song - all about launch hysteria

[mrfett]

if you think ppl going gaga for a cell phone are a little off you might enjoy this. if you're a fan who can take a step back and laugh at yourself you might like it too. The iPhone Song!

WTF "It has been an unforgettable week-end"

[sphazell]

I Like the comment "It has been an unforgettable week-end" FFS its only a phone whats sort of boring miserable lives do these people live.

Re:Who cares really?

[bismark.a]

MS sells way more copies of Windows. By your standards /. should have a post about windows every millisecond. Thank god that does not happen.

The very first image that flashed my mind when I read that was *Vomit*. Thank goodness, indeed !!

I'll stick with PalmOS...

[argent]

No contacts search. What was Apple thinking not including a contacts search feature on the iPhone? I have 700 contacts in Outlook and that's only the start of the problem - some of my entries have last names and some don't... plus I've got keywords stuffed into some of my contacts (for example, first name: Johnny plumber, last name: Appleseed). So when I'm looking for the plumber and I don't remember his name because I call him once a year, I want to type in 'plumber'. Come on Apple, gotta have contacts search!

I'm *addicted* to hitting "find" on PalmOS and having it search through *every* application on the device. It's just like Spotlight... except it came out almost a decade earlier. And it's faster, even on a 16 MHz 68000.

How could Apple have left search out of the iPhone?

Re:Who cares really?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I have to totally agree with you. The iPhone is freaking mind blowing. I can't figure out why so many people hate a device they haven't used.
I know it is awesome. I am using mine to post this with its ultra quick keyboard. Seriously guys, before you condem it, why don't you go try it?

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.

I KNEW it!

[mgabrys_sf]

re:""There are no markings indicating exactly who built it." BusinessWeek reports.

Soooo, from the future - or alien tech?

I'd be careful out there I smell a Dr. Who episode in the making.

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.

Memory??

[TheDreadedGMan]

The Tech specs are ok but anyone know how much memory it has?
I know it has 8 or 4GB of flash storage, but does it also use this as RAM, or does it have a "fast" RAM, say 64MB or something?

Re:Who cares really?

[grub]

Honestly... why would I pay $700 for the privilege of having not one but TWO large companies dictate to me how I can use a piece of hardware.

Dell called, your new Vista PC is ready.

You don't have to hit two butons to type a period

[cuban321]

Just drag your finger from .?123 to Z!

Star Trek features:

[2nd Post!]

Multi touch!
Like when Geordi draws his fingers down the surface of his console to control the various transporter parameters.
Or when Crusher taps multiple places on her Padd while diagnosing a patient while the thing beeps and squeaks.
Or when Data deftly "draws" on his Padd doing engineering tasks like pulling data from a stream of spaghetti.

That is how you interact with the iPhone, now. Flick through lists with your finger, resize images with your thumb and forefinger, selecting complex menus with a tap here and there, turning on and off features with a slide and a swish.

Just like the Wii is virtual reality, the iPhone is science fiction.

Re:Who cares really?

[MoxFulder]

Honestly... why would I pay $700 for the privilege of having not one but TWO large companies dictate to me how I can use a piece of hardware.

Dell called, your new Vista PC is ready. Actually my new Dell runs Ubuntu 7.10. Actually, I dual boot Vista Home Premium to run EXACTLY ONE program (Altera Quartus II 7.1). And I hate pretty much every minute of it.

Dell doesn't lock its computers down to prevent me from running another OS. Sure, I'm no fan of the ~$30-50 OEM tax for Windows, but it's a far cry from an entire system that is enslaved to Apple and AT&T.

I actually paid just under $600 for this nice dual-core Turion 64 X2 TL-60 rig, with a 6-hour battery upgrade... so I paid LESS than the iPhone. And no subscription fees for this one.

R&D costs reclaimed, profits rolling in alread

[WIAKywbfatw]

The iPhone's R&D costs will have been recouped already.

Let's do some simple maths, with the numbers we have already and a few reasonable assumptions.

1. 500,000-700,000 units shipped so far.
2. Sale price of $599 for the 8GB model, assumed component cost price of $220.
3. Sale price of $499 for the 4GB model, assumed component cost price of $200.
4. Assume a ratio of 4:1 in favour of the 4GB unit (I guessed this, and a quick google provided vindication; it turned out to be the ratio that's been widely reported).
5. Assume that 5 percent of the sale price goes to the retailer and that none of that 5 percent makes its way back to Apple. (The actual figure may be zero, but let's assume 5 percent anyway.)
6. Assume that the manufacturing and shipping processes (putting all those components together, boxing them up and getting them to the stores) takes another 15 percent.

Based on those numbers, Apple is making $259.20 on the 8GB models (($599*(1-0.05-0.15))-220)and $199.20 on the 4GB ones (($499*(1-0.05-0.15))-200).

With half a million units shipped, Apple will have made $123.6 million after accounting for the aforementioned costs. With 700,000 units shipped that figure rises to over $173.0 million.

There's no way that Apple's R&D spending on the iPhone came to over $100 million.

And that's before Apple's sold a single accessory, before it's sold a single additional media file or service via iTunes, before you account for all the free press that Apple's got over the last year from the iPhone hype, and, most importantly, the extra boost that that hype has given to the ever-increasing Apple share price.

The Apple share price has more than doubled in the last year, partly because of other things but partly because of the iPhone frenzy. Since the beginning of the year, when the iPhone was unveiled, Apple's market capitalisation has risen by over $30 billion. If only one percent of that rise was due to the iPhone then that alone was $300 million. R&D costs? What R&D costs?

To be honest, I was rather skeptical of Apple's iPhone sales forecasts for the year. I had to temper that skepticism when I saw the sheer numbers that they shipped in the first weekend alone. Granted, (in the US, at least) almost everybody who wanted one right away has one now but I can imagine iPhone sales being steady for the rest of the year (plus getting the usual bumps in the gift-buying seasons) and Apple hitting their targets with ease.

I still doubt that the iPhone will displace the iPod as Apple's main cash cow any time soon but I certainly don't doubt that it's made Apple a huge profit so far and will continue to do so.

He's wrong; the period is easy to type

[drfuchs]

Nope, he's wrong about the period. As one of his responders pointed out, just touch the ".?123" button, and, without lifting your finger, slide it over to the "." button, then lift your finger. Viola! Also works for the other common punctuation and digits. A pretty cute UI idea, I think.

Re:He's wrong; the period is easy to type

[T-Bone-T]

That is pretty cool, though not obvious. I haven't seen all the how-to videos on Apple's website, do they cover that?

Re:Who cares really?

[coolGuyZak]

And for anyone claiming that the iPhone is a tech/techie/nerdy news story, please stop pretending to be a geek and go to the mac forums or cnet or some other consumer tech site.

I think you underestimate the sheer bling this piece of gadgetry represents, not just for the "style-obsessed apple-fanboys", but for the idealistic geek in all of us that sees the iPhone and thinks... I must have a Star Trek PaDD.

I'm in that camp. Plus, I lost my iPod several months ago, and have been month-to-month with my current carrier for about half a year now...

So, I'm happy it's getting so much press on Slashdot. While I agree that the hype is getting stale, seeing people's reactions to the release (whether owners, zealots, or trolls) has helped me make an informed decision. A decision I feel I can trust, coz I browsed these articles at -1!

Thanks slashdot!

Re:Who cares really?

[coolGuyZak]

I believe he's referring to the PADD. My past is tinted by rose-colored glasses, unfortunately. I remember them looking far cooler than in those pictures. While it can be argued (and is presented on the linked site) that a PADD is like a PDA, the iPhone's interface seems more in-line with the way they were portrayed in the show. This could be my memory failing me though.

Re:Who cares really?

[Saint Fnordius]

The iPhone does have a massive influence on how tech in the future will work. It is introducing a new interface, a new way of bridging the grey area between mobile communications and the mobile entertainment. The importance of the iPhone lies not only in the device itself, but also in how other manufacturers will react. This is more like how the original Lisa and Macintosh made a new way of handling data popular.

The iPhone is important because it shakes up a complacent market. As the LG Prada shows, the other manufacturers are already scared, and the market is going to change. We may even see more phones like the Jitterbug as other manufacturers take the end user more into consideration.

So yes, it is more important than the GPL v3. It will have more impact on how we use mobile devices, and possibly even in how touchscreen/touchpad interfaces work on normal desktop computers as well...

Re:Who cares really?

[LKM]

Consider me curious then - what features of the iPhone are like that portrayed in Star Trek, that aren't in existing phones?

A futuristic UI.

Praise Be To Steve Jobs

[dma1965]

The iPhone is the salvation of all mankind!!! My cousin Cletus was blind with a clubfoot and the moment I touched my iPhone to his forehead he went into convulsions, and a phone call came in and the convulsions stopped, and then they started again after I hung up the phone!!! After the convulsions ended, he started dancing to the tune of Inna Gotta Davida, by Iron Butterfly (the DRM free version) on my iPhone, and his clubfoot was gone. He was also able to see his illegitimate children for the first time on the crisp and bright screen of the iPhone, and he even managed to type YHNFDHERROU on the keyboard without any training at all!!!!! He then ran across the street and bit the neighbor in the leg.

Had IPhone for two years ...

[Odisej]

Well, not really. But I am a user of Nokia 7710 for about two years and I just don't get it what the fuss is all about. I've seen dozens of smartphones with features Apple advertises, I've seen people using them and dumping them the next time they bought a new phone ... Mainly because all the features are not worth the money. Maybe it is because I am European, but I shall not buy iPhone. I would rather die than be a member of the flock. My Nokia is serving me well, it has all I need and when i decide to buy a new phone it will be an ordinary one. I am only using about 10% of the features it has anyway. Apple has the best advertising in the world and enough people to fall for it. If I would have iPhone I would be ashamed not proud, if I would have an iPod I would hide it not show it as it would clearly project a wrong image of myself. Having those gadgets is like carrying a big sign above the had saying: "Small brains here!"...

Re:Who cares really?

[mgabrys_sf]

You have to care - because, you know - if you don't buy an iPhone, the Terrorists win.

PS: Pop-Culture check:
I have to wonder why this is amusing in the same way people DIDN'T joke about Pearl
Harbor during WWII (to the best of my knowledge). It's funny because the current
administration is by far - not even slightly comparable to FDR's. And - that's - just fucking sad.

Really sad.

Jazelle

[edxwelch]

It's rather ironic that the processor has a Jazelle Java accelerator, considering what Steve Jobs said: "Java's not worth building in [to the phone]. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

Top 5 Reasons I'll Wait to Buy an iPhone

[Luscious868]

None of the 10 are necessarily deal breakers in and of themselves, but when taken together I can't justify buying an iPhone just yet. I trust enough of these issues will be resolved in the second generation:

1) It's best to avoid the first generation of a product from any manufacturer. There are sure to be issues.

2) Lack of 3G support. I'm an AT&T wireless customer and I don't live in an area that has 3G coverage yet, but I'm very close to areas that do and coverage in my area will happen sooner or later so why waste the money when you know that a version of the iPhone that supports 3G will happen. Likely sooner rather than later if they plan on having any success when they launch in Europe.

3) Lacks the ability to record video. I don't record a lot of video on my phone but in this day and age with a phone that costs over $500 ... are you kidding me?

4) Lack of Flash and Java support on the browser. You can't claim to have a full fledged web browser on your phone unless you've got a browser that supports both Flash and Java. There's too many web sites out there that use them. I don't necessarily think they need to be turned on by default, but support for both should be there if you want to enable it.

5) The 2.0 megapixel camera. If I'm dropping several hundred bucks on a phone, it would be nice to have at least a 3.0 megapixel camera to take pictures with.

6) Lack of a built in GPS receiver. Google maps is great, but I can run it on my current phone (sans the sleek touchscreen interface). If I'm spending several hundred dollars on a phone I'd like one that can give me turn by turn directions as I'm en route (and can recalculate the route if I make a wrong turn) and I don't want to bother having to type in my starting address first, especially if I'm in an area I'm not familiar with.

7) Lack of a proper SDK so third parties can write apps for the phone. I'm sorry but Ajax as a third party development platform doesn't cut it for me. I want a smart phone that offers developers a way to write real third party applications that take advantage of the phones features. There is no way the manufacturer of a device can or will think of all of the ways in which a device can be used. A proper SDK extends the both the usability and the shelf life of any device.

8) Recessed head phone jack. I want a cell/phone MP3 player combination to have a standard headphone jack and that I can use with any pair of headphones that I either own now or will own in the future.

9) Inability to use the wide screen keyboard outside of Safari. I want to be able to use the wide screen on-screen keyboard in every application on the iPhone.

10) Inability to "search" in the contact list. I've got a ton of contacts and I don't want to have to scroll through them to find the contact I'm looking for.

Re:Who cares really?

[Pollardito]

exactly! they should just post something like "no 3G, no zoom on the camera, lame" and be done with it

Re:Who cares really?

[utopianfiat]

I'm touching myself to Firefly and wishing that Fox hadn't canceled it.

fixed

Re:Who cares really?

[Holmwood]

I'm not complaining about the plethora of iPhone stories; I'm pointing out that one can legitimately argue this really isn't the biggest piece of tech news in the last week, unless you view tech news purely as what lots of consumers are interested in, and tech news as being purely about gadgets.

Evidently slashdot has come to. Fair enough. I stand corrected.

To repeat my view though; the iPhone's moving into the hands of consumers will, in a few years time, be a minor footnote (though probably a footnote to a very successful story from Apple).

In my view, tech stories aren't about gadgets, however exciting they are.

I shrug at the lack of reading comprehension. I said nothing against iPhone stories, and nothing against the iPhone. I simply pointed out that I didn't personally believe that it was the biggest tech story of the week, and gave valid arguments why. For that I was modded down pretty heavily. Shrug. I've learned my lesson, Apple mods aren't capable of rational analysis when it comes to anything they perceive as criticism.

It's a shame, because I really do think the iPhone is a fantastic piece of technology. But its fans? Heh. Well, it's just another step on Slashdot becoming a website about gadget stories. And we've got plenty of those.

Re:Who cares really?

[Holmwood]

OK. A guy who responds without cursing to the chap who says:

It's tech news, shitdick. That's the point. We are supposed to know about the shit going on in the tech world.

LEARN THINGS, CUNT!

is the troll?

Huh?

And I get 70% negative karma on my OP out because I dared state the opinion that the GPL3 release might be a bigger technical story than the iPhone release.

Wow. Just. Wow.

The AC's point is correct. Slashdot isn't a mall. Cursing wildly at people to make a point shouldn't be slashdot, and to mark someone as a troll who's been called a 'CUNT' and a 'shitdick' for responding with 'moron'? Wow.

Thanks sadly troll-rated AC, and guy below. That's exactly my point. This isn't a mall. This isn't a gadget website. Or at least I thought it wasn't. I think the iPhone is awesome, sure. I don't even mind the tons of stories about it. People are excited, fine.

But it's a gadget. It's a fascinating step on a road by an interesting company that does some great things with technology, UI and user experience.

I honestly and naively thought that I was on a site that was a technical discussion site, not a gadget site. As I said above, I stand corrected.

Again: I've no problem with the plethora of iPhone stories. I do have a problem with the view that one can't even venture the opinion that GPL3 license release is a bigger technical story without being modded down and having any defender referred to as CUNT and shitdick.

I love Apple's technology. I used an Apple PC circa 1981. I started using a mac in 1985. But I am coming to believe that a significant vocal minority of its fans are crazy people incapable of rational thought.

I am speechless.

"Cunt and shitdick"? And the guy who responds is the troll? And I get more negative points than the "cunt and shitdick" guy? Ok...

I guess this'll get me modded as a troll. But you're creating an echo chamber here. Enjoy it. But count this Apple fan out.

Re:Who cares really?

[Holmwood]

This is a very sensible argument. I don't agree, but it's a cogent argument. My counter argument is that this is simply evolutionary. The EDGE execution is poor (even Jobs admits this) and AT&T is a somewhat mediocre partner. (Compare even T-mobile). It's a fairly closed device.... and dare I say it, the iPhone is a US story. GPL3 is a global story.

If we look at devices in the wireless space that bridge communications and mobile entertainment, Nokia's N-series is well on the way, and well ahead of Apple (though I think they deliver an inferior user interface experience to Apple on debatably superior hardware). Even ARCOS has done some interesting stuff.

Again, it comes down I think to whether you view technology stories as about gadgets or, well, about technology. (And your argument straddles this gap very neatly by the way) No question, the announcement of the iPhone was the biggest story of the week. The first deliveries to customers? That's just marketing hype in my view.

I respect those who feel differently, and those who think about the matter intelligently and respond with a good counterargument like you. For all I know you're right. We could compare notes in two years time if either of us actually remembered.

I don't respect those who respond with "CUNT and shitdick" and mod people down harshly for daring to venture a different opinion.

Best,
Holmwood