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WWDC '08 Sees Slimmer, Improved, 3G iPhone
Many of us have been watching Apple's WWDC 2008 keynote unfold live. There are many exciting tidbits, but most of all is the announcement of the 3G iPhone. Featuring an even thinner profile, black plastic back, metal buttons, flush headphone jack, improved audio, GPS support, and improved battery life, this is bound to make quite a few people stand up and take notice. Update 18:54 GMT by SM: Best of all it looks like they really took the price point to heart, 8GB iPhones are now $199 and a 16GB model will be available for $299, coming to an Apple store riot near you on July 11,2008.
I know people are excited about it and all, but I would think that we'd wait at least until Steve is done talking about the 3G iPhone on the stage before posting this on Slashdot... Digg is for posting announcements before they're even done announcing them. I'm pretty sure there's still some features that haven't been covered yet...
I would think the phone contract is enough to dissuade people. There are already people out there that would've bought gen1 except for a) the carrier b) existing phone contracts.
Not if you don't ignore the several thousand dollar 2-year contract.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
i never buy revision A apple hardware. let the fanatics bug test the hardware.
damn glad I did too. with built in GPS, better battery life, real apps.
I just feel sorry for the 6 million original iPhones that are about to hit ebay. Then again if Apple sold 6 million regular iPhones with version 2 coming out in a month in 70 countries just how many more will they sell? the 10 million iphones sold is going to be a drop in the bucket. i would almost expect 12 million units shipped by the end of the year.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I am not upset about purchasing/owning the iPhone 1.0. It's been leaps and bounds above my Treo 650 and I needed a new iPod anyway.
I knew from day 1 that that price would come down on future versions. The Apple Lisa was $9,995 in 1983 which is around $21,000 today in 2008. That was the baseline model. As technology grows, things get cheaper. If you haven't picked up this, then perhaps you shouldn't buy technology products. You didn't "have" to buy an iPhone, and you should have seen this coming. You shouldn't also buy such a phone if you can't afford it.
At the same time, they are upgrading the firmware on the older phones still. My current one still gives me all the battery life I need for reasonable use. I am in a major city (Boston) with wifi almost everywhere. I don't drive, and thus the GPS is a non-feature.
Anyone that acts "upset" over the new features, and price drop, needs to grow up.
They didn't add any killer features for me. If they had added even something like the (much rumored, but obviously a lie) video chat functionality or something insane then maybe I'd have thought otherwise. Funny how those rumors/lies got around.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
But does it really matter if you're signing up for a 2-year contract with ATT anyway?
I ask this only because most of the people I've met with iPhones didn't switch, they were already on AT&T's network.
Why? Because a consumer electronics company refreshed a product? Should I be pissed at Sony every few months when they upgrade their camcorders? Should I be mad that the camcorder I bought from them five years ago cost more and is less capable than one I could buy today? Ditto with HP - the LaserJet model I bought in 2001 cost about $900. I can get one today that does the same job (and has more RAM) for $300 (or less). HP owes me $600!
$199 for 8 GB, though, intrestingly enough, puts it more in direct competition with much, much lower end phones. Like, say, the Motorola Razor or the LG Envy, which are at a similar price point with probably a tenth of the functionality.
Maybe Apple has something here that will turn the smartphone market on its ear.
My blog
Except that it won't be £100. Technology prices never obey exchange rates. I would expect the $199 device to cost at least £169. If it were £100 even I might be tempted to buy one!
The bitter aftertaste of the Kool-Aid.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I have an iPhone 1.0 and bought it knowing that I don't live in a 3G area (that and GPS are the only new things I won't be able to get). That's like saying anyone who owned anything prior to a new version coming out is going to feel stupid. If anything I would think that geeks understand that technology usually a) moves at a quick pace and b) gets more features and usually goes down in price over time.
"Unwilling" is always your problem and nobody else's.
8GB Touch $299.
:P
8GB iPhone $199 + $59.99 * 24 = $1638.76
I think the touch is the better deal.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
I would bet that iChat comes in Sept when their background notification service launches
I bought an iPhone at the $400 price, and I don't feel like a sucker. I bought it because I wanted the features that the iPhone had. I wanted a portable media player with a large screen for video that integrated with the software I was already using for my music (iTunes). I wanted to be able to use my gmail account with it. I wanted to do IM (Meebo.com). I wanted a good UI (I hate the Windows Mobile UI). $400 was pretty steep, but in the end I felt it was worth it.
I don't feel bitter at all about this. I knew when I bought the first iPhone that there would be another version a year or so down the line. It was just common sense. But I didn't want to wait, so I paid a premium. Thats not a big deal for me.
If I can get one for $200 with my current plan, though, I'd be really tempted to get the 3G.
I bought my iPhone on day three (hey, I'm not stupid enough to buy launch day only to find out there's a massive bug) for $600. I'm quite happy still. See, unlike the rest of the world, I haven't had to put up with a shitty cell phone for the past year.
:)
Tech gets cheaper over time. I'm more pissed that I once spent $50 for a 30-pack of CD-R blanks and only had eight or so work after waiting half an hour to find out the burn failed, only to now be able to buy discs that burn in a minute for fifteen cents apiece with 99% reliability. At least my 1.0 iPhone worked properly at launch and continues to do so
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Haha- so as long as I'm gonna have a cell phone, it might as well be an iPhone. I'll pick mine up when I get back from Mozambique in February 2009- maybe MWSF will see another update
Then I remembered my trusty Garmin:
$5/month for the painfully inaccurate ClearChannel traffic info.
$215 for the traffic receiver (granted, you can find a C550 with it included for less if you shop around).
$160 for the travel guides.
$100-$150 every time you want to go to a new country.
$70/year for the map updates.
Granted, you don't need to buy all of those. But every one of them involves Garmin prying your wallet open for something that's free on the net/Google Maps and thus free once you have paid your $70 monthly net access on your iPhone.
Given the fact that this one is called "Snow Leopard" and not Lynx or Meercat or tabby or any other type of cat more distant from Leopard, I would guess that Snow Leopard is not intended to be a major upgrade from Leopard, and I think it's actually somewhat of a confession that they want to make Leopard much better before they move on from it.
Hopefully they'll have a separate "upgrade from Leopard" SKU that they either won't charge for, or that will be a much smaller price than the usual price.
When the iPhone was release, the iPhone contracts with AT&T were cheaper than their other smartphone (voice & data) contracts by about $10-15/month. That translates into something like $250+ over the course of a 2 year agreement, which is about the same as the $200 higher price for the iPhone compared to the subsidized smartphones available from AT&T.
It may not have been explicitly stated, but coupled with the fact that you didn't have to sign a contract to walk out with the phone, it pretty much adds up to it not being subsidized.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
I think you really should wait. There will be a better iPhone coming out it 2009--unless you want to wait for the really great 2010 model with 50 hours of talk time and 3.5G. Technology moves on.
Seriously, I bought an iPhone last September for 299 and it is my favorite tech purchase in the last 5 years or so. So ~$2 (one for the hardware, one for the $20 my contract is over my old one) a day for something I use and enjoy every day is fine with me. Actually, it paid for itself the first day I didn't feel the mobile phone interface rage my previous LG, Motorolas and Blackberries gave me.
Er, no. Given past pricing strategies I humbly suggest that if the US tag is $199, it will in fact by £199 and â199.
No it isn't.
It is a symptom of a larger problem.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
It's actually true of all products. DVD players we're like $1000 when they first came out now they're like $50.
Why would I feel stupid? I've had a great phone/iPod/EDGE web-surfing gadget for a year, and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Once the new one is available for sale, I'll have a great phone/iPod/3G web-surfing gadget which I'm sure I'll enjoy just as thoroughly, and my wife will inherit the EDGE version (her old Motorola U6 is long overdue for a replacement anyway).
What makes you think I would expect innovation to come to a grinding halt just because I've spent a bit of cash on a gadget? I bought the iPhone with the understanding that it would be replaced with a newer, more-feature-packed model sooner rather than later (taking into account the almost-annual new-iPod release cycle).
What would you recommend to folks considering the iPhone 3G? That they hold off on buying it, because it's eventually going to be replaced by a cooler model anyway?
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
They could show off to their girlfriends they were cool like Steve and had money to throw away.
Apple listened to developers and enterprise customers in nailing the iPhone feature list. No objections or gripes here.
The 3G iPhone pricing is very un-Apple in being very attractive and without an obvious price premium. In fact, it is priced for mass-market consumption right now. That means there will be millions out there a year from now. And the ecosystem/market will flock to this high-profile platform, in turn creating even more pull.
The stock is down today about 4%. Why Jim Cramer is saying "sell on the news" is beyond me. AAPL is going to be a lot bigger and more profitable a year from now.
There is no technology risk here, so sit back and watch one of the great technology markets of a lifetime unfold.
Besides, the jailbreaks have all depended on buffer overrun bugs in the OS. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Apple paid a LOT of attention to those bugs for the 2.0's firmware. It's probably going to be harder to jailbreak.
It also looks like it will be a lot harder to buy one without signing a contract up-front.
E pluribus unum
Plans start at $59.99, so you're looking at a minimum outlay of $1638.76 plus tax over two years.
Whenever I see a comment like this, I feel compelled to point out that this is the TOTAL amount. 99% of iPhone purchasers ALREADY have a cell phone with a certain amount of minutes and messages, so the only ADDITIONAL costs are the price of the phone (duh) plus the DIFFERENCE in cost between their current plan and the new one. I had a $39.99 ATT plan so I'm only paying $20/month more for the data (and it's worth every penny, btw) so for me it was $249 (rfb. 4 GB phone right after the first price drop) plus $240/year--that's only $729 over two years. If I would have waited until 7/11/08 to buy, that would be just $679--almost a THOUSAND less than your number.
Also, if I would have bought a 3G iPhone, I would have not spent $130 on a used GPS a few months ago. And for some people this replaces an iPod as well. Hell, I could literally sell a handful of gadgets that I own and pay for the whole thing.
PLUS: Figure there's a whole bunch of people who will buy new phones (who cares if it's a new contract, I've been with ATT/Cingular/ATT for over ten years anyway; if I were to replace my iPhone with a new one (probably won't, not sure yet) I wouldn't even blink at the thought of two more years) so there will be a whole bunch of used iPhones all of a sudden, and they'll all be selling for less than $200, maybe as low as $100. I imagine that if you buy and activate a used iPhone, you are not bound to a two year contract. (Anyone know for sure?) You may not even be required to purchase a data plan.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So how's the unlimited data service on that prepaid plan?
I'm not knocking what you're doing, you're buying a product that meets your needs. But you're knocking a product that meets other people's needs. I'm in operations, and the ability to do more things remotely makes my life easier, to the point that I'm willing to pay to get more free time.
Data services may be a total waste for you. But since they're a total waste for you, you don't seem to want anybody else to have them either. What, everyone should have identical pre-paid cellphones? Why? Maybe other people are *gasp* different? They have different personal and professional interests and needs for communication?
In that case, prepare for "much abuse" to be aimed in your direction when a newer, snazzier iPhone is released in 2009.
I think you should hold off on your purchase in anticipation of the next model. In the meantime, maybe you can fashion your own smartphone by duct-taping a Palm V, a Creative Zen and an old Nokia together. Think of what a rebel you'd be then!
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
I should clarify that I'm not rich, but I just knew what I was getting into when I bought it. Never have I purchased a piece of consumer technology to have it go up in price and decrease in features as time went on. I expected the price to drop and the features increase. Again, compare the Apple Lisa at $21K vs a Mac Pro at $2500.
I count the money as "spent". It's not an investment piece and I feel that I've gotten my money worth just in its use. Again I needed a new phone and a new iPod anyway. The iPod was going to be $300 or so and a new phone around a hundred. Well worth it. However I should disclose that I wrote it off as a business expense on my taxes.
No one should have bought a $400 phone in this economy without being able to count it as "gone" without massive financial impact. I did see a lot of people buying this phone that shouldn't have and couldn't afford it- stupid idea.
This is about having proper expectations when you purchase technology. Also a device (should) do the same features that it does on day one and provide similar value. My Commodore 64 still does what it did in 1983, and still provides that value regardless of what else is out there or on the current pricing of them.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
It depends upon whether you also want a device to make phone calls, send text messages, check e-mail, and use the web. If so, $1638.76 for two years of connectivity and an iPod is not all that expensive.
Hey man, sorry you bit off more mortgage than you can chew and all, but for the 90%+ of us who aren't behind on our mortgage this isn't a waste of money. I reckon you think us responsible ones should pay to bail you irresponsible ones out? No thanks. A new iphone will be more useful and fun to me than paying your mortgage.
Lighten up, Francis. Some of us want to have fun and aren't dead yet.
everything in moderation
NEWS FLASH:
More services cost more money! It's this amazing idea where companies actually want to *gulp* make money so they can pay their employees. Instead of doing it DotCom style and just giving everything away and then going out of business, companies today charge money for services, and then use that money to pay back their investors, pay their employees, and invest in new technology and infrastructure to deliver more services.
Looked like you needed a little lesson in how money works. See, if you want more, sometimes you actually have to pay for it. You should be more suspicious of companies that give you more *without* asking you to pay anything.
Doubtful. And this is most likely a Flash problem, rather than an Apple problem. It's a mostly closed standard, and even the 'official' implementations aren't all that great.
Adobe's implementation of Flash is remarkably inefficent, and Adobe notoriously refuse to release the player for any non-x86 platform (apart for legacy support of MacPPC, which is pretty grim even compared to the other, better-supported versions).
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for flash on mobile platforms. You'd probably have more success developing your own standard and convincing the world to switch (I'm not kidding).
The various OSS flash implementations have been progressing at a snail's pace, although I wouldn't put much more hope in those than I would in WINE (ie. it'll never be stable enough to be useful). However, Adobe have recently relaxed their grip on the SWF specification, so we *might* see some progress.
Still, I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't typically count myself among the flash-haters, but the recent problems arising from the lack of cross-platform support and the absurd levels of CPU usage imposed by the player are a huge problem.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Video teleconferencing is your stumbling block? I can agree with not being able to swap SIM cards, but Video Teleconferencing is one of those features that people talk about a lot but almost never use in my experience.
I read the internet for the articles.
No kidding. I have so many roll-over minutes, I don't think I'd ever use them in a lifetime. I guess if I had a 16 year-old daughter things would be different.
Make that five; one friend, two co-workers, myself, plus the original poster, at the least.
It's a larger problem than you're implying. The iPhone is wonderful, but why would I want to pay a minimum of $700 per year (minimum) to use it when I have perfectly good service with my current cell phone providor already?
Jobs just got finished talking about how one of their major targets was reducing the cost, but the cost of switching to AT&T is too great for me, and I would imagine I am not alone in that sentiment.
And this is to say nothing of the problems I and others may have with AT&T steming from the illegal wiretapping row, poor previous customer-service experience, or service availability limitations!
Here's a hint. If you keep holding out for the next-great thing, you'll never have anything to show for your efforts.
Notice not you have to buy the phone from Apple or AT&T stores (not the Apple website), and in the fine print is states "with a two year contract". No more buying an iPhone and not activating it, that is where the cheaper price comes from. Since iPods won't be subsidized by AT&T I highly doubt the price will change unless the price for Apple to manufacture them drastically decreases.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
And if the network is subsidising the phone, there's no way you're walking out the store without the contract set up and the phone registered to it.
Of course, it must be all about shame. It couldn't possibly be the case that after several long cycles of innovation it might be a good idea to hold the APIs constant and merely refactor, fix, & profile. Me fail software engineering? That's unpossible,
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Verizon EVDO service works fine with 3G phones. They just have to be EVDO 3G phones, as opposed to HSDPA 3G phones.
That's great for you. Most of the places where I'd want to use data on my phone, there isn't wifi.
I'm pretty indifferent to most of the things that seem to bother you, but one of your complaints stands out as especially backward: the display is "still" glass because it's a vastly better choice. Glass is harder to break, far harder to scratch, and easier to clean than plastic. The only downside is that it's a little heavier, but I find that to be quite worthwhile for never needing to worry about it getting scratched.
If you're finding yourself breaking a lot of glass iphone displays... well, I can't imagine how you treat your phone, but I'm sure that you'd be breaking plastic ones twice as often.
You can't really compare functionality using a list of features.
It shouldn't affect the price at all. Apple isn't really cutting the price on these devices, the wireless carriers in those 22 countries are. Before, Apple wanted every carrier to fork over $$$ each month for each subscriber. That meant that the wireless carriers couldn't afford to BOTH pay Apple and discount the phones like they normally would ... so the phones were sold unsubsidized (or subsidized very lightly).
Now Apple isn't asking for revenue sharing ... or maybe they did but the carriers around the world finally had the clout to tell them to cut it out. Either way, you're now seeing the benefits of the carrier subsidies - that service plan you're signing up for allows the lower upfront price. Apple still gets its cash for the hardware, the customers get a cheaper device ... everyone is theoretically happy. But that's also why you won't see a price dip on the other iPods, because there's no service provider to pay down the cost for you.
"95% of all Slashdot
Word on the street is that the iPhone Dev Team already have a working 2.0 unlock (based on the beta) - and are holding on to it until the product ships, to avoid having the bug patched pre-ship.
That being said, word on the street also says neither AT&T nor Apple will let you out the store until your contract is signed. This means effectively no unlocking is possible (or at least, meaningful).
I bought the phone to use it, not to stick on a pedestal behind a velvet rope to admire its beauty. It's a phone. If you use it, you're going to drop it. Fact of life. Plan on it.
The glass is superior to a scratched up crappy looking piece of plasticThis really isn't a logical argument. Plastic, scratch resistant screen protectors are about $2 on the high end and they work beautifully. If you did somehow manage to scratch it, just peel it off and stick another one on in its place. I've had the same one for 14 months. There isn't a scratch on my plastic screen.