Apple To Face Challenge At WWDC

Amanda Callahan writes to tell us that Apple's upcoming WWDC could be quite a test for the Cupertino powerhouse. They will most likely be missing Steve Jobs for star-power and have extremely high expectations to meet in order to maintain their edge. Thankfully it looks like Jobs will be rejoining Apple later this month with a good prognosis after facing severe health issues. "The competition is now catching up. Palm, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, are all at varying stages of developing and introducing their own iPhone-like devices and software, along with easily accessible stores for the small programs known as applications, or apps, that run on those devices. In some cases, those companies are releasing a greater variety of phones, on more wireless carriers around the world, than Apple. To maintain its advantage, Apple must preserve the impression that it is far ahead of rivals when it comes to the capabilities and the 'cool' factor of its devices."

Comments

Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[MasterOfUniverse]

"If they start making products people don't want, and start losing users, then Apple's strategy will run into problems," said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[KharmaWidow]

Yes, and that is likely to happen, LOL. They should get the guy from the TV commercial to MC.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[siloko]

along with easily accessible stores for the small programs known as applications, or apps, that run on those devices

Do these run on those hand held thingamygigs? Called 'Phones'?

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[cheftw]

My sarcasm detector is showing giving a very strong reading from your title.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[newcastlejon]

He's a banker, you can't expect imagination from him. If he were an accountant, though... they can be very creative.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

TV Guy: Hi I am a Mac. Welcome to WWDC. ....
TV Guy sees cute girl at WWDC.
TV Guy: Hello, I'm a mac

Cute Girl: Sorry Mac. I saw what you were doing with that Camera. Your are just too open and friendly for me.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[RudeIota]

"Amazing insight from Mr Genius"

"If they start making products people don't want, and start losing users, then Apple's strategy will run into problems," said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital.

Microsoft
To be fair, everyone seems to hate the company and have nothing but bitter contempt for all of their products... but Microsoft is indeed doing OK.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

It is better than his previous analyst job of mortgage companies which always resulted in BUY BUY BUY

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[ksheff]

It's nice to have contracts binding all major PC OEMs to install whatever you shovel out the door. Apple doesn't have that luxury in the smartphone market, so it must continually improve the product, service, and value to the customer. What a concept!

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[s73v3r]

This is America. Just because you make a product that people don't actually want or need is no reason why you shouldn't have unfettered success.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[sbeckstead]

Wow Benjamin is a Master of the Obvious!

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[A12m0v]

No Adobe Flash is actually a feature.
I don't care for the rest, I bought my iPhone knowing what I'll be "missing".
Usability is what the iPhone is about, I've personally had it with phones that are too complex to use.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

"If Steve Jobs starts starts sacrificing little ponies in Cupertino little girls will start crying" said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital. ... fixed it.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

"We analysts worry about companies that base their future on working rather than exploiting a monopoly... they can't be lazy, like us" said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital. ... fixed it

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[ScrewMaster]

Apple doesn't have that luxury in the smartphone market, so it must continually improve the product, service, and value to the customer.

Spoken like a true fanboy. Not to defend Microsoft to any significant degree, but every version of Windows since W2K is far superior to Windows 9x (any edition.) So Apple isn't the only company that invests R&D dollars in improving its product. For that matter, Apple wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as far as it did with the Macintosh if Microsoft hadn't supported it by developing and maintaining Microsoft Office for the Mac for so many years. Granted, Microsoft does have the advantage of being thoroughly unscrupulous, although Apple, oddly enough, is far more litigious. Which corporation is the more (ahem!) "evil" is not as clear as some would like. I know that to the average Mac owner Apple Computer, Inc. can do no evil, but the reality is that they're just another big corporation with the usual one-track mind.

The summary got it right, however:

To maintain its advantage, Apple must preserve the impression that it is far ahead of rivals when it comes to the capabilities and the 'cool' factor of its devices.

And what you have to realize is that it is just that ... an impression. Apple does make fine products, but they're not so far in the lead as they once were.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[stewbacca]

Honestly, this phenomenon is what drives Apple's (general) superiority over equivalent Microsoft offerings at every turn. Necessity for Apple drive innovation. Complacency for Microsoft kills it.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[stewbacca]

iPod batteries as profit??? What a stupid, stupid argument. We have five iPods in our house, and we've NEVER replaced a single battery. We have a 2nd generation iPod up to the current Nano. Even IF these batteries ever die, the new iPods are compelling enough over their 3-5 year old counterparts to just buy a new one. There are more battery replacement services out there than Zune owners, so even when your granny's iPod battery dies, she'll have no problem getting a battery swapped.

User freedom? Has it ever occurred to you that we aren't all a bunch of Linux free-tards, and don't really care? You listed good design and UI, which to many of us, are more important than value and freedom. It's my money--deal with it.

Your anecdotal evidence that Apple struggles with quality control is offset by nearly every marketing research agency. Apple has been tops in quality for nearly a decade now.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[stewbacca]

The pure size of Microsoft alone will make them a more litigious than Apple could ever be. Just because you hear about an Apple lawsuit doesn't mean they are more litigious, from a volume standpoint.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[Mattsson]

On the other hand, Microsoft has the enviable position where most proprietary software used professionally are only available to users of their OS.
Some are available to OSX-users too, and a small subset are also available to Unix-users.
OSX can only be run on Apple PC's, so other OEM's can't ship OSX instead of Windows if they should want to ditch Microsoft.

Re:Amazing insight from Mr Genius

[ksheff]

No, a fanboy would say that Apple is #1 in the smartphone market and that no one has a chance to unseat them. They are in a market where the customer has a real choice and as a result, if another company offers a product that is perceived to be better, they have a shot of unseating the market leader.

Whether or not MSFT OS's since W2K are better than the Win9x predecessors doesn't really matter much. Their licensing agreements with the PC manufacturers and the resulting market inertia has kept their monopoly in the OS market relatively stable even when they produce stinkers like Win ME and Vista. There are technical reasons why those could be considered better than what proceeded it, but you still have many average users with the opinion "damn, this thing sucks", yet they still pay for it if they want to go to a store and buy a new machine. Apple, RIM, Palm, Nokia, and the Windows Mobile licensees don't have luxury: users wanting to buy a new phone will get something else. IMHO, that's a good thing.

"Catching up" is the key phrase

[DavidR1991]

"the competition is now catching up"

Assuming they've kept their edge, that statement is the key: They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse. Provided they keep doing that, there is little room for error to occur

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[s.bots]

The Blackberry Storm's haptic feedback was the major feature that sold me on it. I was a staunch non-supporter of touch screens simply because I got no feedback about what I was doing. For this reason I think apple has now lost pace (hardware-wise, at least).

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Darkness404]

Haptic feedback is a double edged sword though. While SurePress did make sure you were hitting the buttons, it decreased typing speed by a lot. While I could get ~30 WPM on an iPod touch, my typing speed noticeably dropped whenever I typed on a Storm.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[s.bots]

True enough. If I were doing anything more intense (typing-wise) than cranking out the occasional text I would revert to my keyboard loving ways, but for the time being I'm enjoying the extra screen real estate. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[ground.zero.612]

I would disagree and say that they stood on the shoulders of others and probably paid hundreds of millions in advertising.

There were other cell phones before the iphone. There were other mp3 players before the ipod. And there were certainly other PDAs with touch screen interface before either.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[timeOday]

Remember, Apple managed to vault from late-comer to leadership in the first place. The blurb is just hand-wringing about things being as they have always been! Competitors are at "all at varying stages of developing and introducing their own iPhone-like devices and software, along with easily accessible stores for [] apps"... "In some cases, those companies are releasing a greater variety of phones, on more wireless carriers around the world, than Apple." That was all true even before the iPhone; Apple was among the last companies to introduce an iPhone-like device! Just as the iPod was one of the later mp3 players on the market, yet became the standard by which others were measured.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[LWATCDR]

And yet the Storm 2 doesn't have that clicky screen. It actually seems that most people didn't like what RIM called SurePress on the Storm.
I have never used it but like everything some people love it and some people hate it.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[EvilNTUser]

"the competition is now catching up"

Assuming they've kept their edge, that statement is the key: They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse. Provided they keep doing that, there is little room for error to occur

That's an amazingly arrogant attitude that Apple would do well to not share. Apple may have the edge in ease of use, but they never had an edge in anything else. If the competition can catch up on designing good user interfaces before Apple can catch up on hardware and features, there is actually very much room for error.

I get that the UI is most important for many, but it's lame to ignore everything else.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're one of those text-while-you-drive people, tactile feedback is a must -- it's impossible to touch-type reliably on the iPhone (you can do it, just expect some gibberish).

I swear if I ever see you in public I will kick you straight in the balls (assuming you have them). If you text while you drive you should be summarily dismembered while still alive and fed to demons in the farthest depths of hell.

Hang up your god damn phone and drive you stupid piece of shit!

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

It also helps that pretty much every reporter in the industry (and in particular on sites like slashdot) uses and promotes their products. TV and the web are absolutely SATURATED with the idea that Apple products are the epitome of perfection, typically ignoring their serious flaws and buying into the marketing hype that if you give Apple your money, you somehow become a better person.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Mike Lazaridis, RIM's founder and co-CEO, at the "All Things Digital" event a few days ago said:
"SurePress is here to stay."

And in the only hands-on video I'm aware of, the screen was a non-responsive placeholder.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Tanktalus]

Good God, man. Stop beating about the bush and tell us how you really feel!

(I see you prefer the "pansy" approach - I'd probably favour something a bit more severe.)

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the anachronism "hang up your god damn phone," in reference to a device that no longer hangs to disconnect, in reference to an act that doesn't involve an open line.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not have modpoints, but I second your feelings.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[samkass]

To maintain its advantage, Apple must preserve the impression that it is far ahead of rivals

This statement was thrown in there seemingly at random. Why can't Apple just be the best, most usable platform? And why can't it rely on a billion downloaded applications that only run on its platform as some lock-in? Not that I'm *not* advocating Apple continuing to innovate, but why do they have to be held to a higher standard than everyone else?

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[cowscows]

You're right, but you're missing the piece that a lot of people don't see. Creating good software is hard. Cramming a new piece of hardware into a piece of plastic is the easy part. Designing an interface that makes that piece of hardware more useful can be a lot harder.

That's the only reason why a computer company was able to walk right into the phone market, and on their first try create something that all those old phone manufacturers are now rushing to catch up to. I'm willing to bet that Apple's employees overall spent way more time getting the software right than they did deciding what hardware to put into the iPhone.

And then the app store is a whole other beast. Apple had a lot of experience from the iTMS, they had a ton of infrastructure in place, and they even already had end-user software in place to tie it all together. Most of their competitors have to build similar systems from scratch. They've got a good example to follow now, but they've still got plenty to figure out.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[s73v3r]

Yes, there were other mp3 players before the iPod. But arguably Apple was the first to do it right. As in, make something that people actually wanted to use, and was easy to use.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[s73v3r]

You don't think Apple had a hand in creating that image?

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[WCguru42]

why do they have to be held to a higher standard than everyone else?

Apple's entire marketing and business model are based on their products being better. Some companies base their businesses on having good products at cheap prices. Apple doesn't do that and if consumers don't have the opinion that Apple has far superior products then Apple will have to redesign their entire business model. Mercedes Benz had this problem when they decided to over expand their product portfolio. They were known for producing high quality "german engineered" cars that were significantly better than other manufacturers. Then they tripled their product line and quality fell and so did a lot of their market. They're now working on regaining that old allure. You can't sell your product for premium prices unless people view it as a premium product.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[rilister]

"Apple may have the edge in ease of use, but they never had an edge in anything else"

If you took apart two phones and compared how they were designed, you'd see Apple's mechanical design is more considerably more advanced, some could say unnecessarily complex. Their manufacturing sophistication is a pretty sizable leap ahead of any other company making consumer products, bar none.

You simply can't make an iPhone using plastic molded parts and paint. It just can't be done.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[tsa]

Luckily there are mp3 players that work better than the piece of crippleware that is the iPod.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

The only safe way to text while driving is to turn on cruise control, take your feet off the pedals, and use your knees to steer. This frees up your hands to make quicker texts, allowing your eyes to focus on the road sooner.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[foo fighter]

If you're one of those text-while-you-drive people

The last person I caught doing that I got out of my car at the next red light, tapped on their window, and punched them in the face, took their phone, and threw it against the building across the street.

You are a time bomb you stupid fuck. You will have earned your reward when you kill someone, you walking abortion.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Police report or it didn't happen.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[mdwh2]

Indeed, I was amused by that. We have a word for "iPhone-like devices" ... why not just say phone.

Just as the iPod was one of the later mp3 players on the market, yet became the standard by which others were measured.

Although it's not "just as", as unlike the Ipod, the Iphone is in no kind of dominant position, nor any kind of standard, despite what Apple and the pro-Apple hype might like to claim. Sometimes trademarks get used to mean a generic product (walkman, Ipod, Hoover), but the idea that people are trying to replace the word "phone" with "Iphone" or "iPhone-like device" is rather laughable, in my opinion.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[mdwh2]

They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse.

No, they don't, and that's not true. PhOnEs were around, and continually rapidly advancing in technology, years before the Iphone joined the market, and now they're just one of many phones in the high end market. A pretty nifty phone if it matches your requirements perhaps, but not the be all and end all of phones, not the market leader, not the dominant player. Sure, perhaps Apple might have been first to add one feature in the Iphone, but all the companies were first with one thing or another, there's nothing special. That's how the market works. And there are plenty of things that Apple have been playing catch-up on, even things that are bog standard on cheap phones, and which took ages for Apple to add, if they have at all yet (3G, video, MMS, Java, copy/paste). And before anyone starts pleading "But I don't need that feature", my point is not whether features are good or bad, simply that singling out Apple as "leading" and other companies as "following" clearly makes no sense, when there is no end of demonstrable features that other companies had first, and Apple followed.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Tirhakah]

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/125/

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Uberbah]

Nope. It's 2009 and still no one gives a shit about WankVorbis or WankBox.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[stewbacca]

We need a Godwin rule, but for "Blackberry". Whoever introduces Blackberry into a conversation about usability and cool automatically losses the argument.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[stewbacca]

Engineering tradeoffs--I prefer UI not suffer at the expense of other things, like long "feature" lists and "legacy support" that Microsoft is so in love with.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[LWATCDR]

Engadget had a working on to try and no clicky screen. So in this case I would say we will see.

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[lymond01]

Hang up your god damn phone and drive you stupid piece of shit!

I realize you're probably using "you" as a generic "you people who do this" but to clarify, I DO have an iPhone and wouldn't text while I drive anyway (I have enough trouble changing radio stations...)

Re:"Catching up" is the key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever see the final reel of Casino Royal? The new one not that David Niven fiasco. That's what I'd do to you if I EVAH catch you texting while driving.

Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Tibor the Hun]

So the competition has millions of devices in user's hands, a unified and attractive app store, and an established ecosystem?
(And that's even ignoring the music juggernaut on the other side of the coin.)

Which competition is even close to this kind of market?
Not trolling, not flaming, just asking.

Seems like everyone nowadays is granted a writing/analyst position if they can predict the fall of apple, or gloat about the upcoming features coming from microsoft.
(I'm also not saying that competition is bad, just that Apple right now doesn't face any coherent competition. Take Palm Pre as an example... Different hardware models (for sprint and verizon networks), crashy app store, lack of apps, web-based apps, lack of actual customers, and worst of all, predicted shortages at introduction. WhoTF decided it would be a good idea to have that kind of a release against the upcoming iPhone v3?)

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[mr_mischief]

It's pretty important to have different hardware when you're working with two different types of radio networks. Apple can't be on both CDMA networks and GSM networks with just the one phone. Companies with both GSM and CDMA phones can have phones on both types of networks.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Microsoft has millions of Windows Mobile devices in users' hands, an established ecosystem, and the app store is forthcoming in the next version of Windows Mobile, Android's finally rolling out more phones, so they're going to start picking up steam, since they already have the app store.

And really, fuck Palm.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[CannonballHead]

just that Apple right now doesn't face any coherent competition

You are apparently really just speaking of two of Apple's "products" though: iPhone and Music.

Great. What about hardware, operating systems/software...? I would think the idea behind predicting Apple's downfall is really just counting how many of their eggs are in one basket, and how close others are at taking that basket.

OTOH, I'm not a fan of "Apple stinks" or "Apple is going down hill fast now that Jobs is gone" comments, either. I also generally dislike the idea that Apple's iPhone is the greatest thing since MacOS... which usually comes from Apple-ite type people. Not to mention that the comments along the lines of "Microsoft cannot produce any quality products [therefore, this new one can't be good]."

/random

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Palm Pre's app store is crashy? It didn't even come out yet, did it? Plus, your ignorance in saying web-based apps is all it has is astounding. WebOS-based apps are not the same as web-apps. Plus, the "different hardware models" you speak of are based on comparing the current model to one that doesn't exist yet. Its quite possible they'll be the same except using a different radio (CDMA instead of GSM). In fact, when it comes down to it, there's not much more to be different than there was between the various iPhone models. Plus, that music juggernaut looks like it'll becoming an attractive point for the Pre as well. That established ecosystem of an app store isn't invincible. The current app stores aren't failing, but its true, they haven't caught up to the iPhone yet either. However, just because it hasn't happened yet isn't to say it can't happen. Also, I rarely read articles that are trying to predict apple failing, in fact, this is the first. And i don't see many gloating about MS. In fact, I can only recall very few. Most of your rant is using baseless conjecture that is mostly incorrect. You are trolling, you just don't realize it. You're one of those fanboys who just don't realize they are one. I own an iPhone 3G, yet even I gotta call you out on this.

I'm excited about the Pre.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[DeathMagnetic]

I don't think anyone's predicting the fall of Apple, but rather just stating the obvious. The competition is catching up. Unless Apple unveils some big surprises next week, there's no denying that the competition is positioned much better than they were a year ago. Apple's in no imminent danger here, but they are losing ground, and rumors about the next-gen iPhone suggest that there won't me any major innovations coming from them any time soon (and no, OS updates to include features the competition already has don't count).

As for the Palm Pre, it hasn't achieved anything yet, much less established itself as an iPhone-killer, but it's a little premature to write it off due to lack of apps or lack of actual customers. It hasn't even been released yet! Most reviews have been very favorable and put it at least in the same class as the iPhone, which is a big step from where we've been for the last couple of years.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

read mossberg's report on palm's app store.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[afidel]

There are Blackberries with both CDMA and GSM radios, they have a SIM installed by Verizon too. Nice for people who live in a GSM deadzone but travel internationally.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Palm Pre. Interesting, in that it won't be released for two days. How can you complain about a "crashy app sttore" when the product isn't even in the field.

Verizon. Hmmm. Not going to happen for a while, the Pre is exclusive to Sprint for a while.

Different hardware models. Duh! Different networks, etc. Palm is one of the most experienced when it comes to having different models all running the same OS. and of course you will need different hardware for different networks. If the networks use different technology, you will need different hardware.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Medievalist]

Without trolling, or flaming, here is my answer:

On February 3rd, 1637, everyone just woke up. And the price of tulips went down the toilet, and everyone looked around and said "why did I pay more than a tulip's weight in gold for this? It's just a flower".

Someday, everyone will just wake up. They will put down the ipods, and pick up pennywhistles, guitars, and harmonicas again. That's just how fads work. Tulips and iPhones will still exist, but they won't be fetish objects to otherwise normal people any more, and so their prices will no longer reflect emotional baggage unrelated to function or utility.

Your perfectly valid reasoning may not do you any good at all if people suddenly go crazy for Zunes, or whatever. I suspect that trying to analyze fads with reason and logic is an exercise in futility... no sane person thinks $100 a month is a reasonable price for phone service, but they buy iPhones anyway. It's probably best just to roll with it and try not to lose your shirt when the bubble bursts.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Orne]

From my MBA economics teacher, in today's information economy, a firm now has approximately two years to have market power, then the sheer number of other players in the market will destroy the first-runner's ability to lead. There are too many competators that can hire their own programmers and make their own hardware, competing products are bound to arrive.

So, Apple has two choices: innovate or cut costs. What will the iPhone+ be able to do that the current one can't do... err, it already does music, camera, QUERTY, video... what more can it integrate with? Apple introduces email integration, which puts them in competition with RIM, but is that enough? They're kind of up against a wall unless they can think out of the box (again), but MS's Zune HD appears to be leading there with console controller integration, an untapped area.

So, the other option to remain a leader is to reduce the costs; and that's what's Apple is rumored to do next Monday, and what AT&T is doing on the O&M side to drive up demand. From the article, "According to Gartner, a research group, Apple sells 11% of the world's smartphones, compared to Nokia's 41% and Research in Motion's 20%." --> Apple has a ways to go and their market position is beginning to slip.

But as more competition comes into the arena, they will be able to beat Apply on the cost-side too. Apple needs to find something on the hardware side to expand its capabilities (bigger better faster) or to charge off into uncharted competative waters and make the iPhone compete with someone else's product (completely different: TV receiver? broadcast radio? )...

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[pitchpipe]

WhoTF decided it would be a good idea to have that kind of a release against the upcoming iPhone v3?)

Hence the name "Pre"mature.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[CaptSaltyJack]

Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted to say. The iPhone/iPod Touch is in no danger of being overtaken by the competition any time soon... I almost laughed when I read the bit about MS, Palm, Google, etc. catching up. I know this sounds fanboyish, but to be completely honest, I don't have any product loyalty. I use whatever I feel is the best gadget for me and my purposes, and at this point in time, my iPhone 3G does everything (and more) that I need/want in a phone and mobile PDA. Apple has spent far more time and research on user interfaces and usability than the competitors, I think, and it shows.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[One Louder]

With all due respect, your MBA economics teacher seems pretty clueless about the actual market. Success in the market has almost nothing to do with hiring programmers and making hardware. In the vast majority of cases, it's all about marketing and product positioning, and most market segment leaders have held that position for far more than two years.

Where's the "iPod killer"? Who's displacing Skype? Where's the auction site competing with eBay? Who's coming up to challenge Google, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook? Some of these companies have been at the top of the heap for over a decade, with no serious competitor in sight.

Many of these folks are leaders because of the network effect of their services - something programmers and hardware can't change.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[david_thornley]

Tulips and iPhones will still exist, but they won't be fetish objects to otherwise normal people any more, and so their prices will no longer reflect emotional baggage unrelated to function or utility.

Except that emotional baggage isn't what sells iPhones. It's primarily function and utility.

I am, of course, referring to easy-to-use function and utility. I can use my iPhone for pretty much any of its intended purposes quickly and without hassling with the interface. That wasn't true of the last phone I had: it did quite a few things, but it never seemed worth figuring out how.

The iPhone does a whole lot of things simply and intuitively. That means it has more effective functionality, for a great many people, than phones that are theoretically more capable. Moreover, the iPhone is a lot more fun to use.

This doesn't mean the iPhone is unstoppable. It does mean that an iPhone killer is going to have to be easy and fun to use, and not just laden with functionality and a manual that's more text than the average American reads in a year. It does mean that any iPhone killer is going to be mocked by Slashdot as being lame, of course. Many Slashdotters are quick to label anything they don't immediately understand as irrational and unpredictable.

Nor do I think people are going to discard their iPods in favor of guitars. People have wanted recorded music since it became available (with the player piano, say). People are going to keep iPods or whatever gets popular instead, and quite a few people are still going to learn to play the guitar, because that fulfills a slightly different need. (And my wife still won't let me practice the nose flute in the house.)

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[CuriHP]

How can you possibly misspell QWERTY? It's spelled correctly on the damn keyboard.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[dave562]

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[jhoger]

Yeah in my MBA program they just taught that you need to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, and you make strategic and tactical decisions to achieve that. You pick niches with high barriers to entry, or you find ways to establish high barriers to entry. Intellectual property, brand equity, channel development, etc. are all ways to get sustainable competitive advantage.

Every industry is somewhat different as regards what options exist for doing that.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[shmlco]

Well... they can always run with the 40,000 applications in the App Store. A rather significant head start on the 12 demo non-native applications Pre is currently showing in their app "store" (you can't buy anything yet). Even beats out the 25,000 or so Windows Mobile apps Microsoft touts as aving.

Plus they have the whole game-integration thing going with the iPod Touch.

Plus binding all of those apps to a larger "pad" media/game/reading device.

And there's that patent that just popped up on middle-of-the-call media transfers (send a pic to someone in the middle of the phone call, listen to the same song, etc.).

But as to killer phone features... my money is on video iChat on the iPhone. Do a video call to anyone with an iPhone OR with a iSight-enabled MacBook or iMac?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[0xdeadbeef]

Not trolling, not flaming, just asking.

If that is the case, why is your next paragraph a bunch of retarded wharrgarbl?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should pass the class before you incorrectly regurgitate this shit. Commodities with low barriers to entry see an influx of competition leading to a reduction in profit. However, Apple has monopoly on their brand and can differentiate themselves with features (software) and patents.

Anyone can carbonate sugar water. Why didn't Coke didn't go out of business years ago?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's using Dvorak.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he *is* an MBA student.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Wisconsingod]

How can you possibly misspell QWERTY? It's spelled correctly on the damn keyboard.

They must be typing on an iPhone

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[LWATCDR]

Yes Blackberry has millions of devices in the hands of users. They now have an app store. I will go with that ecosystem thing.
Palm and RIM have a lot of experience with Smartphones so yes I would say they are catching up. Android has a lot of developer love but right now in the US is limited to T-Mobile.

Also Verizon and Sprint are both CDMA networks so no issues. I think Apple will finally have a fight on it's hands with the Palm Pre. It doesn't just have web apps it uses javascript but that isn't just for web apps. Since the phone isn't out yet I don't think it is far to say the app store is crashy or that they have a lack of actual customers.

Apple has done a great job with the iPhone. It is a really good piece of kit. From the predictions I have seen the new iPhone is going to be a minor update. The big news will be if they release a 4GB one for $99 and an 8GB for 149 to go with the new 16 and 32 GB models.

For me the lack of voice dialing on the iPhone is a terrible omission. Heck that is a feature of my $49 cell phone. No stereo bluetooth? No video,? Think about everything that the iPhone lacks. Yes it is far from perfect device. The have done a lot to push smartphones and now we are seeing the fruits. More and better smartphones.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you are not trying to imply that there is value gained during the planning / engineering / design /development stages of a product or service as a function of the talent / skills / experience of those involved that sits on the other side of the equation from success!! (OMG!! what a sentence!!!)

I'm going with the MBA, they tend to make more money. It's 2 years worth of warm bodies that get's it done!

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[ksheff]

It's an unfinished webservice for an unreleased product, so there's bound to have some bugs. If their app store still crashes after the release, then it's ok to gripe about it. How long did it take Apple to get MobileMe working right?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

DUORAC

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[iluvcapra]

Which competition is even close to this kind of market?

Microsoft maybe, though their problems with getting a good vertical product are endemic, excepting perhaps the Xbox, but is that yet profitable?

Amazon, but they seem to be happy leaving personal computing, email, contacts, mobile media on the table. But Amazon seems to be much better equipped to roll out a vertical than MS, even if it hasn't demonstrated the complete wherewithal in the hardware department to pull off a media/comm device. Love my Kindle though.

As Gruber pointed out the other day, the main NY Apple Store pulls as much revenue, in that one store annually as the entire Palm corporation earns in 4 months. Palm might have a chance if the hardware is as good as everyone says, but I have terrible memories of support on my Treo. Apple will always have the winning store chain of all of these to provide an on-the-ground support infrastructure.

Sony is weird; they definitely could do the hardware and support but they seem to have serious problems institutionally with putting together a vertical that combines the consumer electronics division, music and creatives, Vaio, and SonyEricsson into a single Great Product.

Anyone else come to mind?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

What it seems to me is that your saying you didn't enjoy your last phone as much because you had to read a manual that has a index.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[not-my-real-name]

I don't think anyone's predicting the fall of Apple, but rather just stating the obvious.

People have been predicting the fall of Apple since at least the late '80s. Apple: Proudly going out of business for over 25 years. (or is it 30 years by now) Eventually the pundits will be right and then they can say, "I told you so"

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[ForestHill]

Maybe he's typing on a Pre. I hear the keyboard sucks. :-)

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[DMUTPeregrine]

',.pyf is the Dvorak equivalent. Though "aoeui" might work better.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look man, when I'm driving drunk and trying to figure out how to get Google maps working, I like having a big button I can press with my thumb - not a series of mysteriously ordered menus.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[spire3661]

Skype and Vonage are direct competitors, Google, Yahoo and MS are direct competitors. Craigslist is a direct competitor to Ebay.. Facebook, Myspace LinkedIn are direct competitors. Amazon is a tough one because they aggregate independant e-tailers.Most of these services dont have any REAL brand loyalty beyond familiarity. Being the mo

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[spire3661]

I certainly can appreciate the pure business mindset, but I can never understand it. As a technologist, it is unnatural for me to try and create high barriers for entry to anything. A bit irrelevant to the topic at hand, but your statement made me remember that i will always be a terrible businessman.

Anyways, Apple has a nice market penetration and mindshare, but the market is far too diverse and the competition way too strong for them to be complacent in any way. The iphone's absolute #1 advantage is the ability to use the web better then any other phone EVER. Not only that, the handset makers made it REALLY easy for apple to dominate with a well made product because they cripple the hardware far beyond what is necessary and offer NOTHING to address that lost functionality other then extremely overpriced ephemera.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own an Iphone, ive been waiting for the competition to catch up, so far im still not impressed) I have a HTC 6700 from verizon, its shaped like a brick, I couldnt even get acrobat reader to work on it. Browsing the web or just plain trying to use the device beyond reading pure text email and making calls is an exercise in frustration. Not to mention the OS takes up about 95% of the onboard memory so Im limited to very few apps. In a word, SUCK!

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[imamac]

Doesn't ebay own craigslist?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[larry bagina]

No... craigslist is a private company, but awards stock to some employees. One (now former) employee sold his stock to ebay. So they are a stockholder, but don't own or control it.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[s73v3r]

If I have the choice of two devices with similar functionality, but for one I have to read a manual with an index to figure out how to use it, or the other where I can just pick it up and see exactly how to use it, guess which one I'm going with.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[WCguru42]

Where's the "iPod killer"? Who's displacing Skype? Where's the auction site competing with eBay? Who's coming up to challenge Google, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook? Some of these companies have been at the top of the heap for over a decade, with no serious competitor in sight.

I would say you're right on all of those except for Skype. And Skype is facing competition from Google which you already had on your list, so no biggie. I would say that the GP is missing the fact that Apple has the possibility to innovate beyond cutting costs. Nobody had thought of (or at least producing) a phone like the iPhone until Apple did it. Innovations are innovative because nobody thought of them beforehand and I'm hoping to see something spectacular (beyond cut & paste, for the love of God I've been waiting on that long enough) from Apple, but you never know, it might just be a dud of a WWDC.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[WCguru42]

Google, Yahoo and MS are direct competitors.

And nobody is saying lets Yahoo that. Yahoo and MS might be around but Google dominates that market and has for a long time. They don't have an impenetrable product but until somebody steps up they'll maintain their market dominance beyond that MBA profs magical 2 year limit. The same goes with the iPod, despite all the howling from the /. crowd about product inferiority Apple has managed to maintain it's dominance of the market for quite a long time and it doesn't seem that anyone is coming in to take that from them. Again, they're not invincible, but they keep updating and making enough tweaks to their product that people keep coming back for more and nobody is really catching up. The fact is nobody can accurately predict the market, it's all just more and more educated guesses that can be trumped by somebody coming up with something truly fantastic.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[WCguru42]

I don't think anyone's predicting the fall of Apple, but rather just stating the obvious.

People have been predicting the fall of Apple since at least the late '80s. Apple: Proudly going out of business for over 25 years. (or is it 30 years by now) Eventually the pundits will be right and then they can say, "I told you so"

There was a little bit in the 90's where most of those pundits probably felt pretty snarky.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[WCguru42]

no sane person thinks $100 a month is a reasonable price for phone service, but they buy iPhones anyway.

Maybe that's because I only spend $75 a month. Considering what data plans used to cost the iPhone really isn't that expensive. Now, as competition increases the unlimited date rates aren't nearly as impressive as they were 2-3 years ago.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[WCguru42]

What it seems to me is that your saying you didn't enjoy your last phone as much because you had to read a manual that has a index.

I can't think of the last time I RTFM. My parents used to get so mad at me when we bought new TVs because I would just plug the yellow cable into the yellow hole. They always wanted to check the manual. If you're good at design you won't need a manual to use something that's intended for the user. This doesn't mean that you won't need a manual for fixing a car, but the guts of a car are not intended for the user. And the interface of a phone is intended for the user and my last blackberry was mostly intuitive, but there were still some features I never ended up using because I couldn't figure them out intuitively. I've never had that problem with my iPhone. Some people value features over intuitive ease of use, others have the exact opposite feeling, and plenty fall somewhere in the middle.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[blackest_k]

It's pretty obvious these are the big global players but that doesn't always make them top everywhere. For example Allegro.pl is a pretty big auction site for Poles. gumtree.ie is a better craigs list for Ireland.

There are some really good national and regional sites. Some things a local player can do better than a big multinational, especially once your talking languages other than English.

One weakness of google is it's great at bringing in results from all over the world but pretty useless at finding local information. Wouldn't it be nice if a search engine could fetch results only relevant to a particular geographic area. Googles also lousy at setting up user preferences I'd like to filter my results with an adblock like filter, ideally tailored to my individual requirements.

Perhaps someones already developed something that can preprocess and post process a google search removing the crud from the returned sites.

  I've a feeling Google doesn't want to improve its search results too much, since it makes money from Ads and if the natural search results bring in what users are looking for then thats a lost click from the google ads on the side and the top.

So it's quite possible to make a better search engine, unfortunately that will tend to minimize revenues from advertising.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[7Prime]

That's a little overly simplistic. There's more to the market than just cost and hardware. Hardware is really the easy part, and it's not really what made Apple so popular (although they are good at it). What Apple are, bar none, the best at in this area is infrastructure. Screw their software development, screw their phenominal design philosophies... Apple's biggest asset is their ability to put together massively complex networks of various media types, make them work together, and appear completely seemless to the user. Secure infrastructure builds trust, and it builds relationships with customers that things like "features" and "cost" really can't always compete with. Us techies too often look at specs, features and the actual hardware design, and we often ignore the less quantifiable assets that a product may have: it's infrastructure being one of them. Quantifiable or not, usability and infrastruture (which go hand in hand), sell products.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

he uses dvorak
oh and the capchca is defect

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty hard to do two-way video chatting with the camera on the opposite side of the screen, isn't it?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[FlightlessParrot]

Tulips and iPhones will still exist, but they won't be fetish objects to otherwise normal people any more, and so their prices will no longer reflect emotional baggage unrelated to function or utility.

Well, here in New Zealand all phones have to be sold as bare handsets, without contracts (and so without subsidies); also, parallel importing is explicitly permitted by law. In this market, the iPhone is actually cheaper than comparable smartphones, even the parallel imported ones. The Palm Pre looks very nice, and I'd really like multi-tasking and a better camera, and access to all those old Palm programs would be really nice, but I'm guessing it'll cost half as much again as the iThing.

A retired medievalist says, you gotta lose that idea that there's an Apple Tax or that they're selling pure image.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Wovel]

For the fourth time in this thread...Iphone service samey pricey other smart phone service. Understandy nowey. Pleasey showey meey smarty phoney costy lessy monthy.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[cayenne8]

"no sane person thinks $100 a month is a reasonable price for phone service, but they buy iPhones anyway."

Actually, I think it is reasonable. Hell, I've been paying close to that for years for the Sprint Vision service with a phone that is not even a smartphone....

I figured if I'm paying this much, get an iPhone that actually does a LOT for the price.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's got one a them Dvorak thingies. I tried one oncet and could hardly type the ransom note out in engrish, let alone latin.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[ScrewMaster]

Which competition is even close to this kind of market?

Well, the Google App Store is coming along pretty well, and Google has more infrastructure to support such efforts than Apple or just about anyone else. They also know how to run applications on a vast scale: an app store is pretty trivial in that context. As it happens, I picked a G1 over an iPhone. Frankly, I've been very happy with it, especially since the recent operating system update. Is it as slick as the iPhone ... no, but then again, it does what I want extremely well, and integrates perfectly with the Google services I use. Lots of decent apps (nowhere near the variety of Apple's app store, but it's growing.) It's also a far more open development environment than the IPhone will ever be. That appeals to a lot of developers.

The G1's Linux-based Android OS is also far closer to a real desktop than any other phone I've used, and given that it's now being used on low-end netbooks instead of Windows, I expect that trend to continue.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[ScrewMaster]

Many of these folks are leaders because of the network effect of their services - something programmers and hardware can't change.

Well, you're basically correct ... what you're talking about is something George Guilder discussed at some length in his book. Essentially, his premise is that highly-successful incumbent technologies are rarely displaced unless the disruptive replacement is substantially better, usually by about an order of magnitude. So yes, the displacement of a market leader is definitely something that engineers, programmers and other creative people bring about, but they have to make a serious improvement in order to do it. It can be done, and is. But it's not easy.

Take the internal combustion engine, for example. Are there better technologies out there? Ways of transducing chemical energy to mechanical that are cheaper, more efficient, easier to manufacture, etc? Certainly, but none of them have ever proven so much better that they were worth the cost of retooling manufacturing facilities and replacing existing national infrastructure. That's still the case to this very day.

On the other hand, take the venerable cathode-ray tube. Around for the better part of a century and yet ... it's essentially gone. Displaced. Actually, it was superseded by a number of distinctly different technologies, and it took a lot of people a lot of time and money to pull that off. And more importantly, the new tech had to be substantially "better" to make the transition economically viable.

So don't expect Apple, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook or any of the other current top-dogs to be around forever. They won't ... sooner or later, they'll be marginalized by some up-and-coming competitor, sooner if they stumble and start making mistakes, or if society's needs change and they don't adapt.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[ScrewMaster]

Not only that, the handset makers made it REALLY easy for apple to dominate with a well made product because they cripple the hardware far beyond what is necessary and offer NOTHING to address that lost functionality other then extremely overpriced ephemera.

I don't really disagree with you, but at least in the American market it is not the handset makers that are the problem. It's the service providers that wield so much power over the manufacturers that they can demand that firmware be crippled, in order to drive sales of trivialities like ringtones. Sprint is famous for that, and it's why I left that schlock outfit (I mean, I had a Sanyo Katana, and in order to get pictures that I took with the onboard camera, Sprint wanted me to pay for a data plan so that I could email them to myself.) Well, that stupid decision cost them a good customer. Well, that and insane billing practices that cross the line into fraudulent.

I currently have a G1, probably one of the most open cell phones on the market today (yeah, they took away root access in RC30 but you can get it back pretty easily, and that was a Google decision to protect app developers, not T-Mobile's.) The functionality is impressive, and the Web integration is excellent, particularly (as you would expect) with Google's services. I can take any MP3 and make a ringtone, I can do anything I want with my pictures (or, with the new Cupcake release of the OS, movies), mount the SD card as a drive on my PC via USB. Sure, not as polished or slick as an iPhone, but that's not what I was after.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[stewbacca]

Not to mention that the comments along the lines of "Microsoft cannot produce any quality products [therefore, this new one can't be good]."

Well, with years and years of precedent, why should we give them the benefit of the doubt on any new product they make?

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not realise this - but CDMA is dead. The only reason it still exists anywhere - is because the USA is so used to paying too much for inferior mobile phone services, that the operators can't be bothered to switch to THE standard in use in the rest of the world.

Having a CDMA phone makes no sense for Apple - in a few short years the standard will be gone.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Gilmoure]

What about the $99 Walmart iPhone rumors have out there. Imagine would be positioned similarly as the Nano iPod.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need a manual for fixing a car. Seriously.

But my hands are pretty scarred and callused, so the iPhone/iPod screen doesn't work as well for me as for other people. My right index fingertip does not register at all. Oh, and I've got a genetic propensity for a degenerative eye disease, so my eyesight will most likely be shot in 30 years, so the iPod/iPhone interface will be unuseable for me.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Medievalist]

Tulips and iPhones will still exist, but they won't be fetish objects to otherwise normal people any more, and so their prices will no longer reflect emotional baggage unrelated to function or utility.

Except that emotional baggage isn't what sells iPhones. It's primarily function and utility.

The replies to my post, and my observations of iPhone users, convince me that you are mistaken.

If you say, "Cola sucks. I like iced tea" otherwise sane people don't write ten thousand word threads to prove that you have misjudged the perfect and god-like attributes of cola. Because cola is not (currently) a fad. If you say "iPhones and iPods suck. I like cheap chinese MP3 players and Go-phones" people's heads spin around on their shoulders, and earnest, well-meaning people drop everything to preach you the true faith. Unmistakably a fad.

It's OK to have an iPhone/iPod, it's OK to like it, it's OK to pay more than it might objectively be worth if that brings you pleasure. Rock on, people! But one day the fad will pass, and the people who still want and like the devices will not have to pay so much for them. Nothing wrong with that.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[CannonballHead]

Benefit of the doubt would be "they've made lots of good products, therefore this one will be good.

This isn't benefit of the doubt, this is more guilt by association.

Saying that they historically have not done well thus they won't do well now is... well, not a very informed opinion, IMO. How's that for a compromise.

My main point is pretty simple - MS can, and has, produced some good products. If they work for you (or me, or whomever), good. Just because MS has produced some really bad products doesn't mean I should just presume all of them are bad (even if MOST of them are, or whatever your opinion are) and not even try it and see if it's a good thing.

It's the same attitude as the proverbial Apple fanboy, only the opposite. Instead of "Apple is awesome, all their products are better than any other product by another company," it's "Micro$oft is horrible, all their products are worse than any other product by another company!"

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Medievalist]

Well, here in New Zealand all phones have to be sold as bare handsets, without contracts (and so without subsidies); also, parallel importing is explicitly permitted by law. In this market, the iPhone is actually cheaper than comparable smartphones, even the parallel imported ones.

Sounds like New Zealand already woke up! Aren't you afraid Australia will invade? How can the Aussies stand to see such flagrant sanity right there on their doorstep?

Someday I hope my country will be as sane as yours. Seriously, I am not kidding.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[stewbacca]

My main point is pretty simple - MS can, and has, produced some good products.

And my rebuttal is equally simple. Other than a couple versions of Office in the mid 1990s, what have they made that qualifies as "some good products"? I can think of only a couple -- the Xbox line (even with it's quality issues), Word for Macintosh, version 4, Excel (way back before it became a bloated spreadsheet that does incorrect math calculations), and Windows XP (only after a couple years of service packs, and even still, compared to the competition, only rates "good enough").

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Medievalist]

There are a number of problems with your logic, but the biggest, most glaring one is that it isn't logic at all.

How perceptive of you. You read a post wherein I say "it's not logical" and you recognize the absence of logic. You will go far, with such mad skillz!

Also, I think 100 dollars a month is perfectly reasonable. Probably because I have a real job and that number doesn't even get noticed.

A "real job" huh? I'm guessing not an accountant.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Medievalist]

"no sane person thinks $100 a month is a reasonable price for phone service, but they buy iPhones anyway."

Actually, I think it is reasonable. Hell, I've been paying close to that for years for the Sprint Vision service with a phone that is not even a smartphone....

Well, I apologize for calling you insane, even though you clearly are. Hey, insane people are more interesting, look at it that way!

I figured if I'm paying this much, get an iPhone that actually does a LOT for the price.

Well, that part seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[david_thornley]

Except that it isn't the same thing. I like my iPhone. If you don't like the iPhone, that's cool, and I'm not going to type a single character to try to change your mind.

What you said is that the success was due to emotional reactions, not function and utility. That's wrong, and by my self-appointed role as Corrector of the Internet I have to tell you. Most of the iPhone's popularity is due to the functionality it gives the average person, or for that matter the geek who just wants to learn stuff and not master a particular interface.

Interfaces that are easily learnable, explorable, and generally usable are not a fad, and the demand will not go away. (The supply might, but not while Steve Jobs has anything to do with it.)

Nor is there an objective worth for the iPhone: like all such products, its worth is based on what people are willing to pay for it. This is based heavily on the use people are going to be able to make of it, and the level of annoyance when trying to use the product.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[Medievalist]

I find Apple interfaces counter-intuitive and difficult to use. Are you going to assume I'm lying, or that I'm misguided, or that I'm stupid? Pick any one of the three, and you instantly prove that you aren't operating from logic, you are emotionally attached to your iPhone and can't bear to look at it objectively. Subjectively, for you, I am sure the interface is great. But the idea that the Apple interface is "intuitive" and/or "easy" is pure marketing.

I've used Apple products since they've existed, incidentally, so I'm not speaking from inexperience. I have a mac on my desk right now. I don't own an iPhone or iPod touch because they are difficult and frustrating for me to use and cost too much anyway. I do own an older iPod but I prefer my $15 chinese MP3 player because it has a better user interface (no host software - pure USB drag'n'drop on any operating system with no software install).

Your last point is much better - market prices are determined by markets. It's hard to fight that one! If you can show that there is some function of the iPhone (a real function, like geo-location or caller number lookup, not iFart) that is not already available on the market for less, you can prove your thesis.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[mr_mischief]

I hate to open this can of worms, but most Blackberries are a completely different market from the iPhone, even though they are both considered smartphones. Further, there's no reason to have CDMA in the iPhone so long as it's exclusive to AT&T, with AT&T using an all-GSM network.

Re:Uh-oh, they're catching up! Someone tell Apple!

[mr_mischief]

GSM is great in densely populated areas. It really sucks when you're not very close to a tower. There are large areas of the US that have excellent CDMA reception and very poor TDMA/GSM reception, since CDMA can cover fewer phones per tower over a wider area.

iPod market take over repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

According to reports, Apple will have a slew of iPhones from 4GB all the way up to 32GB.

The data/rate plans will most likely also change.

Apple is going to corner the smartphone market from the top down, like they did with the iPod.

In fact to top things off even further, I bet they spun off Rubenstein and Co to make the "Pre" to appeal to the more RIM business type crowd who see's the iPhone as just a toy, not a tool.

The fact that the Pre id's itself as a "Apple iPod" to iTunes for synching may mean Apple is turning a blind eye or somehow involved with Pre.

Oh yea, prepare for a market assault by Apple.

Short RIM.

Re:iPod market take over repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that the Pre id's itself as a "Apple iPod" to iTunes for synching may mean Apple is turning a blind eye or somehow involved with Pre.

Ummm, you do know that Blackberries have been able to sync with itunes for years, right? They call it mediasync:

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/media/mediasync.jsp

Short RIM.

Right. Just as soon as the iphone gets push email, a keyboard, real management features, and real security. Here are the blackberry certifications. Who has audited the iphone? Nobody, because it has no security.

Do you think there is a reason senior executives (and the US president) all use blackberries? They could choose any device, and strangely enough it isn't the iphone.

Re:iPod market take over repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Just as soon as the iphone gets push email, a keyboard, real management features, and real security. Here are the blackberry certifications. Who has audited the iphone? Nobody, because it has no security.

Come Monday I'll think you'll find most of this will be addressed.

Look for a complete end-to-end solution involving iPhone and Mac OS X Server 10.6 (Snow Leopard) at a price point no one else will be able to come close to; eg. no more per seat licenses, bu-bye Microsoft Exchange. Everything else will fall into place shortly thereafter. Push email, management, security and certification, all of it and maybe even other things that the others haven't thought of yet.

As for a keyboard. Apple will never make a version with a physical keyboard but don't be surprised if the aftermarket doesn't fill that need with micro-keyboards that connect using bluetooth, probably integrated into a carry-case. Apple doesn't need to do it, others will fill that in.

I'm not saying that the iPhone will instantly appeal to everyone, it never will, but the checklist of its shortcomings will get even shorter and people will find fewer reasons why it doesn't work for them.

Re:iPod market take over repeat

[zalel]

I just bought a Pre yesterday, and Steve & Co have nothing to worry about. I find that there are simply too many ways that the Pre does not meet expectations. I knew it wouldn't be an iPhone, but prettiness is the only respect in which it is competitive. First off, Palm didn't even bother to enable an easy migration path for data that's in Palm Desktop. It's their own damn app fergodsakes, yet you can't even import the To-Dos and Memos. In the Sprint store they said I could, but obviously the Pre rep bull-detritussed the Sprinties. Can you believe they so coarsely dissed their own customer base? Now, I have to wait for someone to make a new app so I can do something ordinary like finding a password when I'm not at my own computer. There are a variety of ways in which pretty ordinary actions just aint easy. For example, try selecting a range of text to copy and paste into an email. Or, try moving the cursor one character without an arrow key. Breathe easy, Apple. It's not just the need to use a manual that's gonna keep this device from flying. If I weren't already a Sprint customer (who lost his phone on Thursday), and the cost of changing carriers wasn't so high, I'd've waited till tomorrow to get the new iPhone.

Re:Jobs Health

[DavidR1991]

"f you have enough money in America (Steve Jobs-like money), you get the best healthcare and you get to live."

Arguably that's the same everywhere, since even national health care (e.g. the UK's NHS) can't afford the bleeding edge cancer treatments, for example. You have to fund those out of your own pocket if you want them.

executive summary of comments

[Anonymous Coward]

ITT:

Apple fanboys: "Good health to you, Steve ol' chum!" "LOL the competition are playing catch-up they'll never catch-up!" "I wonder what new wallpapers iPhone OS 3.0 will have - not allowing background apps is such a good idea, you know!"

Everyone else: "$600 for a fashion statement? No thanks." "Hurrr Apple users are gay." "Apple doesn't innnovate, it integrates."

Maintain the impression they're ahead?

[Reality Master 201]

If their competition is rushing to follow what Apple's doing by making iPhone-like devices, then it's more than just an impression that they're ahead.

Re:Maintain the impression they're ahead?

[Carewolf]

If the competition is designing new iPhone like devices, they are moving backwards. iPhones were outdated when they appeared, and are even more outdated now.

If anything the competition is learning from Apple marketing, and is getting better at branding and promoting their mobile devices.

Re:Maintain the impression they're ahead?

[s73v3r]

If we could get a phone with the features of some of the cutting edge Japanese/Korean phones, but with an iPhone interface, I would be all over it.

30" OLED displays

[carambola5]

Despite being a "developers" conference, I'm calling it. 30" OLED displays. You heard it here first.

Re:30" OLED displays

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda big for a phone
Cool, but big...

Re:30" OLED displays

[Anonymous Coward]

iOLED, yours for a low price of $6999

Re:30" OLED displays

[Jane Q. Public]

Last I heard they hadn't solved the lifetime problem for OLEDs. I don't think you'll see them in big, expensive products until they do.

Re:30" OLED displays

[jgtg32a]

Not a chance in hell it would be that cheap

Re:30" OLED displays

[93 Escort Wagon]

Kinda big for a phone

But thanks to the Apple Patented Reality Distortion Field, this 30" OLED display only requires the same space as the current generation iPhone's screen!

Re:30" OLED displays

[Judge_Fire]

Apple would seriously like to make new displays higher density, like over 150 PPI, as to coincide with finally shipping resolution indepence in OS X. Just imagine the amount of gloating ;) and in all fairness, it would be deserved - it would look damn good.

But RI has proved to be quite a challenge, and any progress made would be interesting to see at WWDC.

Re:30" OLED displays

[Hijacked Public]

I'd pay 7k for a 30" OLED in a heartbeat.

Re:30" OLED displays

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

But thanks to the Apple Patented Reality Distortion Field, this 30" OLED display only requires the same space as the current generation iPhone's screen!

But thanks to the Naysayers Open Source version of teh Reality Distortion field, Apple's 30" OLED display is 100% useless to 100% of the world because it doesn't have an analog VGA port.

Re:30" OLED displays

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.techradar.com/news/television/oled-tv-lifespan-doubled-by-new-build-tech-209275

Re:30" OLED displays

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung has a 55" OLED for $4000 and a 46" for $3300.

Re:30" OLED displays

[adolf]

Double nothin's still nothin.

Re:30" OLED displays

[Anonymous Coward]

Just view it as planned obsolescence. Apple really doesn't have a problem with that, nor do the people who buy their products.

Re:30" OLED displays

[omz13]

I'd pay 7k for a 30" OLED in a heartbeat.

You clearly have more money than sense... plus, as we all know with Apple, never buy rev 1 of any new hardware... there are always a few glitches so wait a few months until the wrinkles are ironed out

Re:30" OLED displays

[Gilmoure]

Why?

PIM tools

[Mr_Silver]

I'm hoping for better PIM tools. I'm currently using an iPhone at work (I can pick any device so I change regularly) and having spent a lot of time with Windows Mobile I'm missing a lot of its basic functionality. For example with the iPhone I cannot:

• Sync notes even though there is a notes application
• Sync tasks, as there is no tasks application (why? it's pretty basic!)
• Label a calendar appointment as private. Everything is visible to people who have read access to my calendar until I set it on the PC.
• Set the location of a meeting as free, out of the office or tentative. Everything is busy.
• Differentiate between tentative meetings and ones that have been confirmed.
• Snooze a reminder. It either nags you or gets dismissed when you unlock the phone and never comes back.
• Get the right mouse button to work on an appointment in Outlook that has been created in the iPhone (not sure if that is my work setup as it's very odd)
• Use something which is lighter than iTunes to manage my contacts and calendar syncing - iTunes is a heavy beast for something which should be running in the background. I never thought I'd wish for ActiveSync.
• Search the whole device for something. There is a wedding coming up in the next couple of months. Only way to find it? Hunt for it manually.

Now to be fair, I'm probably limited by the fact I use Outlook on the desktop and have no desire to use MS Push (who wants work emails arriving on a weekend?) or send all my data to Google's services - but some of this is pretty basic that even Palm had in when they were king of the world and pushing out black and white V series products.

If they put all that in, then I'd never need to go back to Windows Mobile. Fingers crossed.

Re:PIM tools

[StikyPad]

Fortunately, my only appointments are "Arrive at work" and "Leave work," and I rarely forget either of those.. especially that last one.

Re:PIM tools

[Registered Coward v2]

I'm hoping for better PIM tools. I'm currently using an iPhone at work (I can pick any device so I change regularly) and having spent a lot of time with Windows Mobile I'm missing a lot of its basic functionality. For example with the iPhone I cannot:

• Sync notes even though there is a notes application
• Sync tasks, as there is no tasks application (why? it's pretty basic!)
• Label a calendar appointment as private. Everything is visible to people who have read access to my calendar until I set it on the PC.
• Set the location of a meeting as free, out of the office or tentative. Everything is busy.
• Differentiate between tentative meetings and ones that have been confirmed.
• Snooze a reminder. It either nags you or gets dismissed when you unlock the phone and never comes back.

I also use my iPhone for work and find its PIM tools lacking. What's worse is Apple has apaprently decided to go with data stores that are not accessible to other software apps; so iambic / CESD / et.al. need to create new data files if they want to create an iPhone app. That probably means no push synch, which would make those apps useless for me.

Of course, that's in keeping with Apple's insistence on total control of parts of teh user experience; which while useful in maintaining the end user experience is very limiting in terms of development in those areas.

As a result, I am looking at the new N95 or going back to a Treo just to have the functionality I need.

Re:PIM tools

[Anonymous Coward]

If the iPhone doesn't do all those things that you need it to do, and your old phone does do what you need, why did you switch in the first place? Imagine if someone walked up to you on the street and told you "I'll sell you this phone for $600. It does about half what your current one does. Some of your most used features aren't available on this one." Would you go for it?

Re:PIM tools

[Mr_Silver]

If the iPhone doesn't do all those things that you need it to do, and your old phone does do what you need, why did you switch in the first place?

Because I can pick any phone I want and change it whenever I want (see first sentence of my comment).

Re:PIM tools

[changedx]

I recently replaced my 5-year-old Palm-based Samsung i500 with an iPhone. Overall, it's quite an upgrade, especially in the display screen, sound, memory (16MB -> 8GB), GPS, and downloadable apps. But here is a comparison of what it takes to enter a new appointment with an 5-minute warning alarm:

Palm:
1) open (clamshell) phone
2) press "Calendar" button
3) use fingernail to click on the timeslot
4) use Graffiti to enter text
5) close phone

Apple:
1) turn phone on
2) slide to unlock, passcode if beyond time limit
3) slide to first page of apps
4) tap calendar
5) tap "+" button
6) tap Title/Location
7) use on-screen keyboard to enter text
8) tap "Save"
9) tap Starts/Ends
10) slide/scroll to correct hour
11) tap "Save"
12) tap "Alert"
13) tap "5 minutes before"
14) tap "Save"
15) tap "Done"

Honestly, it's such a hassle that I'll often grab a pen and Post-It pad, and attach the sticky yellow note to the screen. Too bad there's no 5-minute alarm.

Re:PIM tools

[Aldric]

Exactly. Microsoft own the business market due to the Windows Mobile/Exchange/Outlook integration. Would be nice to have options, but my HTC Diamond does everything I want it to so I don't worry too much.

Also, what is up with not selling a satnav solution for a phone with GPS? Madness!

Re:PIM tools

[Angostura]

Notes Sync is included in 3.0 - at least according to the keynote where the features were unveiled.

Re:PIM tools

[hmar]

Doesn't it get confusing to try and "leave work" when you forgot abou "arrive at work"?

Re:PIM tools

[StikyPad]

Somehow I usually figure it out without the aid of a scheduling device...

Apple's is losing its margins

[Animats]

Apple is about profit margin. Apple has enjoyed much higher profit margins than its competitors. That's starting to slip as iPhone and iPod prices come down, and the cheaper competitors get better.

Apple's reaction so far has been to raise iTunes prices. Something better than that will have to be done next.

Re:Apple's is losing its margins

[rezonat0r]

They aren't losing their margins on Macs. And really, what company isn't all about profit margin?

Re:Apple's is losing its margins

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot to name a few.

Re:Apple's is losing its margins

[belmolis]

what company isn't all about profit margin?

The ones that are all about volume.

Re:Apple's is losing its margins

[rm999]

"what company isn't all about profit margin?"

Economic theory states that in an ideal capitalist system, all industries' profit margins will approach 0. They will make enough money to pay off their costs, employees, research, etc, but nothing else. This is because if company A is making a high profit, company B will come in with a competing product/service and undercut them.

Of course, this isn't entirely true because of several factors, like: barriers to entry (as Palm has proven, spending 100s of millions of dollars to make its "iPhone killer"), patents, and psychological consumer effects (e.g. "oooh, iPods are so cool!"). But still, in highly mature industries much IP, like discount department stores, you will see this in action.

Re:Apple's is losing its margins

[KaptajnKold]

That's starting to slip as iPhone and iPod prices come down

It's not Apples MO to drop prices. Rather, they introduce new models and keep the prices level.

Apple's reaction so far has been to raise iTunes prices.

The changed prices in the iTMS has been a reaction to nothing other than the fact that this was a demand posed by the record companies in exchange for them allowing Apple to provide DRM-free versions of their entire catalogues.

Heh...

[vjmurphy]

"Palm, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, are all at varying stages of developing and introducing their own iPhone-like devices."

So Apple, as a newcomer to the industry, is now making others in the same space play catch up to them. Real competition is a good thing. Definitely Palm, MS, Nokia and RIM had more than enough time and expertise to make a iPhone like device before Apple did, yet they didn't. So now they get to play catch up. I hope they do create real iPhone killers, because it then puts Apple on the spot to improve.

Re:Heh...

[CannonballHead]

Time != Expertise/"Innovation"/Good Design. :)

Re:Heh...

[twidarkling]

By "iPhone-like devices," they usually mean "thing with no actual keyboard." I don't want one like that. I like physical keys. Because they actually work. You've always been able to get apps by searching around a bit for Windows Mobile based phones, and probably for others as well, so the App Store idea is just collecting and monetizing them. Frankly, an iPhone isn't that special, beyond the large touch-screen. Everything about it had been done before in one manner or another. Apple just gathered it in to one place and shellacked it. I will grant they did it well, and it's pushing other companies to include greater number of features, but does a phone really NEED an accelerometer? How about we start getting phones with a good vibrate feature so that I can feel it while it's on my belt?

Re:Heh...

[Jane Q. Public]

Definitely true. Palm should have had an iPhone, 2 years before iPhone. Instead they gave up much of their touch-screen real estate to a chicklet keyboard, and other established advantages, to build a blackberry clone. Big mistake on their part.

Re:Heh...

[tholomyes]

I like physical keys. Because they actually work.

Except that physical keys can physically break, too.

You've always been able to get apps by searching around a bit for Windows Mobile based phones, and probably for others as well, so the App Store idea is just collecting and monetizing them.

Nah, you've always been able to pay for apps for Win Mobile. So, it's not about monetizing. The biggest problem I found when looking for Win Mobile apps was that it even if you did manage to find the ad-filled webpage that had the file, there was generally no way to distinguish, say, two SSH clients from one another, so you just have to install them both and hope that one of them doesn't fuck up your phone.

Re:Heh...

[nine-times]

So Apple, as a newcomer to the industry, is now making others in the same space play catch up to them.

Right, and I think that's why the news media is demanding (wrongly) that Apple blows the door of the hinges at WWDC. They saw Apple go from nothing to an industry leader (in the mobile industry) in the space of a year or two, and they're thinking to themselves, "How can Apple keep that pace up?! They're definitely going to falter!" Bu the truth is Apple doesn't need to keep that pace up. All they have to do is release solid updates that will fix some of the problems people have with their products, throw in a couple of new good features, and continue to win converts.

Re:Heh...

[shmlco]

"How about we start getting phones with a good vibrate feature so that I can feel it while it's on my belt?"

Now be honest here. Is that REALLY why you want a better vibrator????

Re:Heh...

[religious freak]

You're welcome.

Signed,
Capitalism

Re:Heh...

[Chris Burke]

Definitely true. Palm should have had an iPhone, 2 years before iPhone. Instead they gave up much of their touch-screen real estate to a chicklet keyboard, and other established advantages, to build a blackberry clone. Big mistake on their part.

Making something like an iPhone that relies entirely on a touch screen means having a software stack that supports it. Once Palm had already made the big mistake of going with a more or less unchanged PalmOS for the Treo, replacing Grafiti with a qwerty pad was probably a better usability decision than going full touch screen. Which just goes to show how far off from making an 'iphone' they were, despite having the technical capability.

Re:Heh...

[Jane Q. Public]

Palm did already have a "software stack" supporting a full touchscreen. That was the whole basis of the Palm OS. And it had a perfectly workable on-screen keyboard, too, much like the one everybody seems to love on the iPhone. But rather than building on those strengths, they dumped them on the Treo in order to make it a blackberry clone.

"Which just goes to show how far off from making an 'iphone' they were, despite having the technical capability."

Which is just plain false. As I have already pointed out, they DID already have a full touchscreen. They already had on on-screen keyboard. And they already had some very capable apps (more so, and more mature, than what came on the first iPhone). So no... they were not far off. All they would have had to do was leave everything else alone and add a phone.

Re:Heh...

[tchapin]

I've been a Palm user since the Palm Pro and I don't recall them having a good onscreen keyboard.

There's no way that PalmOS could have supported anything like the iPhone. Additionally, Palm never had the balls to challenge the wireless providers in order to have the kind of control over their phones that Apple does over the iPhone. I think that each of the Treos that I owned (600, 650, 700p) had at most one firmware upgrade.

Additionally, PalmOS remained basically unchanged. It was great as an organizer, but does not really work well for in a modern multi-media device. For example, they never updated their browser, and if you want to use Opera, you always have to approve the network usage before you can start using it.

PalmOS has been dead for years, it just didn't really know it.

The Palm, WinMo, and BB app situations were very similar: there were many places where you could get software, but prices were too high. For WinMo and BB, you also had the additional concerns of figuring out if the app you wanted was the right one for your device. At least Palm had the right idea in making their OS standardized across all their (few) devices.

Re:Heh...

[Jane Q. Public]

Strange that you never noticed the keyboard. It has been there a long time. I know it was there on my color version 3 (on a Tungsten), and it was there on an older Palm of mine that I am sure was no later than 2 something. I seldom used it, because I liked the handwriting. But it is definitely there and it works fine.

While I do agree that Palm OS had shortcomings, I see absolutely no reason it could not have functioned perfectly well as an iPhone 1.0 replacement (again, if they had kept the full screen). iPhone also was not multi-tasking, and other than the accelerometer the iPhone really had nothing over the recent Palms in the way of hardware. Pefectly good Arm processor, etc. And I don't know why you say it would not be a "good" multimedia player. The movie player that came with my Tungsten worked just fine, and so did the .MP3 player. I had no problems with them at all. You had to convert the movies into a format that the Tungsten could play, but you have to do that with iPhones too!

However, that would have been about the extent of it. Anything beyond that would require a revamp of the OS, which I understand Palm was working on anyway.

My Tungsten came with perfectly good software that showed movies and still pictures, played music just fine, let me read/edit/write Excel files and Word files. I could read .PDFs and e-books too. The scheduler worked great. It had an adequate database program (I found a better one for free), and there were loads of full-clor games and other applications, again many of which were free. While some of the top-end apps cost a pretty penny, with what came in the box and stuff I found for free I could do almost anything I could do on my desktop computer, limited solely by my tolerance for the small screen. With the sole exception of graphics or photo editing... that was the one that stymied me.

So, I guess we will just have to disagree. With the sole exception of the accelerometer, I do not know of a single thing that the 1.0 iPhone could do that I could not do roughly as well, and sometimes even better, on my Palm Tungsten. (Ignoring the phone part of course.)

Re:Heh...

[Chris Burke]

Palm did already have a "software stack" supporting a full touchscreen. That was the whole basis of the Palm OS. And it had a perfectly workable on-screen keyboard, too, much like the one everybody seems to love on the iPhone. But rather than building on those strengths, they dumped them on the Treo in order to make it a blackberry clone.

By "full touchscreen" I meant designed around that being the sole form of input, and no Palm OS was never based on that. It was based on having both the touch screen and grafiti input (and some buttons). The iphone (and others) are designed from the ground up around solely having a large touch screen and it shows. Palm OS has always carried a legacy from the first palm devices with no power and low res screens, and that shows too.

Which is just plain false. As I have already pointed out, they DID already have a full touchscreen. They already had on on-screen keyboard. And they already had some very capable apps (more so, and more mature, than what came on the first iPhone). So no... they were not far off. All they would have had to do was leave everything else alone and add a phone.

For what I meant, it is just plain true. And this is just my opinion but speaking as a current (and past, having gone through the grafiti->qwerty transition) Treo user, their software is not nearly as good from a user interface standpoint as what came out on the very first iPhones. Certainly not with regards to using just the screen. There's more to it than just tacking on a touch-keyboard applet. I like my Treo, I have no reason to rip on it. But if you took away the keyboard, I would be dumping the thing, perhaps at a high velocity towards a solid vertical surface, for a different phone.

Re:Heh...

[His Shadow]

Two thousand and seven called: they want their aging hipster snotty dismissal whine back.

Re:Heh...

[kovari]

So Apple, as a newcomer to the industry, is now making others in the same space play catch up to them. Real competition is a good thing. Definitely Palm, MS, Nokia and RIM had more than enough time and expertise to make a iPhone like device before Apple did, yet they didn't. So now they get to play catch up. I hope they do create real iPhone killers, because it then puts Apple on the spot to improve.

Actually, they are only utilising the expansion of a niche (touchscreen smartphones) which (the expansion) Apple caused. Apple did not create the market, but was first to create a product to be good enough. At the same time other players are working on other niches, some more, some less profitable.

It's a bit like when Beatles had it's first success (no I'm not that old), other record companies started to sign similar bands. While keeping the still profitable parts of their other catalogue also.

Re:Heh...

[Jane Q. Public]

"By "full touchscreen" I meant designed around that being the sole form of input, and no Palm OS was never based on that. It was based on having both the touch screen and grafiti input (and some buttons). The iphone (and others) are designed from the ground up around solely having a large touch screen and it shows. Palm OS has always carried a legacy from the first palm devices with no power and low res screens, and that shows too."

I simply fail to understand why you think Graffiti was not "touch-screen input". In fact it was more sophisticated touch-screen input than anybody else had. And my Palm Tungsten had a nice, relatively high-resolution screen with all the colors one could want. I just really do not see where you are finding these "failings".

"I like my Treo, I have no reason to rip on it. But if you took away the keyboard, I would be dumping the thing, perhaps at a high velocity towards a solid vertical surface, for a different phone."

And that's just fine. As I have already stated, we will simply have to disagree. My own experience is exactly the opposite, and no amount of arguing is going to change that.

Re:Cool.

[Rycross]

A lot of people will weigh the cool factor quite heavily when buying a $200 (not $600) device. For that matter, a lot of people weigh the cool factor extremely heavily when buying cars, which are significantly more pricey than $200. Its why Apple has managed to dominate the market with a functionally inferior (in terms of feature set) MP3 player (and many would argue the same about the phone).

Re:Jobs Health

[LSDelirious]

maybe that's why we haven't seen much of him lately, hes been hard at work on a new iPancreas, which will not only produce insulin but will transmit blood sugar levels to his iPhone via bluetooth

First time poster, long time reader

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple does not release a new version of the iPhone at this conference, or soon there after I think it will be a mistake.
I think they're going to have to stay on the one new version per year schedule to remain "on top" in the phone market.

Re:First time poster, long time reader

[R3d M3rcury]

If Apple does not release a new version of the iPhone at this conference, or soon there after I think it will be a mistake.

Define "soon."

Actually, Apple is at the top of the heap and people will consider waiting on them. So imagine this scenario:

WWDC. Apple gives it's song-and-dance about iPhone OS 3.0. Basically, the same one they gave back in March. They reiterate that it will be shipping "This Summer." Of course, they have lots of sessions at WWDC about iPhone OS 3.0. Various rumor sites insist that it will be July, then August, then September. Finally, around September 21st, Apple gives the press the word that they'll have some big announcement in mid-October. The few who point out that this is actually outside Apple's "Summer" promise are drowned by fanbois who insist that they'd rather have it perfect than on time. In mid-October, Apple announces the immediate availability of iPhone OS 3.0 and the latest version of the iPhone with an OLED display, support for AT&T's faster network, MMS, Copy and Paste, etc. etc.

Presto! Apple just got you to hold off buying that Pre/Storm 2/Android phone for 4 months. Needless to say, Palm's 2Q results come out and show that there weren't as many people buying the Pre as they had hoped. The press, never one to miss an opportunity, declares the Pre thoroughly beaten and once again proclaims Apple as king of the hill, top of the heap, unstoppable, etc. Sure, Apple also shows a slowdown in sales for that quarter, but says that it's due to people waiting for iPhone OS 3.0 and the inevitable new phone.

So is four months "soon"? If there's no new iPhone by August, will you run out an buy a Pre/Storm 2/Android phone? Or will you wait just a little bit longer...?

Re:Jobs Health

[twidarkling]

No you don't. Not in Canada, anyway. They evaluate what treatment has the best success rate vs. the type of cancer you have, yes, which means you won't always be given the bleeding edge treatment, because if one has an 80% remission rate, why go for the treatment with no track record?

A crippled phone imho

[VMaN]

Multitasking, a memory card reader and installing non apple approved apps.

Features that apple COULD implement tomorrow, but won't.

That's why I'm rockin' android and will never buy an iphone in its current crippled state.

A real shame, as the device definetly has potential. It's not about hating apple, it's about hating that locked down feeling. That is probably not an issue for most people out there, but for me they are dealbreakers.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[Anonymous Coward]

For me lack of memory card reader keeps me from buying the iphone and other apple products. Something that I used about 10 times a day for transferring photos and music, booting off backtrack and other distro's without having to leave a USB stick poking out of my laptop etc.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[aristotle-dude]

Multitasking, a memory card reader and installing non apple approved apps.

So you would be willing to sacrifice stability, security of your data? If you don't care about stability and the risk for malware, you can always jailbreak your phone and install that kind of crap yourself. A memory card reader? So I take it that you don't use picture software like Picassa or iPhoto to organize your photos? You are aware that the iPhone has 8-16 and potentially 32 GB of storage in the new models built in?

Features that apple COULD implement tomorrow, but won't.

They won't because they are interested in serving the majority of customer's needs rather than serving niche concerns at the expense of security and stability as well as battery life.

That's why I'm rockin' android and will never buy an iphone in its current crippled state.

A real shame, as the device definetly has potential. It's not about hating apple, it's about hating that locked down feeling. That is probably not an issue for most people out there, but for me they are dealbreakers.

Good for you. Have fun with your device of your choice but you should realize that your expectations are part of a small niche and most people just want a device that works well on a consistent basis.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[jo42]

the iPhone has 8-16 and potentially 32 GB of storage in the new models built in

There should only be one model with an SD slot.

But there won't be because then Apple couldn't rape the customer over for $100 for only 8GB of flash memory.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[pandrijeczko]

The rest of us will enjoy using the best products in the industry while you struggle with your crap.

Is this why Apple recently shed 16,000 jobs from their Apple stores?

Re:A crippled phone imho

[dwpro]

I like it how you make the parent sound like they actively endorse malware and system instability by wanting to install his own apps. You don't necessarily "sacrifice" anything.

Moreover, just because you don't care about the convenience of memory cards doesn't mean everyone doesn't, and many people do not use Picassa or Iphoto. You may be in more of a niche than you think.
 
disclaimier, I am in the parent's niche as well.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[aristotle-dude]

I like it how you make the parent sound like they actively endorse malware and system instability by wanting to install his own apps. You don't necessarily "sacrifice" anything.

Moreover, just because you don't care about the convenience of memory cards doesn't mean everyone doesn't, and many people do not use Picassa or Iphoto. You may be in more of a niche than you think. disclaimier, I am in the parent's niche as well.

As I said, Apple is interested in serving the majority of "consumers" and their needs, not geeks. I suppose they could include an SD card slot but what about people like me with with a Sony camera that take Sony Memory sticks? Their whole model expects that you would connect your camera or USB card reader to your computer and sync photos back up to the iPhone with iTunes. Could you give a common use case for a regular consumer needing to put an SD card into a music player besides augmenting anemic built-in storage?

As for restrictions on apps is concerned, the review process not only protects non-geeks from unsuspectingly installing trojans (apps that look legit but are not) but also protects the network infrastructure from poorly written apps that could clog the pipes for everyone. It seems like geeks who feel the need to hack everything have menial jobs that do not challenge them intellectually while developers like myself like to switch off when we are not at work. I like apple products because I don't have to futz around with stuff when I'm off duty.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[Macman408]

You say "crippled", I say "design tradeoffs".

I'm generally willing to trade multitasking for better battery life and apps that don't totally hose the phone. Or a memory card reader for a smaller, cheaper phone (memory cards? what are those anyway?). I couldn't really care less about apps. There's maybe a couple I'd get if I had an iPhone, but not many.

Damn it Jim, it's a phone, not a laptop.

Re:A crippled phone imho

[martinX]

The number being bandied about was 1600, not 16 000, and it seems to have arisen from a misinterpretation of SEC filings.

"Despite what some of last weekâ(TM)s headline writers suggested, Apple did not fire 1,600 of its store employees, nor did the company announce or report anything to that effect. The rumors seem to have been born out of some mathematical inferences from Appleâ(TM)s latest quarterly SEC filing. " ...

"Although there has been no official comment from the Apple folks, most likely, their store hours have been cut and vacant positions have remained unfilled over the past year because of general retail recession. It would be pretty impossible for Apple to do a substantial secret layoff over the period of a year without anyone noticing. Apple has better things to do with its creativity than that. "

Source:
http://retailindustry.about.com/b/2009/04/26/us-retail-industry-weekly-numbers-1600-apple-store-layoff-rumors-30-store-closings-162-store-openings-and-one-big-bankruptcy.htm

News reporter reading level

[bkaul]

We recently had a local news crew visit my place of employment, a research laboratory. Those interviewed were told to explain things at a "7th grade reading level." I think that explains a lot of the inane comments made by people in news interviews.

Re:News reporter reading level

[Runaway1956]

Watch the news much? Our local stations hire people to stand in front of the camera based on such criteria as cleavage, white teeth, and affirmative action. They hire so many clowns, that when they put a big black guy in front of the camera, I waited in anticipation to see how his retardation would manifest itself. Imagine my shock when he spoke intelligently, never stumbling over words with more than 5 letters. Smooth as could be. Of course, HE didn't last long either. Seems he got a better job paying three times as much. Nice exposure, huh?

Re:News reporter reading level

[Jeruvy]

Given that most people are not smarter than a 5th grader, perhaps they should bring it down to a grade 4 reading level.

I can see a Disney movie from this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Emperor's New Poop!

What price drops???

[hellfire]

That's starting to slip as iPhone and iPod prices come down

Ummmmm excuse me? Which iPhone or iPod price drops are you talking about? Since the iPhone was out last year it's been $199 for 8 GB and $299 for 16 GB. I can go to the store right now and see the exact same price.

Apple's reaction so far has been to raise iTunes prices

iTunes prices did not increase. They adopted a variable price method so popular songs could be more expensive during their popular period while less downloaded songs could be cheaper.

If you'd like to be an apple hater, please go right ahead, but please do so with correct information rather than stuff you pull out of thin air. There's plenty of other things about Apple you can complain about.

Re:What price drops???

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Itunes prices did increase. More songs are using the upper pricing, while very few are using the cheaper pricing -- even on very old music. Also, I think more of that money goes to the label,than Apple. But calling it anything other than a price increase, is the kind of crap I'd expect out of a politician.

Re:What price drops???

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, the prices did go up due to the implementation of variable pricing but Apple is merely adding their standard 30% mark-up to the Label's cost.

The lack of the promised tiered pricing lies squarely with the Labels. The labels promised prices in the following tiers, (all prices USD)

$1.29 for New/Hits
$0.99 for Non-Hit/Catalogue/Old Hits
$0.69 for Non-Hit/Old Titles

What we got was a lot in the $1.29 range, few in the $0.99 range and virtually none in the $0.69 range.

Also, the difference in pricing between Amazon and Apple has me thinking that the Labels are charging Apple more for many tracks compared to Amazon. I'm surprised there isn't an FTC investigation in to this yet.

Re:What price drops???

[axp_bofh]

The real reason for the change to variable prices was that in return *ALL* the labels moved to DRM-free tunes. That was a huge concession by the labels.

That's a nice opinion, but...

[Alakaboo]

...really, Apple has been doing just fine without Steve Jobs, and the iPhone is so popular that they can probably phone in (no pun intended) the 3.0 update and be set for another six months or more. Apple isn't in jeopardy of losing a significant number of customers to Palm until the bugs are worked out in webOS and their app store is fleshed out. RIM needs to hurry the Storm 2 along and from what I gather their app store needs some time as well.

That being said, I don't think Apple is going to phone it in. They've been quite prolific these past 10 years or so and I've seen no evidence of that changing any time soon. I expect to see a cheaper iPhone with beefier hardware and a reduced rate plan in the next few weeks (not necessarily at WWDC), and I expect to see Core i5 iMacs and Snow Leopard by Fall. Incremental improvements, to be sure, but enough to stay competitive.

Well I can give you one

[hellfire]

Search the whole device for something. There is a wedding coming up in the next couple of months. Only way to find it? Hunt for it manually.

That's coming. There will be a whole new search device page coming in OS 3.0. This was explained in the developer preview meeting they had back in march. You can download the video from Apple.com. Unfortunately that's the only thing on your list that was explained in any detail in this developer preview.

Re:Jobs Health

[DavidR1991]

Yes, but if a bleeding edge treatment is the only thing available which can keep you alive, you have to pay out of your own pocket to get it (if they're not prepared to pay for it)

Re:Cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its why Apple has managed to dominate the market with a functionally inferior (in terms of feature set) MP3 player (and many would argue the same about the phone).

Perhaps the device itself is functionally inferior (in the event you have things other than MP3s, AACs, or Apple Losslesseses), but due to its exposure, compatibility made my decision for me. As in, for effectively any modern make of car stereo, I can find some way to directly interface my iPod to it. Not through some line-in hack or other "just spit audio out the car speakers" method, but through some interface wherein I can keep the iPod itself stuffed in my glove box (negating the "cool" factor if nobody sees it) and control tracks and such from the radio's front panel. Anything else, I'd have to keep the player out in the open, make sure it's not going to fall all over the place, and fumble for it rather than the radio if I want to skip a track.

The same goes for a whole horde of other "iPod compatible" devices (countertop radios, alarm clocks, etc); they all go through the docking interface, allowing them to control playback in addition to playing the music, and not resulting in a line-in hack that just drags out another redundant set of buttons.

I've seen it said before on Slashdot: If the rest of the MP3 player market would get together and make a single, unified interface and protocol like the iPod's docking cable that allowed control and audio output without having to care who made the device, what model it is, etc, etc, THEN Apple would be on the run. But as it stands now, you have the iPod and you have a bajillion other viciously incompatible MP3 players. Will I be able to get an interface cable for my three-year-old Kenwood car stereo for a Zen? What model Zen? How about a Zune? The no-name piece of junk that came free with my Dell? Who knows? But I can Google "Kenwood iPod adapter" and quickly figure out what MP3 player I'm picking up without hassles or guessing.

Make no mistake, I'd rather have a cheaper MP3 player available to me, but for compatibility's sake, I'm sticking with my iPod.

Cool Apples need to prevail.

[slack_justyb]

1) It's good to hear that Steve Jobs is doing well. Being ill sucks butt and I wish for everyone to live happy and healthy lives.

2) Apple's cool factor needs to be maintained if they wish to continue to have a business. Apple has pushed themselves into the corner that they are now in. Consumers, of the non-slashdot variety, will drop crap like it's hot once it stops doing it's primary function which, with Apple, is being cool. The app store is great and all, but they need killer apps on the iPhone that will make users want to buy it again, since they'll loose their first purchase once they switch to a new iPhone 3.14152G.

3) I would be willing to bet that Apple too has its head in the clouds. With the iWork.com site and the increase in how much they push how readily connected you are with the iPhone, I'd bet my two cents that they crossover at some point offering cloud services delivered via the iPhone's 4.9G's cool new aqua-cloudUI that makes it so slick to use cloud services.

4) It's a shame that the app store sells binary programs. With everyone coming to the table with their own "app" store you're going to get a ton of fragmentation.

wait a second... Wasn't this how computing was back in the 60's? Basically, some piece of software wouldn't run on a different vendor's hardware so you had to buy the vendor's hardware? Is it just me or are we just setting ourselves up for another Microsoft inquisition and vague promises of software for every machine not just one machine?

Re:Cool Apples need to prevail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is the market segmenting again, but in the case of Android it's segmenting within itself - waaaaaay different platforms and specifications means you'll have an Android phone that's not capable of using some Android apps - don't believe me? Just wait. It's already happening to Apple (1st generation iPod touch is too slow for some of the newer apps) and Apple only have FOUR platforms with the only difference being CPU/GPU speed. Imagine the hell it's going to be for something as open as Android.

Re:Catching up? Hah!

[4D6963]

Call me when the market starts caring. No, seriously, you have to give it to Apple and its talent for making people take that sort of shit.

Event sold out for months...

[yogibaer]

... so the only challenge will be crowd control. Hundreds of people playing musical chairs for every major keynote and standing in line for everything from food to toilets. Maybe another 10.000 iPhone Apps. Maybe finding a bigger vault for all the cash... They are on a roll and although nothing lasts forever, this is not likely to stop any time soon.

Re:Event sold out for months...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that just goes how much the vast majority of people out there resemble SHEEP you all follow the living daylights out of each other hence wankers like jobs and co make a fortune of your backs now where did i put that frickin mint sauce

Bahh Bahh Bahh
   

Re:Event sold out for months...

[Jerry Rivers]

"Bahh Bahh Bahh"

Yah all those devolopers are followers all right, followers of the money.

Re:Cool.

[Rycross]

I don't disagree with anything you said, but part of the reason it became so ubiquitous was because of the "cool" factor. iPods tended to be more expensive and less functional than other players', but they had better aesthetics and a simpler (some would argue better, but I preferred the iRiver to the iPod) user interface.

And of course, I'm making this post from the perspective of an iPod/iPhone user. I use it for many of the same reasons you do (and because I happen to use iTunes for my music).

Re:Jobs Health

[WilliamBaughman]

maybe that's why we haven't seen much of him lately, hes been hard at work on a new iPancreas, which will not only produce insulin but will transmit blood sugar levels to his iPhone via bluetooth

I know you're being funny, but they really did make an app that does that. From: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/live-from-apples-iphone-os-3-0-preview-event/

Now they've brought up Anita Mathew from Lifescan (a Johnson and Johnson company). Please show the iPhone heart surgery app / hardware combo. No... just diabetes testing. This could be cool.

Re:Catching up? Hah!

[david_thornley]

Most non-iphones have a very important characteristic: the OWNER of the phone CONTROLS the phone.

You're not from the US, are you?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Jobs Health

[LSDelirious]

interesting... but the iPancreas will also autopost blood your sugar levels on twitter

Whaaa....?

[CrankinOut]

->rant>
Two years ago, the competition were doing nothing. Apple steps in, re-invents the smart phone making it a delight to use. One year ago, they produced the 3G enabled phone. Meanwhile, the rest of the "smart phone" companies said, "hey, we can copy that!"

Now, journalists and analysts are stating what Apple "must do." Whatever happened to reporters "reporting" news and not trying to show how they could run a company better than its management?
->/rant>

In the phone business, people will (a) buy what they want, or (b) use what their company allows them to use on the company plan. So, big companies will do big deals and stick with what they have, small companies will not get the great deals and have more flexibility, and consumers will buy what they want.

Re:WWDC

[Chris Burke]

What Will Dickheads Conceive? IDK.

"I do koalas"? WTF?

Re:Captain Obvious and the sarcasm gang

[billlava]

No wonder the newspaper industry is doing so well financially.

can I get my electrons back?

[zenster]

Really? Some company needs to maintain their edge at upcoming event. Competitors are also releasing products and would like some of their market share.

Who is Amanda Callahan and why is she wasting our time?

market leaders: IE, Yahoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's coming up to challenge Google, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook?

I bet the business-types were asking "who's challenging IE" just a few years ago. And remember that there were search engines before Google.

Things can change.

But $600 is probably closer

[grahamsz]

Sure it's only $200 out the door, but I think that also commits you to 24 * 30 = 720 of data plan charges over and above what you are already paying for line rental. The incremental cost of AT&T providing data service just isn't that high, so some of that money is surely subsidizing the phone.

Personally i find the TCO of our two androids quite manageable, but I think our car payment and mortgage are the only higher monthly expenses.

There's a LOT of room to reduce the total cost, and I think the low end smartphone market is yet to really be tapped.

Re:But $600 is probably closer

[Wovel]

iPhone Data planes cost the same or less than every other smart phone plan AT&T offers, and AT&Ts smart phone data plans a fairly comparable to everyone elses.

This just another one of those things that sounds so terrible until you realize it is exactly the same for every other device in the class. Which carrier offers smart phones unlimited data access for the same price as using a "dumb" phone (for lack of a better word).

Re:But $600 is probably closer

[grahamsz]

T-Mobile's Tzones data plan was $5 when i last had it, and i find it hard to believe they were taking a loss on that.

I think it was capped at a gig or two, but i rarely burn through that on my smartphone and i expect i'm a relatively heavy user.

Try to buy a smartphone without a data plan and see where that gets you. The plan is absolutely subsidizing the cost of the device.

seriously

[commodoresloat]

It's even harder to drive while texting as it is to drive while talking on the phone! Talking takes one hand and texting usually takes two. You can't drive with two hands on a cell phone; what the hell are you going to hold your beer with?

Re:seriously

[adolf]

You're doing it all wrong. The beer goes on the back of her head.

Re:seriously

[stewbacca]

I would posit that drinking beer while driving is inherently safer than talking or texting on a phone.

'cool' factor of its devices." Duhhhh ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now who's taking the piss cool factor it all that much crap it's stone dead frozen solid dead Apple need a lesson in there place in the scheme of things and that just happens to be underfoot

Not that i dont like them you understand , I just cant stand them or their gear it all sucks megga big time

Re: 'cool' factor of its devices." Duhhhh ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now who's taking the piss cool factor it all that much crap it's stone dead frozen solid dead Apple need a lesson in there place in the scheme of things and that just happens to be underfoot

Not that i dont like them you understand , I just cant stand them or their gear it all sucks megga big time"

Um, sure, yah, okay. I think.

Re:WWDC

[iluvcapra]

If YDK what IDK means, than IDK what to do with you and you're probably SOL.

Re:Cool.

[wealthychef]

I don't agree that it's popular mainly or even largely because of the "cool" factor. Or even if you think it is, how in fact did it become viewed as "cool"? I believe it's because it's easier to use than other phones. So the features that it does have, even if they are fewer compared to other smartphones, are easier to access. So the user's experience is more powerful overall. It's kind of an Ahmdal's law of interface design -- adding more features at a certain point makes no difference to the user. You also need to make those features usable. Hell, my iPhone is easier to use than my Mom's "simple" Nokia.

Re:Cool.

[Professor_UNIX]

If you're using the car's radio to control the iPod then what is the point in having the iPod in the first place? Why not just make cars with built-in MP3 players and 160GB SSDs for storage? Add WiFi to the radio so you can sync the songs between your car and home PC while it sits in the garage overnight. The only thing halfway "cool" about iPods were they had a pretty decent user interface, although the requirement to use iTunes to sync your music over instead of just drag and dropping music into a music folder on the device sucked.

Re:Jobs Health

[GoodNicksAreTaken]

hes been hard at work on a new iPancreas, which will not only produce insulin but will transmit blood sugar levels to his iPhone via bluetooth

If that is what it takes to get full bluetooth support on my iPhone I hope that Steve's other organs fail also.

Homosexual detected !

[Anonymous Coward]

Arent you tired of servicing Steve Jobs' cock? I mean cmon, ... you're ass is already probably sore and now so is your mouth.

Re:Homosexual detected !

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right! Steve Jobs is The Man!

Re:Jobs Health

[WilliamBaughman]

Well, can't beat that... ... unless you jailbreak the iPhone. Happy hacking!

Re:Cool.

[aztracker1]

I can keep the iPod itself stuffed in my glove box (negating the "cool" factor if nobody sees it) and control tracks and such from the radio's front panel.

Funny, but in my car, I find the usb interface to folder organized files managed via winamp to be a far nicer experience, bot on the desktop and in my car, than iTunes on the desktop, or the funky car stereo interface to control the ipod. Far less expensive for an 8-16gb thumb drive than the ipod I'd only use in my car.

Not entirely

[hey!]

there's also "not overcomplicating".

One of the ways they do this is by insisting they be in control of the user experience. That's not generally the case for smartphones, which are designed to the whims of the carriers. The imperative for the carriers is to steer the user to buying more network services. Apple has its own imperatives too, like steering users towards the iTunes store. However the iTunes store is pretty close to as good as such things get, whereas I have no interest at all in things like the carrier's picture mail services, and if I have TCP/IP I certainly am not going to waste my money on the carrier's text messaging.

Other Carriers is Inevitable

[Bruha]

More iPhones have been sold overseas than in the US. Apple is currently denying themselves of a market of over 130 million customers with Verizon at 87 million customers. In this economy it's just bad business to ignore the 400 pound gorilla in the room.

Re:Jobs Health

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, instead, we should keep everyone alive, even those who don't work hard and just leech off society, because we have plenty of resources for all of the 10 billion people we'll have in a few years.

Maybe I'm being bitter right now, but I'll be more inclined to go along with a "let's save every life" model when doing so doesn't overload and destroy the very ecosystem which keeps us ALL alive.

iPhone shortcuts

[dafing]

glad you mostly like your iPhone, however there are a few steps you could cut out there. You dont have to have the time lock, where you put in a pin on, I dont have it on myself. So, thats just touching a button to bring up the screen (wake it up), and then sliding to unlock right there. You also could put an app you like on the main screen, "home" if you want to call it that. To move apps, touch and hold down on one, and it will start to "jiggle" about, first time I came across it by accident I thought I must be drunk :P You can drag it to where you want that app, just drag it "back" and off screen kinda to go back a page, or forwards. Apps push each other about, you drag one over another to move the old one along. They also show up with an X, tap that and it will delete the app off the iPhone, will still be installed on iTunes on the computer so you can reinstall it later if you want, I THINK, you shouldnt lose any paid apps etc if you just want them off the phone for more storage space.

I find it very easy to add appointments to my iPhone, you did simplify the palm version above a fair bit, you didnt have to hit "save" or "done" or an equivalent on your Palm?

Hope you fully enjoy your iPhone soon!

Re:iPhone shortcuts

[kovari]

I find it very easy to add appointments to my iPhone, you did simplify the palm version above a fair bit, you didnt have to hit "save" or "done" or an equivalent on your Palm?

Of course not. Actually the steps 1 and 5 in the GP are both optional on most Palm devices.

Apple doesn't have to prove anything ...

[P. Legba]

... about cool. The other guys do. Apple's already there and moving forward. They're revolutionizing human communication. Again.

And while I may or may not have been smoking hoodah, I think Jobs has been working secretly behind the scenes on a new project, let's call it One More Thing.

Let me know when they start giving away iPhones. I want in on that.

Also another, notes

[SuperKendall]

Notes sync with 3.0 as well.

Physical keys actually suck

[SuperKendall]

1) The virtual iPhone dialing keypad is far better than any cellphone hardware keypad even ones with only numbers), because the buttons are much larger.

2) The virtual iPhone keyboard is better that most mobile keyboards, because the keys are larger. It doesn't matter if you have a physical keyboard if the keys are too small to use. This is doubly true when the iPhone keyboard is in landcsape mode where I don't think anything else offers keys as large in a mobile device.

3) The virtual iPhone keyboards are all better because they adapt. A URL keyboard drops the spacebar because you don't need one for URL's. A number only keyboard has much larger number buttons, and so on. Physical keyboards are glacially frozen into some arbitrary shape one guy decided was better at a moment in time.

You can stick with your "real" keyboards, by all means enjoy your new career boiling corpses.

Etc Etc

[Anonymous Coward]

"and introducing their own iPhone-like devices"

Dream-on fuckers

Re:Cool.

[mdwh2]

and many would argue the same about the phone

Indeed they would, but they'd be wrong, as they aren't in anywhere near a dominant position in the phone market - not even close.

All I can wish for

[Quila]

Is that people who text while driving crash into trees and drive off bridges and remove only themselves from humanity.

Unfortunately they like to take others with them.

Re:All I can wish for

[Anonymous Coward]

I pity the trees. It's a shame for them to get banged up by someone so stupid.

Re:Cool.

[Anarchduke]

I never saw apple products as having a cool factor. Really, its more of a douchbag factor.

Re:Cool.

[stewbacca]

I can keep the iPod itself stuffed in my glove box (negating the "cool" factor if nobody sees it)

I think that's pretty cool--as do many of my friends and family. Cool means different things to people who get cool and those who don't (hint: we iPod users don't care what you think about our $150 consumer electronic device, no matter how cool you think we are trying to be).

Re:Cool.

[Theoden]

I've seen it said before on Slashdot: If the rest of the MP3 player market would get together and make a single, unified interface and protocol like the iPod's docking cable that allowed control and audio output without having to care who made the device, what model it is, etc, etc, THEN Apple would be on the run.

Wait a second...

I've seen it said before on Slashdot: If the rest of the linux market would get together and make a single, unified interface and protocol like the Windows/Mac OS X interface that allowed control and blah blah without having to care who made the distro, what DE it is, etc, etc, THEN Apple/Microsoft would be on the run.

Fixed.
Knew I'd seen it on /. before. :)

So what? That doesn't mean anything to me.

[Medievalist]

For the fourth time in this thread...Iphone service samey pricey other smart phone service. Understandy nowey. Pleasey showey meey smarty phoney costy lessy monthy.

If everything is blue, that doesn't mean the sky is not blue. Follow me chinee racy mockeree?

I don't carry a phone (because if I did, people would call me... which would degrade my enjoyment of life) but my spouse and son do. They pay less than $100 dollars US per year and get every service they want.

Usability is relative. Use what works for you.

[Medievalist]

No interface is intuitive, not even the nipple. It's all learned. Use what works for you.

If you're blind, the iPhone is a useless bar of soap, manual or not.