I think there's a little confusion here. I think many analysts understate the sheer visual appeal of this device and its user interface design.
I went and did some homework. I looked at the user interfaces, design and features of the Palm Treo (PalmOS and Windows versions), Blackberry Pearl and Sidekick III. I believe these products to be representative of the broader market. What I found out is that the iPhone has few truly unique features, but they are refined to a smooth polish that the competition can only envy. For example, the web browser is a full powered program that uses a big screen and responds to smooth gestures that make web browsing natural. The other phones have web browsers, most of which don't work well, and none of which are as slick or have as big a screen.
Then I looked at prices. $499 is not an unprecedented price for a brand new phone design. The Nokia N95, for instance, sells for about $ 700 without contract, or about the same as the iPhone probably would. The Treo sold for $399 with contract when it was first introduced.
The reason this is all confusing is that the cellphone industry on the whole has not had a radical new platform introduced in some time, so prices have settled down. The iPhone is a new category of product and so it starts expensive, like all innovative electronics, and goes down in time.
Now, I don't remember the exact market share figures. I think smartphones were something like 10% of the market and so the iPhone would have to take 10% of the smartphone market to get 1% of the overall market. Right now, if my memory serves, Microsoft has 45% or so of the market, with most of the rest shared between Palm and RIM.
Finally, I listened to the public. There's a good percentage of the public that really wants this phone. The grumbling over price is remarkably similar to the grumbling over the iPod's price, which was $399 - just $100 less. I've noticed that often I will react to something initially by carping about the price, and then I'll think for a while and say, well, you can do a lot with this thing, and then in the end buy it. I'm sure many people are facing the same situation with the iPhone.
Now, since the best selling Palm phone is $200 and the Blackberry Pearl is $200, both with contract, we can see that the iPhone is quite a bit more expensive than the other options. This is the only thing protecting Palm and the consumer RIM purchasers because the iPhone's capabilities absolutely crush both phones. At the same time, I look at the greater capabilities and realize that personally, yes, it would be worth $600 to have something that has a "real" web browser, has super-convenient controls, a gorgeous music player and even has a non-obnoxious voicemail implemetation. So as I have said elsewhere on slashdot, as long as it has SSH, I'm in.
I think a lot of people will make this same decision. However, it seems dicey to make 10% of the smartphone market, seeing that the competition is so much cheaper. However, Steve is predicting those sales by the end of 2008. I predict the iPhone will sell well but not outstandingly during its first six months, and then around January 2008 the price will go down to $250 with contract, and at that price it would easily get 10%, maybe even 25% of the smartphone market.
I guess whether it will be a hot seller or not depends on your definition of hot seller. The number of people who really want this thing, and at a high price, indicates to me that it will sell well enough to be a modest success at first, and then break away in the next calendar year.
Stilll, that's just one man's opinion. In the end, you are right that we don't really know how well this will do until the launch. But I think the signs are overwhelmingly positive because of the reactions from consumers.
I think the biggest obstacle is not the price, but consumer hatred of Cingular. The people who were grumbling about price were kind of half-hearted because they knew this thing has a lot of
There's no question that I'm a big Apple fan. It's certainly possible for Apple to do wrong, and they certainly have, but they've also created great products. In the end, to me great products are what matter so I'm certainly a big fan of the company.
That being said, Cisco's case is looking dodgy and downright amateurish. They were required to submit a statement saying that they are still using the trademark and give a sample showing its use. Their continuous use claim is invalid, because there was no continuous use, and the sample looked like an afterthought, and not a serious attempt to use the name.
Looks to me like the trademark was not in continuous commercial use for the required time, and so Cisco's quite likely to lose it. Then it's Apple's legitimately, and Cisco would lose the lawsuit if it was pursued to its conclusion.
I think your PS3 example is an interesting one. Supply was badly constrained around the vital Christmas season. Now we have the news that the first million have been sold. That means they have probably received about as much revenue for it as Nintendo has for the Wii, despite the latter's far better publicity. This seems particularly impressive since the launch was severely bungled, and most reviewers have agreed that the games that presently exist for the PS3 are mediocre at best.
So actually I think this might be a powerful argument in the other direction. Clearly people are willing to reach deep in their wallets for a truly compelling and desirable consumer device.
Now, I'm uneasy about the 1% target myself. It seems extremely ambitious because it means that they will have to take about a 10% share of the smartphone market. That's a huge bite out of everyone else.
But still, let's review the competition. Much to my surprise it seems pretty anemic. Consider:
* I reviewed the Palm Treo at the Palm.com site. The most powerful competition for the iPhone seems to be the PalmOS version, which has many of the most desirable features, such as easy conference calling. At the same time, the screens look impossibly crude, almost stone-age, compared to the sleek, anti-aliased iPhone. Here are some Palm screenshots, of their email system:
Yikes. The iPhone almost doesn't look real, does it? Palm looks in big trouble here.
The Treo has the advantage of having a keyboard, although I remember feeling the keys were way too closely spaced for easy typing.
The Treo costs $199 with a plan, $399 without. So the iPhone is about $300 more expensive, provides a far superior screen, bang up to date software, a far superior web browser and email reader, and an ultra-modern operating system instead of one stuck in the 90s.
* The Windows Treo doesn't have a plan option right now, so it costs $399. The iPhone could wipe that out completely for anyone who doesn't care whether they sign a plan extension or not. I don't see anyone paying $400 for a Treo when they could pay $500 for a far superior iPhone.
* The T-Mobile Sidekick is my current smartphone. This was a five-star killer device when it was first introduced, but Sidekick III is barely improved from the Sidekick II. And their online Flash demo is awful. It spends more time showing the phone rotate and move around than demonstrating the features. And again, the screen resolution is horrible, type is ugly and I can't say it stacks up well. Current deal on it is $199. I really like the Sidekick design but like the Treo, it just doesn't look like it's keeping up with the times.
* The Blackberry Pearl is probably what I'd get if I were looking for a non-iPhone smartphone. It does have a beautiful display, and web browsing was probably the best I've seen on anything but the iPhone. $ 199 with contract. Incidentally, the Pearl has the worst online demo. You see the phone moving all over the place, and I'm sure it helped keep 3D modelers in work, but what it didn't do was show the user interface. At all. But when I tinkered with the phone, I noticed that the screen was super-clear, the font crisp and the web browsing smooth. Really, the demo short-changes the phone. The odd pseudo QWERTY numeric keypad was also strange. I found the buttons too close together and it looked like it would be easy to push the wrong one by accident.
The Blackberry may be the healthiest by far of this surprisingly motley crew of competitors, but the iPhone still wins in my book. I wish Blackberry well because I think they are the highest quality competitor, but that's not going to stop me from buying an iPhone
I thought this, which I read after I wrote my original message, was most interesting:
Fundamentally we wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future. In our view, the network provides the basis to make this happen--it provides the foundation of innovation that allows converged devices to deliver the services that consumers want. Our goal was to take that to the next level by facilitating collaboration with Apple. And we wanted to make sure to differentiate the brands in a way that could work for both companies and not confuse people, since our products combine both web access and voice telephony. That's it. Openness and clarity.
I wonder what they wanted in terms of interoperbility - support for Skype, perhaps? Direct dialing between the two different kinds of iPhones if they are on the same network?
You are right that it seems strange that it apparently doesn't offer IM. This is a little sneaky since they made text messages look just like IM, and that may have confused some into thinking that it does.
On the positive side, Steve tells you that you'll never look at your phone in the same way again, and he's right. The user interfaces of PalmOS, Windows Mobile and the Sidekick look downright stone age by comparison. And compared to the smooth demos on the Apple site, the competition's demos are obnoxious and poorly presented. The T-Mobile Sidekick demo spent more time spinning the device than it did showing off the phone's features, which look nearly identical to the Sidekick II. The Palm demo looked like they hadn't changed their ugly, low-res font since the 1990s. And Windows Mobile had an impossibly ugly, cluttered screen.
The phone's critics (such as The Register) are talking about feature parity between the iPhone and the competition, and they are right. I've gone through the demos, and I saw a very significant percentage of the iPhone's core features working on the cheaper phones. And a Palm Treo is just $199 with the same Cingular contract costing $499 with the iPhone.
That being said, the beauty of the interface and design, combined with full-page web browsing, make me think this device will be the best phone for a lot of people.
Well, really, I'm at the edge of my seat wondering if enough people are keen enough to pay $499 for telephonic perfection. It's a lot of money, for a lot of phone.
I'm not necessarily opposed to closed-platform, as long as it has SSH, although I'm almost certain that third-party widgets will work.
Why am I not wild about the prospect of an open device? When I was in the Philippines last year, I befriended a very nice lady who had an advanced cellphone (a Nokia 6600 if my memory serves). At about the time I arrived, it got a virus that was sending multimedia porn messages to her friends and all over the place.
I was able to disinfect the device for her but the upshot was a US$300 phone bill. In the Philippines, where an income of $1,000 a month (about what she made) catapults you into the uper middle class, a $300 phone bill is serious business, especially with the telco unwilling to write it off as American phone companies would do.
Now, a bespoke operating system and targeted 1% market share may make the iPhone pretty safe from virii in the first place, but still.. better safe than sorry, perhaps?
I explained to him that, plan taken into account, it would cost almost as much as his PowerMac. (He got a used one.) He mentioned that because he likes to be out and about and hip and go to all the parties and what-not, he would get more use out of it than a PowerMac.
I wonder if the interface with Google Maps offers spoken driving directions through the speaker? This might just be something you could do with a widget, if there's a speaking interface for it. I know that the navigation system in my S500 is downright addictive, and a standalone nav system's about $300. So if you add the cost of the iPod ($200), the cost of the full-featured smartphone ($200) and the cost of the nav system ($300), now you're starting to talk...
It does seem a little suspicious, since if Apple was begging for the trademark "for years", Linksys had to be very aware of this fact.
I think Linksys introduced their iPhone to counteract an expected argument that the trademark was not in use. As I remember, it was a hasty rebranding of an already existing product line. It would be hard to argue that the name was well-established commercially.
I can't help but notice that the Apple iPhone itself has no visible marks on it, other than the Apple logo on the back. They could change the name from iPhone to jPhone or kPhone in seconds flat.
One thing for sure: The value of Linksys' trademark is virtually zero today. Whenever anyone says "iphone", Apple will be the reason why. And the beauty of that rather curious argument is that the public did it by so relentlessly using the name before launch. Apple itself didn't do a thing to destroy the trademark before launch day.
Apple may rename the product, if Linksys is asking for too much, but I'll bet that years from now people will still be talking about iPhone, even as they use their pMacs or MacPhones.
Trademarks are funny that way.
Finally, will this curious little squabble have any impact? I'm curious since I don't think the amount of money this dispute could yield would be worth the executive time it takes and the odd publicity brought to both companies.
Unless the publicity was the idea? It seems like this has single-handedly given the Linksys iPhone product a blaze of the kind of publicity you simply can't buy.
I do wonder now if this was a setup by Linksys and they didn't intend to give up the trademark without a loud and public fight, not for the money but so that someone, somewhere in the world would hear about their product and maybe buy a couple of them. It's not a bad strategy, especially since they seem like the underdogs...
I mean, this case sounds like an example of the stubbornness of Steve, but what if it's an elaborate publicity stunt? Smart one, too.
I wonder how much publicity Tiger Direct got out of the bizarre Tiger vs Apple suit?
You see, I really wouldn't think Steve would make a dumb decision like not have the rights nailed down tight before MacWorld... it just seems out of character, particularly with a device for which there are so many good names.
Thanks for the correction. Reversing the coordinates (640 x 480 versus 480 x 320) confused me even though I should have thought about the (normally) tall form factor.
Apple marketing has been successful because Apple products have been great products, and that generates loyalty.
I don't think any of Apple's marketing would be sucessful if the products didn't impress people, year in and year out.
I also don't think any other company could market in the way Apple does today, because it takes a formidable track record to get people as hyped up as they are... automatically.
Now, this doesn't mean the iPhone won't flop. That price tag is pretty ambitious. But I've noticed something interesting.
Most people complaining about the price admit they will probably bite the bullet and buy one when it comes.
The people Apple needs to worry about are those who say that they won't buy an iPhone at any price because Cingular is a horrible carrier.
Either Cingular has to change enormously or Apple needs to work around that exclusive contract somehow.
I don't remember people being this excited about the Cube. I think the iPhone will easily sell a million plus units to Apple fans and their friends at the high price.
Then the price will go down to $250 with contract around Q1 2008 and then I think he can sell the remaining 9 million, easy.
D
(I admit the price is stiff and also admit that as long as it has ssh, I'm in, and for the 8gb option at that. With passable luck it will accept a Bluetooth keyboard and that plus the web browser pretty much means software development anywhere you like).
Network operators don't seem to object to SSH, though. Even the T-Mobile Sidekick, which is about the most closed device around, has SSH, which you can buy for $10 through your phone. It's an obscure requirement, so you have to look in the dusty recesses of the online store to find it, but it's there.
Also, syncing using iTunes is a way software, such as iPod games, can be added to the system. That seems like a software loading method that would work well for either Apple or third-party developers to bypass the carrier approval process.
I think the problem here is that although Word and Excel would run on the new device, their user interfaces are so cluttered and pallette heavy that I doubt that they would translate well to a small screen. In fact, I think they have trouble even at 640x480, much less a screen 2/3 that resolution.
I think Apple would be very likely to adopt Keynote, Pages and the new iWork spreadsheet to work with the new device and act as its interface for reading those documents. Then that capability would remain in the "good taste space" of the iPhone and all would be well.
I think games have promise, but I would hate to use my $800 phone like a WII controller and heave it straight out the window. Still, with the sensors being available (and probably working in a similar way to the MacBook sudden motion sensors), I'm sure they will be used. Let's just hope this device is more rugged than it looks.
I already wonder about the potential for scratches.
A tanatalizing hint: When you saw the mention of it running MacOS X, the slide behind Steve mentioned all the technologies surrounding it, including things like Core Video.
I don't think Steve would mention Core Video if it was not there for third-party developers to use. This is a huge change from the iPod, but remember that the iPod operating system was not made by Apple. Odds are that it didn't have the power to work well as an open system.
Also note that the widgets are very similar to Tiger widgets. I think that at the very least, widgets developed for MacOS X will run on the phone with at most minor changes.
Steve wants to show off the phone to consumers, so it's natural for him not to play up the idea of third-party support, until it actually exists. Next year at this time, he may well brag about all the third-party folks who have beavered away to create wonderful stuff for it. But the device was secret until now, so that has to wait.
The iPhone runs MacOS X, therefore it is... wait for it... a computer.
I just hope that when you drop the iPhone, it immediately starts making annoying eeping noises like a little baby so that you don't lose it. Perhaps this is something a third-party maker will have to do, but in any event it seems essential on a phone that, net of contract savings, costs more some used cars. (Not very good used cars, but I think you get the point.)
I wonder what the price is if you have already made a contract extension recently, or if you lose the phone and need a replacement.
What might be most interesting, and not immediately obvious, is that half the applications they showed us were widgets, only modestly changed from their Dashboard bretheren. I suspect that some method for changing the orientation of the app to vertical from horizontal (as the weather widget worked in the demo) will be included in Leopard, and Leopard widgets with these (probably pretty simple) modifications will work on the phone.
I watched the introductory video C-Net has and they pointed out that there is apparently an opening for the SIM card on top of the device. Since the iPod dock connector is on the bottom, the slot on the side could be for a flash card -- or anything else.
I wish they had a keyboard and display adapter for when you want to type lots of stuff into it, like addresses or notes. The power of this device seems to just be dying for a larger display, especially for those of us with lamentably aging eyes. I wonder if this could be fixed up as an iPod accessory out of the dock.
Also, when I saw the introductory video it seems pretty clear that they are encouraging third party development for the device. Why do I say this, when it seems to fly in the face of the evidence of it being a tightly-integrated, Apple-only gadget?
Because of the discussion of MacOS X and the mention of Core Video and other MacOS X-based technologies. The only reason Core Video, etc, would be mentioned is to pique developer interest. This also means that there is almost certainly a way to get terminal and SSH through the device, as well as develop and install third-party software for it. This is an interesting departure from the iPod.
Another interesting correlary of this is that Word - or at least Notepad, which can read Word files, should work fine. And in that case, the support for word processor and spreadsheet files should be superior even to the Blackberry and Palm. Some people on the C|net forums mentioned that Blackberry and Palm should not be too concerned about the device due to its lack of support for documents sent in email; I would not be surprised at all if you could not only read, but edit these documents with the new device. If I'm right, Steve's demo, awesome though it was, has only scratched the surface of the new device's power.
Anyone have any idea what the CPU, memory and other tech specs are? It wouldn't surprise me if the memory was upgradeable (thus that slot) and needs to be for the device to work up to its full potential.
My educated guess is that yes, it would work on a different provider, but you would lose (at minimum) the cool integrated voice mail feature. That was developed with Cingular and obviously requires interchange between them and the phone.
The Internet functionality seems to rely only on a connection, so it should work with any provider.
Cingular brought the cooperation needed to create random access voice mail. If you think of how often you have gone through saved voice mail messages in search of the one you really want, you can see how important that is.
I think Cingular and T-Mobile are related in network service, at least in some places. I know T-Mobile has traditionally had the worst service but the best handsets.
I expected Apple to offer an unlocked phone, so I'm a bit disappointed in that regard. But to do the new features, you need cooperation from the network, so it would probably be inevitable. It's really too bad since I may move to the Philippines in the next year or so, and they won't be in Asia until 2008:-(. Well, maybe they'll have 3G by then. I'm a bit disappointed at the use of EDGE.
Despite all this, there's no question that I will buy this phone as long as I'm staying in the US. Once I have a move-out date it will depend on how many features work without the special cooperation from the network.
I think Cingular and T-Mobile share the same network, at least in part, so you might actually be getting the same service.
Random access voice mail almost certainly required that they get the cooperation of a specific provider.
The price is a bit high. I'd guessed $499 but without a contract. They could certainly obliverate their competition if they were able to get it cheaper, but this is to the Treo or Sidekick as Final Cut Pro was to Adobe Premiere when it was introduced. In other words, it blasts the competition into smithereens.
I wonder if terminal and ssh are included somewhere in the device. Those nice Blackberry folks charge $95 for ssh and that would make up a lot of the price disadvantage if it was included in the Phone's MacOS X installation.
Finally, when I heard all the stuff that goes on that device, I would think you'd want a 30gb version. 4 and 8 gb of Flash almost seems like an insult for something that powerful. I suppose a hard drive would have made it too big and heavy, but still, people carry around hard drive based iPods just fine, and a hard drive iPod's not much different in size from the sidekick.
I think the big concern about Sealand is that it would set some kind of precedent, but the situation that created it seems unlikely to recur and so it can remain as a bizarre curiosity. The British did blow up a similar tower just in case but I don't think it matters enough to them to be worth destroying.
I saw pictures of it after the fire. It looked like it was a rather prosaic lifestyle aside from the unobstructed ocean views, and those views tend to become a lot less appealing in chilly climates. Also, it looked like about 1/3 of the territory was taken up by electric generators to keep the place going. A necessary correlary would seem to be that living up there would be rather loud and not particularly pleasant.
Still, what an entertaining curiosity it is! I don't think I'd like to live there - too bloody cold - but I really admire the audacity of the founders in pursuing their dream. I'm sorry to hear they want to sell.
This is visible even in the S-Class. In my old 1991 S-Class, I got about 14mpg. On my 2000 S-Class, I get 18.9mpg in all driving and 20-21mpg when I'm lazing around.
Incidentally, performance fans (and foes) should know that the brutal gas mileage killer is idling. Accelerating from 0-70 in a quick burst of throttle does virtually nothing for my fuel economy (and a lot for my mood), simply because the higher engine power is used for only a few thrilling seconds. It's sitting in traffic that's the killer.
I'm really not sure what the appeal of the SUV is - to me they're underperforming trucks. I'm not interested in driving off-road or other macho stuff, so the sport/luxury car is the right place for me, and I cheerfully admit it. And of course when it comes to safety, the Benz has every safety device in the known universe at the time of its creation.
For comparison's sake, premium unleaded gas right now is about US$ 2.59, so each mile costs me about $ 0.13. I'll bet that with higher European fuel prices, your Jag is about the same cost per mile.
I don't really like that class of car because it feels cramped to me. Of course part of the reason for that is that I'm overweight, and so in theory we could solve this problem by reducing my weight which unfortunately in practice is extremely difficult.
But it is interesting, thinking about it, that a few inches of extra room on the left and right are all I really need, and I have to drive this enormous car in order to get it. I wonder whether a wider C-Class wouldn't suit my needs just as well. (Amusingly enough, I saw the new C-Class a few days ago, and it's easy to confuse with the S-Class - they gave it exactly the same styling, just slightly shrunk).
It would be tougher to wean me off the wonderful rush of getting from 0-60 in 6.1 seconds, though. Fastest car on the road unless I'm going after a 911 or Tesla.
I'm not convinced, though, that big cars are inherently that bad, though. Pollution in new cars is pretty much a solved problem. It looks like electric cars are going to improve to the point that they will be viable in a few years, probably by the time I replace my current S-Class.
I find it interesting that so many people in this kind of discussion ignore customer preferences. We are not East Germany, whose government said, effectively, "Drive this Trabant or nothing!" We are America. We give people choices. And, I might add, even our biggest SUVs are cleaner than the Trabant was. A LOT cleaner.
So the problem is that most people - at least most Americans - like big, heavy cars and trucks better than small and light cars and trucks.
Many will buy what they want even if it gets 7mpg.
If technology can take a car that goes 7mpg and make it go 27 mpg, that's an enormous win - much more so than increasing an econobox from 30 to 40mpg.
I don't think there's anything wrong with giving people what they want. In fact, I think it's a big virtue of the USA that we do.
I don't like big SUVs myself - my car is the big, heavy Mercedes-Benz S-Class, that flies and gets about 20mpg in my hands. I'll probably drive something like that for the rest of my life, because I love driving that particular kind of car.
And you're not going to prevent me from doing that -- at least as long as we're still America. A hybrid S-Class would give me better acceleration and fuel economy. It would be cool. I'd buy it. And I would save fuel and money doing so.
(Although I might find the Tesla roadster hard to resist thanks to its audacity).
You know, one might find it ironic that the maker of "Who killed the electric car?" made enough money off the film to buy a Tesla. I guess the electric car lives, now:-).
D
Relevant extract, since I believe LA Times articles are behind a registration screen:
Even Chris Paine, director of this summer's sleeper-hit doc "Who Killed the Electric Car?" ponied up. "I don't even own my house," says Paine, who is a familiar figure driving his Toyota RAV4 EV around Santa Monica.
"Now I'll have a $100,000 car in the driveway," he says. "I wouldn't ordinarily own a car like that -- that's so, you know, look-at-me -- but I figure if I was going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's a little confusion here. I think many analysts understate the sheer visual appeal of this device and its user interface design.
I went and did some homework. I looked at the user interfaces, design and features of the Palm Treo (PalmOS and Windows versions), Blackberry Pearl and Sidekick III. I believe these products to be representative of the broader market. What I found out is that the iPhone has few truly unique features, but they are refined to a smooth polish that the competition can only envy. For example, the web browser is a full powered program that uses a big screen and responds to smooth gestures that make web browsing natural. The other phones have web browsers, most of which don't work well, and none of which are as slick or have as big a screen.
Then I looked at prices. $499 is not an unprecedented price for a brand new phone design. The Nokia N95, for instance, sells for about $ 700 without contract, or about the same as the iPhone probably would. The Treo sold for $399 with contract when it was first introduced.
The reason this is all confusing is that the cellphone industry on the whole has not had a radical new platform introduced in some time, so prices have settled down. The iPhone is a new category of product and so it starts expensive, like all innovative electronics, and goes down in time.
Now, I don't remember the exact market share figures. I think smartphones were something like 10% of the market and so the iPhone would have to take 10% of the smartphone market to get 1% of the overall market. Right now, if my memory serves, Microsoft has 45% or so of the market, with most of the rest shared between Palm and RIM.
Finally, I listened to the public. There's a good percentage of the public that really wants this phone. The grumbling over price is remarkably similar to the grumbling over the iPod's price, which was $399 - just $100 less. I've noticed that often I will react to something initially by carping about the price, and then I'll think for a while and say, well, you can do a lot with this thing, and then in the end buy it. I'm sure many people are facing the same situation with the iPhone.
Now, since the best selling Palm phone is $200 and the Blackberry Pearl is $200, both with contract, we can see that the iPhone is quite a bit more expensive than the other options. This is the only thing protecting Palm and the consumer RIM purchasers because the iPhone's capabilities absolutely crush both phones. At the same time, I look at the greater capabilities and realize that personally, yes, it would be worth $600 to have something that has a "real" web browser, has super-convenient controls, a gorgeous music player and even has a non-obnoxious voicemail implemetation. So as I have said elsewhere on slashdot, as long as it has SSH, I'm in.
I think a lot of people will make this same decision. However, it seems dicey to make 10% of the smartphone market, seeing that the competition is so much cheaper. However, Steve is predicting those sales by the end of 2008. I predict the iPhone will sell well but not outstandingly during its first six months, and then around January 2008 the price will go down to $250 with contract, and at that price it would easily get 10%, maybe even 25% of the smartphone market.
I guess whether it will be a hot seller or not depends on your definition of hot seller. The number of people who really want this thing, and at a high price, indicates to me that it will sell well enough to be a modest success at first, and then break away in the next calendar year.
Stilll, that's just one man's opinion. In the end, you are right that we don't really know how well this will do until the launch. But I think the signs are overwhelmingly positive because of the reactions from consumers.
I think the biggest obstacle is not the price, but consumer hatred of Cingular. The people who were grumbling about price were kind of half-hearted because they knew this thing has a lot of
There's no question that I'm a big Apple fan. It's certainly possible for Apple to do wrong, and they certainly have, but they've also created great products. In the end, to me great products are what matter so I'm certainly a big fan of the company.
That being said, Cisco's case is looking dodgy and downright amateurish. They were required to submit a statement saying that they are still using the trademark and give a sample showing its use. Their continuous use claim is invalid, because there was no continuous use, and the sample looked like an afterthought, and not a serious attempt to use the name.
Here are the details:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=236
Looks to me like the trademark was not in continuous commercial use for the required time, and so Cisco's quite likely to lose it. Then it's Apple's legitimately, and Cisco would lose the lawsuit if it was pursued to its conclusion.
D
I think your PS3 example is an interesting one. Supply was badly constrained around the vital Christmas season. Now we have the news that the first million have been sold. That means they have probably received about as much revenue for it as Nintendo has for the Wii, despite the latter's far better publicity. This seems particularly impressive since the launch was severely bungled, and most reviewers have agreed that the games that presently exist for the PS3 are mediocre at best.
So actually I think this might be a powerful argument in the other direction. Clearly people are willing to reach deep in their wallets for a truly compelling and desirable consumer device.
Now, I'm uneasy about the 1% target myself. It seems extremely ambitious because it means that they will have to take about a 10% share of the smartphone market. That's a huge bite out of everyone else.
But still, let's review the competition. Much to my surprise it seems pretty anemic. Consider:
* I reviewed the Palm Treo at the Palm.com site. The most powerful competition for the iPhone seems to be the PalmOS version, which has many of the most desirable features, such as easy conference calling. At the same time, the screens look impossibly crude, almost stone-age, compared to the sleek, anti-aliased iPhone. Here are some Palm screenshots, of their email system:
http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo68 0/email.html
Now, check out the iPhone's email demo:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/internet/
Yikes. The iPhone almost doesn't look real, does it? Palm looks in big trouble here.
The Treo has the advantage of having a keyboard, although I remember feeling the keys were way too closely spaced for easy typing.
The Treo costs $199 with a plan, $399 without. So the iPhone is about $300 more expensive, provides a far superior screen, bang up to date software, a far superior web browser and email reader, and an ultra-modern operating system instead of one stuck in the 90s.
* The Windows Treo doesn't have a plan option right now, so it costs $399. The iPhone could wipe that out completely for anyone who doesn't care whether they sign a plan extension or not. I don't see anyone paying $400 for a Treo when they could pay $500 for a far superior iPhone.
* The T-Mobile Sidekick is my current smartphone. This was a five-star killer device when it was first introduced, but Sidekick III is barely improved from the Sidekick II. And their online Flash demo is awful. It spends more time showing the phone rotate and move around than demonstrating the features. And again, the screen resolution is horrible, type is ugly and I can't say it stacks up well. Current deal on it is $199. I really like the Sidekick design but like the Treo, it just doesn't look like it's keeping up with the times.
* The Blackberry Pearl is probably what I'd get if I were looking for a non-iPhone smartphone. It does have a beautiful display, and web browsing was probably the best I've seen on anything but the iPhone. $ 199 with contract. Incidentally, the Pearl has the worst online demo. You see the phone moving all over the place, and I'm sure it helped keep 3D modelers in work, but what it didn't do was show the user interface. At all. But when I tinkered with the phone, I noticed that the screen was super-clear, the font crisp and the web browsing smooth. Really, the demo short-changes the phone. The odd pseudo QWERTY numeric keypad was also strange. I found the buttons too close together and it looked like it would be easy to push the wrong one by accident.
The Blackberry may be the healthiest by far of this surprisingly motley crew of competitors, but the iPhone still wins in my book. I wish Blackberry well because I think they are the highest quality competitor, but that's not going to stop me from buying an iPhone
I wonder what they wanted in terms of interoperbility - support for Skype, perhaps? Direct dialing between the two different kinds of iPhones if they are on the same network?
D
You are right that it seems strange that it apparently doesn't offer IM. This is a little sneaky since they made text messages look just like IM, and that may have confused some into thinking that it does.
.. better safe than sorry, perhaps?
On the positive side, Steve tells you that you'll never look at your phone in the same way again, and he's right. The user interfaces of PalmOS, Windows Mobile and the Sidekick look downright stone age by comparison. And compared to the smooth demos on the Apple site, the competition's demos are obnoxious and poorly presented. The T-Mobile Sidekick demo spent more time spinning the device than it did showing off the phone's features, which look nearly identical to the Sidekick II. The Palm demo looked like they hadn't changed their ugly, low-res font since the 1990s. And Windows Mobile had an impossibly ugly, cluttered screen.
The phone's critics (such as The Register) are talking about feature parity between the iPhone and the competition, and they are right. I've gone through the demos, and I saw a very significant percentage of the iPhone's core features working on the cheaper phones. And a Palm Treo is just $199 with the same Cingular contract costing $499 with the iPhone.
That being said, the beauty of the interface and design, combined with full-page web browsing, make me think this device will be the best phone for a lot of people.
Well, really, I'm at the edge of my seat wondering if enough people are keen enough to pay $499 for telephonic perfection. It's a lot of money, for a lot of phone.
I'm not necessarily opposed to closed-platform, as long as it has SSH, although I'm almost certain that third-party widgets will work.
Why am I not wild about the prospect of an open device? When I was in the Philippines last year, I befriended a very nice lady who had an advanced cellphone (a Nokia 6600 if my memory serves). At about the time I arrived, it got a virus that was sending multimedia porn messages to her friends and all over the place.
I was able to disinfect the device for her but the upshot was a US$300 phone bill. In the Philippines, where an income of $1,000 a month (about what she made) catapults you into the uper middle class, a $300 phone bill is serious business, especially with the telco unwilling to write it off as American phone companies would do.
Now, a bespoke operating system and targeted 1% market share may make the iPhone pretty safe from virii in the first place, but still
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I'm going to add one more thing to my own post.
...
I showed the iPhone to my trendy friend.
"Cool! I want one," he said.
I explained to him that, plan taken into account, it would cost almost as much as his PowerMac. (He got a used one.) He mentioned that because he likes to be out and about and hip and go to all the parties and what-not, he would get more use out of it than a PowerMac.
I wonder if the interface with Google Maps offers spoken driving directions through the speaker? This might just be something you could do with a widget, if there's a speaking interface for it. I know that the navigation system in my S500 is downright addictive, and a standalone nav system's about $300. So if you add the cost of the iPod ($200), the cost of the full-featured smartphone ($200) and the cost of the nav system ($300), now you're starting to talk
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It does seem a little suspicious, since if Apple was begging for the trademark "for years", Linksys had to be very aware of this fact.
...
... it just seems out of character, particularly with a device for which there are so many good names.
I think Linksys introduced their iPhone to counteract an expected argument that the trademark was not in use. As I remember, it was a hasty rebranding of an already existing product line. It would be hard to argue that the name was well-established commercially.
I can't help but notice that the Apple iPhone itself has no visible marks on it, other than the Apple logo on the back. They could change the name from iPhone to jPhone or kPhone in seconds flat.
One thing for sure: The value of Linksys' trademark is virtually zero today. Whenever anyone says "iphone", Apple will be the reason why. And the beauty of that rather curious argument is that the public did it by so relentlessly using the name before launch. Apple itself didn't do a thing to destroy the trademark before launch day.
Apple may rename the product, if Linksys is asking for too much, but I'll bet that years from now people will still be talking about iPhone, even as they use their pMacs or MacPhones.
Trademarks are funny that way.
Finally, will this curious little squabble have any impact? I'm curious since I don't think the amount of money this dispute could yield would be worth the executive time it takes and the odd publicity brought to both companies.
Unless the publicity was the idea? It seems like this has single-handedly given the Linksys iPhone product a blaze of the kind of publicity you simply can't buy.
I do wonder now if this was a setup by Linksys and they didn't intend to give up the trademark without a loud and public fight, not for the money but so that someone, somewhere in the world would hear about their product and maybe buy a couple of them. It's not a bad strategy, especially since they seem like the underdogs
I mean, this case sounds like an example of the stubbornness of Steve, but what if it's an elaborate publicity stunt? Smart one, too.
I wonder how much publicity Tiger Direct got out of the bizarre Tiger vs Apple suit?
You see, I really wouldn't think Steve would make a dumb decision like not have the rights nailed down tight before MacWorld
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Thanks for the correction. Reversing the coordinates (640 x 480 versus 480 x 320) confused me even though I should have thought about the (normally) tall form factor.
D
Apple marketing has been successful because Apple products have been great products, and that generates loyalty.
... automatically.
I don't think any of Apple's marketing would be sucessful if the products didn't impress people, year in and year out.
I also don't think any other company could market in the way Apple does today, because it takes a formidable track record to get people as hyped up as they are
Now, this doesn't mean the iPhone won't flop. That price tag is pretty ambitious. But I've noticed something interesting.
Most people complaining about the price admit they will probably bite the bullet and buy one when it comes.
The people Apple needs to worry about are those who say that they won't buy an iPhone at any price because Cingular is a horrible carrier.
Either Cingular has to change enormously or Apple needs to work around that exclusive contract somehow.
I don't remember people being this excited about the Cube. I think the iPhone will easily sell a million plus units to Apple fans and their friends at the high price.
Then the price will go down to $250 with contract around Q1 2008 and then I think he can sell the remaining 9 million, easy.
D
(I admit the price is stiff and also admit that as long as it has ssh, I'm in, and for the 8gb option at that. With passable luck it will accept a Bluetooth keyboard and that plus the web browser pretty much means software development anywhere you like).
Network operators don't seem to object to SSH, though. Even the T-Mobile Sidekick, which is about the most closed device around, has SSH, which you can buy for $10 through your phone. It's an obscure requirement, so you have to look in the dusty recesses of the online store to find it, but it's there.
Also, syncing using iTunes is a way software, such as iPod games, can be added to the system. That seems like a software loading method that would work well for either Apple or third-party developers to bypass the carrier approval process.
D
I think the problem here is that although Word and Excel would run on the new device, their user interfaces are so cluttered and pallette heavy that I doubt that they would translate well to a small screen. In fact, I think they have trouble even at 640x480, much less a screen 2/3 that resolution.
I think Apple would be very likely to adopt Keynote, Pages and the new iWork spreadsheet to work with the new device and act as its interface for reading those documents. Then that capability would remain in the "good taste space" of the iPhone and all would be well.
I think games have promise, but I would hate to use my $800 phone like a WII controller and heave it straight out the window. Still, with the sensors being available (and probably working in a similar way to the MacBook sudden motion sensors), I'm sure they will be used. Let's just hope this device is more rugged than it looks.
I already wonder about the potential for scratches.
D
A tanatalizing hint: When you saw the mention of it running MacOS X, the slide behind Steve mentioned all the technologies surrounding it, including things like Core Video.
I don't think Steve would mention Core Video if it was not there for third-party developers to use. This is a huge change from the iPod, but remember that the iPod operating system was not made by Apple. Odds are that it didn't have the power to work well as an open system.
Also note that the widgets are very similar to Tiger widgets. I think that at the very least, widgets developed for MacOS X will run on the phone with at most minor changes.
Steve wants to show off the phone to consumers, so it's natural for him not to play up the idea of third-party support, until it actually exists. Next year at this time, he may well brag about all the third-party folks who have beavered away to create wonderful stuff for it. But the device was secret until now, so that has to wait.
D
The iPhone runs MacOS X, therefore it is ... wait for it ... a computer.
I just hope that when you drop the iPhone, it immediately starts making annoying eeping noises like a little baby so that you don't lose it. Perhaps this is something a third-party maker will have to do, but in any event it seems essential on a phone that, net of contract savings, costs more some used cars. (Not very good used cars, but I think you get the point.)
I wonder what the price is if you have already made a contract extension recently, or if you lose the phone and need a replacement.
D
What might be most interesting, and not immediately obvious, is that half the applications they showed us were widgets, only modestly changed from their Dashboard bretheren. I suspect that some method for changing the orientation of the app to vertical from horizontal (as the weather widget worked in the demo) will be included in Leopard, and Leopard widgets with these (probably pretty simple) modifications will work on the phone.
D
I watched the introductory video C-Net has and they pointed out that there is apparently an opening for the SIM card on top of the device. Since the iPod dock connector is on the bottom, the slot on the side could be for a flash card -- or anything else.
I wish they had a keyboard and display adapter for when you want to type lots of stuff into it, like addresses or notes. The power of this device seems to just be dying for a larger display, especially for those of us with lamentably aging eyes. I wonder if this could be fixed up as an iPod accessory out of the dock.
Also, when I saw the introductory video it seems pretty clear that they are encouraging third party development for the device. Why do I say this, when it seems to fly in the face of the evidence of it being a tightly-integrated, Apple-only gadget?
Because of the discussion of MacOS X and the mention of Core Video and other MacOS X-based technologies. The only reason Core Video, etc, would be mentioned is to pique developer interest. This also means that there is almost certainly a way to get terminal and SSH through the device, as well as develop and install third-party software for it. This is an interesting departure from the iPod.
Another interesting correlary of this is that Word - or at least Notepad, which can read Word files, should work fine. And in that case, the support for word processor and spreadsheet files should be superior even to the Blackberry and Palm. Some people on the C|net forums mentioned that Blackberry and Palm should not be too concerned about the device due to its lack of support for documents sent in email; I would not be surprised at all if you could not only read, but edit these documents with the new device. If I'm right, Steve's demo, awesome though it was, has only scratched the surface of the new device's power.
Anyone have any idea what the CPU, memory and other tech specs are? It wouldn't surprise me if the memory was upgradeable (thus that slot) and needs to be for the device to work up to its full potential.
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I found that T-Mobile service was pretty poor in Los Angeles but much better in other parts of the US.
Of course now that the service is being provided in LA by a totally different network, it might be better now.
D
That is indeed what I was thinking of; I lived in Southern California at the time, and the memory of this stuck.
I stand corrected.
D
This is something I'd like to know too.
t ml
My educated guess is that yes, it would work on a different provider, but you would lose (at minimum) the cool integrated voice mail feature. That was developed with Cingular and obviously requires interchange between them and the phone.
The Internet functionality seems to rely only on a connection, so it should work with any provider.
Or maybe not:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/wireless.h
mentions compatibility only with Cingular's EDGE network. So you might not be able to use data outside of the Cingular network.
However, it looks like a dead cert that it can at least be unlocked for voice. Otherwise there would be little need for quad-band service.
Thoughts?
D
Cingular brought the cooperation needed to create random access voice mail. If you think of how often you have gone through saved voice mail messages in search of the one you really want, you can see how important that is.
:-(. Well, maybe they'll have 3G by then. I'm a bit disappointed at the use of EDGE.
I think Cingular and T-Mobile are related in network service, at least in some places. I know T-Mobile has traditionally had the worst service but the best handsets.
I expected Apple to offer an unlocked phone, so I'm a bit disappointed in that regard. But to do the new features, you need cooperation from the network, so it would probably be inevitable. It's really too bad since I may move to the Philippines in the next year or so, and they won't be in Asia until 2008
Despite all this, there's no question that I will buy this phone as long as I'm staying in the US. Once I have a move-out date it will depend on how many features work without the special cooperation from the network.
D
I think Cingular and T-Mobile share the same network, at least in part, so you might actually be getting the same service.
...
Random access voice mail almost certainly required that they get the cooperation of a specific provider.
The price is a bit high. I'd guessed $499 but without a contract. They could certainly obliverate their competition if they were able to get it cheaper, but this is to the Treo or Sidekick as Final Cut Pro was to Adobe Premiere when it was introduced. In other words, it blasts the competition into smithereens.
I wonder if terminal and ssh are included somewhere in the device. Those nice Blackberry folks charge $95 for ssh and that would make up a lot of the price disadvantage if it was included in the Phone's MacOS X installation.
Finally, when I heard all the stuff that goes on that device, I would think you'd want a 30gb version. 4 and 8 gb of Flash almost seems like an insult for something that powerful. I suppose a hard drive would have made it too big and heavy, but still, people carry around hard drive based iPods just fine, and a hard drive iPod's not much different in size from the sidekick.
It's a pity consumers really love small
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I think the big concern about Sealand is that it would set some kind of precedent, but the situation that created it seems unlikely to recur and so it can remain as a bizarre curiosity. The British did blow up a similar tower just in case but I don't think it matters enough to them to be worth destroying.
I saw pictures of it after the fire. It looked like it was a rather prosaic lifestyle aside from the unobstructed ocean views, and those views tend to become a lot less appealing in chilly climates. Also, it looked like about 1/3 of the territory was taken up by electric generators to keep the place going. A necessary correlary would seem to be that living up there would be rather loud and not particularly pleasant.
Still, what an entertaining curiosity it is! I don't think I'd like to live there - too bloody cold - but I really admire the audacity of the founders in pursuing their dream. I'm sorry to hear they want to sell.
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This is visible even in the S-Class. In my old 1991 S-Class, I got about 14mpg. On my 2000 S-Class, I get 18.9mpg in all driving and 20-21mpg when I'm lazing around.
Incidentally, performance fans (and foes) should know that the brutal gas mileage killer is idling. Accelerating from 0-70 in a quick burst of throttle does virtually nothing for my fuel economy (and a lot for my mood), simply because the higher engine power is used for only a few thrilling seconds. It's sitting in traffic that's the killer.
I'm really not sure what the appeal of the SUV is - to me they're underperforming trucks. I'm not interested in driving off-road or other macho stuff, so the sport/luxury car is the right place for me, and I cheerfully admit it. And of course when it comes to safety, the Benz has every safety device in the known universe at the time of its creation.
For comparison's sake, premium unleaded gas right now is about US$ 2.59, so each mile costs me about $ 0.13. I'll bet that with higher European fuel prices, your Jag is about the same cost per mile.
As for station wagons, well, here's an interesting station wagon review which makes your point pretty well.
D
I don't really like that class of car because it feels cramped to me. Of course part of the reason for that is that I'm overweight, and so in theory we could solve this problem by reducing my weight which unfortunately in practice is extremely difficult.
But it is interesting, thinking about it, that a few inches of extra room on the left and right are all I really need, and I have to drive this enormous car in order to get it. I wonder whether a wider C-Class wouldn't suit my needs just as well. (Amusingly enough, I saw the new C-Class a few days ago, and it's easy to confuse with the S-Class - they gave it exactly the same styling, just slightly shrunk).
It would be tougher to wean me off the wonderful rush of getting from 0-60 in 6.1 seconds, though. Fastest car on the road unless I'm going after a 911 or Tesla.
I'm not convinced, though, that big cars are inherently that bad, though. Pollution in new cars is pretty much a solved problem. It looks like electric cars are going to improve to the point that they will be viable in a few years, probably by the time I replace my current S-Class.
D
I find it interesting that so many people in this kind of discussion ignore customer preferences. We are not East Germany, whose government said, effectively, "Drive this Trabant or nothing!" We are America. We give people choices. And, I might add, even our biggest SUVs are cleaner than the Trabant was. A LOT cleaner.
So the problem is that most people - at least most Americans - like big, heavy cars and trucks better than small and light cars and trucks.
Many will buy what they want even if it gets 7mpg.
If technology can take a car that goes 7mpg and make it go 27 mpg, that's an enormous win - much more so than increasing an econobox from 30 to 40mpg.
I don't think there's anything wrong with giving people what they want. In fact, I think it's a big virtue of the USA that we do.
I don't like big SUVs myself - my car is the big, heavy Mercedes-Benz S-Class, that flies and gets about 20mpg in my hands. I'll probably drive something like that for the rest of my life, because I love driving that particular kind of car.
And you're not going to prevent me from doing that -- at least as long as we're still America. A hybrid S-Class would give me better acceleration and fuel economy. It would be cool. I'd buy it. And I would save fuel and money doing so.
(Although I might find the Tesla roadster hard to resist thanks to its audacity).
D
buy a Tesla. I guess the electric car lives, now
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Relevant extract, since I believe LA Times articles are behind a registration screen: