Jobs unveils the iphone

[Evoir]

I'm dancing and yelping! Very excited. Although, it is not 3G yet, so I'll wait for that. Very exciting!

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/01/09/iphone/index.php

I have not found a picture of it yet....

[Evoir]

The iPhone will come in two versions, a 4GB $499 model, and an 8GB $599 model with a two-year contract. Both will be available beginning in June. Cingular will be the exclusive U.S. carrier. Jobs said Apple anticipates bringing the iPhone to Europe in the fourth calendar quarter of 2007, and Asia in 2008.

[kitchin]

About the only grumbling I read is the exclusive deal with Cingular/AT&T and the two-year contract... and waiting until June.

What's the deal with Yahoo & Google? Apple is partnered with both of them?

[Buck]

Not just a phone, but a widescreen video iPod and an internet communicator, with **** good web browsing & e-mail capabilities.

All using a multi-touch touchscreen interface, too.

[Evoir]

Running OSX and a real web browser! And your itunes, contacts, and date book...

[Evoir]

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

[Andilinks]

This is my happiest Apple day since 1985 when that 9" B&W screen first chimed and flickered on. Apple is now a true triple threat, Leopard will eat Vista's lunch... IPod trumps Zune and RIM and Palm stock are dropping on this news.

During the options thing I was frightened and that is not really over, but Apple needs Jobs, no other company is so linked to the main innovator like Apple. We definitely don't want another "Scully period." I think Jobs can weather whatever the regulators do but it's the only cloud on the horizon. I got out of Apple at 88, there may be no pull-back I'll have to get back in at 92 tomorrow. Worth every penny, buy AAPL. :)

[tknterry]

OK its a technological marvel that does everything except translate NY cab drivers, but practically speaking, how much web browsing do people do on a 3.5-inch display like that?

[Andilinks]

but practically speaking, how much web browsing do people do on a 3.5-inch display like that?Not much these days, but the reason for the excitement is that being online everywhere, all the time is the future.

And this device will help to bring about that future. True, it is something that only interests the geeky early adopters. But that has been true about every advance in technology.

There are still billions of people without cell phones and most of those will be getting low-end Nokia or Chinese Bird phones. But the features that will be on their phones twenty years from now are being developed by Apple and will be available to you very soon.

[Andilinks]

For those interested in the other side of the coin (and there always is one) a new list of the worst things about the iPhone is here. (http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/01/10/the_five_bigges.html)

[hobbes]

OK its a technological marvel that does everything except translate NY cab drivers, but practically speaking, how much web browsing do people do on a 3.5-inch display like that?

It is a tad small screen. I have used the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet for the past year which is not much bigger than the iPhone but with an 800x480 resolution, and have been incredibly pleased with it, surfing the web with it often. So much so that I'm about to upgrade to the newer N800 tablet that was just released this week.

[Randall]

My first thought when I saw it was, "Cram 20GB of flash memory in there and I'll buy one for $900." Or whatever it would cost.

I've been holding off on getting an iPod until the Nano turns into a Micro, but never even conceived of an iPod that also happens to be the first high-end cell phone with a usable interface.

I don't envision doing much web browsing on a screen that small (yes, it's 160dpi, but it's still only 480 pixels wide. We're talking sub-VGA here). But a computer masquerading as a PDA/iPod/phone-thingie is pure genius.

And yes, I have been assimilated into the Reality Distortion Field. :winky:

Randall

[Kevin]

http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196802882&articleID=196802882&sa_type=&section=industries&subSection=News%2BBy%2BVertical%2BIndustry

[kitchin]

It's closed to application developers, but how much web programming can you serve it? Javascript, AJAX, Java, Flash??????? It must have Flash unless Jobs is going to invent a pay service called iYouTube!

[Evoir]

youtube is gonna be great on this thing.

I imagine I'll wait a year or two before getting on board... just look at the development of the ipod. The later versions are much better. Plus, I do have a Treo, and I am in no rush. And I don't have $ burning a hole in my pocket. But, I am sure glad to see it and know that it is the future.

[Andilinks]

In 1985 Apple was the future and then Jobs got canned. :confuz:

That's my biggest worry that for whatever reason he can no longer lead the company. All the doubts and rumors are fine, something has to drive down the stock price so I can get back in where I left. (That's a serious vote of confidence for anyone who missed it, I'm betting on Steve no matter what.) :yeah:

[Mandi]

I *thought* it was you who got the Treo, but I couldn't find the old threads! I'm going to buy a 700p in the next couple weeks. I've been a Handspring Palm + Palm desktop + generic cel phone user for too long, I am ready to consolidate.

Not to steal iPhone thunder, but are you still happy with the Treo? Any pre-purchase warnings for me?

[Andilinks]

I imagine I'll wait a year or two before getting on board... It will be six months before the first "iPhone" ships--if all goes well.

[NoahM]

Sure looks like another great Apple design but I have two major concerns (one which was touched on above):
1. Will it prove to be a mistake to keep the development closed? I have had a Treo since the 600 came out and having access to a program for anything I have needed over the years adds real value to the hardware. Even WM has allot of software available for it that only serves to extend the functionality.

2. The screen - I have worked with devices using only a touchscreen in the past and having no tactile feedback may prove to decrease usability in my opinion. I will also be curious to see how the screen holds up to scratches and skin grease......

I do think the two finger gesture recognition will revolutionize more than just this device. All I keep thinking is about the screen in Minority Report which could look like this (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2848626618717236652&q=multi+touch+gesture) in the near future.

[Syneryder]

I'm late to the party here, but thought I'd chime in with my views. I was real excited and watched the whole keynote (all 2GB of it)... but then reality set in and I found a bunch of reasons I can't switch to an iPhone.

Closed to outside developers. Bad, bad move. I understand their logic, and it protects the integrity of the system. But it means all the programs that are essential on my Palm - ProjecTrak, Natara Bonsai, SplashID, Documents To Go, Quanto, CallFilter, even Converter - will not be coming to an iPhone anytime soon. That's a deal breaker.

That onscreen keyboard. Palm had an onscreen keyboard. They added keys to the Treo when they found it was faster to write that way. As much as I love the stylus and/or Graffiti, I have to admit the Palm keys are much faster. The demo of Steve typing in the Keynote was a joke, it was so slow.

No stylus. At first that seemed like a great idea... but since I've noted how I use my stylus on my Treo, I realize a stylus is important. You can be far more precise with a stylus. Unless they've done something amazing with the touch screen, I can't see myself using Drag & Drop on an iPhone anytime soon - and hence, I couldn't use outliner tools like Bonsai.

Assumes low cost internet everywhere. YouTube anywhere might be cool, but here data costs about 1c/KB via mobile. A typical YouTube clip would set me back $10... uhh, not thanks, it'd be cheaper to buy something from the iTunes video store. (Wait, hang on....)

No Flash or Java. You won't be watching YouTube on this, unless they surprise everyone with this in the next six months. Which they might do.

No user-replaceable battery. I use this feature so much on my Treo, I have two batteries and can swap them in seconds. I don't have to leave my Treo for hours in a charger anymore, just the spare battery.

Not an unlocked model. I need a model that can accept SIM cards, not just so I can stay with my current phone provider, but also for when I travel overseas.

So in my opinion, this is in no way a "smartphone", and I can't give up my Treo. It doesn't have the features that a Treo or Windows Mobile have, and that's a shame, because I'd love an iPhone. But it is certainly the slickest "mobile phone" I've seen, and in that market it will do extremely well... Nokia should be worried.

[Kevin]

lol, I have always thought the exact opposite about the the PDA keyboards. When I got my Clie I thought "yay, I never have to use grafiti again" because it has a almost a full qwerty keyboard on it. However I quickly found that grafiti is still much faster and I almost never use the keyboard.

[Andilinks]

All of these things that Kohan mentions should be offered as options in the future and that would give the "iPhone" a bigger piece of the market. But many of these features are limited now in order that they can meet the June deadline. Apple has a history of adding many features and improvements on its other products so I expect this will happen here too.

Nokia should be worried.Nokia is well positioned for the low end developing market, China, India, Indonesia etc. They own better than 40% of that market. Their N800 Internet Tablet (http://www.nokiausa.com/N800) in the US Market does offer a free download of developer tools. I'm not prepared to make a complete side-by side comparison but they do have a lot of options you can buy right now. (http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/comparephones/1,8392,,00.html)

My greatest reservations about the future of the iPhone are still with Jobs' vulnerability, his health, legal problems, etc. On the other hand the iPod/Macintosh momentum can probably continue without Jobs, though not as well...

[kitchin]

No Flash or Java. You won't be watching YouTube on this, unless they surprise everyone with this in the next six months. Which they might do.
This might be vapor but here it is, from the NYT tech blogger, and four days stale.
Markoff: "What about all those plugins that live within Safari now, like Flash or like Java or like JavaScript?"

Jobs: "Well, JavaScript's built into the Phone. Sure."

Markoff: "And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?"

Jobs: "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

Markoff: "Flash?"

Jobs: "Well, you might see that."

Markoff: "What about YouTube-"

Jobs: "Yeah, YouTube-of course. But you don't need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get 'em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec."
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/ultimate-iphone-faqs-list-part-2/
I sense some nonsense in that last paragraph. June?

[NoahM]

lol, I have always thought the exact opposite about the the PDA keyboards. When I got my Clie I thought "yay, I never have to use grafiti again" because it has a almost a full qwerty keyboard on it. However I quickly found that grafiti is still much faster and I almost never use the keyboard.
I have not owned a Clie, but from everything I have read on PDA keyboards the usefulness completely depends on the design/build of the keyboard. I used to be very fast with Grafiti and was a little disappointed that they removed the dedicated Gafiti area from the older Palm PDA's at first. I now couldn't imagine going back to Grafiti since I am so much faster with the keyboard on the Treo, not to mention I can use the keyboard with one hand when necessary unlike Grafiti. I would agree that a stylus is still necessary for a few applications that really take advantage of the resolution of the phone with small details you need to manipulate, not to mention a few games that really need the stylus.

[Randall]

Jobs: "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain." Oops. That's not going to make my friend the Java coder happy, even if they do open it up to third-party development at some point.

I would agree that Java on the web is horrible. Mostly it's wasted on useless eye-candy animations that would be better done with Flash anyway. But as a cross-platform standard for local apps it has its uses -- Apple still touts it as a key OS X technology (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/java/). Java has become the de-facto standard language for developing cross-platform applications. Recognizing this, Apple has made Java a core component of Mac OS X. Mac OS X includes the full version of Java 2, Standard Edition — meaning you have the Java Developer Kit (JDK) and the HotSpot virtual machine (VM) without downloading, installing or configuring anything. And because Apple has optimized Java on Mac OS X, Java applications act as first-class citizens on Mac OS X. I don't get it. :umm:

Anyway, I doubt that the iPhone is going to knock the Treo or Blackberry out of contention in its current form. While it may have some PDA-like aspects, that's not really the market they're aiming at -- the Treo is already smarter than your average cell phone, and for most people that's enough.

Randall

[Syneryder]

I think Kitchin is on to something with that NYT post. YouTube on the iPhone would be a great selling point, Google acquired YouTube, and Apple & Google are clearly close. Maybe they *can* convince Google to use a better codec on Macs and iPhones.

Still, something else that occurred to me - once you have a WiFi enabled device you can use anywhere, with sufficient bandwidth that you can download anything... do you really need to buy all your tracks from iTunes? Rhapsody starts to become more feasible. If they add Flash support, then I can listen to Last.FM anywhere.

I wouldn't have been asking any of these questions a month ago though, that shows how much the iPhone has changed the game even in its v1.0 state.

[Randall]

If they add Flash support, then I can listen to Last.FM anywhere.

I wouldn't have been asking any of these questions a month ago though, that shows how much the iPhone has changed the game even in its v1.0 state. That is a good point -- Flash support would open it up big time from a music perspective.

Which may be a clue to why they're going with a closed platform. If third parties can write software for the iPhone, probably the first thing you'll see is an alternative music/video player like VLC that gives you access to file formats and internet music streams the iPod doesn't support. Steve Jobs is too much of a control freak to let that happen, at least not yet.

Randall

[Andilinks]

So the supremacy of the "iPhone" platform rests upon its "coolness factor." Coolness is substantial but not absolute and a system more open to development will eventually win out.

Wasn't the superior Betamax defeated by VHS partly because it was less open to wider programming (pornography)? Yes there was the movie length thing too... This is a critical juncture for the iPhone and Apple, they could continue down the tiny boutique market path.

Isn't this the same attitude that allowed MS Windows dominance over the Mac OS for 20 years? And the Blackberry/Palm/iPhone battle is just beginning to take shape. They can all survive while only one is dominant.