I have seen some experienced users type pretty darn fast on the dreaded physical keyboard. Can Mr. Jobs show me a study that says that with practice you top out faster on his keyboard than a physical switch one? I doubt if he can.
Otherwise, cool device. I want to try one at the Apple store. Anyway, it does nothing my 700p won’t do, but it does it tres elegant! On the other hand, my 700p will do some things the iPhone won’t, so nah! I just got the 700p and am giddy with it and won’t plunk down again soon, so maybe I will switch to iPhone in the next generation.
As far as his claims of being “five years ahead”, well he is a bit of a salesman, isn’t he?
I totally agree. I have a PowerBook G4 and I think it’s a great machine–far and away the best designed laptop in its price range for what I do (perl scripting, word processing, animation, talking and rocking with other *nix systems)–and OS X is (unlike previous Macintosh OSs) stable, robust, highly functional, and only moderately top-heavy, at least in comparison to recent Microsoft OSs. But in general I’m underwhelmed by Apple’s marketing hype, particularly with the iPod, which is, after all, a pretty medium-interesting MP3/video player. (Then again, I have no intention of watching movies on a 2.5" screen, so clearly I’m not in their target demographic.)
The iPhone looks…interesting…like a piece of technology straight out of a Stanley Kubrick sciencie fiction movie, but I have a few doubts about the technology, and tying it to a specific carrier (and one with such a mediocre reputation as Cingular) is not bright. I’m taking the wait and see approach. Actually, I’m taking the “Blackberry 7130 today, we’ll see how the iPhone (and subsequent imitators) fare in two years” approach.
Can you really look at the video demos for the iPhone on Apple’s site, and tell me that the iPhone is just more of the same? Because it’s pretty clear to me that it’s more than that.
Usability and design is everything in technology. Apple gets it right, time and time again. I really do not understand why people say Apple is only about marketing.
From the tech specs, the iphone is GSM only. Isn’t Cingular the only carrier in the U.S. with a wide enough GSM network to speak of? GSM is currently the world standard (outside of Japan and the U.S.), seems like Apple doesn’t have much of a choice at the moment as far as who the carrier will be.
Regarding the smartphone aspects of it: from what I’ve read, it is not a smartphone in the sense that you can install 3rd party apps on it. You’re pretty much Apple’s bitch when you get the phone. That’s cool with some people, and it will probably turn off a whole bunch too. I’m with the poster who said wait for the 2nd generation. I think that’s usually the best advice with any new gadget. That doesn’t stop me from drooling all over it though.
Has Apple said that? I’ve read it too, but when I traced the sources, all I found was some kind who said that on his blog - never an actual statement from Apple, or even someone claiming to have heard someone from Apple say that.
They would be nuts not to allow third-party apps. I would be extremely disappointed if that were the case.
I’m drooling too … but I just got my Treo 680 in December and I love it so much I can’t see straight. I don’t use data though; the one thing that would make my Treo perfect would be to have WiFi. I’d probably want to check the web for things like phone numbers, weather (maybe SDMB) and occasionally use email, and that’s about it.
I do love my Treo, which has an iTunie type thing. I don’t see a whole lot the iPhone can offer me (besides, you know, The Cool). I got the Treo because I love the Palm PDA. I wouldn’t want an iPhone without that.
Looks very cool. Screen is beautiful. I think the interface would be neat.
But 8GB? That would hold about 8% of my collection and I don’t like picking and choosing what music to put on a player.
Cingular-only is also going to be a major problem with the iPhone. They better get it working with other providers, even if all the functionality isn’t there.
All in all, the choice is pretty simple, I can get a 60GB MP3 player for $250 and a cell phone for $100 or less and choose whatever provider I want. Why pay $600 for an iPhone, even if it is so purty?
One drawback to Cingular…they have a very crappy data/web service plan for their PDA style phones. Basically, for an average minutes/text package, plus web support, expect to pay over $100/mo for your service overall.
T-Mobile is our other national GSM carrier, and IMO way better than Cingular. I’ve been with T-Mobile for about 6 years and I couldn’t be happier. Their data and messaging plans are the best price / performance for me.
You must’ve skipped the keynote. He specifically dissed the watered-down mobile-friendly websites and the limited web browsing capability of existing cell phones. The iPhone lets you surf the web exactly as if you were behind a computer, and Jobs demonstrated browsing Amazon and the NYT on it.
In any event, I think it’s wisest to save impressions of the iPhone until us mere mortals can get our hands on it and actually try it out. Though given Jobs’ usual super-high standards of perfectionism, he wouldn’t have been as giddy as he was yesterday if it didn’t deliver the goods.
They’re not really national, though – a large portion of their coverage is actually provided by Cingular, licensed through roaming agreements. Plus, I suspect getting anyone to carry the phone required carrier lock-in (especially since apparently Cingular helped Apple with some of the features, such as visual voicemail). Since Cingular is ~2x bigger than T-Mo in the US, it’s sort of a no-brainer.
Heck, i’m a Mac fan myself (Apple authorized technician) and I have no problem with anything you said above, you raise some very valid points as i did in my post as well…
it’s too expensive (it has the same capacity as a top-of-the-line iPod Nano)
cramming all those features in a small handheld device makes no sense, it’s trying to be a “do-all” device, jack of all trades, master of none, one of the nice things about the iPod (love them or hate them) is that they’re mainly a music/video player, and the bulk of the interface is centered around this, that highly focused design makes it excel in it’s target market…
the iPhone, meh, it’s trying too hard to satisfy/wow everyone… “IT’S A PHONE, NO IT’S AN MP3 PLAYER, NO IT’S A CAMERA, NO IT’S A PALMTOP COMPUTER, NO, IT’S A BABY TABLET COMPUTER, IT’S A FLOOR WAX, IT’S A DESSERT TOPPING!!!”
Squeezing all those features in such a small space increases the possibility of hardware failures, the iPhone looks to have a similar repair strategy as the iPods (send it into Apple for service/replacement)
keeping all that data in one location decreases the odds that the user will back it up regularly, the average user doesn’t perform regular backups on their computers, let alone their phones/mp3 players/etc, i forsee a lot of panicked customers bringing in iPhones for service whining that "my LIFE is on this iPhone, i can’t be without it <whine, whine, whine…>
packing all those components in such a tight space decreases the amount of “shock space” to components, i’d imagine a large amount of damaged LCDs from dropped/sat on/spilled stuff on iPhones, and since the screen IS the interface device, they’re effectively screwed…
it looks nice, but once the WOW factor wears off, how will it stand up to daily use?
Eh, I find I can do plenty on my 3.7" screen. I listed all the sites I regularly visit every day on my device. All of them are perfectly usable in their mobile incarnations. If that doesn’t count as “something meaningful” then I don’t know what does.
I’m not a mac faithful, I don’t even own a single apple product but surely you can see the difference between “I don’t have a use for it” and “whats the big deal”. So you’re not part of the target market, thats no big deal. The iPhone isn’t supposed to appeal to everybody.
The average youtube clip appears on your screen much smaller than 3.5" yet look at the explosive growth of youtube. That people do not want to watch tiny video is something that has already been proven wrong. If the platform is compelling enough, quality takes the back seat to almost everything. Would you want to watch the entire LoTR trilogy on your iPhone? Probably not. Would you want to watch short, funny, 3 minute long vigenette soap operas? Maybe.
This is just pure Jobsian RDF. Thing is, we’ve known for about… oh… 20 years now that physical keyboards can type faster than virtual keyboards of the same size. Apple knows that, every single smartphone maker knows that, it wasn’t boneheaded stupidity that made them take up 40% of the phone with a keyboard. The iPhone will never be a full replacement for the blackberry or any of those other text-centric devices for precisely that manner.
I very much doubt this. At the very least, you can install widgets. Theres absolutely no compelling reason whatsoever for them to limit the platform. What could they possibly gain from that?
I was actually reading this thread on my PDA because my lecture was really boring.
This is another Jobsian RDF. Technically, he’s sort of correct, no smartphone can match the experience of the iPhone but I can almost guarentee that my PDA shits all over the iPhone in web surfing experience for the simple fact that it has twice as many pixels. For mobile devices, pixels is king. The more pixels you have, the better websurfing experience you have and the only reason the iPhone is better than the current smartphones is because it has more pixels, not for any other reason.
Smartphones don’t let you surf the web exactly like on a desktop? Guess what, thats a feature not a bug. You don’t want to surf the web like it’s on a desktop because the thing you have in your hands isn’t a desktop. Again, we’ve known this for, oh, 15 or so years now.
What you mainly want for any web surfing experience is to minimise the amount of left-right scrolling. The way you do that for mobile devices is to implement some sort of reflow algorithm that rearranges the website to fit into a much narrower screen. The only reason Jobs presented it that way is because it looks like Safari doesn’t have any reflow capabilites. The desktop view is all you’re going to get which means reading wide text is going to involve a lot of left and right scrolling.
The other thing he glossed over is selection. With a mouse, your accurate selection region is about (very roughly) + or - 2 pixels which means interface elements have to be roughly 5x5 pixels minimum to be useable. A stylus is slightly worse because you have to jab at the area you want to select so your interface elements need to be a bit bigger, around 10x10 pixels or so. Fingers though, are horrible and fat. you really need about 30x30 pixels to acheive anything. This might be fine when you get to design your own interfaces a la apple by making everything huge but it’s going to suck balls for the web, especially with no reflow. Trying to accurately select a link to click on is going to be a major frustration. Again, this is something that has been known for the past 20 years or so.
The pinch gesture might alleviate that to some extent but it’s inherently a two handed gesture which limits it’s applicability. It’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out.
Sometimes they get it right. Other times–like the iPod, whose interface leaves a lot to be desired–they’re just in the right place with the right marketing at the right time.
Well, they didn’t have to make it GSM-only, now did they? If their market is Americans, they should’ve gone with CDMA, which is more widely used and has high-speed data. If their market is worldwide users, there’s no point in tying it to Cingular, which only exists inside the US.
And even if their strategy is to start with Americans but easily move to the world market, why limit it to Cingular when there’s another perfectly good GSM carrier in the US? So what if it might take T-Mobile another couple months to get Visual Voicemail working - the iPhone doesn’t come out until June anyway, and it has plenty of slick features besides that one.
It seems that Cisco has had the name iPhone trademarked since they bought out InfoGear in 2000. And it seems that they have actually released products to market with the iPhone name.
This is an astonishing assertion to make outright. The iPod interface has been complemented for being clean & simple, for being easy for novices (i.e. “I can’t program the VCR”) to use, and so on. Apple have seen that there’s money to be made by making products which do the things which can already be done, but by making them work in a different way so that more people are happy to use them.
Put it this way: my mother would never go near text messaging. The iPhone version, however, she’d be happy with.
