Apple iPhone

[rdrake]

Apple's new device was finally officially announced today at Macworld San Francisco. As quoted by Ars, some relevant info:

Ars wrote:

-Steve: "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once and a while a revolutionary product comes around that changes everything..."
-Widescreen iPod
-Touchscreen controls
-2nd mobile phone
-Breakthrough internet communications device
-Widescreen iPod, revolutionary mobile phone, breakthrough internet communications device all in ONE DEVICE
-Called iPhone, officially
-"Most phones are hard to use, but iPhone is smarter than anything else and is very easy to use
-Been under years of development
-Interplay of hardware and software
-Comparing to blackberry and treo. Nobody wants a stylus, and get rid of the buttons! Make a giant screen.
-Uses fingers & multitouch, works like "magic"
-Ignores unintended touches
-iPhone runs OS X and has "everything you need"
-Apple "reinvents" the phone
-iPhone version of OS X runs Core animation, desktop class applications
-Apple is learning from the iPod--shipping 100 million iPods this year
-iPhone syncs with iTunes, just like the iPod and syncs all of the media on your phone
-Has a cradle to sync just like the dock
-Syncs music, movies, podcasts, TV, photos, contacts, e-mail, notes, bookmarks, calendars, etc. all through iTunes
-3.5" screen, highest resolution screen ever shipped
-160 pixels per inch
-One button on the front, "Home" button
-11/16" thin
-On the back, there's a 2 Megapixel camera
-Takes a SIM card
-3.5mm headphone jack
-One switch for sleep and one for wake, integrated speaker
-When you bring it to your ear, it turns off the display and sound with a proximity sensor
-iPhone has 3 advanced sensors
-Has an accelerometer and an ambient light sensor
-Saves power
-iPhone has CoverFlow, "You can touch your music"
-Interface has Cingular logo on top (booo)
-Clock and battery plus signal at the top
-The move to widescreen is automatic, and when done it moves back
-Sundial moves while loading
-built-in speaker for iPhone/iPod
-Visual voicemail
-Supports GSM + EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth, quad-band phone
-Push "phone" button on the bottom of the screen and it changes like Dashboard
-Big icons: mute, keypad, speaker, add call
-Make a list of favorites, touch one and call
-iPhone does e-mail
-Visual voicemail lets you see all voicemail and click who you want to hear and it plays back over the speaker
-Play back your voicemail in any order
-Button for multiple-session SMS messaging
-Keypad buttons to touch message, has bubbles like iChat
-Photo feature lets you see all photos, just like iPhoto
-Use "pinch" to make photos bigger
-iPhone can use photos as wallpaper
-Any IMAP or POP e-mail, can support rich HTML e-mail
-iPhone uses Safari, can use Google Maps, widgets
-EDGE and WiFi switches automatically
-Announcing with Yahoo!, free IMAP e-mail to all iPhone customers
-Push IMAP e-mail
-Can look at mail in splitscreen view, fullscreen, or preview
-For web browsing, it can show the whole page and the landscape/portrait switch is automatic
-Pinch the screen to increase the size of view using MultiTouch or double tap screen
-Can view multiple web pages
-Can load multiple pages--one page shrinks somewhat and slides off to the side, similar to the effect in Expose
-Still shows the whole page though--just double tap and it zooms
-Change web pages by using "almost" a coverflow to get to a different page
-iPhone has GPS
-Stuff like Google Images supports satellite images
-Google search built-in as well as Google Maps
-Google's Eric Schmidt says it's like a merge without merging
-WiMAX is coming
-Yahoo! search is also built in, as well as Yahoo! IMAP mail
-Yahoo launching some new services for the iPhone: Yahoo Go and One Search
-5 hour battery life on iPhone for talk time
-16 hours for just audio/iPod functionality
-Price for iPhone is $499 for 4GB version, $599 for 8GB version
-Shipping in June
-Europe support by Cal4 this year
-Asia in 2008
-Phone is Cingular-exclusive right now in the US
-Available via brick & mortar and online retail stores
-Only available from Cingular or Apple
-Multi-year exclusive partnership with Cingular

Personally I'm quite skeptical. I'm sure it'll take off for business consumers (essentially as an alternative to the Blackberry), but I noticed the iPod had such a successful place with teenagers and the like. Sure there are many business people, but there are many more kids. With such a high price, I do not see many parents buying their daughters iPhones any time soon.

One might argue that they only wish to go after the business people. I personally think that is a dumb move, but that's up for you to decide.

Discuss!

[Craige]

I"m at work now, and I just heard it on the TV. What's the price set at for the iPhone now? I'd imagine it'll have quite a hefty price tag.

[Tony]

That's more features than are listed on my Mac Mini! heh

The brilliance of iPod (other than it making lots of profit) is that it has brought attention back to Apple and their computers as well.

Targeting business community might be a smart move on a number of points

a) it's probably not economically feasable to make an affordable Apple quality phone otherwise.

b) It's good for Apple for bring business world's attention to itself and their computers as well. Especially now that Vista is coming out, and many are considering the available alternatives.

[rdrake]

Craige @ Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:40 pm wrote:

I"m at work now, and I just heard it on the TV. What's the price set at for the iPhone now? I'd imagine it'll have quite a hefty price tag.

As stated above, "Price for iPhone is $499 for 4GB version, $599 for 8GB version."

Tony @ Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:44 pm wrote:

The brilliance of iPod (other than it making lots of profit) is that it has brought attention back to Apple and their computers as well.

Another brilliance of the iPod was its simplicity. It made mp3 players easy for the masses to use.

Tony @ Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:44 pm wrote:

a) it's probably not economically feasable to make an affordable Apple quality phone otherwise.

I would imagine given how flooded the market is right now, this is quite true.

Tony @ Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:44 pm wrote:

b) It's good for Apple for bring business world's attention to itself and their computers as well. Especially now that Vista is coming out, and many are considering the available alternatives.

So essentially Apple peripherals are being used to drive their hardware sales? Would not surprise me, 'tis a good idea.

[Craige]

rdrake @ Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:02 pm wrote:

As stated above, "Price for iPhone is $499 for 4GB version, $599 for 8GB version."

Oh, so you did. That's what I get for skipping the last part of the list.

[md]

I want one. However the whole waiting 'till june and it not beign available in Canada kinda sucks.

[1of42]

That's stupid. Phones are better at better at being phones, iPods at being iPods, and Blackberries at being Blackberries.

Just slapping more crap onto one device does not make it revolutionary or a good idea.

[Amailer]

I don't know, I'd rather carry just one device :/
I like it

[Clayton]

I agree with Amailer, especially considering an ipod will cost you anywhere's around ~$350 after tax, plus you figure a decent phone costs ~$150 then the blackberry on top of that, so it's really not that unfeasable, it just seems bad because you only have 1 device compared to 3.

[md]

1of42 @ Tuesday 2007-01-09 5:43 pm wrote:

That's stupid. Phones are better at better at being phones, iPods at being iPods, and Blackberries at being Blackberries.

Just slapping more crap onto one device does not make it revolutionary or a good idea.

You do know what a blackberry does right? It does email, web browsing, plays mp3s (yup, it really does) and gasp! It's a phone! My phone plays mp3s and movies as well as being a phone; and it can do calendar type stuff as well but it's a pain to use without a keyboard. That means that I usually carry a Palm T5 as well as my cell phone so I can keep track of things. So really an iPhone would replace my current phone and my T5; and do it better then my devices currently do. How is it stupid for me to replace two things with one?

Just because you don't use all the things the iPhone can do doesn't make it stupid, it must means you aren't the target audience.

[edit] My phone cost me $299, my palm T5 ~$600. An iPhone is DEFINITELY worth the the price tag, in fact even if it did half of the things that it does strait out of hte box it would be a good deal at $499.

Also, about the target audience thing, it's aimed at 20+ business men/women who have the disposable income to buy one. Grade 11 students are definitely not the target audience.

[ZeroPaladn]

Yeah, my phone is a phone, an MP3 player, a 1.5MP camera, a basic organizer, and can play some videos.

My MP3 Player can play MP3s/WMAs/WAVs(those are old), plays most kinds of videos, displays most kinds of pictures, has a decent organizer, FM radio, microphone, ect.

Everything nowadays isnt just what its main use is. Everything has some sort of crazy amount of extra perhiperals added to it. an all-in-one device is a neato thing, yet it only does a few things decently. Who wants to watch a full length movie on a 1.5'' Screen, hm?

[neufelni]

This thing is amazing! You can take a closer look at it here

Take a look at the videos by clicking the links to the right.

[ZeroPaladn]

I knew something liek this was coming. Creative is suing Apple for the iPhone. Apparently Creative is suing because they have the patent for the software that the iPhone runs off of, which is the Zen Technology (which is my MP3 Player). Heres a short little article i found about it, but I also heard it off the news this morning.

Creative Sues Apple for Violation of Zen Patent

[Martin]

The iPhone looks pretty stylish. At $599 for the upper end model with a two year contract, I think that the $199 Blackberry Pearl is going to find a lot of eyes on it. The biggest problem that I see with the iPhone is that it's looking like a jack of all trades, master of none. You can't type as fast with the touchscreen (vs. a Blackberry/Treo), a regular MP3 player is going to hold more stuff and a regular cell phone will have longer battery life. I like how my phone lasts a week between charges, my mp3 player doesn't hold out so well. I can live with a dead mp3 player for a day, if I don't have my phone it can mean trouble.

We'll see though. Apple has the marketting thing down pat, so I'm sure it'll sell. 1% of the cell phone market sounds pretty ambitious...

[ZeroPaladn]

Sorry for the double post guys, but I couldn't edit since Martin posted

Cisco Sues Apple for Trademark Infringement

This is starting to get crazy.