It’s been really interesting to watch all the discussion around the iPhone in both of the topic areas I cover for O’Reilly (Emerging Telephony and Mac Development). There was a very pronounced dip in enthusiasm among the blogs I read in both of these spaces, that started just about 24 hours after the announcement, when you could almost tangibly feel the glow starting to fade. I was at the Macworld keynote where Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, and there is certainly no disputing that he is one heck of a charismatic speaker and can do a great demo, but I don’t think we should discount that fact that a big part of the “wow” factor that spread so fast across the Internet was in large part due to the advances it looks like Apple has achieved with this product. And I’m mostly talking about interface advances.
The Mac developer crowd pretty quickly started realizing and anguishing over the closed nature of the device, which Apple has said we should think of more like an iPod than a computer. They have made it clear they want to completely control the interface, and are not particularly interested in third-party development. You’re probably not going to be seeing much iPhone coverage here on Mac DevCenter.
The telecom development folks are also upset that the device will not be open to customization and third-party apps, but they are also pretty upset about the Cingular lock-in and are let down by the apparently completely non-revolutionary aspects on the carrier side of things. Steve talks a big talk and he likes to use words like “revolutionary”, but I have to agree that what we know so far sounds like business as usual from the telecom/network side. And while that is disappointing, I think it was pretty unrealistic to expect Apple to chart new ground there, at least right out of the gate. They’ve got their hands full just getting into this ultra-competitive market, and the tides of telecom carriers are not something easily changed.
But what I remain excited about is the interface. Ted Wallingford sums up many of my opinions well in this post (which is a response to Ken Camp’s less-than-enthusiastic take on the iPhone).
I agree that the iPhone is NOT categorically revolutionary. But it does represent a number of firsts. The UI with multi-touch is obscenely cool, no question. And the graphical feedback on the phone I saw demonstrated by Jobs makes Nokia’s gear look antiquated. These may not be revolutionary, but I’ll take positive steps. The worst part of a cell phone has always, always, always been the UI. So I welcome these evolutions.
We like open things here at O’Reilly, and I doubt they’ll be any reason to be using the words “open” and “iPhone” in the same sentence any time soon. But I’m with Ted in welcoming significant interface improvements, and I couldn’t agree more that the worst part of cell phones is their UI. I’ve never owned a cell phone that had an interface I didn’t hate (I’m right there with you, Nat), and I’m ready for a device that improves upon that. Om Malik agrees that it is the interface improvements here that are important, and has some interesting thoughts on Apple’s use of fluid interfaces in general.
The mac was revolutionary because it allowed many thing to get done quickly and relatively cheaply. A network could quickly get set up for a college computer lab, complete with networked printer. Using existing software, customized business solutions could be created. Garish documents using 15 font and 1000 colors could quickly be created and sent to printing. many devices could be connected with much less fuss than other platforms. Could these things not be done on other platforms? Of course they could. I worked on many platforms at the time, all useful. However, the Mac remained a top solution for many problems until the early 90's.
I suspect the iPhone will be the same thing. People will fuss because it is closed. People will fuss because it is underpowered. But like the original mac, the interfaces, mechanical, visual, software and electrical, will define the success of the machine. I hope the Newton mistake, to value the cool internals and size over the interfaces, will not be made. I believe once again the purists will be criticizing the machine while the rest of us are happily conducting business, playing, studying, and generally living life.
Apple still has five months to announce new features of the iPhone, though I agree that none of those announcements will be that it is "open".. Apple announced Multi-touch and the UI because it has patent protection. And possibly visual voicemail would take months for both the carriers and the phone OSes to implement. Certainly, there are things that could be copied within five months so why announce now and give competitors a head start?
So why announce early at all? I think the FCC story is just a cover since there exists a confidentiality option that would keep it quiet until its approved. (Of course, who can count on the FCC really keeping it quiet?) Anyway, I think the main reason is that it became necessary to involve many more people in prepping it for sale, such as people in Cingular, Google and Yahoo.
Nice article. It made me realize there's an iPhone phenomenon going on I hadn't before realized. To my knowledge, there's never before been such a cool platform, I'll call it "OS X Mobile", that I absolutely can't get my hands on and write software for. Apple has every right to do this. I think there's a huge gap between OS X Mobile and all the competing mobile platforms. Can any of the competition close that gap soon, or is Apple indeed in a league all their own?
The first embodiment of the iPhone is a cellular technology implementation of what conceptually is a mobile phone.
It seems to me that Apple has created the best mobile phone (Steve never used the word "cell" and his choice of the word "mobile" was not merely a concession to European usage) that is possible with the network technologies that are already in place today at a reasonable price. Of course we will see the likes of 3G, 802.11 n, and perhaps even WiMax in the near future.
We don't know for sure what enabling underlying network technology(ies) will mobile phones be using in the not too distant future (let's say 3 to 5 years or even 10 years from now) but we know that Apple is not going to invent them. We can only reasonably expect Apple to invent the best ways to use them.
Will Apple give us the universal personal phone (which works with all the networking that we pay for at the best price for us and is at the same time cordless phone (with my fixed line), VoIP phone (with my ISP), and cell phone) and has GPS (or Galileo) and video-conferencing built in in 3 to 5 years? I don't know but I would love it!
The interface is what does it. I remember vividly when Jobs introduced the iPod and I thought it was way cooler than the other MP3 player I have seen. Even though a lot of people thought it was too expensive, my feeling was that the iPod will be a hit and I was right on the money then. I am having the same kind of vibe with the iPhone (or whatever name it will end up to have). Right now my Nokia sucks and I am waiting eagerly for June to roll around. The iPhone is not just a phone but the coming together of at least three devices merged into a single, way cool and easy to use gadget.
I say, expect "One More Thing..." come June.