Wow, where to start?
At the beginning. A few days ago, when Apple posted the gauntlet-throwing “The first 30 years were just the beginning” sign on its home page, it effectively announced to the world: “This time, we have something special.”
And special indeed. Today’s announcements from Steve Jobs fulfill almost all the Mac enthusiasts’ dreams of the last two years or so. Finally, Apple has a living room media device and a portable computer that rivals the coolness of the iPod combined with the geeky joy of the old Newton.
My first thoughts are:
- Apple did an amazing job of keeping this secret and unleaked
- The iPhone screen looks incredible
- But with that bright screen, plus wifi, plus Bluetooth, the battery life can’t be good. Five hours of talk time, video & browsing; 16 hours music playback. These things are going to spend a lot of their lives plugged in
- Zune just looks pathetic now
- It runs OS X. What hacking and coding opportunities will present themselves?
- The Multi Touch UI is, at first sight, a work of genius. The pinch-and-drag method of zooming a photo just makes me grin with delight
- How is the syncing handled? All through iTunes? What about the contacts and stuff? Will there be a separate app to handle it?
- I really, really do not need one of these. But I so want one. And given that it won’t be available here in the UK until the end of this year, at least I have some time to save up some money to buy one
- What, no Leopard previews at all? Not even a shipping date? Perhaps the iPhone UI gives us some clues about new stuff we can expect to see in 10.5…
- Other things we didn’t see: any sign of iWork or iLife 07; updated Mac minis (Core 2 Duo); any mention of the long-suffering .Mac.
And aside from the products, there’s the corporate identity. Apple Computer is dead; long live Apple, Inc. If any of us had stopped drooling over iPhone mockups for long enough, we might have seen this one coming. Apple is no longer a computer company, it’s a media and consumer electronics company that also makes computers.
What a strange, strange 30 years lies in store for it.
More reports and analysis coming later…
Intel announced on Monday their quad cord CPU. No mention of an 8 core Mac Pro?
Given the dearth of actual Macintosh subject matter at the Keynote, perhaps the whole shebang should be called "AppleWorld" next year!
Yes, the iPhone is way cool, but I'm disappointed with the lack of Leopard and Macintosh computer hardware updates/info. Where are those Leopard secret features?!?
I guess I'm behind the times... Apple Computer, Inc. is dead. Long live Apple, Inc.!
Right, "Apple did an amazing job of keeping this secret and unleaked"
So secret, that even main stream media started to say "The Apple Phone is coming" in the last week ...
Alex
A new Airport Extreme as well. 802.11n draft and three extra ethernet ports for your wired hook-ups. http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/
Very, very, very... disappointing. The iPhone was what the industry and rumor sites were waiting for, but average users were eagerly waiting for news on Leopard. No cat in sight.
They didn't mention it, but to me it looks like with WiFi or Edge I should be able to shop on the iTunes music store and buy them.
With the iTunes 7.0 Feature of 'restore my music' any music I buy to my iPod should copy right up to my iTUnes the next time I sync.
Where's the damn order button.
> "So secret, that even main stream media started to say "The Apple Phone is coming" in the last week ..."
People have been saying it for the last two years. Show me someone who said the iPhone would actually be a PDA, done right.
> "disappointing... average users were eagerly waiting for news on Leopard"
Yeah, everyone was chomping at the bit over the prospect of seeing marginally updated screenshots from last August.
What kind of cpu is inside the phone, was that mentioned? Another 'secret life' of OS X, how many lives does it have? (Those cat names have a reason...). And how much are the monthly fees for that 2 year plan you have to pay on top of that 600 dollar iPone price?. It's going to be expensive...
OK, so now Apple is announcing products 6 months ahead of time (1year if you live in Europe, who knows when in Asia), instead of 3 months as with the iTV. Was there really no real product ready to show? Maybe the Mac has been terminated, it's dead, we just don't know it yet.
I want to touch on a couple of things you've said here....
1) I just got a Samsung Sync (yeah, I'm using Stinkular here), and I could have returned it in a couple of weeks. But not in June. As great as the iPhone looks, and I'm sure it will work even better (and I can't complain too much about the Sync) I can't just throw it aside for a new phone in six months. It seems to go about 2 days before I have to plug it in -- not good compared to my previous phones. I'm guessing the iPhone capacity will be similar. There will be an aftermarket for chargers -- car chargers, "travel" chargers, solar-powered chargers, you name it.
2) I've already thought of a couple of hacking/coding opportunities. How about recording -- and editing down -- an entire "remote" podcast using the iPhone? It would take an audio editor that can work well with the tiny screen... GarageBand micro, perhaps? GBµ would also be useful for creating custom ringtones (I've done one for my Sync, transferred through its microSD card -- so maybe Stinkular won't cripple the iPhone either). Capture programs could also record phone conversations.
The gesture interface is way cool in a lot of respects, and I'm sure even the demo on apple.com doesn't tell the whole story about what this baby is capable of. In a way, though, I'm kind of glad I'm not going to be able to get one right away -- you know what they say about Version 1.0 of Anything.
For all it's OS X/iTunes/WiFi specs, this lacks any trace of mainstream appeal. This is strictly a geek toy.
It's one thing to sell someone a $249 mp3 player, but it's another to sell a $499 and $599 phone with iPod when even the biggest of the Apple diehards may not have Cingular or a soon-to-be-expiring cell contract.
Your mother will not want one; your baby brother going off to college for the first time will not want one; you will not engrave one to give to your wife on her birthday.
And what about those of us waiting for a widescreen iPod by itself?
Awesome stuff today! The average person,who doesn't care about computers, is going to think these are cool! These are BIG. They appeal to both Mac and Windows users - people who use iTunes. They will bring in $$$ for Apple.
AND THEY RUN ON OS X. Apple introduced two new computers today.
iLife is great but it only brings in ¢¢¢ for Apple compared to iTunes/iPod. They can introduce that at it's own event.
Same with new Macs...or at the Developer conference
Apple's world is now larger than Macworld.
Giles - think you're right about it being a strong hint at Leopard UI - you can see use of Core Animation on the text messaging keypad, looking similar to the clip of a Safari build under Leopard. And black glossiness is all over the place with Apple at the moment . . . I think I could get sick of animated bubbles though, they could be Apple's Clippy.
re: iWork/iLife - so Amazon were just guessing then?? Or will there be more surprises to come later this week??
EJ - I'd say the initial customers are geeks, and the business users who have Treos and Blackberrys, which this frankly walks all over. (It's iPod nature is a secondary feature). But this is version 1.0, and remember how much the cost of iPods has decreased over the years (in relative and real terms), or how much the RAZR cost when it was first introduced?
it's pretty inevitable the next big iPod will use this interface. And maybe the Nano will be revised to a credit card shape?
My immediate thought on seeing the iPhone was, of course "whoah! Want one of them!". The second thought was, of course, "Damn, I live in Australia, it will be at least 2010 before they are released here, with support from our telcos and broadband suppliers". My third thought is perhaps the most interesting: whatever technology they have driving their touch screen (coupled with the other sensors), and the multitouch software finally provides a way to make a sensible "tablet" format general purpose computer. I can easily imagine about a year from now a version of this being relesased with an A4 (or thereabouts) form factor. And it would work.