No doubt by now you’ve seen and heard of the iPhone. It was announced yesterday and already is engulfed in a full media blitz. This is to be expected. If the iPhone is 1/10th as revolutionary as it appears to be, a signifigant portion of the cell phone industry just got a huge wake up call.
Personally, I don’t like Apple that much. I’m not a big fan of their computer hardware and I feel that iPods are perhaps the single most over rated product of the last 5 years. Their locked down nature far outweighs their usefulness. That said, I’m not a Windows fanboy either. Actually, I could give you a long list of things I find wrong and patently offensive in Vista (but I won’t, you’re welcome). I have no sworn allegience to any camp or group. My sole obsession with technology is for it to work and be used easily as I see fit.
WIth that said, I really like the iPhone, from a consumer and a tech savvy point of view. It really is going to “reinvent the phone”. It’s not without it’s negatives however. My thoughts after the jump…
My thoughts on the iPhone basically fall into two categories: initial impressions and things not discussed. Having slept on it, and thinking about it fresh today, I find that there are a large number of questions I have about implementation, services and a lot of the technical aspects. This is in stark contrast to my initial reaction yesterday as I watched the keynote speech.
My initial thought is that this is truly a revolutionary cell phone, and I’ll stand behind that. A giant, full screen touch sensitive display, built in iPod, email, text and web browsing, all thrown on top of a very slick interface. Add to that the phone features of quad-band GSM, bluetooth, wifi and a 2mpx camera and you have a very attractive package. This, ostensibly, replaces everything in your pocket with one ultra-slick device. I keep saying “slick” because that’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think about it. It’s not super-powerful, it’s not micro-thin, it’s not the ultimate pda, it’s just slicker than snot and looks like it’s easy to use.
There are a lot of features I really like. The OS for one (which I’ll elaborate on in a minute) appears very uncluttered, intuitive and very much an Apple UI design. It just works like it’s supposed to, and that’s a big plus for them. Also, the incorporation of things like wifi and google maps and the web surfing make it a very attractive web device and a platform for future expansion, especially for people like me who live in areas that are getting city wide wifi in the next few years. Houston specifically is going to see it rolled out starting this year and a considerable amount more in 2008. This could be huge for me.
Basically, for me, this is a complete evolution of my current phone. Not the small incremental upgrade like T-Mobile and Danger are trying to push as the Sidekick III. This is a giant leap in cell phone technology, and needs to be viewed as such.
So, as a phone, I really like it’s features. I like the form factor, I like it’s size, and the touch screen is obviously incredibly nifty. I also like all the little “Apple touches”, like sliding your finger across the screen to unlock the phone, something you wouldn’t be able to do accidentally in your pocket.
After my inital reaction and I had calmed down from my “geeking out”, I started to ask myself some questions that hadn’t been answered in the keynote. Some of these are more observations than concerns and some of these might get ironed out in a hands on tech review from someplace like Engadget, who I’m sure are just wetting themselves trying to get one of these.
First is that the OS, above all else, is really showing it’s Linux based scalability on this phone. Apple hates to admit it, but OSX is very much based in Linux. I will give them credit for creating a very beautiful UI (it’s one of the things I believe Apple does best), but when you get right down to it, there’s a lot of Linux in there. A shit-ton. After seeing this phone and hearing Steve describe it as “OSX on a phone”, I had to cry foul. It’s not. It’s a mini-linux distro on a phone. It really is. Linux is the ONLY thing that could scale that well. I’m willing to bet that if OSX is, give or take, approximately 70% Linux based, this is well up into the 90’s. It’s super optimized, beautifully skinned, but it’s still Linux. It has to be. There’s no way they created a separate OS just for the phone.
Another point about the OS that I started thinking about is that while it upholds the Apple principals of design, it doesn’t look very much like any previous product. Apple typically doesn’t do “dark” interfaces. This looks more Adobe CS3 and, dare I say it, Vista inspired. Now, I don’t want to get into a “Vista is ripping off OSX, so OSX is ripping off Vista” debate, because I don’t think it’s that. What I am saying is that bright colored buttons on dark and GLASS looking backgrounds isn’t anything new, and it’s something that is very “Web 2.0” and familiar. Vista is trying to do it, Adobe is trying to do it (look at Apature and Lightroom) and I think Apple, seeing all this, went with the crowd. Be honest, when you heard “iPhone” you thought it was going to be white, didn’t you? I did. I figured it would be soft white plastic with big smiley icons and that blue swirly background. I was pleasently surprised. I think this is a much more universal design that doesn’t tie Apple and the iPhone down as being “a big iPod”. That’s a good thing.
While all this was stewing in my brain, about a million articles have been written about the phone, most of them pointed geek pieces about how much they just “filled the cup” when they saw this thing. One article however focused on how this would kill the downloadable ring tone buisness. First, let me just say that the ringtone buisness NEEDS to die. It’s a horrible, evil, bullshit scam and I don’t think we should have accepted it as consumers for as long as we have. However, not once in the entire keynote did anyone mention MP3s as ringtones. Not once. I have a horrible feeling that it’s not going to happen. Tons of cell phones can use whole songs and MP3s as ringtones, but very very few (read: none) of them can simply be loaded on the phone, they all need to be purchased and downloaded via the phone. Even the iTunes phones are like that. It also doesn’t help that Cingular is their sole provider for the first two years. They’re the biggest whores of the whole downloadable content for cell phones. You honestly think that Cingular is going to let Apple sell a wide open, unlocked phone and not get a slice of the music pie? This is all speculation at this point though. We won’t know until someone digs deep into the phone to find out. All I’m saying is that I’m not going to get my hopes up. There’s a very real possibility that there are two different sections of storage for the phone. The hard drive for the iPod portion and then separate memory for the phone. We’ll have to see how easily we can change in between the two.
The last thing I wanted to talk about was iTunes and the device synchronization. Yesterday it was mentioned that using this device was as easy and syncing and charging your iPod. That all your data could be transfered via iTunes. I have a huge huge problem with that. iTunes is the bane of my existence. I refuse to use it. It’s the biggest part of the closed loop system that is Apple and the music industry. You want an iPod you HAVE to use iTunes. I have a problem with hardware dictating my software. I have a Canon camera, does that mean I have to use Canon Photo Editor instead of Photoshop? No, of course not. Where my real problem lies is in email and contacts. How are those going to be synced with this phone? Through iTunes? I hope not.
What I don’t think they realize is that if they’re going to make this a true mobile internet device, it’s going to get used by people in business. People who’s offices run Exchange servers, Novell, Outlook, etc. Then there is the 90% of the planet that’s still using Outlook Express. Are you telling me that this thing won’t sync with your Outlook contacts? That you’ll have to import everything into iTunes? There’s not a serious business minded person on this planet that is going to use iTunes as they’re office communication software. It’s not going to happen. So, what are the possible solutions? Well, iTunes could just be a pass through software. All your email stays in Outlook and iTunes simply grabs it and put it on your phone for you… wait, what planet is this? Oh yeah, Microsoft would never allow that (or at the very least make it easy) to happen, not in a million years. Well, what about open standards, like ical and the Mozilla office tools (Thunderbird, Lightning and Sunbird)? Sure, if you want 2% of the market being about to sync.
This is a serious problem. They can’t use exclusively iTunes for everything. That would have iTunes the biggest piece of bloated software in the history of software. Far eclipsing things like Office 2000 and Norton System Works in terms of their resource hogging and uselessness. So, if you can’t use iTunes, then it needs to be wide open, to sync with everything. That will never happen either. If it’s one thing Apple loves, it’s closed loops.
My guess is that we’ll see a new, feature heavy iTunes or even an iTunes office tool by summer. It would make more sense to separate the programs into a music managment system and a “sync tool”. However, that doesn’t seem to ever be Apple’s MO. I’m betting on one big piece of bloatware to handle everything.
That brings us to the end and the summation. Deep down, as a geek, I like the iPhone a lot. Realistically, I’m never going to buy one. Basically because I don’t want to be inside that loop of Apple products, unable to do what I really want. Remember, I’m not Apple bashing. I think they have a seriously revolutionary phone here. I think this will really shake up the market. That, in the end, is what I hope comes out of this. I hope other companies take a look at this and up the anty. I really want to see Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and the like come out with guns blazing. If we get super phones like this from every company, the world is going to be a much better place.
So, good job Apple. You just gave the cell phone industry the wake up call it’s needed for the past 10 years… but I’m still not biting. Not yet. Prove me wrong and I’ll swallow the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Nit to pick: OS X is approx. 0% Linux based. It is however, heavily NeXTSTEP based, with a lot of stuff borrowed from the FreeBSD project and a pretty coat of Aqua on top to make it user friendly.
One of the gadgets sites I read had a nice little article yesterday where Apple has apparently admitted that the OS on the phone isn’t really related to OS X on the desktop, and they have no plans to release an SDK or any kind of dev kit to allow 3rd party software. The iPhone will be as locked down as an iPod.
That said, it is pretty slick, but I’ll be sticking to my relatively easy-to-develop-for, huge-freeware-software-base PalmOS-based Treo 🙂
Ah, my mistake. Thanks for the info. I went digging a little and found this tidbit:
“Darwin is made up of code from: FreeBSD, NetBSD and 4.4BSD Lite2. So Mac OS X is Darwin with the Aqua GUI, with more enhanced features etc.”
I had my BSDs and Linux flavors mixed up. Sorry gang.
Still, the scalability is pretty impressive.
And I agree. It’ll be locked down as all heck. In my heads its becoming one of those “wait for generation 2 or 3” kinda of devices. If for no other reason than to see what kind of app support will be coming.
Thanks bud!
You knew I’d have something to say about this. So, I’ll be advocate to the devil here for a bit…
• Notice how his Steveness was careful to say “OS X,” and not “Mac OS X.” There is clearly a distinction between the two at this point.
• To clarify, Aperture is an Apple product introduced in October, 2005. Adobe’s Lightroom was released as a response to Aperture a full year later.
• Aperture has always featured the “dark” interface. For that matter so does Shake and elements of Final Cut…in other words, Apple’s Pro Apps feature this “dark” aesthetic. The iPhone interface, to me, looks a lot more like Mac OS X Tiger’s widget pane than the pro apps though.
Futhermore, when it comes to UI design, Apple is going through a UI switchover. (Which makes Tiger, at this late date, very ugly.) What with brushed metal in the Finder, to the new white & plastic-y-ness of iTunes 7, to the slick & dark transparencies found in the pro apps (and, strangely, their word processor, Pages), it’s clear there is not one defined style…yet. It has been long speculated that Leopard will feature a new razzle-dazzle UI that they’re keeping in the bag for now. I think this is the first peek at it.
As for why it is black in general, I think you could easily point to the sales figures from the black iPod nanos and the black MacBooks and see that black is hot right now. (I, for one, paid an extra Benjamin or two for the black paint job on my MacBook.) In the past two years, Apple has brought the black sexy back. Show me who was doing this black thing (the crappy PSP doesn’t count) before the black nano burst on the scene.
Oh, and the whole “glass” look dates back to Mac OS X 10.0, and to a further extent 10.1. So that’s before Web 2.0, and waaaay before Vista. Sure, it’s more defined now, but still, the glassy look became popular with the advent of Mac OS X.
• “Filled the cup!” Ha! Oh, and I totally agree with exalting the death of ringtones. BUT, go back to the keynote, Steve did mention ringtones. I forget what he said, but I remember hearing “Oh, that’s one of our ringtones…”, inferring that an mp3 would be the ringtone.
Also, I’ve read that Cingular will get no extra cut from the iTunes Store or anything. Essentially, from what I read, Cingular entered the deal with no knowledge of the phone (physically) whatsoever and just helped pull together things like “visual voicemail” before the keynote and otherwise allowed Apple to do their thing as long as they could get their 2yr contract for service.
• The way I understand it is that contacts and calendars will be Mac Address Book, Mail.app and iCal based. No clue how that pans out for Windows users. And yeah, it could be a deal breaker for many when we get through the Spring and people who have been saving all Winter realize that.
As for iTunes as a big evil enemy, I think that it is something you’re going to have to accept is not going away. It already handles all of the big hitters in Apple’s “digital hub” business strategy: music, podcasts, tv shows, movies, the nike thing. It currently syncs your address book to the iPod as is, and does it pretty well. I guess I’m trying to say iTunes is going to continue to get bigger and bigger. They’re betting on people paying $300 on AppleTV which is nothing more than an iTunes operating system on your TV…for…$300. Think about it…that thing is just a Mac mini with AV outs and an iTunes based OS. Yeah, it’s definitely not going away. iTunes is the MAIN reason why Apple dropped computer from their name.
Now, I completely understand the morally objectionable ramifications of allowing all of your media to be tied to one app from one (increasingly controlling) company…but all in all, it’s a pretty good app. It could be much worse.
• Finally, I too have some issues with the phone: No flash or java support on the browser? No bluetooth syncing for music? No wi-fi iTunes store? Only a 2mpx camera with no video? Cingular? No games? No AIM support? No 3G? No changeable battery?
Now, some of that could change in 6 months. But I doubt I’ll take the plunge instantly either way (unless money is burning a hole in my pocket on release day).
And money is known to ruin my pants from time to time with their hole burning ways.
Okay…so, yeah, I’ll let you know how it works. =)
Ah, I was waiting for my Mac buds to help me clarify this stuff. This is why we need a podcast 🙂
As far as Adobe Lightroom is concerned, having seen the beta, I think it’s “darkness” is more a result of the purchase of Macromedia by Adobe. Macromedia was starting to lean towards those interfaces as far back as the MX series. So, I guess it was a combination of things.
The interface looking like Widgets was something I was definatly thinking too. Having not seen any of the pro apps (besides Final Cut, which had a gray interface last time I saw it) I was thinking it seemed a lot like Konfabulator, and then most recently, Apple’s own widget engine.
I agree about the black though. Black is definatly back. I don’t know about it’s Apple exclusivity, but they certainly helped the cause. My Sprint phone back in Savannah was black shiny plastic for example. My Palm pilot from 1998 is also black. I think Apple just made it trendy again. 🙂
And I’ll agree that the “glass” look was definitely an Apple invention, but I think that the Windows customization crowd and Web 2.0 designers really pushed it. I can remember trying to make things transparent on my desktop as soon as I saw the OSX dock, but before the glass effect was introduced. It’s kinda of a chicken and the egg thing. I think the community had a push in the right direction, ran with it, and everyone picked up on the trend.
Ringtones, yes “one of OUR ringtones”. I have Jay-Z on my cell phone, whether I wanted it or not. It’s one of OUR (t-mobile users) ringtones. I can see full quality ringtones being preloaded, but not getting a cut of them is crazy. Cell phone companies subsidize (and loose) a lot of money for the phones we use with the idea that they’ll make it back by nickle and diming us to death. If Cingular is getting nothing but an exclusive, they must be putting next to no effort forward for it… or… Apple paid out the nose for it.
Now, I do have to stand by my “iTunes evil” opinion. Do you really want to usse iTunes for email? Really? I don’t mind using it for music and media. I really don’t. It’s not a bad program, it’s just not my bag. But, in the past, when people have tried to incorporate more and more things into a “suite”, it just goes horribly wrong. The memory footprint of that new (speculative) “super iTunes” must be huge. Forget multitasking. That would be like running “ADOBE” and having it check my mail as I retouch and listen to music and download LOST in the background.
I understand they’re trying to make it a digital lifestyle system and set of products, and that’s cool, but if it’s a “suite of products” it should be a “suite of programs” too. iTunesCal, iTunesMusic, iTunesMovies, etc.
And I completely agree with your beef list as well, I just ran out of steam when I was writting. lol.
So, are we all agreed it’ll be a great 2nd generation product? I think a X-mas 07, Spring 08 version of that phone will rock (and be reasonably priced).
Sorry, late to the party 🙂
All us macheads are eagerly awaiting the details of Leopard (10.5). Need more info! Wish it had come out at Macworld, but I eagerly await it to power my spankin’ new MacBook Pro.
As for no 3g – right now there are few markets where 3g/ hsdpa is actually out and about – It’s a judgement call I can understand Apple making – yes it sucks it doesn’t have it yet, but as you’ve said, it’ll be there in the future. Also don’t forget it’ll have WiFi connectivity which should be good in those places that actually do have 3g networks, as a lot of them (as you’ve mentioned houston being one) will also have city-wide wifi networks, which should lessen the blow a bit. Or people will be in offices/ indoors or at home bulk of the time, where WiFi is prevalent.
Speaking of the future, don’t forget that the bulk of the phone is software based, so things like video capability and AIM support are in theory much easier to implement in a software update rather than in a new phone rev. You can also bet your ass there’ll be plenty of games for sale, just like the iPod is doing now.
Re: iTunes suite – FWIW, I think that iTunes currently does a crappy job of managing movies/ TV shows – it was really built for music, and has had movies, etc tacked on. I’ll be interesting to see what happens when Leopard comes out, as well as what happens when Apple starts offering HD movie downloads.
I am not sure how Apple is going to manage contacts, etc in windows – In Mac OS X contacts, calendars, etc are all OS services with a central data store and APIs galore. Email is going to be a little simpler – the phone itself is going to be a POP client, so I’d imagine that you just won’t take things off the server when you download (e.g. you have two email clients, both pop – no syncing, just multiple downloading). On the Mac side of things, there may be more “Syncing” going on with the Apple Mail client, but unless Apple blesses a custom iPhone app that’ll sync with IMAP and/ or exchange servers (perhaps from Microsoft’s Mac unit?), I don’t think you’ll be seeing anything of the sort, not to mention that Exchange syncing isn’t that big on Apple’s key demographic (high end iPod users – not business folk) anyways. I do see specialized clients from Yahoo! and Google (yay for me!), at the very least, as they seem to be pretty central to Apple’s strategy.
I’m sure that in the next couple years, we’ll see at least 1-2 new versions of the iPhone (e.g. Nano and Shuffle) as well as at least one revision of the current one we see now (new camera, 3G, GPS)
Technically, this iPhone must have GPS capabilities in order to be used in the US. It’s been a FCC requirement for all new mobile phones for a while now, what with the e911 stuff. It’s just a matter of if the software makes it accessible in some useful way or not.