sootman's Journal: A few random thoughts on the iPhone

Here are some thoughts I've had in the last couple weeks. (Filed under 'OS X' because there doesn't seem to be an 'Apple' category...? Based on this post.)

Success:
- Will it be a success? Yes. Is it pricey? Yes. Is it gorgeous? Yes. And the price will eventually drop, just like the iPod did. It's Apple's famous method: release a really nice, almost perfect product for a bunch of money, sell a bunch to the first batch of buyers; then, when that supply is exhausted, improve it, drop the price, sell again to the next round who weren't willing to buy the first time. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Note: don't look for a widescreen, touchscreen, iPod until MAYBE September for the 2007 Xmas season; more likely, you'll have to wait until Spring 2008. Apple won't let a nice iPod cannibalize sales they'll get to people who buy the iPhone MOSTLY because they want a widescreen iPod. We just saw a perfect example of this: a few months ago (fall 2007), Apple introduced the new Shuffle. Christmas came and went and they sold a zillion. Then, on January 30, 2007, BAM!--the Shuffle now comes in colors, just in time for Valentine's day. Raise your hand if you think this is just a coincidence--that maybe Apple forgot that they knew how to anodize aluminum.

- BUT--the iPod wasn't a success just because it was pretty. It really is a better, easier-to-use MP3 player than anything else out there for most people. The iPhone will ONLY succeed if the touchscreen system works as well as Steve says it does. I can tell it'll be mostly great just by looking--a regular touchscreen could easily handle 90% of the single-finger action he demo'ed--but I'll have to see the keyboard in person to become a believer on that.

- will Apple work out a deal with Cingular to offer a reasonable data plan? No one will be happy with the Internet Communicator of the Future if it costs $100/month to do anything with. For this to really, really work, there has to be reasonably-fast, reasonably-priced data. If it becomes a situation of "Oh, I can't use Safari until I get to Starbucks or Panera" that will be a big buzzkill.

- will they meet their goals? They said they want to sell 10 million phones--have 1% of the market--in 18 months. (God, that sounds like so many WWW business plans I heard in 1995-97--"If we could just get 1% of all web users to visit our site...") That sounds good on the one hand, given that they want 1% of a billion phones, BUT--Cingular only has 60M customers. Is the iPhone so great that ONE SIXTH of Cingular's customer base will spend $500? If not, are that many people going to get out of contracts and switch carriers in the next 18 months? I'm not so sure. Like I said, I really think the iPhone will be a success, but their expectations are pretty high.

Other thoughts:
- no iChat! no iChat A/V! How LAME! Either a) it's part of the deal not to step on Cingular's toes by offering anything like VOIP, or b) it's waiting for Rev B. Unfortunately, my money's on A. Well, at least you can use the browser to access Meebo. In any case, it is a very obvious omission and clearly intentional--given that the SMS system looks just like iChat, it's impossible that they just "forgot" about it. Further weight to my fear that a reasonable data plan won't be part of the deal--if Cingular is pushing this hard to get people to use SMS, they're probably still planning to charge as much for that as possible. Or maybe it's the other way around--with a cheap data plan, everyone would use chat and quit using SMS, and Cingular doesn't want to lose that income. Could go either way.

On a related note, it's also too bad that the camera doesn't swivel and let you use iChat A/V--how many science fiction films have we seen with two-way handheld videoconferencing?

Current iPods have 4:3 screens. (1.33:1.) All Apple's computers are 16:10. (1.6:1.) The iPhone, like the original PBG4, is 3:2. (1.5:1.) So: what shape should iTMS movies be?)

- Proximity sensor--nice. But I hope that's not one of their patents. My Canon XTi turns off the screen when you put it up to your face--and it already exists. ;-)

- Apple will need to add 'Cingular' and 'iPhone' to Leopard's spellcheck dictionary. :-)

- Looks like it has no GPS, just a combination of Google Maps and cell-tower-based. Too bad. Real, accurate positioning in such a device would be AWESOME.

- I'll pick one up in a couple rev's just to have a decent browser. Despite having twice as many pixels as the iPhone, browsing on my Axim mostly sucks.