Apple finally announces the iPhone After years of rumors and speculation, the Apple iPhone was officially announced today at MacWorld. It's an iPod, plus phone, plus camera, plus internet-device. There's just one 'real' button, with the rest of the interface being a touch screen. I admit I'm a little bit iffy on the touchscreen thing. Hopefully Apple has a killer implementation, because most touchscreen devices I've used have been sucky.
The iPhone comes with a 3.5 inch widescreen at 320x480 res. It has some kind of WiFi support, along with EDGE and Bluetooth. There's a 4 GB model for $499 and an 8 GB model for $599 (when you take a 2 year contract with Cingular). It will be available in the US in June. Full tech specs here.
It's a high-end device, with good specs and a matching price. I expect it to be a big hit for Apple.
8 comments
| I would love to get one. It depends on what kind of hoops I'll have to jump through to get one in Canada... | | |
I expect it to NOT be a big hit for Apple. This article on ZDNet sums it up pretty well:When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. . .
Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don't exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren't clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good. . .
Apple, in other words, won't be competing against rather doltish, unstylish companies like the old Compaq. The handset companies move pretty quick and put out new models every few weeks. I'm also pretty skeptical of the touch screen, because it seems like the sort of delicate technology that one can't just carry around in your pocket all day without it getting pretty messed up pretty quickly-- and who wants a mobile phone that you have to take out of a case before you answer it? | | |
Cell phones are clunky, if you're trying to use the internet, or play games on.
Here's the other main problem with existing handsets: they are not an iPod. I carry my phone and iPod around a lot of the time. They should just be the same device. Apple has packed a lot of extras in, but I see this as a natural extension of the iPod line.
If the touchscreen sucks though... then I could see it bombing. | | |
| I just got a new Blackberry Pearl through my work, a smartphone which will compete with the iPhone, and many parts of the interface suck big time. It's functional, but I don't find the user experience polished. It is getting better though, and I'm sure the iPhone will continue to push devices like the BlackBerry to improve even more. | | |
About the touch screen thing, a friend of mine has a 2 year old tablet pc, and I will say I was really impressed with how well it worked, and actually how much more comfortable a computer is to use when you have a pen in your hand. All this to say, I have faith. It seems to me that:
iPhone = teh shit!
P | | |
Boing boing had an interesting thread about the iPhones DRM. It never occurs to me that the iPod is locked into apple itunes and one piece of hardware, simply because finding a software crack for it is so easy. If there isn't a way of hacking the iPhone, then my enthusiasm for it will be reduced to 0.
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