iPhone

I don't personally give a stuff about mobile phones but ... is the iPhone really as good as Jobbie says it is?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6246063.stm

I wonder if the touch screen is any good as most I've seen are annoying. The "future" would really be some kind of actual tactile touch screen with buttons that could appear, resize and move.

Looks no different to the mobiles/handhelds Microsoft have been providing for 3 years. I guess you must hand it to Apple though - the worlds gone mad over some supposed 'new' product.

Wonder if they are made from the same quality as the ishods...

Just watching the keynote now - its fantastic!

Apple tv and iPhone more great reasons to go Mac.

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/

Its a long speech iPhone is in the 2nd Quater Apple tv in the first = Wonderful.

IPete2.

Overpriced and under-featured, IMO. It looks nice, though.

I don't see what all the fuss is about, it's certainly nothing revolutionary. It's a fancy phone with an mp3 player built in. oooh, that's exciting :)

Sure, it looks nice, but the cost?!?!, no 3G support? I can just imagine you make a call and half way through cancel the call because your cheek has touched the "cancel call" touch screen image.

No doubt it'll be a resounding success like the IPod though.

Nonsense. It's much more than that.


You didn't even watch the keynote, did you?

OK, so it can do web browsing too and has a built in camera. All in all though it's just a reinvention of an XDA.

Seriously, watch the keynote before commenting.

Right, I've watched the keynote.

Looks nice and pretty but what's so special then? It really is nothing more than a reinvention of an XDA, but instead you use your finger rather than a stylus.

Every feature gets a round of applause, what's up with that? weird!. "You can make conference calls, here's a demo" *round of applause*.

Well designed and pretty cool? Yes. Revolutionary and worthy of all the fuss? No.

If you have watched the keynote from the very beginning then you might have noticed that anyone got a nice cookie (in a shape of the apple logo) before the presentation started. The nerds are just having some fun. What's so bad about this, jealous? You have to take it in the right spirit and getting with the audience wooohhh and wahhhh and from time to time just shout out an amazing! Believe me this helps! ;O)

Anyway from what i've seen this looks like a great product whilst it isn't a revolution. What makes this product so appealing is that the competition missses a common sense and so among the blind a one-eyed is the king.

> Nonsense. It's much more than that.


For $500 I would hope so.

Watched the Keynote. Got to admit it looks pretty cool. It's certainly next gen. One BIG thing missing from the presentation - games ... what about games on the iPhone? iPhone Bonus ;-)

I like it!

The look, the feel, and the multi-touch.

The one thing I always liked about my ipod (bought one for my wife last year) is that its very bright, and the interface is easy to use, cheery, and intuitive.

I suspect with this that the same will follow. Most of the 'touch' screen phones are all drap and hard to see and usually have a button or two on them. This follows the usual apple "we want to give you the last piece of technology you will ever want to use" design scheme. I think it will do very well.

I'm no Apple fan, but this looks nice. I don't even give a flip about the mp3 features, but the rest look great. I currently use a Wondows Mobile based smartphone with touchscreen and there is definitely room for improvement. I also happen to currently be using the carrier they have teamed with. I am interested, but not quite $500 interested.

I'm interrested in it..
It might be because I never got around to buying an iPod, so this way, I get a "two-in-one".. :)

Saw this on another board. Nicely addresses the "nothing revolutionary here" comments:

----

As for the claims that there's nothing revolutionary here:

1. Multitouch screen (first consumer device to feature this)
2. Visual Voicemail (never existed before this)
3. Sensors that determine orientation that apps can react to appropriately. (not entirely new, but new for a phone)
4. Sensors that determine proximity to your head so the touchscreen can be shut off.

----


That touch screen, if it works as advertised, is reason enough to hail the iPhone as revolutionary. No more stylus garbage. Flick to scroll, pinch to zoom, etc. Beautiful and will define the interfaces for handheld units for years to come.

Not to mention that it's running a full OSX installation which opens the door for, basically, anything.

I'm neither a nerd or particularly a fan of Apple, but I'm experienced and educated enough to know a good product when I see it, regardless of current price.

If you watched the entire keynote you can start to see where this is going to lead... let's ...EX-TRAP-O-LATE!

Its got OSX inside, so its gonna be potentially able to do 'anything' OSX powered Apples can do albeit in a smaller format.

It plays widescreen movies and mp3 with all those standard I-Pod and I-Pod video features out of the box, I-Photo or whatever its called on here looks fab, I-Movie - dunno but I would guess tba.

This essentially means that combined with Apple tv you will be able to transmit content from your home to your i-Phone, so you'll be able to watch any content stored on your Apple tv anywhere you go, in the car, in your hotel room, on the train, plane in a bus queue wherever.

The screen resolution is mighty fine, so that means fantastic quality, although you may not want to touch the music should you sneeze! That means reading in landscape format - E-Books becomes sorted too. Web browsing in widescreen is much nearer to the normal way of viewing and not one page at a tiome, multiple pages and 'pinch' zoom capability. Safari and OSX means Flash is built in too so all the content Flash can enable - you can see.

This is a software phone, so immediately anything new becomes available it can be downloaded and used, just like your PC or Mac does now.

As Warren says above those 4 features are totally new, plus it has accelerameters like the Wii controller, so guess what, motion sensing for games and fun ways to control other home bound gadgets which are sure to be coming.

Apple Inc (as they have just renamed themselves) will already have great controllers on their i-phone for games or at home using the Mac or if Apple tv goes that way too.

Already has ability to show Google Maps and you can phone anyone with a linlk on the map immediately. 4,000 Coffee late's to go he asked for when he called Starbucks, right down the road! Lol.

User friendliness of this system means that kids to grandparents can get a hold of it and simply touch to get what they want. It looks very intuitives.

Wasting 40% of a phone's realestate on buttons and keys when you could have a much better screen with the right interface...well that's a no brainer.

You know Apple - innovation is their shadow name, so you can expect a whole raft of other , as yet undisclosed features and gadgets which will totally enhance the user experience many time over.

The price is not so bad, $499 with a 2 year contract for the 4GB and $599 with the 8GB version, sheesh thats cheap based on what you would pay for phones in this sector.

Whether you can afford one or not is just upto you, I definately won't be able to afford one, probably ever, but I already wish I did own one now.

IPete2.

Still i don't see it as a revolution. Good evolution but no revolution as all the techniques are known since years. It's a well designed product which will make it's way but i expect more from a revolution than just incorporating already existing technologies in a common sense.

My Sony LCD will turn black as i will walk into the kitchen now to get something to drink. And when i go back and take place in front of the computer again it turns itself on again. By the way it does this since five years...i spare myself providing similar examples for the rest of the points.

I don't think you guys get it. Apart from the bundled features that no smartphone has really put together before, it's all done intuitively, in an accessible way, which is typical of Apple.

It's the same as the iPod. Before the iPod, MP3 players were still geeky, now they're mass market. The simplicity of iTunes and the scroll wheel pretty much made them what they are.

You're talking about a market here that got excited over the Blackberry, which has the amazing feature of a scroll wheel and push email.

You can argue easily enough that none of the ideas alone are that original, but to package them in an easy to use, attractive form factor is, and that's what's going to make this thing sell.

Exactly. The world didn't need a portable MP3 player when the iPod came along. Lots of devices already existed that played MP3 files on the go. The market was completely saturated.

They're going to sell their 100,000,000th iPod this year.

> but to package them in an easy to use, attractive form factor is

I'd argue that is not revolutionary either. It *IS* Apple doing what they do best, taking the overly complex and making it understandable. The possible exception being the touch screen, but even there - doesn't the latest Ipod use a touch screen instead of physical controls?

Honestly, who cares if it is revolutionary. Your arguing a futile point here....

Its a lovely device regardless. If you don't like it, dont buy it. Arguing if it is 'revolutionary' is very petty and not worthy of wasting db records on in pointless discussion.

*lol* :O)

I think i'm not too dumb getting the whole picture but still this is no revolution in my opinion. A more or less easy accessible gadget with some multi functionality and some missing features for $500 just isn't a revolution in my opinion.

But feel free to call revolution as much as you please and whatever you like. So shortly after the Wii revolution and what was the revolution before again? Well, i do at least remember Prince and the revolution!

You're just too cool for school.

> Arguing if it is 'revolutionary' is very petty and not worthy of wasting db records on in pointless discussion.

But if you take away the pointless discussions we would have nothing left to discuss.

@Warren
So you mean i'm also a revolution? ;O)

Mac fanatics are like Sony fanatics ... Only more so.

It's still not out and the indicated prices are only valid with a 2 year contract with Cingular. This means the price is already subsidized. I wonder what the real street price for unsubsidized unit will be? Too expensive for something that basically is just a ... phone ...

Barney

Those shiny buttons are soooo 2006... ;)

It will also be known by another name as "iphone" is owned by Cisco and they have slapped Apple with a law suit. Knowing the kind of cash Cisco have that paperwork will weigh a ton and be served by an extremely expensively suited lacky from a nice enough car too! ;-)

Apple seem to have a problem in the "leaving other people's trademarks alone" department lately; Beatles last year and Cisco this, and it's not quite half way into January already! Boy are they sloppy? Or maybe they're just cheap if they're only showboating with this trade name infringment, so as to get in the press with it all.

Great intuitive design enables use, enabled use of previously demo or badly implimented ideas and technology IS revolutionary.

Man dreaming of going into space is step one. Man doing it, is a revolution.

Inventing the phone, revolution one. Inventing a system that brings that phone into thousands of homes, also a revolution.

The iPhone will only be a revolution if it actually does what it claims to. It will enable a level of ease of use that didn't exist before, which is revolution.

I would expect you game designers to understand that good interface design, be it physical or electronic (And especially when both) is a revolution.

Here is a post on Cisco's blog thing about their side of an explanation of the iPhone name thing.
I hate to be anti-Apple (really, they do some great stuff; I bash all tech companies because I'm too negative, and while Apple isn't difficult to bash they're really easy to praise. Their work covers only the extremes)... anyway, hate to be anti-Apple, but Cisco's message really nails home the "holy crap, their bullying is overcoming Microsoft's!" idea. While in the mmiddle of working to sort out the naming thing, Jobs decided to reveal it as iPhone anyway thus throwing Cisco's work into "obscure Apple ripoff" and spitting at Cisco's attempts to settle it all quietly.

Oh well, I wonder when Apple will mention this...


As for revolution, I can't call the Apple iPhone perfect (or, thus, revolutionary). I have always had an obsession with excessive soft-coding, where practically everything can be configured at a convenient point in time in one way or another yet still all be intuitively managed by the host program. So far, there is not much out there that gets this at all right...
The iPhone doesn't fit this obsessive ideal of mine, because it is closed in terms of cell phone carriers and applies its tricks via... tricks. If you could get your own SIM card in there (or register with whoever you want when you want through any other better means), it would all be better and softer.
It's meant to be easy and intuitive, right? What about those eager fans who already have long cell phone contracts? What about getting it in other countries? (For example, Cingular is not big in Canada... what happens? Delayed release, for one. ...Maybe some odd behaviour when moving thanks to Apple's apparent use of proprietary Cingular network stuff?). Tons of FUD and fuss right now, but they are all questions I hope see answered.

For now, I think I'll wait for big range WiFi (yay, cancer!) and iPhone-like devices that run Skype and aren't cell phones.
Who knows? Maybe Apple will do it; they definitely know how, and have a great design team to make it happen in both a pretty and methodical way :)

One thing is certainly going to happen here. I remember Apple winding up regarded practically as the /inventors/ of mp3s (and mp3 players). The same thing is probably just about to happen to the 'flat, hand-held portable devices with big touch screens' market; soon, it will all be considered a brand new revolution as imbeciles suddenly become aware of the things yet continue unaware of the fact that they have existed for 10 years. Can't blame it on anyone, but it sure is weird!

Cisco knew Apple was going to call their phone the iPhone and they scooped the trademark in the same way that squatters scoop up domains. Cisco is being the assholes here, not Apple.

I'm willing to bet that Cisco grabbed "iPhone" the minute they saw the success of the "iMac" and "iPod".

In 2000/2001? Wow that would be really forward looking of Cisco.

Was really "surprised" by their announcement. They do the same as always it seems: Take stuff, cross finance it, try to make it look cool and sell it through channels which take care that it will stay a hyped article for long enough to get some more idiots to buy it ... similar to how the iPod ended where it is ...

Lets see how much longer Apple will get off with cross financing all their stuff through things from different sectors.

taumel

I'd lose my bet then. Thanks for the info! I googled a bit and saw that they actually purchased NetGear who had the trademark in 1996. Shame they didn't do something with it sooner then so people wouldn't jump to the same conclusion I did.

The thing is, the iPod will sell it's 100 millionth unit this year. 100,000,000 idiots? You imply that all Apple is selling is sizzle but with the iPod there IS a steak there as well.

I don't think it would be so much hassle for Apple to change it's name though, seeing as they haven't branded the name "iPhone" anywhere on the phone itself..
Don't know if the manuals etc. have been finalized and sent to printing though..

However ... to present the other side, here is the actual trademark.

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75501345

Notice that it's for "iPhoneNetworks" not "iPhone". Also notice that the current status is "Abandoned". Good luck in court, Cisco!

Let's wait and see what happens. I dunno what's behind beside of the articles i've read but i somehow guess it will end up like they will pay a little bit of money and use iPhone, just like Microsoft did in earlier days when there was something in their way: Don't care, just buy it...

Hmm there is one question i was asking myself: Why call iTV: AppleTV and iPhone: iPhone?

Warren: No, after the core userbase is enough, even the worst product sells.
You just have to take care that the hype keeps up long enough to get that userbase.
Apple does this hyping through selling it only through special channels so it gets an "exclusive gadget" which all want to have so they are the "cool and hipp" ones.
I can remember the days, where anyone wearing the original iPod headphones in a city had to take care of himself if he wanted to keep his iPod.

Well known examples:
- Windows at its beginning
- PS2 (bad piece of hardware compared to DC, still it won the war thanks to hyping and cross financing)
- EA Games (at least too many of their fullprice yearly upgrades) :-)

Sorry, I own an ipod (after many months of saying I wasn't going to buy that piece of crap) and its a very good device!

Before it, mp3 players were junky, it wasn't until after apple announced the ipod that other companies (IE RCA, etc) started developing products to compete with it.

Say what you will about the ipod, but it was a worthy purchase to me. I have 4 other mp3 players shelved in the basement (you pay for shipping and I'd gladly send them to you). I'm not pro-apple by any means (I will be the first to say I hate Macs), but the ipod was a good design.

That's simply not true. You can't sell 100 million units of garbage. You can get some early adopters but if they don't tell their slower adopting friends to buy it, they won't. The train stops or rolls depending on word of mouth.

The iPod is a solid product. Hence, it sells.

Remember that just because -you- personally don't like something, that doesn't mean that everyone else who buys it is an idiot.

May i present the iPhones to you?

Looks very intriguing, but considering its all touch screen (in which the actual use of it is to litterally touch the screen) makes me wonder how much more prone it is to damage and need for repairs.

Taumel:

"Hmm there is one question i was asking myself: Why call iTV: AppleTV and iPhone: iPhone?"

Because Apple did it again, they were calling it iTV then found out it was yet another trade mark.

They only do it to get press attention, yawn. 3 times in 12 months, what else can it be?

I found this interesting, in the article on touch screens (on Wikipedia), which I was reading to figure out if Apple had, in fact, "invented multi-touch". Multi-touch wasn't mentioned, but this was:So, I wonder what Apple has planned to compensate? The intended use, which is fingers bashing at keys on an unmoving screen, could certainly cause that problem.

So, either the choice of styluslessness is extremely foolish, or they have a neat way to solve it such as a flexible screen cover.
(Parts of the screen selectively stiffening / bulging would be incredible, but definitely not here. Some day, maybe...)

Neuro: Touch screens have existed for decades. As long as they use decent screens, there's no problem there :)

Capt'n Kirk wishes he had a tricorder as cool as the iPhone.. haha

Seriously tho, i'm hoping they will spin the cool new design into the next iPod.. I'd buy that!

Hey i'd get the phone too but it's not available here.. soo.

I would prefer the tricorder due to the analyse functions in it. Also i've never seen any battery life problems with the tricorder. :O)

I wonder on how many patents the tricorder is built on...

http://www.electric-chicken.co.uk/itoilet.html

they have flat-out said that you can run NO 3rd party software on the iPhone, so unless that changes you won't ever be able to run your own software on it, blitzMax or otherwise...

There is an article on the iPhone's MultiTouch on multi-touchscreen.com:
http://multi-touchscreen.com/iphone.html

I am now reminded that Jeff Han developed multi-touch, and it is his technology being used in the iPhone. Thus, no: /Apple/ did not invent multi-touch, Apple's partner Jeff Han did. (Nothing against Jobs, but what is up with him and these twisted truths? It's not very nice when you fail to give someone credit where it's due, especially if it is for something as important as that!).

Anyhow, I'll definitely enjoy playing with one of those screens, though that does make it a shame that I can't write software for it myself :(

Interesting...

http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/

Dark Half - That really is a "Piss Take" - lol

IPete2.