Apple iPhone

Well, the speculation is over. Does this change the game at all?

I hear you. I tell you one thing. If this thing doesn’t work out of the box it could really screw Apple in a lot of ways. The field is riddled with crashing and buggy CRAP (i.e. Moto Q). I would have been much happier to see Apple stick with a PFP…no camera, no whizbang screen sensors, etc.

The other thing that will be interesting is its RF sensitivity. A phone that thin has inherent restrictions on how good of an antenna it can have.

There is a good chance this could end up a mediocre iPod smushed together with a mediocre phone.

If not, I believe it could change the game.

Too true

Can apple pull off another miracle product before they go back to the dark years of OS 3-7… that was a lot of poor sales, near bankruptcy years… thank you MR Gates for bailing us out, oh, that guy in the adverts, that’s not supposed to be you…

That said if the iPhone or iWhatever is as good and easy to use as the iPod, it will be huge.

If it is a revolutionary but buggy, too much too soon as the Newton than… well, we know how that one ended.

On one hand, it looks easier to use than existing cels because the buttons seem larger. However, with a touch screen interface there is no physical break between buttons, so it loses out a little there. Also on the plus side of usability is the fact that they didn’t use buttons whose functions are labeled on a seperate screen. The cel makers have been particularly guilty of that, and even their own usability experts report very low user function-finding ability.

It’s good to finally see a company specialized in usability make a potentially very usable phone!

The pitfalls I see are more marketing that anything else:

  1. What companies will offer this phone?
  2. Price, price, price
  3. There are mp3 playing phones out there, will people see the other advantages to the product?

To sum up, it’s not a revolution, but rather just applying the knowledge that everyone had already and smacking a super-brand name on it. That being said, it’s the most significant product launch of some time!

I’m neither a Mac nor a PC enthusiast, but I have to admit that as in the case of the iPod Apple seems yet again to have done a very good lateral thinking job with this product.

I’m impressed at how the can think of new ways to go beyond what is taken for granted. Stylus? Who needs a frickin’ stylus? Loose the stylus and use your fingers. Become one with the device!

Revolutionary concepts: “list scrolling” with one finger, “picture zooming” with two fingers and “screen tilting” from vertical to horizontal position. On any PDA or SmartPhone you must press a button to tilt the display. On the iPhone, there’s a sensor taking care of that. Wham! Why hasn’t anybody thought of that before?

Steve Jobs is very, very good at doing his job.

On any PDA or SmartPhone you must press a button to tilt the display. On the iPhone, there’s a sensor taking care of that. Wham! Why hasn’t anybody thought of that before?

Credit where credit is due…M$ trumped Apple with the auto-rotate screen on the Zune. Zune does the same thing.

:frowning: English is my second language, so I’m missing the subtelty of your comment. Do you mean that this feature was on the Zune before any Mac products or that Microsoft copied it from Apple?

No worries, your english is better than my non-existant second language…

I mean that Zune had this feature before the ApplePhone was announced.

and the auto-tilt has been a feature on a few snapshot cameras already…

my biggest beef with total screen based interfaces is that in strong light, glare and loss of contrast makes seeing and interfacing difficult, especially with features as advanced as what the iphone proposes. Has apple put any thought into solving this problem, or is just up to the user to find a shadow or grow a third hand, unless of course, one hand operation of this device is easier than it would seem to be.

Hmm, it seems like some of the Applephone’s ideas are not such novelties afterall:

This swedish phone has been around for more than a year:

I thought I heard that it auto adjusts based on the surrounding lighting conditions. Not completely sure though, no time to listen to that whole keynote speech again.

Here is Sony Ericsson’s response to the iPhone:

i would hardly call this a response. this phone has been in the pipeline for a while and is more of a response to the motorola razr v3 and the likes.

what will come somewhere Q3 2007 will more likely be a response.

If the response will be full-touchscreens then Steve might be right about having a 5 year lead…Supposedly they have a lot of IP tied up in stylus-free touchscreen interactions. But I like the Windows UMPC thumb-based touchscreen, which splits the keyboard onto either side of the screen. Two thumbs are faster than one forefinger for text entry.

Haptics (ie. force-feedback and motion-sensing) could provide a legitimate response.

I should have added, “Sony-Ericsson’s response the the iPhone, according to Sony-Ericsson’s press release”

It’s interesting how people are using the iPhone as the industry benchmark already.