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Quick Flipancy About The iPhone 3G

I'd like to say that I've been ignoring the foofrah about the iPhone 3G for the last couple of weeks, but I have to be honest and say that I've been ignoring lots of news, while I beaver away at a few urgent projects. That's more or less my half-assed, backhanded apology to my faithful readers for the dearth of blog updates lately.

Regardless, savvy CE expert and Marketnews editor Christine Persaud does a great job of summing up her frustrations with the endless gyrations in the media about the launch of the new iPhone.

MarketnewsGadgetTalk: iPhone is Here, Hundreds Line up, Now Can We Get on With Life?

It seems like all we've been hearing about for the past few weeks is iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. The device has finally made its way to Canadian stores today. In Toronto, hundreds lined up outside the Dundas St. store on the corner of Yonge & Dundas in the pouring rain just to have the chance to fork out at least $200 for the device, plus $30/mo. in data (in addition to the price
of a voice plan) for the next three years. (see related story) Is it all worth it?

I will say that much good has come out of the attention the iPhone has garnered. It's nice to see that Rogers has (somewhat) relented to consumer pushback, vis a vis their mobile data plans. It's still not enough, but it's a start.

Also, as commenters like myself have noted, we're just now seeing the forward edge of more advanced handhelds, for which the title "smartphone" is kind of inadequate. Samsung, LG and others are bringing competitive handhelds to market, and fostering new innovations. Whether or not the iPhone achieves the same market domination that iPod has in media players remains very much in question.

Lastly, I'm eagerly awaiting the news to break that some clever dude somewhere has successfully unlocked the 3G iPhone. Despite Apple's best efforts at delivering an inert "brick" to customers, that can only be activated by Apple, that won't last forever. As the old No Fear t-shirt read: "It's Not If, It's When And How Bad!" My personal over/under on a cracked 3G iPhone is a week. Tops.

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Speakercraft And iPhone, Together Again

I'm no Apple fanboy, but I am a huge Speakercraft lover, and have designed, sold, installed and programmed my share of their outstanding MODE music distribution system. This announcement, of a MODE control application for the iPhone is simply the cat's pyjamas.

CE Pro: SpeakerCraft Launches iPhone Interface for MODE Multiroom A/V

Now the company is taking its ties to Apple one step further with an iPhone interface for the MODE distributed-audio system. The interface is generated through an embedded Web server residing inside SpeakerCraft’s ERS 1.0 Ethernet-to-serial adapter. Since the interface is accessed through the iPhone’s Safari browser, there’s no software to install on the phone (or iTouch).
The ERS also dishes up an interface for standard PC/Mac Web browsers, allowing users to control the system from any iPhone/iTouch on the network.
Multiple interface devices can be used simultaneously to control different zones of the house.

I can't even begin to tell you how cool I think that is. Seriously. I'm aflutter.

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iPhone software apps gaining traction

Don't believe me? Check this out:

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Newsflash: Many iPhone owners are whiners

Apple Users Talking Class-Action Lawsuit Over iPhone Locking (InformationWeek) reported on Dealbreaker's Opening Bell

No offense, but what's the deal with iPhone owners? Seriously. First, Apple warns them not to surf the internet when they're overseas, because they'll ring up a huge bill. What happens? Nobody listens, and then they complain when they get a $3,000 roaming bill. A bit steep? Sure, but they were warned, so hard to have too much sympathy. Then Apple warns them not to unlock their iPhones and that if they do, they might be in for some nasty surprises. Again, warning delivered and then followed up upon. But people act like it's some big shock. Here's the thing about the iPhone set. It doesn't really seem to be the early adopter crowd that everyone assumed it was. Remember those pictures of frat boys walking out of the Apple store, screaming at the top of their lungs? Exactly. That's the iPhone customer, which actually explains a lot.

While we're dogpiling on iPhone owners, don't forget the way that they screamed and mewled when the iPhone got a price cut.

To be a real early adopter you've got to be willing to hang out there on the edge, and pay top dollar to stay there: Forty thousand for a plasma tv ten years ago, eleven hundred for a Blu-ray player last year, and so on. Not to mention taking your lumps when hardware goes sideways on you, or if you end up on the losing side of a format war.

It's the cost of being first in line. Early iPhone owners are misguiding fanboys, not proper early adopters.

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Apple iPhone results cause unrest

It seems that the iPhone's launch was either a success, or a failure, depending on who's reporting on it.

The Street: Finally, Apple's iPhone Lowdown

USA Today: Apple: 270,000 iPhones sold in first 2 days

"270K in the first 30 hours" reads like one of those amorphous metrics that retailers manipulate to make themselves look good, like "Sales per square foot." It sounds great, but it's neither here nor there in relation to the big picture.

Nobody hands out gold medals at the 30 meter mark in the 100M sprint for best start. It's all about the number by the end of the year.

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My token iPhone post mortem, and I'm not even going to do any work

Instead, I'm going to swim in the wake of Dealbreaker.com's Keith Hahn:

Dealbreaker: Why the iPhone is no PS3, but should try to be more like it

To put things into a mobile telecommunications market perspective, Nokia shipped 91 million units in the first quarter. In order to penetrate the cell phone market in any meaningful way or provide a more digestible iPod replacement for when your Mini breaks, Apple will have to get used to thinner margins (and probably thinner than the 40%+ made on most iPod models).

iPhone. Rah.

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Paris Hilton released early from jail before the Apple iPhone launch: Coincidence? I think not!

Since The Epicurean Dealmaker has pretty much called me out (deservedly, perhaps) for shamless blogwhoring, I might as well ride this pony all the way.

Paris Hilton!

Paris Hilton!

Paris Hilton!

Apple iPhone!

Apple iPhone!

Apple iPhone!

It's kind of like summoning Beetlejuice.

...I've had a lot of coffee this morning, even by my standards, and I get a little goofy when that happens.

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Pundits weighing in with iPhone reviews

The moment of truth is here at last. Key tech pundits have their hands on iPhones and are telling we unwashed technoproles how they measure up.

Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg had quite the love-in with his phone:
We have been testing the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the country. Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.

By contrast, the NYT's David Pogue is pleased, but more reserved:

So yes, the iPhone is amazing. But no, it’s not perfect.
There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash, which deprives you of millions of Web videos.
The two-megapixel camera takes great photos, provided the subject is motionless and well lighted . But it can’t capture video. And you can’t send picture messages (called MMS) to other cellphones.
Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee.
Then there’s the small matter of typing. Tapping the skinny little virtual keys on the screen is frustrating, especially at first.

All in all, for a first-generation device, it sounds like it's off to a good start.

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Amazingly, not everyone is rushing out to buy an iPhone

From the Department of Pointing Out the Obvious comes this important bit:

CNET: Some waiting on iPhone improvements before buying

Apple's upcoming iPhone is shaping up as this year's must-have gadget, but several perceived shortcomings are pushing some potential buyers to wait for an updated version.
Worries over the high cost, slow network speed, and battery life are deterring some customers from ponying up a minimum of $499 for the iPhone, despite the buzz across the gadget-crazed landscape of tech retail.

I would like to remind you all of the wisdom handed down to me years ago by the Reverend Brian J Munro when I was just a fresh faced newbie at Sony: Never buy the first generation of everything. It often takes three iterations before the manufacturer gets it right.

Early adopters play an important role as unpaid beta testers for the manufacturer. In fact, early adopters pay for the priviledge of discovering a new products shortcomings. Sure, someone has to buy it. You just have to ensure that it's not going to be you.

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iPhone to run 3rd party software

Knowing full well that the success of the iPhone hinges on it's ability to run 3rd party software (you know, like a real computer), Apple has agreed to do just that.

TWICE: iPhone To Accept Third-Party Apps

San Francisco — Apple’s iPhone will run third-party Web 2.0-based applications when it begins shipping on June 29, the company announced here at its Worldwide Developers Conference.
Web 2.0 applications “look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone,” Apple said. The apps will “seamlessly access iPhone's services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps.” Apple contends that Web 2.0 applications will “extend iPhone's capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.”
Web 2.0-based applications are “far more interactive and responsive than traditional Web applications and can be easily distributed over the Internet and painlessly updated by simply changing the code on the developers' own servers,” Apple said. The standard also provides secure data access and transactions, including those used with Amazon.com or online banking.
Web 2.0-based standards let developers “create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

It must be important, because the article said "Web 2.0" five times in four paragraphs. Apparently we're using "Web 2.0" as punctuation now, like a high-tech exclaimation mark.

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Some positivity about the Apple iPhone, for a change

MSNBC.com: Music, video phones may ride iPhone wave
Cell phones sporting bigger screens, music, video and Web-surfing capabilities may try to steal some of the spotlight when Apple Inc.’s iPhone debuts next month.
Although few have seen or used the gadget, it could draw consumer attention to other pricier, high-end handsets, executives at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit said this week.

...

Regardless of the iPhone’s success, convergent devices are poised to grow in popularity, Sony Ericsson President Miles Flint said.
“The phone is capable of doing many other things,” he said. ”People want to have any content, any time, any where on their device and that is leading to the phone being a mobile Internet gateway entry point. the trend is clear.”

Um, yeah. I think that one or two people have made the point that iPhone, regardless of what it can or can't do, is the leading edge of the next generation of wireless connective devices. Thanks for the validation, MSNBC!

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Apple iPhone wading through a morass of distribution questions

The iPhone certainly looks cool, but getting it into consumer's hands involves partnering with telecom companies, and that isn't always easy.

NYT: Much Ado About Apple’s iPhone
The largest service provider in Europe is Vodafone, but Ms. Milanesi said that Vodafone’s underlying business model might not dovetail easily with the Apple universe. Vodafone uses its own service, Vodafone Live, to sell songs to mobile phone users, and iTunes from Apple could be viewed as a direct rival.

...

If the iPhone does not initially support 3G in Europe, Apple may combine a range of service providers, said Thomas Husson, an analyst for Jupiter Research in Paris.
That would require Apple to balance the discounts operators give on the phones against Apple’s own sales. “Too large an operator subsidy would kill Apple’s own highly profitable retail sales,” he said.

In terms of marketing and promotion, it will be a fine balancing act between the discount wireless carrier's model of pimping out the hardware on the cheap to make money on the calling plan, and the inherent brand value that an Apple product carries. Discounting off of list price is not standard operating procedure for the Apple stores and partner retailers, so this ought to be interesting to watch unfold.

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Competitive Intelligence, and Apple's Forecasting for the iPhone

Interesting bit reported on Paul Kedrosky's blog about intel used to estimate Apple's own sales forecasts for the iPhone.

Digitimes via EE Times Asia reports that Apple is negotiating to buy 500 million Samsung NAND flash chips. These are 4 GBit chips, so that means that a 4 GByte iPod nano or iPhone would require eight of these; an 8 GByte iPhone would need 16. Averaging out those numbers says that Apple is looking for flash supplies for somewhere around 50 million iPods and iPhones over the next nine months.

Clever.

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Paul Kedrosky, Apple iPhone, And The Wisdom Of Crowds

There's a great topic over on Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed about the iPhone and what it might bring to the table, vis a vis superiority over other mobile handhelds.

Paul Kedrosky: Five Reasons Why iPhone Will Win
Having now wandered in the wilds of various cellphones over the last few months, I am re-reminded why iPhone is underestimated. I have a Treo 700, a Blackberry 8800, and a Samsung TV phone, and they all suck. Here are five things that bug me about the abovementioned trio, and that favor the iPhone

The main attraction is actually the thoughtful commentary left by readers about what the iPhone portends for the future. Several intelligent sounding people share the perspective that I've been blogging about already, which is that the iPhone is the first iteration of the next wave of mobile handhelds. It may not be the big winner, but it will definetely shape and define a whole new category of products.

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Helio Ocean Seeks to Usurp the spot that Apple's iPhone Hasn't Even Filled Yet

Did I not say that by the end of they year, we would see a whole new category of mobile devices?

Why yes, yes I did!

This year, we will see many more such devices roll out and jostle for position.

Here's what the NYT has to say about Helio's Ocean:

By JOHN BIGGS
Published: April 5, 2007
While smart-phone makers cower in the looming shadow of the June release of the iPhone from Apple, a small cellphone service provider called Helio is introducing a device that is getting plenty of buzz.

Helio’s phone, the Ocean, has two keypads. Sliding the phone up reveals a standard phone keypad, while sliding to the side reveals a full QWERTY keyboard. The 4-inch-long phone has a 2.4-inch display and 200 megabytes of internal memory for video and audio recordings and media files.
Helio gives the phone its own special interface and offers downloadable content including games, TV shows, movies and music.
The Ocean also handles e-mail, instant messaging and Global Positioning System services. What makes the Ocean stand out is the integration of almost all of these services into its contacts software. Each contact listing has small icons that show your friend’s current status in AIM, Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger.
The Ocean, priced at $295, will be available at dealers this month, giving it a bit of a head start on the iPhone.

And so it begins.

To reiterate a point that I have made earlier, "smart phone" is a dumb name. It's not a name for an emergent category of wireless devices, it's placeholder. A band-aid of a name. Somebody, somewhere, has to come up with a name for these things that sticks!

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Apple and Cisco agree to "share" the iPhone name

NY Times: Cisco, Apple Settle 'iPhone' Dispute
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple Inc. have agreed to share the ''iPhone'' name, but both companies are staying tightlipped about what future products might come from the resulting deal to collaborate on ''interoperability'' between the companies' products.
Analysts said the settlement announced late Wednesday in Cisco's trademark-infringement lawsuit could help both companies strengthen their positions in the increasingly fierce battle to deliver video and other applications directly to consumers' homes.

It appears that all the posturing and chest-thumping on both sides has paid off. I think that a collaborative parntership between the two will benefit both parties better than a simple settlement would have. This also allows Cisco to save face, since really, Apple handed them a fait à compli, and frankly, everybody knew it.

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Oddly enough, some people are negative about the iPhone

From Steve Makris' Input/Output column in this morning's Edmonton Journal.

MY WAY OR NO WAY
Apple's Steve Jobs broke every rule and business model in the cellphone industry during the development of his iPhone, announced and shown at the recent MacWorld in San Francisco in January.
-The sleek, one-button multimedia touch phone will work exclusively with Cingular in the U.S. this summer, but the cellco gave up a lot in what appears to be a very one-sided business relationship in favour of Apple. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cingular will not be able to put its logo on the phone and will have to share its monthly revenues with Apple. The iPhone will not carry any of Cingular's own software and, at $499 and $599, will be available from Apple and Cingular, bypassing cellco partners. During development, Cingular engineers only tested partial mock-ups of the iPhone and only a handful of Cingular execs got to see the actual product before launch. Imagine, not too long ago, Jobs referred to telecom operators as "orifices" that other companies, including phone makers, must go through to reach consumers. Do you think Rogers, the obvious Canadian heir apparent to the iPhone, will put up with that?

I don't know, will they?

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The Onion cuts to the core of Apple's iPhone strategy

The Onion: Apple Hard At Work Making iPhone Obsolete
February 12, 2007 Issue 43•07
CUPERTINO, CA—Only a month after the much-heralded announcement of the iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that his engineers were already working around-the-clock on the touchscreen smartphone's far-superior replacement. "We looked at [the iPhone's] innovative user interface, the paradigm-shifting voicemail, the best-in-class mobile browser, and we realized we could make all that seem ridiculously outdated by the time the product becomes available to customers in June," said Jobs, who described the project as "Apple reinventing the iPhone." "When the second-generation iPhone comes out this fall, we want iPhone users to feel not just jealous, but downright foolish for owning such laughably primitive technology." Jobs also hinted that the second iPhone device would not be compatible with existing Mac computers, third-party peripherals, or any future Apple products.

As usual, The Onion is funny because on some level, they're telling the truth. When Apple announced the iPhone last month, six months ahead of it's anticipated launch, many pundits, including myself, speculated that the iPhone we saw is not the iPhone that Apple will release. Job's initial pitch was intended to a) test the waters, and poll the blogosphere for what users really want, getting free market research (let's call this concept viral market research) and b) hand Cisco a fait à compli regarding the name iPhone. Both elements appear to be going according to plan.

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The Mandatory Blog Post about the iPhone

Yes, it's coming. Yes, it's set the blogosphere on fire, and some people are getting even more wiggly about it than others were for the launch of the PS3.

But, as I had commented yesterday on Paul Kedrosky's blog, it's not just a phone, is it?

In fact, there's two key things apparent.

1) It's a computer.

It runs on mac OSX, and it fits in your hand. It's got 8 gig, which may be more than your home computer had in 1997.

The iPhone is the forward edge of the next movement in interconnectivity. There has been much talk in the past year (although I'm too lazy to Google it) by pundits, including myself, that the next wave will be handhelds with larger screens, more connectivity, and more functionality. Calling the iPhone a cell phone is as inapt as calling it an mp3 player. It's so much more.

This year, we will see many more such devices roll out and jostle for position. Will the iPhone totally dominate the market the way iPod did with media players? I personally don't see RIM and Palm taking this lying down.

2) it doesn't look like we expect an apple product to look.

Only one person in the discussion on Paul Kedrosky's site drilled down on how un-mac it looks. It seems to me that after the way Apple almost tectonically reformed the design landscape in the past ten years via mac and iPod, they're chasing a new design vision. I think we can expect a big shake up in the visuals of Apple's desktops and laptops this year.

There. I've done my bloggerly duty. More later.

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