Apple today introduced iPhone, combining three products – a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps-into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting users control iPhone with just their fingers. iPhone also ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, which completely redefines what users can do on their mobile phones.
“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device — our fingers — and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse.”
iPhone is a revolutionary new mobile phone that allows users to make calls by simply pointing at a name or number. iPhone syncs all of your contacts from your Mac, Windows PC or Internet service such as Yahoo!, so that you always have your full list of up-to-date contacts with you. In addition, you can easily construct a favorites list for your most frequently made calls, and easily merge calls together to create conference calls.
iPhone’s pioneering Visual Voicemail, an industry first, lets users look at a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to the prior messages. Just like email, iPhone’s Visual Voicemail enables users to immediately randomly access those messages that interest them most.
iPhone includes an SMS application with a full QWERTY soft keyboard to easily send and receive SMS messages in multiple sessions. When users need to type, iPhone presents them with an elegant touch keyboard which is predictive to prevent and correct mistakes, making it much easier and more efficient to use than the small plastic keyboards on many smartphones. iPhone also includes a calendar application that allows calendars to be automatically synced with your PC or Mac.
iPhone features a 2 megapixel camera and a photo management application that is far beyond anything on a phone today. Users can browse their photo library, which can be easily synced from their PC or Mac, with just a flick of a finger and easily choose a photo for their wallpaper or to include in an email.
iPhone is a quad-band GSM phone which also features EDGE and Wi-Fi wireless technologies for data networking. Apple has chosen Cingular, the most popular carrier in the US with over 58 million subscribers, to be Apple’s exclusive carrier partner for iPhone in the US.
iPhone is a widescreen iPod with touch controls that lets music lovers “touch” their music by easily scrolling through entire lists of songs, artists, albums and playlists with just a flick of a finger. Album artwork is stunningly presented on iPhone’s large and vibrant display.
iPhone also features Cover Flow, Apple’s amazing way to browse your music library by album cover artwork, for the first time on an iPod. When navigating your music library on iPhone, you are automatically switched into Cover Flow by simply rotating iPhone into its landscape position.
iPhone’s 3.5-inch widescreen display offers the ultimate way to watch TV shows and movies on a pocketable device, with touch controls for play-pause, chapter forward-backward and volume. iPhone plays the same videos purchased from the online iTunes Store that users enjoy watching on their computers and iPods, and will soon enjoy watching on their widescreen televisions using the new Apple TV. The iTunes Store now offers over 350 television shows, over 250 feature films and over 5,000 music videos.
iPhone lets users enjoy all their iPod content, including music, audiobooks, audio podcasts, video podcasts, music videos, television shows and movies. iPhone syncs content from a user’s iTunes library on their PC or Mac, and can play any music or video content they have purchased from the online iTunes store.
iPhone features a rich HTML email client which fetches your email in the background from most POP3 or IMAP mail services and displays photos and graphics right along with the text. iPhone is fully multi-tasking, so you can be reading a web page while downloading your email in the background.
Yahoo! Mail, the world’s largest email service with over 250 million users, is offering a new free “push” IMAP email service to all iPhone users that automatically pushes new email to a user’s iPhone, and can be set up by simply entering your Yahoo! name and password. iPhone will also work with most industry standard IMAP and POP based email services, such as Microsoft Exchange, Apple .Mac Mail, AOL Mail, Google Gmail and most ISP mail services.
iPhone also features the most advanced and fun-to-use web browser on a portable device with a version of its award-winning Safari(TM) web browser for iPhone. Users can see any web page the way it was designed to be seen, and then easily zoom in to expand any section by simply tapping on iPhone’s multi- touch display with their finger. Users can surf the web from just about anywhere over Wi-Fi or EDGE, and can automatically sync their bookmarks from their Mac or Windows PC. iPhone’s Safari web browser also includes built-in Google Search and Yahoo! Search so users can instantly search for information on their iPhone just like they do on their computer.
iPhone also includes Google Maps, featuring Google’s groundbreaking maps service and iPhone’s amazing maps application, offering the best maps experience by far on any pocket device. Users can view maps, satellite images, traffic information and get directions, all from iPhone’s remarkable and easy- to-use touch interface.
iPhone employs advanced built-in sensors — an accelerometer, a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor — that automatically enhance the user experience and extend battery life. iPhone’s built-in accelerometer detects when the user has rotated the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display accordingly, with users immediately seeing the entire width of a web page, or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.
iPhone’s built-in proximity sensor detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away. iPhone’s built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display’s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time.
iPhone will be available in the US in June 2007, Europe in late 2007, and Asia in 2008, in a 4GB model for US$499 and an 8GB model for $599, and will work with either a Mac or Windows PC. iPhone will be sold in the US through Apple’s retail and online stores, and through Cingular’s retail and online stores. Several iPhone accessories will also be available in June, including Apple’s new remarkably compact Bluetooth headset.
iPhone requires a Mac with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X v10.4.8 or later and iTunes 7; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 2). Internet access is required and a broadband connection is recommended. Apple and Cingular will announce service plans for iPhone before it begins shipping in June.
To learn more about iPhone, please visit Apple.com or watch the video of the iPhone introduction at http://www.apple.com/iphone/keynote
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Video of how Apple’s rumored touch-screen Tablet Mac could work – February 13, 2006
for some reason i got the inkling that leopard’s interface is going to look and move a lot like iphone’s does, specifically the ipod section… don’t know why, it just seems very new & different than any other interface apple has put out…
questions:
no video recording with the camera built in? only for pictures?
what about games? can I put games on this thing?
is that Google Map thingy, track the users location?(kinda like mini-GPS)
can I share stuff from my iPHone to another iPhone?
Will the price come down if I buy it @ Apple or Cingular directly?
so far thats’ it..otherwise, it is indeed a break through the mold product..congrats Apple!
G
I totally don’t know what it means, but I want it.
I must be the only one that couldn’t care less about the iPhone.
The thing is rediculous.
Not that I plan on buying this, at least not for a while, but will it function as a GPS unit for internet maps and such? It looks like it might just also have some games coming for it, but they want to give Sony and Nintendo a little more time before showing off multi touch video games as well.
I was quite impressed with the iPhone too. It’s shown very well on the Apple web site. It’s got some great technological marvels and I wish that Apple makes a bundle of money on it. I know that the rest of the mobile phone industry has just about had a coronary. They have been happily over-charging for the same old cell phone technology for years while Apple has been thinking differently. I love this.
By the time I can afford one of these, Apple will have worked out all of the bugs, upgraded the OS, made the phones cheaper and unlocked them for other phone services to join in on selling one of the best mobile phones on Earth.
Thank you Mac Daily News for the on-going report of the keynote presentation. While my friends were trying to get Quicktime to view the keynote from the Apple site, I was already reading all of the latest from the keynote presentation from you. If Apple would get their act together and make Job’s keynote available as a free iTunes Store download, that would be cool. Oh well, I guess iTube is the way to go.
Thank you Apple for making my Tuesday!!!
Guys…this is my thought:
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> Videoconferencing via Apple TV ?????
1. This is the FIRST phone….kind of pilot-project: wait and see. They have to start “simple” to gather experience and get to know this market. I am sure they will bump their head once or twice but in the end they will offer something NO-ONE has: a tight integration of phone/pda> Mac> system etc. ALL on ONE system, virus and spyware free… Wait till the macmini and the iphone/pod do some freakin synergy
2. OSX is the core of it all….iPod will run OSX as will the macs, incl servers. They will offer 10.5 along with Adobe CS 3 AND a new pro mac with 8 cores: they are not ready yet and they def. would be the “natural” follow-up: what’s the point of dualcores if the 8 cores are almost there? So they wait and let it mature and “ripe” and then the other annoucement will follow soon: it will happen before august.
3. Globalisation iTunes movie store and iPhone services
iPhone is wow…
cheers, MacB NL
Amazing looking product and great features. Too big for a everyday phone. Too small HD for an iPod. I would have hoped for smaller iPhone with fewer features and true video iPod with big HD.
I wish the iPhone had the ability to put all the whiners on “mute”. Apple introduces the most revolutionary cell phone on the planet, and all you hear is bitch, bitch, bitch.
If the Steve-note had been about macs, Leopard, and “true” video iPods, you’d all be bitching about the lack of iPhones…
Did anyone else notice the subtle presentation of the Beatles Cover Art on the iPhone?… Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band / With a Little Help from My Friends
Does this mean they have a deal worked out for Beatles content via iTunes?
Zune Tang….C’mout, C’mout wherever you aaaaaarrre.
Engadget was by far the best site for MacWorld – by far!
Detailed text and large good-quality photos – and all that as fast or faster than the other sites could deliver sparcely typed text without photos.
MDN, Macworld, Mac Observer and all the others paled in comparison.
Engadget is in a class of its own.
I’m a fan of Steve and I’ll be getting an Apple phone as soon as I’m due for a refresh (already use Cingular), but I find it amazingly tacky that Steve ridicules the Zune for having 2% market share while defining success with the Apple phone as gaining 1% market share. I guess 1% of $1B = 5 x 2% of $100M, but still, people in glass houses….
This is just the tip of the iceberg for new Apple products.
The iPhone targets one specific market (a real smartphone) and there is still a market for a high capacity full screen iPod. The technology and the form factor is there, so I expect we’ll see a full screen iPod soon.
Since you can’t turn a phone on during an airplane flight, consumers need a video iPod with music and videos without the phone so it can be operated in flight.
I’m just happy that the iPhone will meet many of my needs. I can drop my old cell phone and my Palm. I could also probably do without my iPod photo on a daily basis, but I’d still want a high capacity iPod video for travel.
just as they did with the original iPod – the eventually made the nano and the shuffle. With the iPhone, they WILL make a family of phones. They will make a smaller version that doesn’t have features like web and sell it for a different price. Believe me – there will be iPhone options down the road. Be patient. This is the “starter” model.
I’m sure the iPhone is a really great product, but I’m simply not interested in a a $500 phone, especially since it ties me to a single carrier (Cingular). I’m more interested in putting money aside to get a Macbook to supplement my iMac. I have company-provided cell phone service and that’s a good thing for me because as much as a cell has become almost a necessity, the monthly cost can run up quickly. Hopefully, the iPhone will spur innovation and ease-of-use improvement in the industry as a whole and eventually bring prices down.
The iPhone is awesome vaporware.
Ever check out the cost of an unlimited data plan from Cingular? Save up your $600 and then be prepared to pay $45/month if this is called a PDA and $60/month if Cingular classifies it a computer.
Amazing piece of technology with an utterly screwed up business model. And to the guy who has a $650 smartphone, that phone has an xSD or microSD slot I’d bet….if not you got completely hosed.
The future arrives and it seems some posters above don’t even know it!
How STUPID are people (or are they just Microsoft trolls trying a little bumbling low level undermining??).
This piece of kit IS the future. It can be scaled to any size.. it is a tablet computer. Put it in 6 inch 10 inch or 20 inch box and it can do the same things.
I truly bow to the geniuses that work at Apple. Steve Jobs has to be recognised as the most inspirational man in technology – ever.
According to Cingular’s website for my area, unlimited data is $20 a month for a smart phone when paired with a voice plan.
It connects to the internet, yea! But can I use it to also connect my Mac laptop so I can throw away my stupid PCMCIA Sprint card?
My Sprint card does work great, but it only does one thing and can’t use it to connect to a Mac Book Pro. I don’t want to pay two monthly mobile internet fees, one for the Sprint card and one for the iPhone.
I know, I know, this is only the first of many such OS X mobile products to come from Apple, patients, patients young grass hopper.
The most important thing about the iPhone is the user-interface and it’s ability to run Mac OS X (lite). It truly is ground breaking in design and blows the competition out of the water.
My reasons why are on my blog <a href =”http://tweenbetween.blogspot.com/”>here</a>.
The technology in the iPhone (Mac OS X, touch screen, on-screen keyboard, etc) lends itself well to a tablet Mac done right. Swivel the screen for laptop with full keyboard or landscape/portrait tablet with InkWell handwriting recognition. This would match my needs alongside the iPhone.
If price or too much technology is your problem, that is an easy one to fix – no one bothers about the price once you’ve paid for it, from then on you only worry about how it works. I hope they’ve addressed the screen-scratching issue!
Zune Tang? Oh, Zuuunnnnne Tang? Calling Zune Tang on my new iPhone . . .
Voice recognition instead of finger perhaps?
Perhaps we can have a wide screen video iPod without a phone or any connectivity?
At the very least, it would be nice to turn the phone signal off in a zone where a signal is not allowed, e.g. as Sideshow says, an airplane, and also…ahem…my head?…
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/march05/wakeupcall01.html