“Apple’s new iPhone appears to be the clearest statement yet of what Steve Jobs’s impact has been on consumer electronics,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times. “Mr. Jobs himself acknowledged that when asked during an interview on Tuesday whether he thought the iPhone represented a trend toward the convergence of computing and communications. ‘I don’t want people to think of this as a computer,’ he said. ‘I think of it as reinventing the phone.'”
Markoff reports, “If the iPhone succeeds commercially, it will be new proof of Mr. Jobs’s power and influence over the world’s consumer marketplace.”
“The device is not currently compatible with the faster 3G wireless data networks that are driving sharp gains in cellular revenues in the United States, although several Apple insiders said the phone could be upgraded to 3G with software if Apple later decides to do so,” Markoff reports.
Markoff reports, “It appears that [Jobs] wants to control his device much more closely than his competitors. ‘We define everything that is on the phone,’ he said. ‘You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers. These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any [old] software on them,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.'”
“Is it a phone, a PC, or something entirely new? For instance, despite the fact that the phone has high-speed digital Wi-Fi capability built in, Mr. Jobs was coy about how that capability would be used.,” Markoff reports. “During an interview on Tuesday, he said that Apple had not decided whether to enable a voice-over-Internet service like Skype.”
Full article here.
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Thats what i love about the iPhone.. Updates!
makes sense.
for now I will trust his judgement on controlling all of the software on it.
Get the fsck out of here. You can’t upgrade to 3G with a software update. It either has a UMTS/HSDPA chipset or it doesn’t. If it did have one, why the hell wouldn’t Apple say so?
Good thing you weren’t on the development team, R2.
Look, you want to have your Mac fanboy dreams then go ahead. But I wouldn’t advise you to go around preaching how the iPhone can be upgraded to 3G with a software update.
they WANT to activate VOIP but cingular is in the way! by activating such a feature would mean that consumers could eventually bypass cingular’s data network.
There is a reason why there is no 3G but there is a 3G chip inside. reasons to be heard later.
It’s the same thing as the update that is with Apple TV or with the new router, to activate 802.11n.
Same way the wifi in current imacs are software upgraded (or turned on) to 802.11n
Steve put goodies in, but left them off for later activation.
When I first heard about the iPhone, I thought it came with the ability to talk using the internet…
R2,
Sorry, I must have missed your detailed dissection of Apple’s iPhone. Obviously, you know all about what’s inside the device. Please point me to your link (hope you have photos, too).
Thanks in advance.
Of course, if Apple’s software elves are thinking at the top of their game (and the phone’s hardware is good enough), they could create a virtual OS X “box” within the iPhone’s own OS X environment that could be used by corporate application developers, whilst “retail” apps that Apple have approved as “Works with iPhone” get to work in the standard “host” space.
Anyone know if that approach is possible?
Yeah yeah, Fred. The biggest complaint about the iPhone is lack of 3G and now fanboys like yourself wish to claim “there’s a 3G chip in there but Apple left it inactive.” Just like the Zune fanboys who love to say Microsoft software updates will later enable it to wipe my ass.
Looks like that Reality Distortion Field does exist.
I hope this is not going to be “Cube, Part Deux.”
So many barriers to entry, they better remove as many as possible before launch.
“It either has a UMTS/HSDPA chipset or it doesn’t. If it did have one, why the hell wouldn’t Apple say so?”
Umm, maybe because Apple isn’t ready to actually use it yet due to issues with Cingular’s network?? Look, nobody will know the answer to that for sure until the iPhone is actually released in June anyway, so just calm down dude.
Fanatic Realist: Yeah, Microsoft has been doing it for years. Internal API’s for their own apps, public API’s for everyone else’s… that’s why their products seem faster and more stable than the competition. Heck it’s even been discovered that the public API’s have done nothing but cause a short random delay and then call the private one. It’d rather hope that Apple NOT copy them.
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Who gives a sh*t whether it has 3G built-in or not. The iPhone kicks the @ss of anything that Microsoft, Motorola, Palm or anybody else has ever come up with anyway. No sense in getting all anal over this R2D2.
Don.
Did I say different APIs?
I said virtualised “box”, similar to Parallel’s Workstation or VMWare or, dare I say it, Classic.
By creating a virtual “sandbox” for independently developed applications, Apple can deliver a “smartphone” that can develop a “vertical” life of its own.
I don’t care, BaD.
I don’t care that the 1st Generation iPhone doesn’t have 3G. I never wanted that shit to begin with. Take out the cellular aspect, replace it with an 80gb hard disk and now we’re talking (no pun intended).
How many Macs shipped with 802.11 AirPort cards before Apple acknowledged that they upgraded them?
I’m sorry, I meant 802.11n cards.
R2 likes buttons to push! Leave him alone in his own fantasy world. He needs to stay with his comfort zone. It is just too bad he can’t recognize a good thing when it up and slaps him on the side of the head. Some people really do like windoze. I have friends who still have the rotary dial phones.
To add to Don’s comment (public vs. private API’s)….
IBM started this back in the day of punchcard readers. There were two types of customers, banks and S&Ls;. The banks bought the high-speed card reader and the S&L’s bought the more affordable, slower one. Turned out the slower one was just the same as the fast one, but with a governor on the motor to restrict RPM’s.
I am skeptical of this report since it’s unlikely that the chip is there but unused. It pushes the price of components upwards for no good reason. However, saying that it’s impossible for certain and even name calling posters is childish. Apple didn’t even want to mention what kind of CPU powers the iPhone, what makes people think they want to tell what kind of communication chips are in it or not. So, though it’s unlikely, it’s not impossible either.
Aside from select people inside Apple working on iPhone integration, no one has all the answers. An Apple executive even said that it was powered by an Intel chip and Intel promptly issued a denial. People, especially Apple outsiders, should stop turning speculations to certainty.
I’ve probably given Apple more of my money over the past two years than you have all your life, opie. Please let’s not take it there because I’ll certainly smack the shit out of you. We can start scanning receipts right now.
I have a phone that works fine. I don’t like Cingular’s service. I want a widescreen, touchscreen iPod with a 30gb+ hard drive and will pay any price to have one. It’s that simple. I have no bias against Apple or the iPhone. I love the former and think the latter is an excellent product with or without 3G.
Re: Skype-likeness
… just wait for leopard. I give you a three-finger guarantee it’ll be there.