“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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“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.”
You’re a lawyer for Cisco, aren’t you? ^_^
While I’m also a wishful thinker, hoping that the 3G aspect has already been incorporated, and only needs to be activated like the recent 802.11 cards in the latest iMacs, i also doubt it. 1) Cost, and 2) Apple wants as many people to use it asap.
So i actually give credit to R2 for being able to see this picture, and reiterate his wish for a 80B widescreen video ipod. Afterall, if you wanna see good movies, you dont want to keep syncing to download another movie to it later. Its just a clever way of getting as many people as possible to buy the iPhone for any of the 3 key reasons Jobs demonstrated.
Again, due to Apple’s secrecy on roadmaps, maybe there will be a full 80GB+ widescreen ipod with the same Multi-touch interface. No one will know, and while we can all guess and stress each other out with aggressive comments, it wont actually get us any closer to the truth.
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Jobs directly said that there is not a small order or uniquely designed silicon. So jointed GSM/3G chip is by far not something impossible. There is nothing that would make joining two things together impossible.
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However, this variant that iPhone a actually supports 3G is not much probable, since Cingular would be only glad to have it and, hence, Jobs would tell about it without hesitation.
“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.”
Whoa. Is OS X that unstable that running an app could bring down the whole OS?!
R2 is correct. 3G is an entirely different chipset. If the iPhone starts with EDGE it cannot be upgraded to 3G via software.
“During an interview on Tuesday, he said that Apple had not decided whether to enable a voice-over-Internet service like Skype.”
See, there’s the problem I have with this. Needless to say, Apple will decide who gets to do stuff and who doesn’t. So I want to do Adium for the iPhone–nope, sorry, Apple is doing iChat. So I have this great idea for an app for the iPhone. I present it to Apple and am told to get stuffed. Three months later, Apple comes out with my idea (because they’d had the same idea? Or they said, ‘Hey, yeah, that is a good idea! Thanks!’).
Correction:
…
Jobs directly said that there is not a small order ***OF*** uniquely designed silicon.
…
**Economan**: not necessary; Jobs directly said that there is specifically designed silicon in iPhone. There is no problem to have two chips merged in one.
**Peter**: having or not iChat on iPhone has nothing to do with to do with whatever ideas until Cingular will losing money if people will not pay to them for SMS. The same is with VoIP versus Cingular.
Also, Jobs never said MacOS X will hang with those three applications. Hovewer, such applications can become processor resources heavy and that may interfere with basic functions of the phone. MacOS X’s stability has nothing to do with it; it will be fine.
Simultaneously, Jobs said it is Cingular’s fear that unknown and untested applications may cause glitches to the cell network or overload it with sending whatever (malicious or not) information.
So it was hardly purely Apple’s decision to close completely iPhone platform.
“Umm, maybe because Apple isn’t ready to actually use it yet due to issues with Cingular’s network??”
Yet Cingiular has many other 3G models working.
The only conceivable possibilities are 1) It’s not 3G capable.
2) It is but the software is not ready. given that the phone is vaporware today, what would be the harm in announcing that when it finally ships it will be 3G upgradable?
“I don’t care that the 1st Generation iPhone doesn’t have 3G. I never wanted that shit to begin with.”
You’re right, Lightning fast music download to the phone, streaming music and video plus fast mobile Internet would really suck.
…“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.”
There you go! They are not going to write all the softwares so third-party app is a possiblility! Although “…it has to be more of a controlled environment.”.
It would seem that in order to use 3G, you’d need the appropriate chip set. Any chance Apple found a way around that?
I know, I know. Probably not. But I swear, after that last keynote who the frig knows what Apple has accomplished or what might be up their sleeves.
Anyway you look at it, what an exciting time to be a geek.
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Hey R2, you’re completely right. You have much more patience than I would in the face of all this ignorance.
R2, that iPhone has one fsking MUTHA/HUMPSTER chipset!
We all need to take a step back here for a moment.
The iPhone is in it’s infancy. It took 2 1/2 years to bring it out into the public. Apple is being couscous with by controlling the software and functions. They are only aiming for 1% market share for 2008. This is a new market for Apple even though the iPhone has iPod functions. They don’t want to mess this up. I believe if demand becomes high for 3G Apple will add the capability. I think Cingular should be up front with Apple about customer numbers using 3G on PDAs and phones. I’m guessing most of them are business enterprise customers who connect them to laptops or use 3G enabled PC cards anyway. Not really for entertainment purposes.
Apple wants you to buy video from the iTunes store and not stream it from a Cingular video service. It’s also possible Apple is not ready for customers to download iTunes content direct to phone yet which would require 3G. Maybe they will enable it when that piece is worked out.
Apple wants you to use your MAC to send audio, video and pictures to the phone. That’s not a problem for me. In fact I prefer it that way.
I love using my Mac as well!
Give us 3G and Skype-like capabilities, please !!!
OS X ran on Intel chips since version 10.0.
When was the first time the world heard about it?
…5 YEARS LATER!
I support the liklihood that iPhones will be ready to switch to 3G with software updates.
Every single time this happens, people expect less from Apple and the deliver more.
For example: timespan to switch to Intel? Jobs said 1 year. Actual time? 7 months.
Get the picture R2?
>”Umm, maybe because Apple isn’t ready to actually use it yet due to issues with Cingular’s network??”
>
>Yet Cingiular has many other 3G models working.
>
>The only conceivable possibilities are 1) It’s not 3G capable.
>
>2) It is but the software is not ready. given that the phone is vaporware today, what would be the harm >in announcing that when it finally ships it will be 3G upgradable?
I’d say Cingular itself isn’t ready, as Cringely said in the article on MDN earlier. Cingular’s 3G network uses Real video and not QuickTime (for video-calling), and Steve wants them to use QuickTime because Apple have control over that technology and don’t want to have to license a competing technology. With Mpeg-4/H.264 video calling you’d be able to use the iPhone to record, rewind live, and playback later your video calls.
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/cringely_apple_iphone/
Let the 6 months of mostly-useless and borderline-nonsensical speculation begin!
How do you make video calls when that lousy 2Mpix camera is on the back of the phone? Or is that also software upgradable to the front?
Software upgradable 3G… what next? GPS was also left out, but it’s naturally software upgradable when the deal with Google is ready. Oh please.
3G could have hardware already inside, not turned on for US but possibly turned on for Euro or other markets.
Camera is on back, if they release a version for videochat they could add a camera behind screen (already have such technology patented), perhaps such hardware is already in phone.. though unlikely.
GPS? As far as I understand in the US cell phones already have some form of tracking based on cell towers, so GPS might be redundant in areas with lots of cell towers.. granted, it won’t help you pinpoint your position out in the middle of the desert. If you want a “survivalist tool” perhaps you’ll have to look elsewhere, but in urban areas tracking is already built in.
There are limitations with version 1.0 of the iPhone as with any version 1 product, but it clearly can be expanded and likely will be before launch.
“Cingular’s 3G network uses Real video and not QuickTime (for video-calling),”
The 3G network will transfer any kind of data. The phone could easily be 3G, and if you’ve seen Cingular’s UTMS phones, the browsing, email, music and video speeds and quality are truly impressive compared to Edge phones. The problem with the iPhone is it’s a dog which has taken forever by cellphone industry standards to get to market, and in fact is not even shipping yet, and is therefore obsolete before it ships.
But Apple may take note, and fix that issue before it ships.
A Cynic would say that the main reason behind this announcement is to tell people that the iPhone will be overpriced, under-featured, and not coming for some time, so will get those who’ve been holding off wondering whether to wait for the iPhone or buy a new iPod today to make the decision that the iPhone’s not going to do what they need from a cellphone and to buy that new iPod today, not in 6 months time when it ships.