“During a meeting with Apple’s vice president of iPod products Greg Joswiak, I finally got to play briefly with one of the highly anticipated iPhones,” Jeremy Roche reports for ZDNet Australia.
Roche reports, “The iPhone is one of the most elegant and ravishing phones I’ve seen so far, due largely to its simple, sleek design and impeccable, intuitive user interface. While fashion phone fans used to teensy handsets might disagree, the iPhone doesn’t feel too unwieldy and at just under 12mm thick, it is certainly pocketable.”
Roche reports, “Although the iPhone runs a version of Mac OS X “optimised for the handheld experience”, Joswiak explains it’s not an open platform and any updates to applications or software will come through Apple. This closed model, although secure, means you can’t install additional custom or third-party apps — does this mean it isn’t defined as a smartphone? It’s a model that Joswiak says will continue in the foreseeable future.”
Roche reports, “While the room we were in was dimly lit and conducive to making displays look vibrant, the screen didn’t fail to impress. It is bright, colourful and seems like a very high resolution for its size. To get an idea of how to type messages on a buttonless phone, I ducked into SMS… Using two thumbs to type a quick couple of words, the touch-sensitive QWERTY worked well — my accuracy might have been better if I had longer than 3 minutes with the phone. However, I think the virtual keys and the lack of a tactile click feeling won’t be everyone’s preferred way of text entry.”
“Orientation changes as expected when the iPhone is tipped on its side, allowing you to see Web sites, videos, maps and photos in landscape mode. Multi-touch is a fantastic feature for zooming in and out and panning. Apple isn’t mentioning how much system memory is onboard, but we didn’t notice much of a lag between menus or applications — mind you we didn’t push the iPhone’s multi-tasking abilities to the extreme,” Roche reports.
Roche reports, “We were unable to demo the synching process with iTunes, and are disappointed that Wi-Fi can’t be used for synching or for direct communication with other iPhones… Joswiak claimed an advantage of the wired connection is that it’s faster and that it charges the device at the same time… Addressing the iPhone’s lack of 3G connectivity at a time when HSDPA services are flourishing internationally and the impact of future WiMAX technology, Joswiak said that Apple ‘made some choices that make sense today.'”
Full article here.
3G is coming to future iPhones. Steve Jobs said so himself during his keynote presentation. iPhone is a US-only release at first: June for the US, Q4 for Europe, and 2008 for Asia. Expect to see different iPhones just like you see different iPods and different Macs for various needs at a range of price points. As for Wi-Fi, that’s a software decision for Apple to make. The Wi-Fi can be used to do whatever Apple wants in the future; the main thing is that it’s in there. Remember how early this is: there are parts of the iPhone that are not being shown, that are still being worked on for iPhone’s June release.
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Hrm. I must say it is disappointing that they’ve decided to lock the system. I was already thinking how many cool apps 3rd party developers could crank out by the time the iPhone actually got released.
I hope at the very least Apple will create an SDK and provide some sort of “official approval” pipeline for folks who are serious about creating apps for the phone.
People need to be free to load their favorite widgets onto the iPhone (or MacMobile, or whatever it ends up being called), if nothing else.
I don’t need one but I’m certainly going to buy one. I’ve never said that before about any other product.
Apple has tons of widgets on their site. Probably be able to put MDN’s widget on the ApplePhone from there.
This is exactly what I was concerned about. I want to protect the system. But I also want some freedom to decide which applications I need to have with me. RIght now that’s FileMaker, some exportable and importable word processing. Maybe a spreadsheet. Useful stuff. not just “fun” stuff. They have time to get this right. It’s a lot of money to lack basic applications that any other PDA has.
From the iPhone website. “OS X — is now available on a small, handheld device that gives you access to true desktop-class applications and software, including rich HTML email, full-featured web browsing, and applications such as widgets, Safari, calendar, text messaging, Notes, and Address Book.” That’s what’s been release so far. Just wait. If they don’t have it you don’t have to buy it!
what disappoints me is the lack of wireless connectivity between individual iPhones. I certainly hope sending files between the iPhones through wifi won’t be an issue and that Apple doesn’t want to force us to use the GSM-EDGE for such.
Othe thing i would like to see rather soon is the same device minus the phone.
The iPhone is AMAZING… There is only 2 things that suck:
1. Cingular – their network is horrible! The only reason why they can claim ‘More bars in more places’ is because they have the manufacturers put 5 bars on the screens of their phones while the other carriers ahve only 4… I always hate talking to someone on Cingular… In spite of what their ads say, the calls always drop or become unintelligible…
2. EDGE – Whaa?? When you are outsiide of a WiFi hotspot you are supposed to use EDGE? Argh! Not likely w/o major frustrations…. Even David Pogue described Cingular’s EDGE network as notoriously slow….
Meanwhile Sprint & Verizon have both launch EV/DO Rev A allowing up to 3.1 Mbps in the downlink and up to 1.2 Mbps in the uplink…
Too bad there’s no iPhone on Verizon Wireless…. Maybe Apple will make one for Sprint’s new WiMAX network that blows 3G away….
the appeal for me of any new ‘smart’ phone is the ability to write sms / email easily and quickly. i have little patience with tiny keys … i hope the text entry won’t be a big problem with the iphone. just an idea – what if text can be entered while the phone is in landscape mode? that would make the keys ‘larger’ … ?
Ben Dover
I’ve been using Cingular for years. I’ve never that many problems. Read the manual; it helps!
I’d like to see Apple open it up for development though. This could be a killer device if it has some Unix utilities like a command line to log into Linux or Xserve servers.
“The Wi-Fi can be used to do whatever Apple wants in the future; the main thing is that it’s in there.”
To be fair, you clowned on Zune for having crippled Wi-Fi. The same argument applies to them. Zunes should be able to get viruses wirelessly in the near future.
Regarding WiFi restrictions, I wonder how many restrictions on functionality are being imposed by Cingular. We’ll see.
Concern about the ease of typing on the iPhone keyboard may be valid. Are the keys totally silent or is there an audible click when you press them? If not, perhaps Apple could add a click which would help to give the impression of a tactile keyboard with real buttons.
I have to say, while I too would like to see the iPhone platform opened up so that we can see a stripped down version of excel, word, powerpoint and some other business standards on there, I understand why Apple would initial go closed. The last you want on a handheld who’s self admitted killer app is making calls is to have some poorly written piece of software uploaded to the handheld that is going to cripple it. It’s alot easier for me to revert back to an older backup if I install a new ‘update’ that is buggy on my Mac than on an iPhone.
Using dashboard as a testing ground for these mini-apps and their functionality was a great toe in the water to add functions with operating slightly outside the main OS functions. i.e. if for some reason dashboard crashes, it’s an isolated problem.
I doubt Apple is going to make the mistake of closing the system to outside development. But remember, they only allowed EA to publish games for the iPod after 5 years…
As the iPhone grows in userbase and adoption picks up Apple will allow mobile versions of 3rd party software, the marketplace will demand it.
Dashcode, people. If third-party apps appear on the iPhone, we’ll be coding them in Dashcode.
The interface we see here in the iPod..i think is the future of not only Cellphone interface ( that one is obvious) but it’s also the future of UI in computing…this will be when Tablet computing really takes off. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if the next iMac has a detacheble screen with the apple patented touch interface…i think it would be pretty cool…and i bet you they have working prototypes in Cupertino as i type this
it doesnt really surprise me that the iPhone is locked down to Apple-only software. It’s their brand new baby and they dont want to hear of any “software crashes” because someone’s programmed their shareware badly. Having said that tho, I would really appreciate having some way of installing financial software on it so I can track my budget before making a big purchase, or something.
Aside from a GPS software that will allow you to use it as a sat-nav unit, what other software do you guys think would benefit from being installed on the iPhone?
It’s not out yet! In 6 months, maybe the name will be changed and they’ll open up the platform; if only to widgets. Regardess, someone, somehow, will find a way to hack it just like ipods, and getting OS X on non-Apple hardware.
I ment to say: The interface we see here in the iPhone…
1. I don’t want Craplets on my iPhone.
2. I want a phoneless iPhone like iPod.
On the subject of custom development, can I just throw the following into the mix…
If the iPhone Safari is truly a fully-featured Web browser, than it must surely have the same Java and Javascript functionality as Mac Safari.
It therefore follows that iPhone must have a recognisable Java Virtual Machine. So I would imagine that so-called SOA or Web 2.0 apps will be supported from the get-go.
My guess is that iPhone’s first few iterations will be locked down for the following reasons…
a) Apple’s lead partner at Cingular obviously has a sensitivity about something coming onto their network that has a possibility of causing network disruption. Quite how this reflects in Cingular’s relationship with other – normally extensible – “smartphone” manufacturers (whether Palm, Windows or Symbian) is a question that someone else needs to answer.
b) There is a lot of overhead in creating a developer program with an SDK and accompanying certification, and there is very little point until the first 10 million phones are in the hands of real customers. That’s around June 2008 if anyone would care to hazard a guess.
c) At some point, a network operator who is more determined about satisfying the needs of the business community will come into Apple’s orbit, most likely in Europe or Asia where cellular networks are more advanced than those in the USA; that manufacturer may well be willing to subsidise a subsequent generation of iPhone more aggressively and be more relaxed about an ‘open’ platform. Where is Clent Richardson (Apple’s former VP for Developer Relations)? He left to get into the cellular industry in the UK. What’s he up to now?
d) I have no axe to grind about Cingular (I live in Europe), but their CEO’s performance on Tuesday was a demonstration of what happens when ‘old’ telephony (even the supposedly-modern cellular element) collides with ‘new’ computing. The guy was reading off idiot cards ferchrissake.
e) Let Apple get some more horsepower into the phone. More RAM would be my first step. 16GB in January 2008 seems like a good start and pretty realistic.
I agree with locking the system down, for now. Maybe in the future, Apple can find a way to heavily control the deployment of third party apps, like only allowing widgets or something. It’s a consumer device, you don’t want to open it up to everyone. I bet Apple will allow widgets to be installed thru Apple’s widget website (or Cingular), which means Apple would review and test any third-party widgets first and then put them up for download on their site, like they have done with Google and Yahoo so far.
I currently have a WM5 Smartphone (HTC StrTrk) and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do a full system restore due to third party apps messing up the phone or distorting the user experience. Thankfully, the Missing Sync for OS X is a wonderful application, so everytime I have to restore my WM5 phone, I have all my important information on my Mac. I am at the point where I just keep my phone stock, no third-party apps or anything just so that it stays somewhat reliable.
Everyone (well at least Windows users) expect computers to be buggy and unreliable, this mode of thinking was established by Microsoft ever since Windows became mainstream with Windows 95. But with consumer devices such as the iPod or cell phones, people expect them to work flawlessly. Most people just want a cell phone that has a good UI, works great as a phone and has some extras on the side (like a media player and internet). Only the hardcore geeks want a device that they can hack up and install a bunch off add-ons.
Can you imagine how much of the flop the iPod would have been if it was somehow unlocked to allow third-party crap installed?
A software update can enable iPhone-to-PC wifi connections or iPhone-to-iPhone connections any time apple feels like releasing such an update. I agree with MDN’s take. The key thing is that the wifi is there…now it’s up to Apple’s software team and independent hackers to figure out where to go with it.
Welcome to the Newton 3000!