Let me just say that looking at the hype surrounding the launch of the iPhone, there is no doubt whatsoever that Steve Jobs has the Reality Distortion Field working better than ever. Every official review of the iPhone seems to be really glowing. People lined up for hours (or days) at Apple and AT&T stores to get one (even big city mayors got in on the hype). The iPhone is Apple’s hottest selling product ever. You know the drill. But seriously, isn’t the iPhone just a lot of iHype?
Let’s begin where we need to begin. I understand Apple’s choice of AT&T (nee. Cingular) for its choice of wireless partner. This is Apple we’re talking about, and you know they would want total unmitigated control of all facets of the iPhone, including the interface, third party applications, and, most importantly, streams of revenue. This is not to be unexpected. Apple built the iPod on the concept of a vertically integrated business model (where the hardware, the software, and the online service to purchase music for the device all come from Apple), so you would expect that they’d want the same sort of model for the iPhone. Something tells me that Cingular was the only carrier willing to play ball on this matter. Both of the major US 3G carriers (Verizon and Sprint) have worked very aggressively to build a business model that relies on selling not only the phone and the service, but extra services and micropayment items such as ring tones, video, Verizon’s Navigator, and now even television on the mobile phone. To further this end, they take whatever cell phone models that they wish to sell and install their own operating systems onto them that cripple certain features (like Verizon famously crippling the OBEX profile for Bluetooth so people can’t transfer ringtones from phone to phone) and basically funnel you into spending money on services like Verizon’s Get It Now, or the Sprint Music Store. That would be a small clash.
Incidentally, I’m surprised we didn’t see over-the-air purchasing capability from the iTunes Store. Maybe that’s planned for a future release, but that would have been a truly “killer” feature at launch (since the iTunes Store has so much more music available than a lot of other music stores, and since they’ve also started selling DRM-free music), but I digress.
The problem, of course, is that they went with a 2.5G network (EDGE) instead of the newer 3G network (HSPDA). While I suppose that this is a side effect of the fact that Cingular didn’t have much of an HSPDA network at the time that the iPhone was in development, but that is a major downer. If you’re hyping data-based services as a major selling point of this device, you want to sell the fast data network with it as well. I can see this leading to some major consternation among early adapters, or we will see more and more people put off buying the device until it has faster network support.
I fail to see what’s really revolutionary about the device. Sure, it has a nifty interface, but after a while, I think the lack of tactile support will irk a lot of people. Early reports already indicate a steeper than normal learning curve to use the on screen keyboard. Beyond that, it feels like there’s a lot of glitz, and not a lot of substance. The thing doesn’t do a lot of things that cheaper (even the freebie) cell phones can, like MMS messaging. Basically, you can take a picture with the integrated camera on the phone, but you can’t text the picture to anyone. That’s kind of dumb. Sure, you can email it, but if you want to send it to your friend’s phone, you’d have to know their clunky texting email address (like 212551212@vzwtext.com or 2125551212@mobile.att.com or something). Plus, the sheer fact that you can’t add third party apps (other than some weird web interface apps) is going to frustrate many. Plus, although the iPhone promises to bring forth a better browser experience by bundling a more full featured browser onboard, the fact that it won’t support Java or Flash makes half of the web still inaccessible via mobile. The YouTube support that’s included seems half-assed and added mostly to appease people who were mad about the lack of Flash or Java. Doing basic tasks like making a phone call apparently takes a number of clicks. Plus, the memory is not expandable and the battery is only replaceable by paying Apple $85 (and there’s no Apple Care plan like there is for the iPod or any Macintosh systems). All of these things combined with the fact Apple won’t work out all of the bugs until at least the next iteration of the device, make this seem a lot more like iHype than iPhone.
The only thing that’s really revolutionary about this new device is that Steve Jobs has managed to convince the world that the iPhone is the best thing in cell phones since sliced bread. I honestly wonder how he keeps managing to do that.
Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, steve jobs, at&t, verizon, sprint
Technorati Tags: apple, at&t, iphone, reality distortion field, sprint, steve jobs, verizon
