You knew I had to comment on this thing. Had to. Steve Jobs waltzed out and quite calmly smacked the cell phone — and MP3 player, for that matter — market on its collective ass with the announcement of Apple Computer, Inc.’s iPhone. Packing a widescreen touchscreen, a 4 or 8GB iPod Video, “free” push email through Yahoo and “visual voicemail”, this thing takes aim at every other phone out there and waggles its svelte form their way. In one fell swoop every phone on the market looks dumb and antiquated. All those devices with QWERTY keyboards dangling ponderously off the side suddenly are ungainly and ridiculous. Okay, they looked that way before yesterday, but there was no other option before. Now there is, and everyone will want one.
Almost. They’re not perfect. For one thing, you’ll have to switch to Cingular if you don’t already use them. That might kill the deal for many, and it would for me. At a $499 starting price for the 4GB version they’ll sell plenty to the Mac-faithful and the gadget heads. That’s a premium pricepoint and I think the uptake from the business people and executives could take a hit as companies try to swallow that pill on an expense report. Using Cingular’s EDGE service seems… limiting. With the rich experience Apple demoed yesterday there will be significant bandwidth required which might be throttled a bit under the EDGE limitation.
All that said, it’s sexy. As I mentioned to a friend, I don’t want to want it but I want it. Damn you, Apple.
http://www.iphonecountdown.com/iphone_readymech.pdf
I was ready to buy two (one for me, one for the Mrs.) until the above $299 pricepoint hit. I guess I’ll have to wait for their next generation phone.