Apple’s iPhone (2007- ) is like an iPod with a telephone built in. Like an iPod, it can store and play music. Like a telephone, it can make and receive calls. But there is more. It can also take pictures like a camera and show films like a small television. It can go on the Internet to get email, go to web pages and get maps and directions.
In fact, it is a Macintosh computer made small enough to fit in your hand and light enough to take anywhere. It even runs Mac OS X like a Macintosh.
There are already telephones that can play music, but they are hard to use. And there are telephones that can go on the Web, but the Web is almost unreadable and painful to use. The iPhone works the way these things should have. Even as just a telephone it is better than anything we are use to.
Apple will start selling the iPhone in America on June 29th 2007. Cingular, which was just bought by AT&T, will provide the telephone service. It will appear in Europe later in 2007 and Asia in 2008.
The iPhone is the future now: Bit by bit the computer has been taking over television, telephone, music and film. Within ten years few will still have a separate telephone or television or music player. Instead there will be three kinds of computers:
- wall computer
- table computer
- hand computer
The iPhone is the first real hand computer.
Apple understands design and understands computers. Few companies have a deep understanding of both. That is why Apple is first.
Instead of little keys and a little screen, the iPhone has no built-in keys and one large screen. When it needs keys for you to enter names or numbers, it draws the keys as needed.
Things like Treos, Blackberries and Zunes will have to change or die. They will seem old-fashioned almost overnight.
As wonderful as it seems now, it already has some known drawbacks:
- At 40 to 50 crowns ($500 to $600), it is a lot for “a telephone that plays music”. But, from the Gutenberg Bible to the VCR, this is a common starting price for something as new and different as the iPhone. If it does well, the price will come down, just as it did for printed books and VCRs.
- Cingular’s telephone service is not as cheap or as good as, say, Sprint’s. It seems like a strange choice. You will not be able to get an iPhone unless you sign up for two years with Cingular.
- The battery is built in. If it turns out to be anything like the iPod, then when the battery runs out of power after a few years you will have to send your iPhone back to Apple. They will send back someone else’s used iPhone with a new battery.
- It has no games.
- Even though it has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, you will still need to hook it physically into a computer to download songs and so on.
By year’s end we will have a much better idea of how good it is, of its strengths and weaknesses.
See also:
Here’s the future of such phones:
http://www.theonion.com/video/new-google-phone-service-whispers-targeted-ads-dir,17470/
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