[whydidnt]

Originally Posted by barky81

In fact, even though my Cingular 8125 does EVERYTHING the iPhone does, I recently bought a Zune...

So what makes you so sure people buying the iPhone won't do the same thing, but replace the Zune with the latest iPod?

I still say the biggest obstacle to success faced is the lack of hard buttons. Unless Apple's touch screen magic really is magic, people who are heavy phone/text users will NOT like the experience. It won't take long after release for word to get out to the masses that this is an issue.

What intrigues me about this device is the fact that Apple has proven that you CAN make a reasonably sized phone with a large hi-resolution screen, WiFi, Bluetooth AND include 8 GB of flash memory AND still sell said device for under $1,000. Are you listening MS & HTC? :bad-words:

[whydidnt]

Originally Posted by barky81

In fact, even though my Cingular 8125 does EVERYTHING the iPhone does, I recently bought a Zune...

So what makes you so sure people buying the iPhone won't do the same thing, but replace the Zune with the latest iPod?

I still say the biggest obstacle to success faced is the lack of hard buttons. Unless Apple's touch screen magic really is magic, people who are heavy phone/text users will NOT like the experience. It won't take long after release for word to get out to the masses that this is an issue.

What intrigues me about this device is the fact that Apple has proven that you CAN make a reasonably sized phone with a large hi-resolution screen, WiFi, Bluetooth AND include 8 GB of flash memory AND still sell said device for under $1,000. Are you listening MS & HTC? :bad-words:

[Tye]

Originally Posted by barky81

Sure, Apple will sell millions of these...but at what cost to their current business?

Don't know, but Jobs--love him or hate him--is not a stupid guy.

Originally Posted by barky81

Once the iPodders start buying iPhones, they WON'T be in the market for annual upgrades to new iPods.

Why not? I generally buy one PPC per year and one phone per year. Combined, they are about the same price as this.

Originally Posted by barky81

Each $600 iPhone (revenue split with Cingular) will wipe out at least two or three iPod upgrades (revenue retained by Apple).

Agreed. And I don't know the financial details, but as before, Jobs has done a pretty good job while at the helm.

Originally Posted by barky81

I would assume the v2 iPhone will show significant storage increase.

Agreed again, but at 8gb, it's enough storage for many people. I do know some who carry around 60gb of music but I know a lot more who carry only 4gb. I have a 2gb card in my PPC and it carries a lot of stuff! 8gb would be a huge leap for me.

Originally Posted by barky81

Biggest surprise of the launch? The absence of a pair of bluetooth stereo headphones that support phone features too. Well, I guess they held those back till next year...seriously, Apple's just about shot it wad as far as future announcements go.

Agreed, but developing this thing couldn't have been easy. It probably took a lot of resources. Accessories will come out by the aftermarket guys.

Originally Posted by barky81

What is left? A Tablet? Ultraportable? Everything else is incremental.

Good point, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Personally, I don't see the iPhone as a small announcement, even though before it was unveiled I didn't really care.

Originally Posted by barky81

But if Apple thinks people will swap out $600 phones more often than every two years (contracts are contracts), they are about to find out phones are different.

I strongly disagree with this. A lot of people swap phone/PDA combos often, even at the expensive prices.

Originally Posted by barky81

In fact, even though my Cingular 8125 does EVERYTHING the iPhone does, I recently bought a Zune...

I have a PPC6700 which does pretty much everything I want it to do too. I agree with you there. My problem with the PPC WM5 platform is that it's still not easy to do a lot of this stuff. It works, yes. But it's not always simple. That's one place where I hope Apple will leap ahead.

barky81, I promise I was not picking on your post. You just happened to hit on a number of items that I've wanted to comment on.
I'm not an "Apple Fanboy." The only Apple product I've ever owned is Newtons. You could, however, call me a "Newton Fanboy."

[zetsurin]

Originally Posted by barky81

Sure, Apple will sell millions of these...but at what cost to their current business?

I'm afraid you wrote that post looking backwards, not forwards. There is a lot of potential for further revenue streams with these phones. Wait and see. But to look backwards and keep falling back on your core rather than being forward looking is a very Microsoft thing to do. Take a look at the front page of this site right now, only one thing looks new and refreshing while the rest are all 'seen it before' devices. You want history just to keep repeating on itself? What a yawn.

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by Tye

Wasn't that an April Fools joke?

It is - see my RAM-related posts, as far as Linux / pdaXrom on the Zaurus is conerned, here.

[T-Will]

Originally Posted by Marty1781

Other things that bother me about the iPhone:
- no wireless download of music from the iTunes store. This would have a really killer feature for the iPhone. The ability to get new music on-demand wherever you are when you want it, that would have been awesome and I think would have been enough to convince some people to spend the $600 on this device. Apple missed a real opportunity there.

QFT! I was getting ready to do a post about this. I find it hard to believe they would leave something like this out, they do still have 6 months to continue software development, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's included when the iPhone is officially released.

[barky81]

Originally Posted by whydidnt

So what makes you so sure people buying the iPhone won't do the same thing, but replace the Zune with the latest iPod?

Ahem, first because there is a difference between niche and mass markets...PPCs are niche, iPods are mass market...

Second, I guess I left the obvious unstated in my earlier post: I bought the Zune because I wanted a mobile music subscription service. I briefly considered Yahoo Unlimited to Go, etc. on my 8125, but space is an issue. My current 2 gig card is about full (I convert MCE dvrms files for viewing as well).

The service pricing is about the same ($14-$15 a month), but with the Zune I get the extra space, with the room for my converted TV shows from my MCE2005 as well. So basically, I eval'ed myself into a Zune due to the lack of a 20+gig PPC phone....

Unless Apple gives away multi-device iTunes subscriptions, how could the average user justify buying music for 2 devices?

A side note on What's Wrong with the Zune:

1) No Audible book support (bad)

2) No Bluetooth (worse)
The Zune cries out for a stereo bluetooth headset that pairs with it AND your phone at the same TIME! That's what Bluetooth was always supposed to be!

2) They are targeting the wrong audience in kewl 20s/30s somethings (unforgiveable).
The Zune is the perfect Teen/Tweens tool--because it is subscription-based and wireless. High school kids can't afford to buy every song they want, and they have all day to trade tracks temporarily (plus they could afford $15/month--that's one CD off of iTunes a month). Also, they are obsessively interested in what each other is listening too...

[whydidnt]

Originally Posted by T-Will

QFT! I was getting ready to do a post about this. I find it hard to believe they would leave something like this out, they do still have 6 months to continue software development, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's included when the iPhone is officially released.

I would -- wouldn't that require a rewrite of iTunes? Admittedly, I haven't used iTunes/iPod a lot, but it seems like iTunes controls everything and the iPod is just there for listening songs added/indexed via iTunes. iTunes doesn't seem to be built for true two way syncing of data. Can you add a song to an iPod today without iTunes? If so, does iTunes ever see it and add it to your library?

[T-Will]

Here's an iPhone hands-on article that clears up some questions:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...th-the-iphone/

Regarding the screen:

Apple went through numerous iterations of the glass surface, trying to find one that’s not too slick or too rough, or that shows grease and fingerprints too much. You still get finger streaks, but they’re relatively subtle and a quick wipe on your sleeve takes care of them.

[T-Will]

Originally Posted by whydidnt

I would -- wouldn't that require a rewrite of iTunes? Admittedly, I haven't used iTunes/iPod a lot, but it seems like iTunes controls everything and the iPod is just there for listening songs added/indexed via iTunes. iTunes doesn't seem to be built for true two way syncing of data. Can you add a song to an iPod today without iTunes? If so, does iTunes ever see it and add it to your library?

You're probably right, but wouldn't it be ideal if Apple stored your music catalog online, allowing you to login to anyone's iTunes/iPod/iPhone and stream your music collection.

Or maybe they could make it so once you purchase a song on your iPhone, you sync back up to your PC and it flags the newly purchased song and automatically downloads to iTunes.

I'm sure Apple could figure out a way if they wanted.

[whydidnt]

Originally Posted by barky81

Ahem, first because there is a difference between niche and mass markets...PPCs are niche, iPods are mass market...

In the context of this discussion I don't see the difference. Your comparing the iPod to you PPC, but you should be comparing the iPhone to the PPC. The iPhone is going to be used by people while they are on the go with their phone. The iPod is going to be used by people with larger libraries/needs for times when they don't need to be tied to their phone.

Originally Posted by barky81

Unless Apple gives away multi-device iTunes subscriptions, how could the average user justify buying music for 2 devices?

I could be wrong, but I thought Apple already allowed up to 4 devices to use the same library/downloaded tunes. Can someone correct me if I'm wrong on this? [EDIT] I just checked the online FAQ at Apple. It looks like you can share your library with up to 5 computers and each computer can have multiple iPods connected to it with no mention of a limit there. I don't see an additional financial burden from owning two separate iPod devices, at least as far as music purchases are concerned. [EDIT]

I'm not one that's drooling over the iPhone, I do think that this device can be a nice tool to push MS and it's OEM's to recognize an under served market however. MS has been too busy trying to segment the market to realize that consumers would love an all-in one phone/camera/media player/portable game machine with lots of storage space in a simple easy to use package.

Instead of leveraging PPC and enhancing the OS and included media player enough to fit this niche they have been busy dumbing it down (Smartphone edition) or eliminating functionality (Portable Media Centers).