[Jason Dunn]

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=1

"The demo was not going well. Again. It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet." The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. "It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill," says someone who was in the meeting."


Photo by Landov

Love or hate it, Apple's iPhone shook up the North American wireless industry in a way no product before it had done. This Wired article is a superb piece of writing that delves into the guts of the troubled start the iPhone had, the negotiations they had with Cingular (now AT&T), and the price that both sides had to pay to have this product come to market. It's a fascinating read that's well worth your time.

The question for us Windows Mobile users is, has Apple paved the way for companies such as HTC to bring more tightly-controlled experiences to market, without so much interference from the wireless carriers? Perhaps, but there's still a long way to go. I was amazed when the HTC Touch came to markets across North America not only still branded as the HTC Touch, but also with it's very slick and simple Today screen plug-in intact, and not ruined by the wireless carrier selling the phone. On the other hand, we haven't seen features such as visual voice mail that require the low-level phone hardware and wireless network come to market for our platform.

The carriers are always desperate to avoid being just a "bit pipe", a carrier of voice and data bits, but Apple managed to convince AT&T to be exactly that. Can HTC, Motorola, or another Windows Mobile phone market convince another carrier to do the same?

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=1

"The demo was not going well. Again. It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet." The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. "It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill," says someone who was in the meeting."


Photo by Landov

Love or hate it, Apple's iPhone shook up the North American wireless industry in a way no product before it had done. This Wired article is a superb piece of writing that delves into the guts of the troubled start the iPhone had, the negotiations they had with Cingular (now AT&T), and the price that both sides had to pay to have this product come to market. It's a fascinating read that's well worth your time.

The question for us Windows Mobile users is, has Apple paved the way for companies such as HTC to bring more tightly-controlled experiences to market, without so much interference from the wireless carriers? Perhaps, but there's still a long way to go. I was amazed when the HTC Touch came to markets across North America not only still branded as the HTC Touch, but also with it's very slick and simple Today screen plug-in intact, and not ruined by the wireless carrier selling the phone. On the other hand, we haven't seen features such as visual voice mail that require the low-level phone hardware and wireless network come to market for our platform.

The carriers are always desperate to avoid being just a "bit pipe", a carrier of voice and data bits, but Apple managed to convince AT&T to be exactly that. Can HTC, Motorola, or another Windows Mobile phone market convince another carrier to do the same?

[Stinger]

To boss around the carriers, you need a killer product. A product so guaranteed to sell that the carriers will bend over backwards to sign it up.

How many phones have there been like that in the US market? As an outsider, I can only count the RAZR and iPhone in recent years.

What do they have in common? Fantastic industrial design and a good deal of hype. Both product were lacking in certain areas, but that never seemed to matter. All people saw was how gorgeous they looked (including the UI, in the case of the iPhone).

No Windows Mobile phone has managed such an aesthetically pleasing design so far. Some have been "quite nice", but nothing ahead of the game. For example, the HTC Touch is "quite nice", but it's still very plasticky. It doesn't feel like a premium product.

There's also the matter of positioning. Windows Mobile is still seen by Microsoft, the manufacturers and the carriers as an enterprise thing. Windows Mobile has been designed and marketed in that way since its creation and it's a self-perpetuating circle. Even recently Bill Gates said that Microsoft has no plans to make an iPhone rival.

But that's not to say that it's the only way for a manufacturer to make money. Nokia haven't released a high volume chic phone in a long, long time but are enjoying 39% market share and record profits. Sometimes being the carriers' bitch pays off. It certainly has for HTC.

[mbranscum]

Some things that made me switch from Smartphones and PPC devices to an iphone:

1. HTML mail - The absolute BEST presentation I've ever seen. I can live with IMAP Gmail with 15 min delay.

2. Safari Web Browser - All I can say is WOW. Amazing. Why can't Microsoft put out a competing product, now nearing a year since the iphonce release?

3. Battery life - Outstanding, even when I'm tied to WiFi half the day I still have 60-70% left at the end of the day.

4. Phone - One of the best for reception and clarity I have used, including my Blackberry devices.

With the SDK being released in February and todays announcement by IBM and Lotus to port to the iphone, I see many others doing the same thing.

Wake up Microsoft. Quit sitting on your hind quarters. You're losing ground.