At the Steve Jobs keynote speech at Macworld this morning PST, he
announced "three revolutionary new products". An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile
communicator. But turns out it's all one device: the fabled iPhone!
We'll have extended analysis about this later today, but for now let's review the news. Here's the feature list:
- Instead of a standard keypad, the iPhone uses a patented Apple technology called "multi-touch". It doesn't use a stylus, has "multi-finger gestures" and claims to ignore unintended touches. Jobs compared it to two other revolutionary Apple UIs - the mouse on the Macintosh and the click wheel on the iPod.
- 3.5 inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard.
- iPhone runs OS X, Apple's standard operating system; according to Engadget's superb coverage: "It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the cripled stuff you find on most phones, these are real desktop applications."
- Syncs with iTunes: "iTunes is going to sync all your media to your iPhone -- but also a ton of data. Contacts, calendars, photos, notes, bookmarks, email accounts..."
- Apple's design chops is all over the iPhone: "3.5-inch screen, highest resolution screen we've ever shipped, 160ppi. There's only one button, the "home" button [...] thinner than any smartphone..."
- 2 megapixel camera built in
- Outstanding media features - scroll through your music, widescreen video, album art, built-in speaker...
- Sync your iPhone with your PC or Mac (for contacts etc)
- Standard phone features - SMS, calendar, photos, etc. With photos there is a motion sensor that rotates photos when you turn the phone.
- Visual voicemail
- Rich HTML emails - works with any IMAP or POP3 email service. This spells trouble for Blackberry!
- The Safari browser runs on iPhone - "it's the first fully-usable browser on a cellphone." Jobs shows the NYT running in the iPhone - the actual website, not a puny WAP version.
- Google Maps
- Widgets that connect to Internet seamlessly (via WiFi and EDGE)
- Free "push" IMAP email from Yahoo
In terms of phone dimensions, iPhone is a quad-band GSM + EDGE phone (no 3G, notes Engadget). It has WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0.
Apple + Google + Yahoo
Google CEO Eric Schmidt
and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang both made an appearance in Steve Jobs' keynote. Schmidt is an
Apple board member and had this to say:
"From a google perspective we've pushed very hard to partner with Apple and working with many many different data service -- Steve showed a little bit. It comes together seamlessly. This is the first of a whole new generation..."
Jerry Yang then said:
"One of the things we're going to be doing is launching some of our new services , Yahoo Go and One Search on this phone. Mail is a killer app on the phone, Yahoo is trying to redesign the web and email experience on mobile devices."
Summary
Steve Jobs said about the iPhone: "it's the internet in your pocket for the first time ever." He also called it "the ultimate digital device". A 4GB model will cost $499 and an 8GB model will retail for $599. It will be available in June in the US (on the Cingular network), Europe in the 4th quarter, Asia in 2008.
With a desktop-like UI and partnerships with two of the Big 3 Internet companies (Google and Yahoo), Apple is really upping the ante in the Mobile Web market. I think this will finally propel mobile Internet into the mainstream. Maybe 2007 will be the year of the Mobile Web after all!
