So, you thought you wanted an iPhone? Well, we’re here to tell you that that’s so last week
Peter Wilson
Sun
The new Apple iPhone was unveiled Jan. 9 at MacWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. Photograph by : Paul Sakuma, Associated Press
So, you thought you wanted an iPhone. So attractive, so neat, so thin, so easy to use, so darned iPod-like. It sings, it dances, it gathers e-mail, it sends messages, it makes phone calls. And it’s aimed at soccer moms, a largely untapped market for smart phones.
Well, we’re here to tell you that that’s so last week.
Sure, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave a demo of the iPhone at the Macworld Expo on Jan. 9, there was an almost universal outpouring — at least in the mainstream media — of unfettered gush.
In what Newsweek described as “Web-exclusive commentary”, the word was that “. . . Apple’s relentless focus on simplicity, efficiency, utility and fun makes the iPhone seem a different species than its competitor — something more personal, more approachable, and ultimately, more desirable than anything else out there.”
Yes, but . . . .
Within a few hours, the undercurrent of mumblings of disappointment and betrayal had begun, initially from the blogs, and then picked up elsewhere.
Among the complaints:
– Instead of being available to use on any network — as pre-announcement rumour-mongers had hoped — the iPhone was tied in the U.S. to a two-year contract with Cingular. Special efforts have been made to make sure that the phones can’t be unlocked.
(A small aside here. The only company in Canada that has a GSM network, which is what the iPhone uses, is Rogers. And all Rogers will say is that they don’t comment on unannounced products. But they do at the same time — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — tend to mention that exclusive GSM thing.)
– Apple will control what you can have on your iPhone. There will be no outside applications allowed, at least initially. And while Jobs and his company may eventually allow developers to come up with apps for the iPhone, they — and Cingular — will have approval over what will make it on board.
As Steve Jobs told Newsweek: “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform . . . you need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast Network go down because some application messed up.”
– The iPhone’s music-playing functions are crippled by what Apple calls FairPlay, so that if you pay for and download songs from the iTunes store, you can only use them on the iPhone and iPod (unless you’re willing to make a huge effort to do otherwise). Why anyone would expect this to be different for the iPhone, nobody has quite explained.
– The non-tactile keyboard will make it difficult for people to use because you need a feel-element to be able to type accurately. Some commentators have gone so far as to say that the iPhone’s set-up effectively will make it impossible to use by the visually impaired.
– The brand name iPhone , at least in the U.S., is owned by Cisco, which has filed suit to this effect.
– The cost of building the most expensive iPhone (to be sold for $599 US) has been estimated by tech analysts iSuppli to be just $280. That means that Apple, which won’t allow for discounting by wireless firms, should make a big profit on the sale of each phone.
And so on.
Of course some of this — if you’re looking for a conspiracy theory — might have to do with the fact that the iPhone is viewed as a major threat to both wireless providers and other phone manufacturers. But the fiercely independent bloggers seem highly unlikely to have been influenced by this.
The general tenor of the blogging seems to be one of disappointment — mainly at the missed opportunities to free up wireless phones from the grasp of the network operators, who Jobs once described as “orifices”, but has since learned he has to appease (okay, get along with) to get his iPhone readily into the hands of the public.
Nobody can really tell whether any of this negativity — largely confined to bloggers talking to one another in what has often been described as the echo chamber of the Net — will have any effect on wide consumer acceptance of the iPhone.
Certainly not many soccer moms are readers of tech blogs.
And, according to press accounts, on the Apple conference call with financial analysts on Wednesday, following record quarterly earnings and profit, there was little else talked about but the iPhone, with Apple officials sticking to the company line that they just announced the product and it’s too soon to tell how it will do.
Since its announcement, Apple shares have shot by as much as 10 per cent, which would tend to indicate that perhaps not everyone is worried by the recent outburst of negativity.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007