Letters to the Editor
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I watched...
...the blow by blow podcast on engadget, and I really like using my mac, but I have to wonder how long we will see this swiss-army-knife of a phone at the full price. I know several people who have balked at the $499 price of a PS3, not because we can't afford it, but because it's not worth it. I am going to move away from cingular soon and I am frustrated by the over-featured or super-craptacular choices I have in the current market for $50 with a 2 year contract. I have an iPod, a Nintendo DS, and a Phone, and they all work fine, and if I lose one I'm not out $600. I'm waiting for version two in 2009, when I can pay what it's worth.
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Apple TV = joke
Mr. Manjoo seems to have taken a healthy swig of the Kool-Aid (or stuck his head too far into the Jobs Reality Distortion Field) when he states "Everything that's on your computer can now be played on your TV, while you're sitting at your couch, using a nice Apple remote."
Huh.
Per Apple (http://www.apple.com/appletv/), "Apple TV puts your iTunes library — movies, TV shows, music, and podcasts — plus movie trailers from Apple.com on your TV."
That sure as hell doesn't sound like 'everything on your computer' unless you are only referring to Mac users who only use iTunes for their media files. That probably covers 1/2 of 1% of all computer users. AppleTV sounds like a complete waste of time until Jobs and company offer a PVR solution that has equivalent functionality to SageTV or Windows Media Center (or heck, even the Xbox 360 if you can stand the heat and noise). Once they have that, will it be more elegant than other solutions? Probably. Will it be too late to the party? Almost certainly.
p.s. Is Mr. Manjoo going to talk about any other CES announcements (Windows Home Server springs to mind, as does the announced 1TB hard drives from Hitachi and Motorola's MOTORIZR Z6 phone - all of which are more interesting for a variety of reasons than the iPhone or AppleTV), or is he just going to provide free press for Apple?
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Uh
I totally don't know what that means , but I want it.
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More than a phone
I just watched the video of Job's Keynote and read the article by Farhad Manjoo. I'm uncertain of Manjoo's tone. He seems anti-Apple one minute and impressed the next. He seems to have a grudge against the iPod, for sure.
Fair enough, but I think Farhad completely missed the mark in his assessment of the iPhone. There is definitely a bigger picture here. Sure, Steve Jobs is a master salesman, but the potential for the iPhone is breathtaking. It's a computer that fits in the palm of your hand. It runs OS X. As another letter writer noted, it's got bluetooth built in. Get this thing hooked up to some peripherals and other devices, let software developers get their hands on it and create applications and you're going really see the phenomen Jobs spoke about.
$500 may be too much for a phone, I don't know, but it's a mistake to view this as just a phone. Its potential is huge.
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This couldn't be done with an unlocked phone ...
They're pushing the technology on the network side with a few of these features (eg visual voicemail), which is the sort of thing which requires a technology investment from the network providers.
If they sold an unlocked phone, some of these features wouldn't work with carriers who hadn't made sufficient upgrades. This would create a situation Apple hates: the end user experience is out of the control of the company. A lot of users would be unhappy because their experience out-of-the-box wasn't what was advertised by Apple, but there's nothing Apple could do about it.
While they could have picked T-Mobile instead of Cingular, Verizon's business model would requite them to cripple the phone; again, it's hard to see how Apple would be ok with that.
But to get the technology upgrades on the server side, nationwide, to ensure a smooth rollout, Apple almost certainly had to promise the network providers something. In this case, exclusivity.
I'm not anti-Cingular. I currently use Verizon. I'm concerned, because Cingular doesn't score particuarly well in most customer satisfaction surveys ... but I'm also not sure I need a phone with this much power yet.
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Steve, It's called Coltan, Baby
I am so sick to death of you, Mr. Jobs; you and your revolutionary gimicware. So now we have this $500 cell phone hooked up to cingular and nowhere any idea about dealing with the responsiblity you have to inform your adoring public about the devastation wrought on the Congo for coltan to run these babies your dream up.... why don't you wrap your brilliant mind around some concept that doesn't involve bogus genocide psych-ops fueled by our unrelenting quest for the nouveau gadget?
Oprah invested billions in a 5 star school in Africa. Surely, you can use your charisma, power and influence to inform, innovate and re-design reality ...
huh. steve? are you still in there?
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Music vs. Computing
I find it interesting that Mr. Manjoo would rather have his computer crash than his music player. He must take listening to music very seriously.
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Can't we fast track FCC approval on this thing?
A pretty good write-up by Manjoo, time will tell how this product fares. Some of the responses to this article border on the hysterical, seems that both Manjoo and Jobs often hit a nerve or two with some people. My guess it will sell very well. I use Cingular and haven't had any more problems with them than with other carriers I have used, cell coverage in places is just plain awful. This device does nothing to change that, but it completely blows away anything else out there in both form and function. A minor quibble about the " Put two fingers down and pinch them together to zoom out; tap twice to zoom in." From what I saw, for example with an image, you use either this pinching motion to zoom in and out OR you can tap the screen to effect the same response. Pretty ingenious. For the imaginative developers out there, this thing is an enormous opportunity.