I always love big Apple events. They never do things quietly. Leading up to MacWorld every year there are rumors flying like crazy. Everyone is waiting with bated breath for what will come off of Steve’s lips. iPhone rumors have been flying for over a year and now it’s here.
This thing does it all. It’s an iPod, it’s a cell phone, it’s a camera. The thing has a wide touchscreen that automatically knows whether it should be in landscape or portrait mode. It runs OS X, so you can have real applications like Mail and Safari, not neutered ones. It has wifi, bluetooth, and EDGE: It’s always connected. It’s got a 5 hour battery life while doing video, photos, surfing, calls and 16 hours of just audio. It’s got 8GB (or 4GB) of storage. This thing is fricken amazing.
The problem; it cost’s $600 for the 8GB version and $500 for the 4GB version (prices with a 2 year contract) and you can only get it on Cingular. And not until June! Steve, you had me up to that.
The iPhone, it really does sound great, but I think they took a huge gamble by going exclusively with Cingular. People don’t like to be locked down like that. I predict they work something out with the other carriers within a year.
My big question after the MacWorld keynote was that’s it? I really want to see a large iPod like the iPhone. Touchscreen iPod with wifi and bluetooth? You could get rid of that big dock connector on the bottom and just add a charging port which could be mini-USB 2.0. Ahh…what could be.
If you didn’t notice Apple’s stock (APPL) took a 7+ points (roughly 8.5%) hike today. Damn! If I’d only had a spare $10k yesterday!
And it can run Dashboard Widgets! Widgets have been available for the desktop Mac OS X since April last year, and now they have gone mobile. This is actually one of the most advanced, and probably will be on of the phones most used features. Just think about all the thousands and thousands of Widgets that are already available! This is the largest application bank any phone have ever seen.
And I just loves the sensor that detect when you held your iPhone up to your ear, and automatically shuts off the screen to save power. This is an amassing feature, and I am astonished that no one else have done this!
Except it is a crippled version of OS X. You can’t install your own programs, probably not widgets either.
Also, it won’t sync over wifi or bluetooth, so you still need the dock. Apple should’ve learned from MS’s pile of bullzune (I’m using zune as a euphemism for shit these days, but in this case it’s more of a pun) and let the thing sync wirelessly.