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Apple’s gigantic quarter, iPhone vs. Android, and the new MacBooks. Listen in!

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• Nearly 7 Million iPhones sold last quarter
• iPhone hits Walmart
• The Competition
  • iPhone v Android: Cloud Sync and general Android Talk
  • BB Development, not so dead
• 3G Unlock Update
• State of the Apps
• New MacBooks
• Works with iPhone Headphones
• Get those AC Adapters switched out

How To

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Community

Thanks to Frank and Nick for contacting us!

Top 5 Must Have Jailbreak apps

• Working with Exchange
• Want: VNC type deal for iPhone — Like a reverse of Windows Mobile on iPhone video proves
• QuickPWN help with Vista

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast.

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge
• Relaxation Spa Treatment by Dan the Automator via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• Wataridori 2 by Cornelius via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• DC 3000 by Thievery Corporation via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Phone different Podcast #29

[Here's a bonus TiPb of the Iceberg for you this week, courtesy of the humongous news coming out of Apple's Quarterly Conference Call]

Tuesday’s news that the iPhone has been selling well stupendously well, in case you weren’t paying attention, was really big. It’s tough to express how big. Some of the bullet points:

• They exceeded their sales goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008 already, with the holiday season still ahead of them
• They sold nearly 7 million iPhones in three months.
• They sold more iPhones than RIM sold BlackBerrys (yes, that’s the proper plural spelling)
• Based on revenue from iPhones, Apple was the #3 cellphone maker last quarter, behind only Nokia and Samsung.
• They achieved all this in 15 months.

Now, there are caveats to these numbers: there was pent-up demand for the iPhone 3G so these numbers almost surely won’t hold; RIM’s sales were depressed because of delays releasing the BlackBerry Bold. Don’t let these caveats mislead you, though, what Apple did with the iPhone 3G in the past three months is unprecedented in the mobile industry, it was pretty much unprecedented in any industry.

The most recent numbers we have show that RIM and the BlackBerry enjoy the undisputed lead in US Smartphone marketshare, while Nokia has the undisputed lead worldwide. Apple may have its work cut out for it going after Nokia, but it seems very clear that they are on track to seriously challenge RIM in the US market.

What’s amazing about that possibility is that RIM and Apple have very divergent strategies. RIM has dozens of different BlackBerry models aimed at nearly every demographic imaginable: from the Pearl Flip and Pearl for the low end all the way up to the Bold and Storm for the high end. They have phones available on every carrier. Most importantly, they have practically locked-up the enterprise market and are as effective as anybody (but Apple, perhaps) at targeting the consumer market.

To counter that broad, multi-pronged strategy, Apple has one model on a single carrier. Steve Jobs:

Well, I wasn’t alive then but from everything I heard, Babe Ruth had only one homerun, he just kept hitting it over and over again. So I don’t think that — I think the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties. But as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing and most of the competitors in this phone business do not really have much experience in a software platform business. So we are extremely comfortable with our strategy, our product strategy going forward and we approach it as a software platform company, which is pretty different than most of our competitors. [Seeking Alpha]

Apple’s dedicated to presenting the iPhone as a single platform as much as possible. That strategy appears to be working. Not only is it easier for developers to target a single device (or, if they do indeed introduce an iPhone HD, a single device with multiple resolutions), it’s radically easier for Apple to continue to develop the platform.

RIM’s platform challenges are much bigger. As Mike and I discussed in this week’s Podcast (forthcoming!), RIM’s BlackBerry Operating System may need to be completely overhauled in the coming years, but the recent BB Developer Conference did show that it has more legs than I previously gave it credit for. Still, BlackBerrys have a confusing array of Operating System versions that vary from device to device, from carrier to carrier, and from region to region. On top of that, they’ve recently added the Storm to the mix, which features a touchscreen and requires a different UI.

Although RIM does have an aggressive development roadmap that’s clearly a response to Apple, it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to roll out their improvements quickly enough to counter the iPhone onslaught.

In short — Apple has not only hit the ground running like a Formula 1 racer, they also are not towing a trailer full of backwards compatibility and multiple-device compatibility issues. If this were the entire story, I would have little hesitation in simply saying “Game Over, Apple Wins.”

But there is one area where Apple is still going to have a tough time of it: the enterprise market. There are a couple of reasons for this, but both of them have to do with companies feeling ‘locked in’ to the BlackBerry ecosystem. The first (and perhaps smaller) lock-in is BlackBerry Messenger, a BlackBerry-specific IM-like protocol that does indeed see heavy use. Our friend CrackBerry Kevin noted that while he was in New York he met a ton of people who purchased BlackBerrys specifically so they would be “in” with all the Wall Street types who use this form of communication extensively.

The second, and bigger, lock-in is the array of features tied to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Internet Server (BES and BIS). This includes not only push email and PIM, but comprehensive device management, enterprise applications, and (soon) a protocol to push any information whatsoever to a BlackBerry (much like Apple’s now-late push notifications). Much has been said about the iPhone’s Exchange support, but push email via Exchange isn’t a magic bullet. In fact, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has had Exchange support for several years now and they recently introduced MSCMDM, which offers comparable device management to the BES. These features haven’t so much helped Windows Mobile gain traction as they have helped stem the bleeding. Of course, we can have another discussion about why Windows Mobile isn’t gaining traction against RIM (Hello UI), but for now I’ll just make the smaller point that simple Exchange integration doesn’t cut it.

Apple also has not traditionally be able to ‘get’ enterprise on the Mac front either — fundamentally many see them as a company that’s not focused on the enterprise. That may continue to be the case — in fact I think it will be — so don’t expect RIM to be forced to close up shop as quickly as Apple has established themselves. This is a fight that will go on for awhile.

Wither Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Android? I honestly believe all of the above have the potential to become more than 15%-ish players in the US smartphone market, but I don’t think any of them will be able to pull it off in the next year or so. Heck, even if they never pull it off, 15% of the US smartphone market is totally legitimate given its rapid growth. But for right now, the big boys are Apple and RIM.

One last thing to mention: as John Gruber notes in his excellent analysis, if you dig a bit into the numbers it becomes clear that the iPhone is soon going to be Apple’s biggest business and the platform will soon become their most important platform:

So the question is: Despite continuing strong iPod sales and record-breaking Mac sales, how long until the iPhone is undeniably the primary product and platform made by Apple?
My answer: Not long.
And I think Apple’s executive team sees it the same way.

Agreed. Looking back, it’s amazing we didn’t see this coming the moment Mac OSX became a great platform with 10.2. The Mac is an elegant operating system with a creative and engaged developer community; it’s only sold on incredibly good hardware; it ‘just works’ and rarely crashes. That’s exactly what has long been needed in the smartphone market.

Whereas the Mac faces a market where the superstructural elements prevent it from rapidly gaining marketshare, the smartphone market is much more fluid. It’s no surprise that the iPhone is coming on strong when you think of it in this light. It seems surprising because we assume that the smartphone market is like any other market that has come before — it’s not. People can switch phones more easily than they can switch computers if only because of the lower prices, and they do.

Companies are different, though, they hold on to their platforms — both PC and Smartphone — for 4-5 years before they consider a change. Now that we have number portability, the last real thing keeping people from switching smartphone platforms every few years is Enterprise lock-in. RIM’s managed to get it, Microsoft less so, and so the question becomes twofold:

1. Will that lock-in hold?
2. If the iPhone can’t crack Enterprise, will the consumer / small business market be enough to push them up to #1?

The answers are “For at least a few years” and “Yes.”

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Marketshare: Will Apple Take the #1 Spot From RIM’s Blackberry? – TiPb of the Iceberg

In the Phone different forums, surur (with the help of marcol) has posted up some fine analysis on the question of all those missing iPhones we mentioned a couple weeks back. The question: whether or not iPhone sales had slumped over the holidays (they didn’t), but more importantly, how big is the gap between what Apple says they’ve sold and what AT&T says they’ve sold. As you can see in the graph above, it’s a big gap that’s getting bigger.

I’d previously doubted that a significant part of that gap was unlocked iPhones and unsold inventory. It seemed like the 1.5 million gap had to be some error in reporting or other such strangeness. But based on what analysis is available, it’s starting to look like “unlocked and unsold iPhones” are exactly what makes up that gap.

The real question, then, is what the ratio is of unlocked to unsold. Actually, the real question is what does this gap tell us about how Apple is going to be able to talk about the iPhone. Read on for the answers to both questions, after the break!

BusinessWeek has done some analysis. Once you factor out the iPhones sold “legit” via European carriers, the data suggests that as many as 800,000 iPhones have been purchased, unlocked, and shipped overseas (many to China). It also suggests that somewhere around 400,000 iPhones are sitting in inventory somewhere. That’s an awfully high number (at least for Apple), but no big deal compared to many other of AT&T’s SKUs. It basically works out to around 3 weeks of inventory, which is again slightly high but not at panic levels — though one wonders how that inventory of 8 gig iPhones will move now that the 16 gig has been released.

I make no claims about the accuracy of the above numbers, but I think they’re fairly close. Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to make that disclaimer?

The thing that I’d like to see, and that I doubt I’ll ever get, is a clear explanation from Apple. The gap seems to have given investors the willies, but it’s not exactly going to calm anybody down if Apple talks directly about two things that look bad on their face: unsold inventory and iPhones that aren’t bringing in residual income via carrier agreements. Like so many companies who have to sell via carriers, Apple is in the awkward position of not being able to be as transparent as they otherwise might be regarding the financials behind their product.

Again, “not being transparent” is nothing new for Apple. They don’t, for example, make a habit of detailing exactly what ratio of the types iPods go into their sales numbers. The iPhone situation feels different, though, because Apple has made a deal with AT&T that may last for as many as 5 years. The confusion here feels, heart-sinkingly, much like the confusion that Palm sometimes is forced into because of their deals with various carriers.

The whole situation solidifies my feeling that Apple missed an opportunity to shake up the wireless industry business-wise in a way that benefits consumers. What’s best for consumers is to make carriers into dumb tubes for our data and calls. Though I can’t fully fault Apple for not trying to take down that system, I do wish they hadn’t introduced another layer of confusion and payola “synergy” into it.

The counter-argument is that if you have no choice but to make a deal with the Mafia, you might as well get a piece of the action. I have to say it’s a compelling argument and I can’t pretend I would have done differently in Apple’s place. At least we know that Google’s demands for openness on the new wireless spectrum auction will have to be met. As soon as their deal with AT&T allows it, Apple needs to jump on the open wireless access bandwagon with Google.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Why the Missing iPhones Really Matter

Holy smokes! Apple has put a $200 price cut on the 8 GB iPhone, and dropped the 4GB version altogether. That’s right, the 8GB iPhone is now $399. Where do I line up for my $200 check? I’m equal parts filled with rage for paying a $200 early adopter fee, and equal parts filled with glee for a $200 price cut. I’m glad that it makes the iPhone that much more accessible for everyone else. I just feel a little sore when I sit, that’s all.

I have colleagues that believe the price cut is a portent of a hardware refresh. I have a hard time believing Apple would refresh their iPhone hardware so soon after launch, but I should float the idea out as speculation. I believe a 3G version is possible, perhaps in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2008. The part of me that hopes I’m wrong is the part of me that wants my iPhone to be new forever. Sigh

There’s an iTunes update tonight that will bring Ringtones support. For a select portion of their music catalog (about 500,000 songs altogether, or 8% of the songs available on iTunes), you can make a ringtone if you’ve already purchased the song. All in all, the song to play on the iPod and the song to play as a ringtone is $1.98. Song portion: $.99, same as always. Ringtone: $.99. I think the extra fee is for the ‘public performance’ licensing aspect of ringtones. It will be interesting to see if the iTunes update breaks iToner, iFuntastic, or the indomitable iPhoneRingtoneMaker. Let’s hope not.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store will come to the iPhone in an update later this month. Look for it on a Tuesday afternoon this month, I’d bet. You will be able to purchase any music from the iTunes store and download it via wi-fi. I doubt you will be able to purchase it via EDGE. After all, it’s not the iTunes Wireless Music Store. Why not, though? It’s easier to say, and less cumbersome to type.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music store will also be available from a bunch of Starbucks in most areas by 2009. The Starbucks in the larger top-ten cities in the US will get the update treatment first, and Starbucks figures they’ll have “most major metro areas” by late 2008. Um, I could rollout a storewide wi-fi network faster than that.

In other iPod news, Steve announced the iPod sister to the iPhone, the iPhone touch (8GB for $299 and 16GB is $399), to be available later this month. It’s slightly smaller, you’ll note from the picture above, and its application functionality has obviously not been totally disclosed. Notably missing from the iPod Touch thus far is a notes app and a maps app…. Hmmm.

The iPod, newly rechristened the iPod Classic, saw updates bringing a new, drastically thinner 80GB version ($249) and a thinner-than-the-previously-thickest 80GB version is the 160 GB version ($349).

The new iPod Nano, regarded by many as an ugly duckling, gets the full iPod treatment. It gains a video-quality screen, and is available in 4GB ($149) and 8GB ($199) versions, and it still works with the Nike+iPod sport kit. As you can see in the picture from Apple’s website above, it’s a little wee thing, absolutely tiny.

Huh. Apple’s iPod lineup looks like a steamroller right now. The Zune, Creative Zen, Sony Walkman line, et al, all look like bumpy roads waiting to be flattened this holiday season.

[via, via, via]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

8GB iPhone: $399, Ringtones

Apple is hosting another media event today. iPod Nanos are expected, and they look drastically different than the current nano. Not everyone is happy with the new look, but from what I can see it looks pretty functional. I think I’m withholding judgment until I’ve seen what all of their iPod lineup looks like.

Meanwhile, ThinkSecret basically guarantees touchscreen iPods. They also say the iPod nano, featured in the above Gizmodo link, will pack some seriously updated iPod software, and it will be great; it will be revolutionary. Or evolutionary. One or the other, really.

Please note that the screenshots from ThinkSecret above include albums from the Beatles that aren’t yet available in the iTunes Store.

Microsoft always seems to pop up with a little snippet of news on event days like this. I think they do this so they can play the ’sour grapes’ role of the day, now hints that making a Zune phone is ‘not unreasonable.’ This is more or less the opposite of what CEO Steve Ballmer said at the D5 conference, so I’m glad to see that they’re still talking from both sides of their mouth. They’re champs of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Emphasis on the ‘uncertainty’ part here. And now you know why they play the sour grapes role — it gets them in the news. But everyone knows somebody that can’t tell the difference between negative attention and positive attention, and it’s not like there’s surging demand for a Zune phone, though I’m sure Windows Mobile users would be happy for the extra functionality.

But back in focus, there’s no shortage of hype — read a paragraph and you can see why Apple’s stock is so volatile after announcements. Taken from Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge:

I seriously believe tomorrow is going to be different. I think it’s going to be the day when iPod die-hards, technology geeks, and mainstreamers alike are all going to be genuinely excited by what Apple is going to show. In short, if the release of the iPod mini signaled the start of Apple’s dominance of the digital music player business, and the nano and 5G signaled the end for most of its small competitors and beginning of its video initiative, tomorrow is going to be the final nail in the coffin for Microsoft, Sony, and the bigger players as well. Yes, even with their recent announcements. The only people who will be upset are those who aren’t already on the bandwagon, or the few who (sorry, NBC) jumped off early and got hit by it.

You know though, the scary thing is that he could just as well be right. John Gruber thinks so, so it must be true.

And in other news, T3 reports that a 3G version of the iPhone will be announced today. I think that’s a pipe dream; there’s no way Apple would update a flagship product 2 months after it came out for the first time. That would flat-out anger the almost-1-million purchasers of an iPhone here in the U.S.A.

Of course, any time Apple updates iTunes, it’s always possible that they will also update the iPhone, so I’ll be keeping my ear close to the news to see what they have planned. There’s plenty of speculation for iPhone Games and ringtones. And it’s not just the iPhone Ranch that’s expecting it, it’s also the New York Post.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Today’s Media Event Roundup

iPhoneSIMfree.com chose CNN as their 2nd news outlet that got to verify their iPhone software unlock method. The good news is that CNN re-verified what Engadget already verified. So yeah, what we thought was true before? We were right. It looks like they’ve set the cost of the software unlock pretty low — $36 US each for each block of 50 licenses, and the price drops to $25 if you buy 5000+ licenses. The licenses are supposed to be available as of today, though all’s quiet on their website.

That’s right, they’re not going to sell to the end user. And since the price point is now available, end users won’t be willing to pay too much past that for the unlocking software. My guess is that they want to avoid that AT&T lawsuit, and their law-talkin’ guy thinks that this method will be their DMCA loophole. iPhoneSIMfree can distribute the software to other folks who then assume the legal risk of a lawsuit for distributing software that bypasses a security measure.

Engadget notes that due to the way this deal is set up, the best way to not distribute this software is to either

1. Send your iPhone in to be unlocked, or
2. buy a new iPhone that they’ve unlocked.

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This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhoneSIMfree: Staying in the News

Michael Ducker is formerly Senior Editor of one of our sibling sites, TreoCentral.com. He now works at Synthesis Studios, a Cambridge, Massachusetts product design and consulting firm with specialties in embedded and mobile computing. Michael can be reached through his personal website, miradu.com, or by email at miradu@miradu.com.

Introduction

When I watched Steve Jobs introduce the iPhone six months ago at MacWorld, of course I was caught in his reality distortion field, but some skepticism remained. Surely this would be an incredible device, but would everything come together such that I’d actually want to use it over my trustworthy Treo? The answer, after 72 hours of using it, is a handsdown “absolutely, yes.” Apple has introduced the age of the smartphone to normal people, a not-so-simple task that competitors like Palm and Microsoft have been trying to do for nearly a decade.

I could go on and on about the iPhone’s strengths (which are myriad) especially concerning the hardware. Taking the device out at parties, I was the center of attention for hours on end, and everyone in my young twenties age group was shocked at the size of the device, the clarity of the screen, and the intuitive emotive interface (what other device do you stroke to communicate with? sorry HTC touch, you’re just not an iPhone). It seemed that most people assumed the iPhone would be about the size of a Treo, a big brick that made you look like a super nerd. Instead, Apple successfully created a form factor, complete with all the requisite gloss, to attract and impress the crowd of normal users.

But a big Apple fanboy article isn’t the intent for this essay, as it would not add much to the crush of articles gushing about feature after feature throughout the web. Instead, I want to try to answer the questions of “Why is this important?”, “What needs to be improved,” and (I can’t help it so I’ll be brief) “What did Apple do right?”.

Like the SAT, easiest questions come first.

What did Apple do right?

1. Copy the Treo.

Palm did an incredible job at figuring out how to make a good interface for a phone, and Apple copied it, straight up. As a consumer, I’m happy, but I certainly feel bad for Palm’s team. The genius ringer switch, the icon based home screen, automatic parsing of phone numbers and email addresses, threaded SMS, and especially the amazing in-call interface (including three-way calling); they all remind you of that little keyboard-based brick we used to love.

Of course, Apple did make some improvements. The in-phone interface’s buttons are bigger and shinier, and the proximity sensor to protect the screen from being used by your face is pure simplicity. It works. It’s great.

2. Touching is fun.

Touching is fun. Stroking is better. Apple has capitalized on its multitouch interface, without having too many gestures to confuse users (double tap, single tap, flick, pinch, swipe). Multitouch is great, but Apple took the next step in making this interface incredibly intuitive by providing feedback when you try to scroll/flick/zoom past the boundaries. Instead of simply ignoring your gesture, the iPhone will actually continue to scroll the whole window, or zoom in on the photo when there is no more zoom, but with a very high damping force that makes you feel that the device is resisting your continued motions. When you let go, the window bounces back to its boundary position. It’s extremely intuitive, and is used in nearly every application to great effect. Without this feedback, I am certain that users would become quickly frustrated at why their flicks and swipes weren’t working.

3. Camera.

My pet peeve with normal cellphones is watching crappy interface after crappy interface make its way into phones. It is painful to watch my mother struggle with her Motorola RAZR and have no easy way to get her photos off of that device. With that, I find Apple’s one-button camera a refreshing take. This is what the interface to mobile cameras should be like. One button, take the photo, and it’s ready to view. Sync to iPhoto, and the photo is on your computer. This feature alone will be a selling point for many consumers, especially the non-technological ones. I disagree with others online who think that a cellphone camera needs white settings, focus settings, and all the other software junk. How many normal users actually use them? I don’t think they do, that’s what a real camera is for.

That said, Apple painfully ignored the huge population of people who like to take photos of themselves. It is difficult to do that on the iPhone, because there there is no hard button for taking the photo, and no mirror on the back to see yourself in (no, the shiny Apple logo does not work). Sure it’s dorky, but people do it, a lot. A software update could half fix this by allowing you to take a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen, not just the tiny button at the bottom.

4. Great Built-in Apps.

I said earlier i didn’t want to spend the entire time gushing, so I’ll keep this brief: The iPod is amazing. Coverflow is better on my iPhone then on my Macbook Pro. The photos app is super fast, and includes some great core animation transitions for slideshows. Weather is a perfect demo app (though I wish they updated the icon with live data as they do the calendar app), and maps works just as you’d expect it (honestly, aside from better searching, it’s similar usability to Palm/Windows Mobile versions). YouTube is extremely fun on a wi-fi network, and a great time killer (who needs mobiTV when you have YouTube for free?).

5. Keyboard is surprisingly good.

Three days into it and I’m already typing fluently with two thumbs. Needless to say, I’m shocked.

What needs to be improved?

1. Dialing interaction.

The dialing interaction on the iPhone is better then on normal phones, but that’s not saying much. The weakness is the number of interactions required to dial a contact. At best, it’s on/unlock:press phone:tap favorite contact number – three interactions. That’s nice, but rarely how it ends up. In my 72 hours of use, it’s generally more like, on/unlock:press home:press phone:press contacts:search for contact/tap contact:tap contacts’s number. That’s six interactions. On a Treo 650, it’s on/unlock:type 3 letters of name:dial number – three interactions.

Apple can make the iPhone much quicker to dial by implementing two simple changes. First, have a button sequence that directly launches the phone app’s contact or favorites list (user’s choice I guess). A double-tap on the home key has been previously suggested. Secondly, instead of searching for a contact, tapping the contact, and tapping the contacts number, the contact list should display all numbers for that contact, directly available to dial. To maintain speed in scrolling, the numbers could collapse into the name when scrolling, and then expand back out when the scrolling slows down. Or for another solution, Apple could use the keyboard dialing interface from their SMS app to allow users to quickly type in names.

2. Voice Quality, Speaker Volumes.

It may just be myself (and PC Magazine), but I was generally disappointed with call quality on the iPhone. Calls just sound muddled. The speaker is barely loud enough for busy environments, and the speakerphone is qualitatively a joke. The vibrate is hardly noticeable at all. While these features do work, for me, they did not work super well, and i’ve known many people who have stopped using phones because of these issues. (counterpoint: this site quantitatively claims iPhone is best quality smartphone out there.)

3. Crash Happiness.

My iPhone randomly crashes a lot. When an application crashes, the phone simply returns you to the home screen, as if you pressed the home button by accident. In fact, I bet many users will think that that is what they did. Alas, you didn’t. Safari seems to be the most crash prone, and especially so when trying to listen to music at the same time. I have witnessed YouTube and other apps (though not the phone) also crash. Low battery life <20% seems to encourage more crashes as well. Apple needs to fix these bugs fast, because crashes get annoying quickly. In the meantime, rebooting the iPhone seems to temporarily fix many of them.

4. UI Inconsistencies.

Why can I double finger, double tap in Google Maps to zoom out, but not in photos or the web? Why is the back button for Safari in the lower left, but in most applications “back” is in the upper left? Why, if I chose shuffle mode in the iPod, and then rotate my screen to view coverflow, and choose another song, does it switch me out of shuffle mode and into per album mode? Why doesn’t the swipe-to-delete work in all apps? Worst of all, why doesn’t the keyboard auto-correct in some text fields, such as the weather widget, URL bar in Safari, or Google Maps?

5. Adding new data could be better.

The forms for adding a new contact and new calendar entry both have two of the same significant issues. First, instead of typing important fields such as title/location, or first/last name inline, you have to tap into a new form to enter such data. Secondly, a “cancel” button is in the upper left corner, where generally the iPhone interface has back buttons. Instead, one is supposed to tap “save” in the upper right. But, if I’m a two-layers deep in the forms for adding a contact, mentally, i am not saving anything yet, as I’m only halfway done entering my contact’s data. I need to go back to the previous form to click into the number button. Hence, I think of the “back” interaction. To fix this, Apple could bring required fields inline, and switch the placements of save and cancel (and perhaps rename save to “done”, “back”, or “continue editing”). For reference, cancel is in the upper right in the Weather, Stocks, and Safari.

6. Safari rendering mobile webpages.

Safari does a phenomenal job at rendering normal webpages, but as a side effect of this, it does a pretty poor job rendering mobile web pages. As long as slow networks exist, specially formatted mobile pages will be a blessing for mobile devices. Table constrained mobile webpages end up being a tiny blotch in the upper left of a field of white until you zoom in. Mobile facebook doesn’t even load. Sites with no fixed width have “issues”. In general, CSS based mobile web pages fare much better. On another note, Palm’s mobile portal is still an excellent mobile portal, even on the iPhone.

7. Poor Calculator, Notes apps.

Simply put, Apple could have done better. Calculator could have greatly benefited from having unit conversions, and few more advanced scientific features, perhaps via slide-across different calculators ala the weather widget. Notes, I’ll defer to John Gruber’s criticism: Marker Felt? WTF?

8. SMS

Only one recipient? blahgh.

9. Lack of features _, and __.

No point going to much into this, but what was apple thinking not having any games or any expandable ringtone support? (even the original iPod came with games). Not to mention A2DP, and bluetooth OBEX, DUN, wi-fi Sync… I sure hope Apple has software updates a plenty.

Why is this important?

Hype aside, the iPhone is the game-changing device that will turn the cellphone market from being about hardware to being about software. That’s no small task given that the main customers of cellphones (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile) haven’t seemed to care much at all about software. Instead they’ve focused on encouraging handset makers to go ever sleeker and smaller, marketing each subsequent handset as the next sexy fashion accessory. That was great and all, but we’re pretty close to an optimal size for a hold-in-your-hand handset. Where is the innovation going to happen next? Aside from power management, it will happen in the interactions you have with the device. And these interactions are governed by software.

Palm and Microsoft have been trying valiantly for years to get across this message, but they missed creating the simplicity, flash, and consumer appeal when making their devices. The Treo is ugly and slow. Microsoft at least does a better job utilizing the color depths of their screens, but the interaction is poor. They’ve failed because they have fallen too short of appealing to consumers. Microsoft has done a good job appealing to business users, who often seem to take whatever is stuck down their throats. Yes, there is a significant part of the iPhone’s appeal from marketing — but marketing only gets people to ask to see my iPhone. The iPhone sells itself once people start using it, and see what technology can now do in your pocket.

So what’s important? Here are five features of the iPhone that I think make this device a revolutionary product, especially for users upgrading from normal cellphones.

Your digital life communicates with your real life, through a device in your pocket

To me, this is the killer feature of smartphones. It brings together my digital life (music, movies, photos), with my real life (the world around me, my friends, people I need to communicate with, places to go), and integrates them together, by allowing me to share and inquire (Email, Phone, Maps, Google). There are several parts to this problem, which various devices have tried to address in the past.

The iPod very successfully synced your digital life onto a portable device, but couldn’t communicate.

The cellphone very successfully allowed you to communicate with your contacts through voice, and nothing else.

The Treo very successfully allowed you to communicate with your contacts, and could answer questions about the world well (Google, Google Maps), but had pretty poor media support (I gave up syncing Palm devices a long time ago).

Laptops have allowed one to combine your data with some non-verbal communications, but are unwieldy.

The iPhone is the FIRST device to EVER allow you to seamlessly combines your digital life and your communication, with little user intervention required to set up. My digital life follows me in my iPhone, my real life contacts me via my iPhone, and I can answer questions related to both using my iPhone. That’s a revolution.

Mobile Web Browsing comes to the Masses

I’ve been using mobile web browsers since Handspring’s Blazer 1.0. It was a proxy based system that stripped out most everything from a web page to try to get to the pure content. Guess what? Mobile browsers don’t do much else six years later. The goal of every browser is to display a page, which has a lot of extraneous junk on it, in a way that I, the user, can efficiently view and on a small screen. Browsers have come in all shapes and sizes, zooms, proxies, images, wide page and optimized… but nothing, nothing has ever come close to the speed and usability that Safari on the iPhone has.

This is the feature that switches me to the iPhone, as Google, for me, is the killer data feature of a mobile device. For a smartphone user, Safari is a huge leap in usability. For a normal cellphone owner, who’s never even had the web in their pocket, the fact that Safari exists is perhaps seemingly unbelievable. The ability to consume and generate information on the go, wherever you are, changes how you interact with the world. When a thought pops up in your mind, you immediately satisfy it.

Mobile Media comes of age

Qualcomm is investing billions in DTV systems. mobiTV is an extremely successful offering from carriers. Mobile video, and likewise mobile media in general, have been the aspirations of the cellphone industry for years. Yet, the iPhone does it better, and in higher quality then any other offering before. I can find nearly any show or clip on YouTube or Google Video. I can watch movie trailers from Apple’s website, or I can simply have the media pre-synced onto my device. Whatever I do, it is seamless, for me the user, to get the content and consume the content. There are no costs, there are no complicated interfaces, or special service plans. The iPhone demonstrates that mobile media comes best from the users, and not from some special monopolized one-to-many network or service (that said, there is of course still room for these services in the market, they just won’t be the dominating force). In the iPhone, mobile media has come of age, as for once, users can actually use it.

Animations improve usability.

In January, when covering the iPhone launch for TreoCentral.com, I made a comment that I pretty much immediately regretted making: “I think that flashy graphics don’t make a UI. A UI is defined by the ease of navigating between forms and the ability to quickly find your information on the display. And for the bulk of the applications, I saw very little differences between Palm OS and Apple’s UI”.

While I stand by the second part of my statement in my definition of a good UI, my gosh, Apple’s animations are all tools to help your eye track where to go, where information is moving, and how you are navigating the device. My favorite example is when emailing a photo:

• After tapping the large “Email Photo” button,
• the share interface slides away, but the photo stays.
• It then shrinks and centers on the display.
• Following which, the email interface slides up underneath the photo.
• Then, the photo drops down into the email body.

In the iPhone, animations don’t just add flash, they significantly improve usability. To do that took talent, and it will be extremely hard for competitors to replicate. This is perhaps the greatest innovation to mobile user interfaces.

Font Rendering.

This is perhaps the iPhone’s most important feature-that-you-don’t-think-about. Never before has text looked this good on a mobile device. Even with similar a similar DPI as a Treo, the iPhone’s fonts are absolutely stunning compared to the fuzzy, pixelated Palm OS or Windows Mobile fonts. And don’t even bother comparing these fonts to those on a normal cellphone, that would just be a joke. Clean fonts lead to cleaner UIs, which lead to better user experiences. Need I say more?

Apple has a phenomenal first entrance into an incredibly competitive market, and I cannot wait to see how the other big players respond. For once, software is a competitive point, which is great news for Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson, and bad news for Asian OEM manufacturers with little knowhow in high end UI software development. Ignoring cost, the future phones that compete against Apple will have to not only have slick hardware, but will have to have an intuitive, easy to use interface, and complete solution to integrate my digital life with my real life.

Microsoft, in particular, is extremely well positioned to provide operating systems that look good, run on great HTC hardware, and sync well with Windows — if they could only get over their current start menu based application model (soon, I hope). Even the Zune does, believe it or not, have pretty good software (just hideous hardware).

From a mobile content side, the more iPhones out there that use existing free content, the less consumers will want to pay inflated costs, such as $2.99 for a song, or $10 a month extra for mobile TV. I’m so sick of seeing these monopolized, overpriced, products be successful, and cannot wait for them to have reasonable prices or die out.

The scary part is of all this, is that if Apple pulls this iPhone launch off, and continues to succeed over the next few years, we’ll have a new platform for computing… without the platform. We’ll have tens, if not hundreds of millions of users using devices that are locked down and will not be opened up without significant investment or relationships with people inside AT&T or Apple. Webapps do not allow the extension of the actual functionality of the device. In my opinion, true innovation on the smartphone platform can only happen on the device side. It pains me to think of the iPhone 3 years from now if Apple doesn’t change their tune: we’d have a closed platform, low competition, overpriced market full of crappy products, like software on cellphones and iPods are today.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

More iPhone Impressions

If all of these were made into news slices, we’d have to reconfigure the page to fit everything in. So, it’s going to have to go into a roundup article instead. We’ll start with the above cartoon from Gizmodo, who apply the curious moniker of “Jesusphone” to the iPhone. I’m more prone to calling it the Mosesphone, as it’s leading me to the promised land of smartphones. If it really was the Jesusphone, all of my other smartphones would suddenly stop sucking, right?

Activation and Deactivation? Inactivation?

Should you wish to avoid these problems, perhaps try this advice, or just trust in the fact that AT&T has fixed the server bug and you had a 98% chance of going through anyway. I’ve only seen one gripe of a defective iPhone, and the article about it is here.

iPhone Firmware Hacking

The next big story is disassembly and hacking. In addition to our takeapart coverage, there’s more at Wired and All Things D.

Wired launched a call to hack the iPhone, as did iPhoneTunes. It was not long before their call was answered, and the iPhone firmware was found [via] They found out what kind of processor the iPhone uses, it’s a beefy Samsung processor.

Around the World in 80k

There are still places in the world the iPhone isn’t available. If you live in Alaska or the Midwest, this may interest you: AT&T is buying Dobson [via], who owns cell phone companies in Alaska and the midwest. If you’re in Europe, this rumor was posted, claiming Vodaphone and T-Mobile both as the iPhone vendor. We’ll find out tomorrow if it was true, eh? Also, still no official word on Canada, besides that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t work on any network besides AT&T, as it’s not available unlocked. A somewhat clueless U.K. company claimed Java is surely the route for games on the iPhone, when Steve Jobs confirmed otherwise.

Activation Hacking

Fear not, though; the race is also on to unlock the iPhone. It’s been claimed to be done already, but I think they may have confused activation with unlocking. Speaking of activation, if you want prepaid, there’s an easy way to ensure prepaid is offered to you.

Huh, the i-What?

Competitors are unafraid, naturally. In the off chance that they admit they’ve heard of it, they thump their chest. RIM, makers of popular Blackberries, saw their stock surge up, and by quite a bit. Verizon stayed open late for iDay, but for no apparent reason.

Apple News

Then, there’s some Apple news. Apple sold anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000 iPhones. This kind of component speculation is always anyone’s guess, but current groupthink puts the actual component cost (that’s minus R&D) to be about 200 bucks (more or less what iSuppli predicted), which is a tidy sum of profit for Apple and Foxconn. Also, User guides have been posted online. Secret workings of iTunes 7.3 have been discovered. Apple has posted official store accessories for the iPhone. Universal, clamoring for attention, wants more money and is “threatening” to pull out of #3 music retailer iTunes. $ure, they are.

Other Reviews and Roundups

In addition to ours, there are some full reviews and first impressions at some well respected sites. If this is not enough, there are other roundups out there.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Massive iPhone Link Roundup

Upsides:

• Safari: The web browser is great. I haven’t missed flash yet, and the fact that YouTube is built-in more or less means that I’m not too broken-hearted about Flash. Maybe we’ll see it in an update, maybe we won’t. If we don’t, I hope they give me the ability to turn it off.

Downsides

• Web Applications and built-in apps in general: Most applications that Apple has included are great: Text, Calendar (mostly, see below), Photos, Camera, YouTube, Maps, Weather, Clock. I found Notes and Stocks to be underwhelming (and as of this writing, undeserving of the front screen), plus there’s an entire empty row sitting there waiting eagerly to have application buttons stuffed in. You can’t replace this kind of immediacy with web services — I don’t want to open Safari, create a new window, or find it with a bunch of button presses in my bookmarks. I want it there, on the main screen.
• To Do: Implement To Do: The sync doesn’t bring over to-dos from iCal, which is going to be a big hullaballoo. On the flip side of events, it doesn’t sync notes from the notes app back to the computer, so there’s no way to back them up either. I’m guessing something will happen here once Leopard comes out, or that we’ll see some updates here, but this aspect is very disappointing; the omission of this is actually downright weird. Any fans of GTD will have to use a web app for To-Dos as of this writing.
• Activation: When I first installed the iPhone to my computer, it took a while to activate. The system failed on me. I was nervous of a double-billing situation, but I resubmitted my information anyway. The activation system found my info and to my relief I had already been accepted. Other folks in our organization were not so lucky; Chris Kingree at our warehouse had to wait 60 hours (!) for his activation to go through.
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR: So what? there are *no* supported profiles for interfacing with a computer. None! That includes DUN, AVRCP, OBEX, the whole shebang. This means you can’t use the unlimited internet on your computer; nor can you sync your iPhone via Bluetooth. A2DP seems to be unimplemented as well. This one is downright weird to me; if I was assigning a score to this review, they’d lose some serious points here.
• Preferences: They don’t allow you to set too many preferences. Granted, this keeps things simple to support and you’re never in a situation where you’re not sure where the preferences are (they’re right there in the Settings app). But if you don’t like the default SMS message alert, tough! You can’t change it. You can disable it, but not change it.
• Ringtones: Apple has included ringtones on the iPhone, and some of them are pretty good. Thank you for the effort, Apple, but I would prefer to be able to use my own. I’d love to be able to blare video game sounds from Galaga or the theremin-like intro from Dr. Who whenever someone calls me, but that functionality is not with us. I’m guessing they just haven’t finished it yet, or don’t have legal agreements with labels yet in place.
• AT&T / EDGE: If you’re a technophile, you expected this here, and I am not willing to disappoint. EDGE brings me back to dialup days. AT&T’s coverage in my area is adequate, but it’s nothing to praise. I dropped two calls on the first day of use. AT&T’s commercials about dropped calls are like salt to my wounds now.
• Filesystem and Mass Storage: The iPhone doesn’t show up as a mass storage device when you plug it in to a computer, nor is its filesystem browseable. I can’t peer around on the inside, much with things, see how it works, and the like. It’s essentially a black box, which is annoying. This doesn’t bother me too much, but nor does it make a lot of sense. I didn’t think I’d still have a use for memory cards once the iPhone came out. This one doesn’t bother me too much.

All in all, what Apple has completed is mighty. That’s not to say that there aren’t missing pieces; there are serious missing pieces from the iPhone. Still, for an entry to the smartphone market, or mobile phone market in general, it’s a very impressive device. I’m glad I bought it; I’d recommend it to anyone while making note of the above caveats, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a phone in a long time, and I haven’t even installed any games on it yet. Oh wait, that’s still a sore spot.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone: My Impressions

It fascinates me that Apple’s marketing and commercial videos for the iPhone so far has also been all training. They show the iPhone being used for the main tasks that people will use, and that’s it. The interface is good enough that it sells itself and doubles as a training video, which is brilliant.

• YouTube
• Google Maps
• Internet Browsing
• iPod Video
• Overall How-To

• the guided tour video
• activation and sync video

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Marketing is also Training