Apple Introduces A Phone. Do You Care?

Will Anyone Answer When Apple iPhones Home? Jack Gold January 10, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Apple has finally announced its long-rumored iPhone. True to the Apple"i" tradition, the iPhone is filled with features and touts an innovative interface more akin to a kiosk or video game than a telephone. By making music, videos and Web browsing available to its users, Apple hopes to set the standard in the entertainment/phone, all-in-one device market, much as it did in the music player market. Can it succeed? (Computer World)

First, let me point out that I am not an Apple person. Sure, I think the Mac is a useful toy for most who want to learn and there are niche functions where the Apple is the go-to machine, but there has always been something overly boutique about the system. With the adoption of OS X, the platform kind of came close to breaking into the mainstream, but when you add in the just enough differences for compiling software (carbonizing) to make it more efficient and the outrageous hardware costs (who, in their right mind puts down $2000 for a laptop when you can get comparable hardware for $800), the Macintosh is still playing on the fringes. Of course, the Mac/PC wars will continue to rage. You can rant about how your MacBook Pro can run circles around my Gateway or ThinkPad, but frankly, unless I am rendering graphics (which, really is not something you do on a laptop anyway), the difference in speed is a phony made up radio value that as a consumer, I cannot, nor will ever be able to appreciate and as a technologist I take with a heavy dose of scotch.

So, SteveO and Company decide to enter the already saturated fray of the cellular telephone market, thinking that they can invent a better mouse trap. Forget that Verizon (and others) already provide you on-demand audio and video through their galaxy of hardware. Forget that most phones today have the ability to play MP3, Mpeg and other media streams. Forget that most phones today are priced less than $100 and are usually given away when you sign the contract and forget that Palm and RIM (Blackberry) are constantly getting dinged for their form factor when you ask about their product's phone qualities. Apple thinks that a snazzy interface will cause millions of people to rush out an buy their new MacPhone (iPhone is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems, a company that has been around not quite as long as Apple, but has just as many expensive lawyers - and after the "Apple" suit with Apple Records, Apple, Inc, may not be willing to go toe-to-toe over the name)

I have to agree with Mr. Gold on this one. If the MacPhone does not quickly show its value to the corporate customer, it will die a swift and quiet death. And as much as it pains me to acknowledge this, most corporate email systems run on Windows.