Let’s be honest. It was absolutely no surprise when Steve Jobs stood up on stage at Macworld 2007 and unveiled the long-awaited iPhone. Combining the ever-popular iPod with a swank cell phone and Internet device, Jobs and his team claim to have “reinvented the phone,” although we’ll have to wait until June to see if they can live up to the hype.
Within the sleek, 11.6 millimeter-thick body of iPhone rests a four- or eight-gigabyte iPod with a few new tricks up its sleeve, but really more of the same device. Added to the typical user interface of artists, albums and playlist, is a feature Apple has dubbed “Cover Flow.” Users will now be able to view all the cover art to their favorite albums and simply drag their fingers across the screen to cycle through and find some new tunes. Turning the iPhone horizontally changes the perspective to widescreen for things such as video playback.
The widescreen iPod is nifty but not revolutionary. The storage space in minimal by comparison to Apple’s current offering of the 80-gigabyte video model. Personally, I can’t see giving up the comforts of near-limitless storage that I currently have, and actually picking and choosing media to sync, which is clearly a pain with thousands of tracks to choose from. Cover Flow, an interface that lets users select songs based on graphical rather than textual display, is a purely aesthetic aspect but is quite gorgeous. The glossy screen and reflection effects of the iPod make the images pop out and video playback looks much better on iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen instead of crammed onto iPod’s slightly smaller LCD. When it comes down to it, Apple simply stuck an iPod Nano into the phone and called it a day. It would have been nice if they could have sacrificed the right to say their phone is the thinnest on the market and put in a larger capacity.
Apple’s “revolutionary” phone packs quite a punch. Jobs’ presentation highlighted a few new features leaving viewers stunned. Working closely with Cingular Wireless, “Visual Voicemail” was developed to make checking messages a more convenient process. Don’t dial into a service, just click the name of the person you would like to hear a message from, and don’t bother listening to them in particular order. Their SMS text-messaging interface looks exactly like the iChat instant messaging client. It even keeps track of texts in a chat format separating each individual person. As for making calls, Apple breaks down the contact list into groups like a full contact list or “favorites,” which acts like a speed dial. Jobs made a point to jest that using an actual number pad to dial is so last-decade. Highlighting the call demo was the process of merging calls to create a conference. With two people on separate lines, simply touching “merge calls” eliminates the need to place a three-way call and the chance of cutting someone off.
I’m not going to lie, merging calls rocks my world. I am one of those guys who will fumble around trying to make a three-way call and then cut off both people, try to call back, get voicemail and proceed to be frustrated. Using “merge” or “add” a call will just make my life so much easier, saving both my time and sanity. I like the idea of splitting the phone book into categories like the favorites since I swear by speed dial. I would hate to have someone discover he or she isn’t on the favorites list and get pissed off, however — but hey, that’s life. As for the SMS interface, I am more than pleased by the organization. Having a unique inbox for each person I want to converse with instead of one that fills up so fast is fantastic. Having the full conversation without having to switch back to the “sent” box and “inbox” is something that should have been done a long time ago. Jobs’ statement that Apple has “reinvented the phone” may be a tad overzealous, but they are pretty damn close.
The final use of the iPhone is its functionality as an Internet device. Since iPhone runs OS X, Apple tossed in a fully functional, miniaturized version of their browser, Safari, for a better Web browsing experience. No longer will mobile Web users be plagued by a cheap textual version of their news outlets or online stores, but will instead be presented with full sites. Again, flipping the hardware from vertical to horizontal allows for easier viewing, and simply double-tapping on the screen lets users zoom in on text or a photo. During the keynote presentation, Jobs loaded sites such as Amazon.com, which is rather graphic intensive, in a very timely manner. According to Jobs, iPhone switches between WiFi and EDGE (Cingular’s data service) automatically to optimize connection speeds, and users can fly through pages with ease and incredible speed. Another highlight of the presentation was the e-mail demo, boasting rich HTML support to display full text and images right alongside one another. In collaboration with Google, iPhone has access to Google Maps, and can even use the satellite imaging.
The Internet functionality of iPhone can easily be called years ahead of its time. Personally, I use Sprint’s Power Vision network for mobile Web, and at $20 a month, I feel cheated after seeing iPhone. The only images I see are tiny, sometimes pixilated thumbnails, and simplified text from CNN. Being able to see a full site the way it should be seen is a big step for mobile Web, and it’s about time, too. E-mail was also rather impressive, as the attached images were gorgeous on iPhone’s beautiful screen.
OK, aside from the blatant ass-kissing I am engaging in right now, praying that Apple will send me a phone to demo (pretty please?), I must say I have some concerns and gripes based off the presentation.
First and foremost, the design makes me a little nervous, since the entire device is pretty much a screen. With a base price of $500, one scratch on the LCD would set me over the edge. To go along with that, I could not help but notice that by the end of the presentation the phone was horrifically full of fingerprints. A strength of the iPhone is its clean design — I would love to keep it that way. The battery is also a concern. Go ahead and say that it will last for five hours of talk and Web, 16 for music playback, but can I change out the battery? Eventually it is going to start losing charge, so what security do I have that I could go pop in a new one? If it is anything like iPod, I won’t hold my breath, as they are sealed tighter than Fort Knox.
In the end, only time will tell whether or not iPhone will be a success, or if it will only be just a bunch of hype and hot air. With the buzz Apple has drummed up, declaring they intend to steal 1 percent of the market share, I sure hope it is the latter. Yet sadly my friends, we will be waiting, and June is so far away.
Justin Voss is a sophomore majoring in Japanese. Are you an Apple fanatic like Justin? E-mail him at [email protected].
