The iPhone and 3G

So this is it- it's actually June 29, 2007: the day the iPhone ships.

I feel like it's really not worth saying too much about it until I've had a chance to actually use one, but I think this is going to be big. This event- the product itself, the hype, the leverage Apple was able to employ in negotiations with the leader of a very un-consumer-friendly industry (AT&T)- this is is what Apple has been building up to ever since Steve Jobs came back and Apple became cool again.

People (including me) will criticize the iPhone's features (and lack thereof), and I'm sure all of them will have valid points. The iPhone will not be a better BlackBerry than a BlackBerry, and it's not going to be the fastest device for Internet access when it's not connected to a WiFi network. Its storage capacity is quite small when you consider it's trying to replace your iPod, and its lack of a removeable battery may be a deal-breaker for many. And so forth.

But there's something bigger going on here. I really believe that the iPhone represents an evolution to a new generation of computing device. Character mode PCs were the first; graphical PCs (started by the Mac) were the second; and now, we've truly arrived at the next generation. What the Palm Pilot started, and smart phones continued, the iPhone will cement.

I could be wrong, but when history is written, I think there's a good chance that the iPhone will be seen as the key milestone on the road to pocket computing for the masses. Five years from now, the feature set of the iPhone that ships today will seem absurdly limited compared to what's available. But I'll bet that most competing devices will look and work a lot like the iPhone, and we'll all be better off as a result.

iPhone

Wow- Walt Mossberg (WSJ) and David Pogue (NYT) have just posted their reviews, and they are as positive as could be reasonably hoped for. The iPhone has cleared two major hurdles and genuinely looks like it's going to deliver on a lot of the expectations out there.

The real loser in all of this may turn out to be AT&T- across the board, AT&T's low-speed EDGE network is being villified as the one real drawback.

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iPlane rolls out

The first Boeing 787 has been assembled and is on its way to the paint shop in preparation for its official rollout on 7/8/07.

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GUEST POST FROM FORREST: Uh...what? Another application to crash Windows...?

What a bunch of crap!

Apple is so full of themselves..."The world's best browser..."

Newsflash: Apple users that actually know what they are doing use a real web browser, i.e. Firefox...

Check out the dumb performance stats on the site too..."Blazing Performance." Am I the only one that wants to know how they tested and what the actual scores were? If indeed these results are true, chances are...it's a difference of a fraction of a second, at most a few...

Would this justify installing another crappy Apple application on my spanking clean Windows XP computer...? Maybe you should try it and see for yourself on your computer...

Indiana Jones

Then and now.

Nice

From Mike:

WWDC 2007 keynote thoughts

Overall, less than I was hoping for but about on par with most of the keynotes over the past few years, where expectations have been set so high that nearly anything (except for, possibly, the iPhone) comes across as a disappointment.

Leopard

The new UI touches and file management functionality looks cool (though it won't be possible to really "get it" without trying it). "Back to My Mac" looks like a nice touch and a refreshing, new use for the otherwise stagnant .Mac. Everything else (Spaces, Time Machine, and so forth) will almost certainly be well implemented and nice, evolutionary advances to the platform.

But now that we know the "whole story" about Leopard, with its "top secret" features supposedly revealed, I definitely feel underwhelmed. I suspect (really more like hope) that there are a number of additional revelations coming down the line, like more details about iPhone integration, significant advances to .Mac functionality and Web 2.0-type services (possibly through a partnership with Google), some big-time improvements to iLife, and some under-the-hood new tech (such as pervasive use of ZFS). There was definitely a sense that even though today was supposed to be the big reveal, there is still more to be revealed. There has to be, right?

It's ironic, because Leopard really does represent the biggest advance in any single version of OS X, and I bet it will be great and make everything that came before it seem primitive. But the way it's been positioned, with its initial PR launch a year ago and the lure of "top secret" features, the longer than usual gap between it and Tiger, and the release delay to October of 2007, expectations were set too high.

Safari on Windows

Huh? I didn't see this coming, and it's hard to get excited about it. If Firefox didn't exist, this would be a great thing, but Firefox on Windows is "a good thing" and Safari will now be competing with it, and I don't really see the end-user or community benefit.

However, now that Apple has opened a third party development path for the iPhone that relies on Safari, it does make sense to provide Safari to Windows users if for no other reason than to serve as a development environment.

Apps on the iPhone

Which brings us to the announcement that Web 2.0 sites accessed through Safari represent the initial round of development opportunities on the iPhone.

What?

This whole thing reminds me of the Chris Rock routine that went something like this:

"They'll say something like, “Yeah, well I take care of my kids.” You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker. “I ain't never been to jail.” Whaddya want? A cookie? You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!"

Of COURSE the iPhone is going to support cool Web 2.0 apps- if it didn't, it would be seriously compromised as a "breakthrough Internet device" that doesn't offer the "watered down" Internet. It's SUPPOSED TO do those things by default.

I was hoping for some sort of Widget API, which would seem to be the best and most secure path to offering next-gen apps on the iPhone, and the "Web 2.0" announcement really comes across like a total cop-out.

But, anyway, we'll see what happens. I hope to see some new hardware functionality soon, I'd love to see multi-touch support brought to the Mac, and I really want Apple to Web 2.0-ify all of the cool Mac features so that I'm not so tied down to a single computer. I think these things are coming, just not quite as soon as I'd like to see them.

BOOGIE NIGHTS- STAR WARS EDITION