Optimus Pete

On Tuesday this week Mac Overlord Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone after months of speculation what the device would look like and how it would work. Now there’s no doubt that Apple with shift millions of these devices, Steve Jobs could announce a new product called the iTurd [1] and millions of Apple fanatics would still rush out to buy it. The real question is not if the device will be successful but how successful will the device will be?

Most people have an mp3 player and a phone; combining the industries best selling mp3 player and a phone makes excellent sense, one device less hassle. What Apple is aiming to do is much more ambitious they are attempting to create a portable multimedia device that will have mainstream appeal.

Looking at the above size comparison from sizeasy.com the iPhone is slightly bigger than a 30gb iPod and a normal mobile phone (its exact dimensions are 115mm x 61mm x 11.6mm). It is smaller than most PDA’s (It’s worth bearing in mind that the iPhone will have a 4GB or 8GB flash memory so is actually a combination of a iPod Nano and a mobile).

Apple are often praised for their highly innovative products, I would argue that many of Apples products aren’t particularly innovative at all. However Apple does produce highly polished products with effective user interfaces and stylish designs. This makes their products highly desirable and is why there is often such a cult surrounding them.

Heres a list of the key features that the iPhone is meant to achieve:

• Play mp3’s
• Make phone calls
• Browse the web
• Send emails
• Take photo’s
• Video Playback

An impressive list, but if you cut thought the hype there isn’t much that is being offered that can’t be done by high spec PDA or Smart Phones which are currently available, and the iPhone will not be on sale until June.

I believe how good the iPhone will be as a multimedia lifestyle device will be determined by four major factors:

1. Touch screen
2. Internet
3. User interfaces
4. Durability

Touch Screen
I used to use a PDA however I found that it took too long to input data with it. Either you had to use the hand writing recognition software which was rubbish or use the stylus to point at characters on a onscreen keyboard, very slow. Blackberry’s have full QWERTY keyboards but they’re tiny. With the iPhone apple claim to have patented a revolutionary touch screen technology, if the touch screen works genuinely well then this reason alone could justify buying one instead of a smart-phone/PDA alternative.

Internet
People are becoming more reliant on Internet services as time goes on. Even though Internet connectivity has been offered on mobile phones by various means for the past few years it has never taken off. This is probably because it tends to be very expensive to connect on most mobile tariffs and if you do manage to connect its painfully slow. The interesting thing to see will be if Apple can achieve decent connection speeds and what sort of coverage the iPhone will get. Apparently they want to offer music and movie downloads so their going to need some fast speeds.

Like a PDA the iPhone features Wi-Fi connectivity, this is a nice feature however at this point in time not many public places in Britain offer Wi-Fi access. This means the only places you’ll be able to use the Wi-Fi is your house or your office where your likely to have a Computer anyway so why bother using a portable device?

User-Interface
I used to own a 4th Generation iPod and I was very impressed with its user-interface; it was intuitive and common tasks could be achieved with minimal effort. Early mobile phones especially Nokia’s had fairly good UI’s however as extra features crept in they began to lose some of their simplicity and elegance. I currently use a Samsung D500, when I get a new message it takes 5 button presses before I can actually read it, my old Nokia 3310 took 2.

The iPhone is an ambitious project but if Apple can keep it so core features can be achieved quickly and effectively this will be a huge selling point.

Duabilty
The hard-drive on the 4th Gen iPod I owned broke after 14 months; the 1st Gen iPod Nano’s had defects with the screen’s cracking. Majority of people I know that have owned iPods have had them break. You can’t really have an essential digital lifestyle device if it’s likely to break on you at any minute. Apple really have to make sure the durability on the iPhone is good otherwise it just won’t be worth buying. It will be interesting to see if insurance is offered on iPhones like it is on mobile phone contracts.

I look forward to having a play with an iPhone when it’s released. Will I be buying one, no, well not straight away anyway I’ll probably give it 6 months and see if the people who were raving about them when they initially came out still rate them. I do think convergent devices are the way forward, for a while when I was carrying a mobile, PDA, iPod and laptop around with me I was starting to feel like inspector gadget. Maybe we can all read this article again in a years time and mock me for my ridiculous predictions.

// Pete Graham

[1] UrbanDitionary.com has this definition of the word iTurd: When you drop your iPod in the toilet

“I was such a fucking dumbass, I dropped my brand new iPod in the toilet, now it’s a iTurd.”