Un-Friggin-Believable
I really don’t know how to write a blog entry about this. The pundits I deemed most credible have been spending the past few weeks downplaying the possibility of an iPhone. And then Steve gets up there and blows my friggin mind. They did it. They took two amazing products — the widescreen iPod and the iPhone — and put them into a nice cozy sleeping bag with each other. And they had babies. And the babies were called the iPhone. Beautiful, beautiful babies.
I was hungrily devouring Engadget’s coverage of the keynote, thinking, “This will turn the mobile phone industry on its ear! Finally, a phone that truly combines form and function! They’ll be racing to compete with this!” But then I realized that, no, they won’t. They might think their new full-screen, music-playing phones will compete with the iPhone, but they won’t. Has the iPod really gotten any competitors in 5 years? Nobody gets it. Apple just steals the show, year after year.
As much as I would love to buy an iPhone as soon as humanly possible, the fact that we just kicked Cingular to the curb last month due to staggering reception problems and — amusingly enough — dropped calls makes it difficult to imagine returning to them. Hopefully the iPhone will move to carriers with more mature networks (Verizon) in time, although it’s possible that Verizon will decide they don’t need no stinkin’ iPhone and instead have a horse in their stable make their own answer to the iPhone.
Alrighty, that’s more than enough cynicism. I swore by PCs and hated Apple throughout my school years, but in October 2004 I saw the light and ordered this PowerBook. They are a different company than they were in the days of OS 9 (shudder). Now go give your money to a company worth supporting and buy one of Apple’s superior products. And no, I am not presently an Apple shareholder. But I wish I was.
I leave you with this link, via Chap: Steven Frank’s A Special Post Live From Macworld.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
One of the perks of work: I watched it live, sort of — we had a video feed up on satellite that was delayed by 45 minutes. So I kept up with Engadget and MacrumorsLive, and then watched the critical parts on video 45 minutes later. Apple should have the keynote video available soon, maybe this evening.
Indeed, my brain exploded. It freaking runs OSX, holy crap. 11 mm? 4.5 ounces? You had me at scrolling. Price point? Just fine. If I bought one it’d be the SECOND time I’d spent $600 on a smartphone.
I knew about all the rumors, but never expected them to pile it all together. Apple will be printing money with this thing for years.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Ah, you lucky dog! :)
I think you’re exactly right about this product being incredible. I don’t know if my post conveyed that enough, but I could not be more in love with what I’ve seen of this product so far. And this is from someone who has never paid more than $100 for a phone in the past. As far as I can tell, this product can easily take the place of my video iPod (even with just 4-8GB of storage) in my daily life, and be more portable than I consider my iPod to be because it takes the place of my phone. Not to mention the simplicity and apparent obviousness of the interface and applications.
You didn’t happen to record that feed, did you Chris? ;)
The keynote video appears to be up here: http://www.apple.com/iphone/keynote/, but at the moment it’s not actually coming up.
January 10th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Are they really all that different, now? Are you sure? :)
January 10th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Oh no he didn’t!
Perhaps I should have specified that my change of heart was brought about by Mac OS X, released in March 2001. Quite a change from the crappiness (in my very subjective opinion) of OS9.