This evening, Apple finally announced what must be the most highly awaited product in the company's history. The iPhone, a combination iPod, mobile phone and portable internet device looks stunning.
The whole thing is one big touch-screen (no physical buttons), comes with either 4GB or 8GB of storage, runs MacOS x (which means it links up perfectly with your new iMac/PowerBook, if you have one), features WiFi, BlueTooth, iTunes, and all other stuff.
Potential problems: touch-screens get dirty/smudged/scratched really quickly. It's not clear if they've done anything to deal with this. Also, battery life is noted as 5 hours. That had better be talk time… otherwise this thing will be pretty unreliable.
Price: $499 for 4GB, $599 for 8GB. Available in Europe: end of 2007.
Isn't this gadget, if it does what it says on the tin, going to potentially render the ipod obsolete? Be funny if ipods disappeared almost as quickly as they became ubiquitous.
I've always thought that having one thing that did everything would be good, but there's something about mobile phones I just find banal. It's got a huge market to compete with. It either has to destroy everything in its path or fail completely. i suspect it may be the latter. Apple are overdue for some failure.
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Yeah… but in terms of business use (a large sector of the phones market), this phone offers a very good alternative to BlackBerry and other smartphones. As to rendering the iPod obsolete… yes, but I think that's the plan. I think Apple want us to consider this the new iPod model. I'd be surprised if they continued developing new iPods without the phone capability.
The mobile phone market is the largest single market in consumer electronics. Apple need only snag 1% of this market to be a massive success. I vote yes!
In other news, my new iMac arrives tomorrow. I think.
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