I really haven't written much at all about the iPhone announcement. Ted caught my utter lack of excitment, but I'm going to elaborate a bit in this one post, and capture some links to others who both care more, and have more to say than I. In fact there are so many, I'm just going to grab a few. The whole iPhone subject's getting pretty boring and I don't think I can bear re-reading so many posts.

Alec wrote A letter to Steve Jobs about iPhone I hope, Steve reads it, but I doubt it. Sadly Jobs is still of dancing on the high of reinventing telecommunications in his own head. Alec is right on the mark, while Jobs is off the map in hallucination. Beware Steve...there be dragons there.

Richard says IPhone - re-inventing the phone? I disagree. They're reinventing the iPod. They're aiming at their own market and will score a near builseye. Reinventing themselves in their own image.

Dan York notes Apple's iPhone as a platform for Skype, Gizmo, Jajah and everyone else... . he'd take one and try is, but being outside the locked down footprint of Cingular (or have they abandoned their brand and reinvented AT&T this morning), Dan's out of luck.

Andy catches the importance of the WiFi link in Wi Apple? I'm not sure WiFi, even advances in MuniWiFi are going to be as big as some of us once thought. I think WiFi is going to be overrun by WiMAX and EVDO Rev A like technologies. Frankly, I think 802.11xxx is going to be leapfrogged and tossed in the grave within 18 months. It's a technology that can't possibly keep up.

Jeff Pulver nails Jobs perfectly - Is the Apple iPhone Evolutionary or Revolutionary? has to feel liked getting pinged in the forehead with a ball peen hammer. I'd ask it differently - Has the creative genious that once was Apple fallen so far that an incremental, minor play in the general direction of telecommunications is heralded by Jobs' own ego a reinventing an industry? That's sounds like the mindles rantings of a dying geriatric under the speel of agony and morphine. The iPhone isn't revolutionary. I won't even say it's evolutionary. It's lateral, or a sidestep (Cue Charles Durning singing Oooooh I love to Dance a Little Sidestep from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas please.).

Martin calls it iPhoney? and an undercooked business model? Undercooked? It's the sushi of business models I think. It's a business model propelled by ego. As Martin notes, it's not disruptive at all (expcet, I think, to the iPod market).  He says(emphasis mine) - The iPhone as launched is not a smartphone, it’s a featurephone
and fashion accessory. But the touch screen will turn out to be a
liability: like programming a computer with only a 5V battery and piece
of wire, in being able to do everything, you end up being excellent at
nothing.  I agree it will be execellent at nothing.

It will be mediocre at anything, at best. In my words, it will be crap.

The touch screen will be a disaster. The closed interface assures that it's another all your tunes calls stones Apples are belong to us. Apple is the worst offender and not understanding open standards and extensibility on the planet. Worse that Microsoft.

The iPhone is just an iPod. With a jazzier, and doubtless a less functional interface. And yep, it might make phone calls every now and then too. If you're on the right carrier in the coverage area. We'll lock you in to Apple and Cingular proprietariness all with one key.

Limited features, locked in to a single carrier, not open to third  party software. And using the argument that third party software might take the telephone network down? Gimme a break.

I'm sorry,  I'm not an Apple user, but until now, I've never been a detractor either. I've respected them highly up to this point. This is snake oil at its finest. This is selling pure crap, driven by ego, to a consumer market of unsuspecting suckers just because we think we can.

iPhone sales will doubtless skyrocket, but it will never begin to live up to potential. It was introduced with a big L on its' forehead. The iPhone is Apple's Zune. And fair enough that both companies have that kind of learning experience.

I want to think I'm was right in seeing this as the end of the PC and heralding the new micro-PC, but he's wrong too. A PC, of any flavor, that's a closed device, is another useless doorstop. The iPhone did succeed at one thing. It set the stage for the next generation of computing devices. Nokia N800, Nokia N-series in general, Nokia E-series, Blackberry, Windows Mobile devices - they'll all surge while Apple figures out that they set the bar for a new device that they didn't deliver. They better get their act hustling in order to not get left in the dust when the real micro-computer in handheld size takes off. They better be working today on reinventing the iPhone rather than an industry they do not understand.


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