Jason Kottke pretty much says it all here and here.
I too share Jason’s concerns about text input. I noticed that Steve never used his thumbs on the keypad…
I’m in the market for a new phone at the moment, and none (I mean none) of the existing crop of phones does what I want. So I watched the keynote announcement (the first time I’ve done so – much to the surprise of Ang…) to see what it was like.
In the back of my mind, all I could think was “when is it going to be available in Australia?” If we remember, it took Apple Australia over two years to organise iTunes Australia Store. I expect this will take them even longer, especially given both the music industry and telcos here are similar in as much as they’re pretty much an oligopoly.
At the end of the keynote Jobs says that “Asia” is slated for 2008. Asia’s a big place Steve. Is Australia included in that grouping? At least Australian customers should be able to avoid Apple’s “first model” issues – by 2008 I would expect Apple would have at least a second revision on the market.
Apple have put together an interesting and ground-breaking device. They haven’t “reinvented the phone” as they claim. But perhaps it will shake a few trees and open up the market a little bit…
It was interesting that Google was talking about the open standards and systems that their services are built on, and how that enabled the iPhone integration.
Apple’s is a walled garden – they are leveraging the open systems, but still tightly control anything they can (note the 200+ patents for the device – and iTunes “FairPlay” digital rights management system).
Jobs is quoted in Time (see the Kottke piece) as lamenting the lack of innovation in telcos – one cause of this is the lock-in created by the telcos’ “walled garden” approach. Innovation on the iPod and iPhone will always be held back if Apple continues it’s current practices.
I also had very big doubts about the claim that the phone ran OS X (hearing, of course, Mac OS X). The John Gruber quote in Kottke’s article, and this cheeky screenshot pretty much sum it up. B.S.
Tangential link: Seth Godin on Cingular’s part of the presentation. I agree completely, although I think Yahoo’s Jerry Yang could equally be criticised for not really saying anything too…
Bonus links: Leisa has some great posts on mobile usability posted before and after the iPhone announcement – 1, 2, 3.