The Tao Of Joe

Up until today I have chosen to not blog about the upcoming release of the iPhone on Friday. It’s not that I am uninterested but rather there is such a huge signal to noise ratio, with the noise winning by such a large margin, that I felt anything I could add would only contribute to the noise. That and the fact that the only thing I can add is based upon what I have read. Seems I am not worthy of a pre-release iPhone for demo purposes, guess I’ll have to talk to my assistant Kris about that.

A quick review of Techmeme this morning showed the cacophony is growing louder by the minute and everybody has something to say about iPhone this morning. So I’ll go ahead and put in my two cents.

I will admit that I was pleased when Steve Jobs announced that he would release the iPhone back in January 2007. There had been speculation for months that the iPhone was in the works but it wasn’t confirmed until he held one up and spoke about it in his keynote address at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco.

“This is a revolutionary product that has the chance to really impact people’s lives,” said Jobs, while comparing the iPhone to the original Macintosh and iPod. “This is the ultimate digital device.”

The mobile industry here in the US has needed something like this to finally jumpstart the industry for a long time. Americans have been much slower to embrace smart phone technology than our European counterparts. Texting as well as internet access has been available for quite awhile but we have used our cells mostly for just making calls. Perhaps it is a product of our talkative nature and that we don’t put as much importance in the written language as our friends overseas. Also, it has only been in the last 18 months that prices have really started to come down low enough for everyone to be able to afford a cellphone with PDA functionality.

The iPhone claims to be a lot more than a cellphone with PDA technology. What the iPhone has going for it is that first and foremost, it’s a New Media device providing all-in-one functionality. Instead of having to carry around three devices, a cell phone, PDA and an iPod, you can pick up an iPhone and do everything. Plus it comes packed with all the cool a Mac has become synonymous with in a 3 by 5(2.4×4.5) package. It runs on the OS X operating system just like it’s big brother and can be connected to a Apple TV device in addition to everything else. You can connect to your Mac or PC using iTunes and download your favorite music and video right to the iPhone.

Jobs expects the iPhone to have an immediate impact in the burgeoning market for cellphones worldwide. Steve predicted Apple will sell about 10 million iPhones, or about 1% of the worldwide market, by 2008 and rightfully so.

I knew when the iPhone was first announced that I would have to wait for one. Having just moved to North Carolina from Denver, I had signed a new plan with Sprint and bought a PocketPC rather than a Blackberry to use with work. It already has most of the functionality touted in the iPhone but definitely lacks the slick packaging and stylish grace being cooed about by those lucky enough to have gotten their hands on an iPhone already.

There is only one thing, just read it today, that gives me pause, this from Edward C Baig in his Personal Tech column on USA Today, “too bad iPhone has no voice-recognition or voice-dialing capability.” WHAT?! When I am in my car this has become a must have functionality for me but I’m sure this functionality will be in future releases of the iPhone when I am ready to buy.

So hold on world, the iPhone is almost here. Maybe by the end of next week we can move on to something else but I have a feeling that the iPhone is going to reign supreme on the Tech frontpage for some time to come.

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