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The iPhone’s niche is going to be the working person who has an iPod and a phone and can merge them into one and merge their PDA in as well. Will the iPhone change the world? Not yet. It needs a revision or two and it needs a lower price point first, but then it could.

I always swore I’d never buy an iPod. They’re too expensive! What a pain in the ass! The screen is too small! And what’s next to my right hand as I type this? My video iPod. I’m typing this on my new Macbook Pro as well.

While Apple’s strength may be marketing, the thing you can’t deny is that their products tend to work, work well and work easily and their customer support, as far as I’ve seen so far, is much better than most companies. Don’t underestimate brand loyalty. As the Mac Mini, Macbooks and Macbook Pros and iPods bring consumers into the ‘Apple Den’ they will gain loyalty like no other company and with that loyalty, I think consumers will give Apples products a look when they are in the market for a new device and as Apple lowers prices to where they’re competative with other companies or have a $20-50 premium, their sales will explode.

There are many ‘better’ mp3 players than the iPod, but they get crushed by iPod sales. Can the iPhone do the same? It’s possible when version 2.0 of it comes out at $299.

- Steve

PS - As for the stock, remember that we just jumped almost $10 on the iPhone news, which doesn’t even include the Quarter 4 results news (which should be stellar), OS 10.5 is going to be released in the first half of 2007 and you know Apple, we could very well see a ‘Oh, one more thing…” or two coming soon as well. I think we could see an Apple split in 2007.

Invest in peace…

That’s about it. I’m not even up on all the 3G vs. G-spot stuff. SIMM cards or whatever. Maybe I should care about those things.

I tried to do some quick research, but maybe you can answer these questions for the Nokia which I would find important on any audio playing handset:

(1) Is it easy to get music on the device? Can I somehow move MP3s from my computer to the device?
(1.5) Do I have to repurchase music I already have?
(2) Do I have to pay an extra monthly charge for the music?

I bet the answers are correct for the Nokia (Yes, No, and No, respectively). But one thing I do know is that the Nokia will not work with iTunes like the iPhone will. This is huge for old iPod users who have their life of music wrapped up in that software.

BTW, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a fan of the iPhone or iPod. I’ve had to HD-based iPods break on me and I’m through with that company.

About being a better music player I rather doubt it. Take a look at the N95 http://www.nokia.com/nseries/index.html or N5300 http://www.nokia.co.uk/A4254051 from Nokia.

I could only find N95 series documentation in German, but here are the stats: http://www.nokia.ch/german/phones/phone_models/n95/

- All bands UMTS, quadband, WLan, etc
- 5 Mega Pixel Camera
- 20x digital zoom
- TV Streaming and DVD video recording capabilities
- Java functionality, organizer, etc, etc

The N95 kicks the butt of the iPhone! The only place where the N95 is not as good is hard disk space, but the N95 has slots.

The reality is that Apple is delusional in thinking that THEY are the only ones who can do phones!

What does the iPhone have for it:
(1) Slim Size?, (2) Sexy Style, (3) Music Playing.

If it is slim (haven’t looked at too many pics or touched one yet), there are a lot of other slim phones on the market.

It is cool that it is running OSX, and Apple Geeks will want to pick it up for sure.

And it does seem to be a better music player than any other phone since it integrate with iTunes and doesn’t require some BS like Verizon’s V-Cast.

Good points, Christian. I don’t know if this can take off yet. They are likely to push a bunch of units on brand name alone, but any one issue becoming too big is going to kill the device. People are unforgiving. Although the first iPods seemed to handle some of their issues well: dying, internal batteries, dying hard disks…

http://www.digg.com/apple/Gizmodo_iPhone_Hands_On_I_Called_My_Mommy

Here is a comment from Digg I really liked:

http://www.digg.com/users/TheOverman

If Apple gets a good marketshare with only this device I’ll be really surprised at how much people can be controlled by marketing. I still believe in human nature and brains so I’m holding my breath.

This time, Apple calling this device anything “revolutionary” is a really stretch. Calling it evolutionary is arguable. I’m waiting to take a deep look at the interface to see if there’s something really new that can be salvaged from the iPhone. The demo videos I saw online (graphical eye candies aside) show an interface that is a simplistic (meaning with less features) version of latest Windows Mobile devices.

Form factor? Well, the whole “oh, look, no buttons, so the interface is dynamic” that Jobs was BS’ing about is the way the WM devices with touch screen have been forever. As a matter of fact, in the first generation Windows Mobile they did the same mistake Apple is doing now, removing keys altogether and leaving the user with a clean, touch screen interface. The response from customers? A resounding “hell no! I can’t type on this”. That’s why most of new generation Windows Mobile devices have the sleek sliding keyboard along with the touch screen and with automatic screen re-orientation (no news here either). Want a really powerful and well thought touch screen phone? Try this one:
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/01/08/htc-omni-specifications-unearthed/

Dimension is one factor that many list as one of the few points where iPods are better than Zunes, and arguably one of the strenghts of Apple designs. Well, there’s nothing to praise here either. The iPhone is visibly (and on cold numbers) wider and longer than any new generation device (think Q or BlackJack) and a little thicker still. To be honest, even in those slimmer devices, I think that the flat, wide, shape is particularly cumbersome and I tend to like better clamshells and smaller candybar phones
(The new Samsung i760 is sweet! http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/01/06/samsung-i760-hands-on/ )

And don’t get me started on the fact that the iPhone is not even supposed to be a real extensible platform ( http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/01/09/the-iphone-is-not-a-smartphone/ ) Big, BIG, mistake!! Phones are all about customization, personalization, new games, new apps, etc. That’s how we got to 1 billion phones world wide. And by driving the development community out of the Palm OS the Windows Mobile managed to steal along the market.

The non-replaceable battery is another bummer, no matter how long they think they can go with a single charge, everyone that depends on their cell phone on a daily base knows that you always need two times the juice they have at any moment If you start listening to songs on this, then, make it 3…

No 3G? That’s SOO 2 years ago!

And no support to Office documents, access to Exchange, etc? WTF???

400 bucks with 2 year contract to Cingular? You gotta be kidding!

What’s really the market for this? It’s not iPod’s teens, because they prefer the PS3 and XBOX for this money. It’s not the professional guys, because the phone is lacking too many of the features they depend on to work. It’s not the casual cell phone user, because that one will buy the cheapest device with the cheapest rate service they can find. Maybe the San Francisco “intellectuals”, but those have brains to figure out hype from reality (I surely hope so).

The reality is that Apple took 2 or 3 years too long to get into the cell phone market. It’s a quite more mature market than mp3 players were by the time iPod was released (Creative and others didn’t really had got a handle on that and penetration was minimal) and has big names that have been innovating for years (Moto RAZR, THAT was quite a revolution. Samsung seems to be releasing new devices every day. And those sexy Nokias…).

I don’t know which cell phone Jobs has, but he’s not speaking for me when he says that “people hate their phones”. I don’t hate mine! I hate my carrier, which happens to be Cingular!

I really think that when the hype is gone the iPhone will leave that kind of impression you get when you think you understood the joke someone was telling but the joke was really on you. But, you know what? I hope not! More choices are always welcome! Maybe they get right the second time!

So, good luck, Apple! Nice try and don’t give up!