In case you missed it, Apple’s Steve Jobs today introduced the iPhone. Apparently it will be exclusive to Cingular for some time (since the phone is GSM, that pretty much would limit it to Cingular or T-Mobile stateside) and is still about 6 months away from release.
The phone looks cool, has a unique buttonless interface, is also an iPod, and apparently also runs the Mac OS-X operating system, so is a full featured computer in a very mobile package. There are plenty of places on the web where you can read all the gory details and see lots of cool photos.
My question is, will it really make any impact on the industry, and more specifically, will it help push forward the mobility revolution?
Almost a month ago, I wrote a piece identifying the iPhone as one of the top stories of 2006.
At that time, I said “If Apple can successfully bring the value of their usability leadership into the handset space, they will create new, untapped value in a new industry. Good for Apple and good for cellphone customers. But, if Apple can do that AND fully leverage the Law of Mobility to amplify the value of the iPod, then we’ll be looking at a revolutionary product that is helping push forward the mobility revolution.”
So, how does the iPhone appear to measure up to those standards?
Are they “bringing the value of their usability leadership into the handset space?” In introducing the device, Jobs said “Apple is going to reinvent the phone!” That reinvention is around something that Apple is calling the “Multi-Touch” interface. As I mentioned, there are no buttons on the device, all interaction is through the touch screen.
Half of me wants to believe that this truly will bring usability leadership into the handset space. Conceptually, it’s not so different from the radical reinvention of the PC that the original Mac introduced - changing the whole paradigm from keyboard centricity to a mouse-driven point-and-click interface. The parallels to the iPod are also meaningful. Mostly driven by iTunes, the iPod eliminated the techno-geekery that had previously been required to enjoy MP3-based music. By simplifying the whole experience to rip-sync-burn, mobile music became available to the masses and obviously had an enormous impact on both the music and consumer electronics industries.
In fact, one of my predictions for this year is that “the breakout phone of the year will be popular because of usability, not style” (okay, so the iPhone has both going for it…). So, if the iPod were hugely successful and if that success were attributed to its usability, then I’d get at least one of my predictions right…
And this is important because, especially for data applications, usability has been perhaps the biggest hindrence to adoption. If Apple could eliminate the complexity that today surrounds mobile data and make it so simple that anyone who can use a Mac could use it, then we could be looking at a true breakthrough in the ongoing mobility revolution. I get pretty excited when I think about the simplicity and power of widgets combined with contextual relevance and mobile broadband connectivity. All of a sudden, Yahoo Go 2.0 starts looking pretty tame by comparison.
But… I have lingering concerns.
Why did Apple go with EDGE instead of USDPA (or better yet EV-DO or WiMax)? Will the limited bandwidth undermine early user experiences and suppress the iPhone revolution before it can even get started?
Is a button-less phone really such a good idea? My current phone has a few buttons, but the telephone dialing pad is a touchscreen and I hate it. Trying to select from my contacts using my finger is also a challenge. Has Apple really solved the challenges of the physical dimensions of the typical American finger and the touchscreen? (I hope so, but…)
How confident should we be that Apple has really designed a device that can live up to the demands of a cellphone - a device that people have with them all the time, wherever they go, in whatever weather, banging into steering wheels, table legs, brick walls, and expected to always work? The iPod has done remarkably well, but isn’t really up to these levels of (ab)use demands. (Again, I hope so…)
Getting back to my questions from a month ago, my second “if” was if the iPhone could “leverage the Law of Mobility to amplify the value of the iPod,” then it would be a big deal. Well, I certainly undershot the mark on this one. Because the iPhone appears to be a full Mac running the full operating system, then iTunes will work over the Internet connection (WiFi or EDGE) to deliver a mobilized iPod experience (although I’ll keep hoping they’ll find innovative ways to integrate context into a truly mobile iPod experience). But as I mentioned above, because it’s a full OS, it’s so much more than just mobilizing the media experience, the potential exists to integrate widgets and context in some very exciting ways.
Bottom line, I’m hopeful, but a bit skeptical.
Like so many products, maybe it will be version 2.0 or 3.0 that will really hit the mark. Or maybe the iPhone will end up being a revolutionary product, but not as a phone at all.
Time will tell.
One closing thought. A month ago, I observed that “Apple still defines itself around the personal computer,” and “Apple is not driven by the Mobility Revolution. The success of the iPod and iTunes is only marginally associated to the Internet Revolution (the iTunes store isn’t a bad revenue source…). The iPod is really all about the PC Revolution that Apple launched more than a quarter of a century ago and which still defines the company.”
Maybe, just maybe, the real revolution here is the true mobilization of the personal computer in a way that Microsoft and it’s partners have so far failed to accomplish.
Now that would be insanely great!
