maniacal rage

My butt is sore from literally sitting on the edge of my seat for two hours yesterday as Apple introduced the iPhone, hitherto referred to as Apple's greatest achievement. That might sound like a hyperbole, but it's really not: Apple builds great computers, makes great software and created an excellent music player, and this combines all of them. This is the device we've all been talking about for 10 years. The thing we meant when we were saying, "One day, we'll have one device that does everything..." That day is today (well, okay, it's actually a day in June).

I love mobile phones. Since 1999, I have had thirteen phones¹ (a few of them only briefly) and my biggest complaint is that none of them, not one was what I really wanted in a phone. Currently, I carry my mobile phone, my iPod, a small camera (usually), a voice recorder for recording ideas, pens and a small notebook every day. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it adds up. And, with all of that, I still can't browse the internet full-scale, send real email or check my location on a map. And I surely can't send the ideas that I record to friends.

And let's talk about interfaces. I've seen them all—from no color to five colors to full-color, from LED to LCD (STN to TFT!)—and they all fail in comparison to Apple's 160ppi iPhone screen. Just take a look at the demo or photos of the phone and you'll realize, immediately, how truly awful current phones' screens are in comparison. Now, with pixels per inch we're only talking about how it looks, but how does it work? Apple has put OS X on a phone and honestly, that's the best part. Shawn made a good point yesterday in that Apple's real marvel here was getting OS X on a mobile phone. Once they did that, the rest was gravy. Beautiful software, that's just par for the OS X course. Now it's on a phone and they can go nuts.

There are many innovations here (and I'm sure we'll see them all detailed more and more as it gets closer to release) that leave current mobile phones in the dust. Visual voicemail. Multi-touch interface². Proximity sensors to save battery life and accelerometers to switch viewing state. Two batteries, one dedicated to the iPod functionality so you don't run out of juice and can't make calls (I might be wrong about this, perhaps it's just one battery with software-controlled usage). 8GB of storage. A real, full-featured email client and web browser. Wi-Fi. And, of course, it's got tons of the standard features as well, like Bluetooth, Quad-band capabilities, EDGE and a 2 megapixel camera.

I mean, my god. It almost sounded like a joke when Jobs kept listing features for 45 minutes. This is truly the gadget of my dreams.

Of course, there had to be a downside: the Cingular lock-in. Luckily for NYC-area residents, this shouldn't be an issue³, but for people who live in a weak-signal or non-Cingular area, this will really dampen the excitement. Who knows what's going to happen in Canada and Europe. This also means you'll have to sign another 2-year contract, and, if I know Cingular, customers currently in a contract without upgrade rights will have to pay full price for the phone (which will probably be $699/799 USD). I was really hoping Apple would take Cingular to task and force them to change some of their policies but that's wishing for a lot since Cingular has 52 million customers.

In the end, my excitement for this device can be summed up by listening to the crowd at the Moscone center when Jobs announced the device yesterday. June cannot come soon enough, and I'll be right in the front of the line when the iPhone is released.