If you’re landing on this blog for the first time, welcome, you probably wanted some of the iPhone scoop so Google might have dropped you off. Well, you’re in the right place. I only wish I could have been there at the business meeting where they announced this news the other day. And if I had I would have tried my hardest to sneak a camera in to give you a little glimpse of this new marvel. Unfortunately I wasn’t there, didn’t have a camera and you’ll just have to rely on some of the rumors I have heard.
The blogging world being what it is you can never be sure who to trust, but I promise you I’m only going to deliver to you that information that I’m at least 95% sure of regarding Apple Computers new telephone device.
First, it’s an iPod. That means you can put music on it, take it with you and have your own personal ‘jukebox’ on you all day long. You be the DJ! The iPod is a pretty popular little gadget right now, almost a ubiquitous fashion accessory so it may be hard to determine if it’s popularity has more to do with it’s cultural cache than it’s actual usefulness. Some people are real trend hoppers. [This is not meant in any offense if you, like me, love your iPod for all the music it can hold and play in random order…better than a radio station, isn’t it??]
Secondly, it’s a phone. No duh, I hear you saying. But one of the best things I’ve heard about this new iPhone is that it’s revolutionary. That means it’s going to totally force us to rethink the way we think about telephones, fax machines, cell phones and probably even the internet. What’s the one thing all these things have in common? Keeping us in touch with our friends. Exactly. No matter what the technology looks like, no matter how many features and games we can add on, it all boils down to keeping close with our pals, family, friends, coworkers and people we know from social networking sites that we’re chat buddies with. All over the world, it’s about communicating.
Some other features of the phone will be video playback. Apple Computers are on the forefront of multimedia programming. This is why in almost any artist’s apartment or company that produces something with a lot of design flourish you’ll see the familiar glow of the Apple Macintosh apple. Apple has always been the open secret of the computing world, and that does make a lot of long time users cautious about every step Apple takes into the regular world of commerce. A lot of long time users also resent a lot of the new Apple products being able to work on, in their minds, the inferior operating system Microsoft Windows XP. These are battles that take place mostly on message boards and blog comment pages, so most non-computer obsessed people might think this all sounds kind of crazy. It’s like a mega soda war with a few potato chip skirmishes thrown in for good measure.
Now, the last part of this post is going to be the one thing I promised it wouldn’t be: speculation. Sorry guys, but we’ve got to at least wonder about some of the really amazing little secrets this iPhone is going to hold until it’s possible entry into the marketplace. A lot of people are really convinced it’s going to have almost 100% sync up with the Apple Computer. This is really likely. Also, you can bet that it will work pretty seamlessly with the iTunes application. If it can browse web pages it will likely be formatted to auto-detect those smaller better laid out (read: add free!) mini pages a lot of big news companies have for handheld device users. Ever check out the web on a Blackberry? Then you know what I’m talking about. This may even force big time Internet companies like Yahoo! and Google to rethink all the special java scripting they’ve been using on their email accounts. Anyway, you can also bet that it will feature one of those great click wheels we’ve come to know and love about the iPod. This may actually mean we’ll have to get used to dialing numbers the old fashioned way again. It will probably indicate there won’t be any text messaging, since there won’t be any keys, so I’m not even sure how the web browsing will work now. Probably a bug they’ll fix before going into the marketplace. Anyway, I for one look forward to picking up my new iPhone in the next couple of years now that they’ve let the cat out of the bag. Let’s hope the design is at least as fashionable as the iPod we’re so used to.
