Apple MUST NOT create anything that tries to do so many things that it does none of them well.
Cell phones need good battery life, because when you need a phone, you need it (especially if, as with many younger people, it's their only phone). iPods can afford a lower battery life (and thus, a hard drive) because they're optional accessories.
A cell phone with the battery life of an iPod would be a nuisance.
The PDA is a non-starter, so far. The vast bulk of cellphones in use have minimal PDA capabilities, and no-one cares. As long as the person's memory, paper calendars, and paper notes have a significantly better cost/benefit ratio, no-one will care about this. That's why PDAs and their ilk occupy a niche (in the US at least). The iPod handles a few PDA-like functions; most cell phones can manage a few others (address books, particularly, and simple calendars). Good enough. Apple's synching capabilities are limited to relatively high-end kit. Until they can synch will the phones that are FREE with a 2-year contract (or whatever), none of the services they synch with will be used with any great frequency.
On top of all this, there is the simple fact that the features of a gadget that are easily accessed from the physical interface are the ones that will get used. Anything too far off the beaten path, anything that can't be obviously and easily set and reset, anything buried down under too many submenus... is not going to get used by 90% of the population. The physical interface in particular, and the software interface as well, define the set of features that people will actually use. And the features that people actually use define the desirability of the product as far as word-of-mouth advertising (the best kind) goes. So if you roll out some do-everything widget that doesn't do anything easily or well, nobody will buy it. That's what Apple understands, and that's why they haven't tried making an Everything Gadget to date.
There's one more issue that cell phones introduce: The customer for cell phones isn't the end user, it's the cell company. The companies demand certain features (and the exclusion of certain features!) and you have to design for them. Consumers take whatever they're offered (especially if it's free, and if all they want is a phone). This puts a real crimp in Apple's style, for one, and it means that you have to account for the business models and desires of the cell service providers, more than the end users, more even than Apple itself, in determining what sort of features any widget containing a cell phone can provide.
Well put. You are quite right - I can imagine how difficult the carriers would be in their demands. Thanks for your response Amorph.
However, Apple does have an elegant simplicity to most of their products. They are quite genius in this department - and in some ways, it's what they do best (simplicity). I think they could master the cell phone / PDA OS (OS X Mobile) - better than most companies (especially most cell phone companies). Also, as for the battery - the iPod Shuffle could be crammed into a phone.
A question Apple might ask themselves: Could we make a better cell phone? Yes.
In all seriousness, I find the PDA functions on every cell phone I've owned (5 or 6 now) to be utterly useless. I synced my iCal calendar with my Moto v60 recently and got millions of incredibly small, utterly useless blips on my calendar. No, screen size does matter when you have LOTS of appointments etc. So for me the phone is the phone. No more. The iPod works because it targets one market, rather than the spread shot features in one device you are describing.
Anyway, I wouldn't pay $599 for a phone, even if it had all those features. I'd get my cell phone that works good, and an iPod for music/photos etc. I still have a Cambridge date book, because I can erase appointments and scribble notes easily. Try editting something on a phone once. It would take at least 10x as long as my notebook and pencil. Sure I can't shove it in my pocket, but to me that is not a drawback. I stuff it in my laptop bag and go.
There's only one obvious question about the future: What do you need to carry in your pocket at all times?
Right now most anyone has a cell phone in their pocket. Socially it's considered the norm. People are shocked when they find out someone doesn't have a cell phone. Of these people who have cell phones - how many have iPods? Quite a lot.
As it stands now, I always need my phone in my pocket - the iPod is optional. However, I need much more from my phone. The OS sucks! The internet sucks on a phone too. The future is with cell phones or multi-functional pocket devices. An iPod/Phone/PDA device would sell like mad. I've seen rumors here and there about an Apple prototype of this sort. An iPod Shuffle could easily fit into a cell phone!
Here's what it needs:
Compatible with most carriers
High Speed Wireless Internet (carrier provided for a fee)
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
Mini-Safari
Email client
mini-iChat
USB or Firewire
iPod built-in
SD slot
Any thoughts on this?
(This is a must for Apple)
-Bubba
For the first time in three years of lurking and occasional posting here at AI, I feel stupider after reading something in Future Hardware -
Since we are on the "jump the techno-bandwagon" bandwagon here, I have to admit the idea that Apple needs to make other popular products TO SURVIVE was originally a silly idea, but then I turned on the television.
BAM! There is Billy Mays screaming at the audience about his bathroom cleaner named KABOOM. It cleans grout, tile, chrome, porcelain, linoleum, hell you could probably use it for a foamy desert topping. And I had a thought, if Apple REALLY wants to be successful they should make their own version of KABOOM. Call it KRABAPPLE! Only aside from cleaning grout, tile, linoleum, chrome, and porcelain, they could also make the bottle be a 256 meg MP3 player, stop watch, GPS device, mini DV camcorder, Mars Rover, and iron lung.
Think of the market for that!
I changed channels, and there were The Blue Angels. I thought "Planes! People love planes!" Therefore Apple must begin the immediate manufacture of airplanes and highly trained stunt teams (The Blue Apples). Only these teams would not only perform complex and dangerous aerobatic maneuvers, they would mind-meld with the audience and synchronize their G-forces with those on the ground thus offering a virtually interactive experience.
I went to the bathroom, sniffed my KABOOM bottle, then returned to the television. WHAM! There it was, the must produce product if Apple wants to remain a viable company for the next ten billion million years, The Starship Enterprise. No doubt with Steve Jobs' vision and Apple's committment to ease of use the holodeck malfunction plaguing the intrepid crew would forever cease to be a problem other than in fiction. Better yet, the ship could be connected via 802.16Z Interstellar Wireless Protocol to all the other ships in Starfleet. Now captains can synch their to-do lists, Klingons on the starboard bow reports, and trade pictures of Lwaxana Troi's wedding without the whole dock in space port, connect docking station computer to ship with big dangerous cable, force only android crewmember to change the location of several hundred little blinking plastic cubes in a hidden panel, and employ the talents of Wesley Crusher to make everything work.
I changed channels again, and there was the Sprint guy, showing off the new Nokia SUP 101 (The only cell phone that is also a rectal suppository, PDA, MP3 player, TIVO recorder, geosynchronous satellite, hybrid car, complete collection of Hummel figurines in decorative display case, umbrella, lingerie catalog, and bacon double cheeseburger) and then I knew Bubba was right on the money.
Otherwise it's curtains for Apple...
Hey... Curtains.... Curtains?.. Curtains!.. CURTAINS!!! APPLE MUST BEGIN THE IMMEDIATE MANUFACTURE OF CURTAINS!!!
For the first time in three years of lurking and occasional posting here at AI, I feel stupider after reading something in Future Hardware -
Since we are on the "jump the techno-bandwagon" bandwagon here, I have to admit the idea that Apple needs to make other popular products TO SURVIVE was originally a silly idea, but then I turned on the television.
BAM! There is Billy Mays screaming at the audience about his bathroom cleaner named KABOOM. It cleans grout, tile, chrome, porcelain, linoleum, hell you could probably use it for a foamy desert topping. And I had a thought, if Apple REALLY wants to be successful they should make their own version of KABOOM. Call it KRABAPPLE! Only aside from cleaning grout, tile, linoleum, chrome, and porcelain, they could also make the bottle be a 256 meg MP3 player, stop watch, GPS device, mini DV camcorder, Mars Rover, and iron lung.
Think of the market for that!
I changed channels, and there were The Blue Angels. I thought "Planes! People love planes!" Therefore Apple must begin the immediate manufacture of airplanes and highly trained stunt teams (The Blue Apples). Only these teams would not only perform complex and dangerous aerobatic maneuvers, they would mind-meld with the audience and synchronize their G-forces with those on the ground thus offering a virtually interactive experience.
I went to the bathroom, sniffed my KABOOM bottle, then returned to the television. WHAM! There it was, the must produce product if Apple wants to remain a viable company for the next ten billion million years, The Starship Enterprise. No doubt with Steve Jobs' vision and Apple's committment to ease of use the holodeck malfunction plaguing the intrepid crew would forever cease to be a problem other than in fiction. Better yet, the ship could be connected via 802.16Z Interstellar Wireless Protocol to all the other ships in Starfleet. Now captains can synch their to-do lists, Klingons on the starboard bow reports, and trade pictures of Lwaxana Troi's wedding without the whole dock in space port, connect docking station computer to ship with big dangerous cable, force only android crewmember to change the location of several hundred little blinking plastic cubes in a hidden panel, and employ the talents of Wesley Crusher to make everything work.
I changed channels again, and there was the Sprint guy, showing off the new Nokia SUP 101 (The only cell phone that is also a rectal suppository, PDA, MP3 player, TIVO recorder, geosynchronous satellite, hybrid car, complete collection of Hummel figurines in decorative display case, umbrella, lingerie catalog, and bacon double cheeseburger) and then I knew Bubba was right on the money.
Otherwise it's curtains for Apple...
Hey... Curtains.... Curtains?.. Curtains!.. CURTAINS!!! APPLE MUST BEGIN THE IMMEDIATE MANUFACTURE OF CURTAINS!!!
This is exactly the conversation I wanted! And perhaps more.
Dali once said: "Why then, when I order a lobster does the waiter not bring me a flaming phone book??"
After reading this response (and picking myself up off the floor from laughing so damn hard) - I couldn't help but think of Brando (in Apocalypse Now) reading your words - in the style of Kurtz.
This is exactly the conversation I wanted! And perhaps more.
Dali once said: "Why then, when I order a lobster does the waiter not bring me a flaming phone book??"
After reading this response (and picking myself up off the floor from laughing so damn hard) - I couldn't help but think of Brando (in Apocalypse Now) reading your words - in the style of Kurtz.
Well put. You are quite right - I can imagine how difficult the carriers would be in their demands. Thanks for your response Amorph.
However, Apple does have an elegant simplicity to most of their products. They are quite genius in this department - and in some ways, it's what they do best (simplicity).
Exactly.
How do they do that? By trimming off features. Posts like yours popped up within seconds of Jobs unveiling the first iPod, and guess what? Years later, the iPod still does the same thing with a similar interface.
Quote:
A question Apple might ask themselves: Could we make a better cell phone? Yes.
But that doesn't matter, because the only relevant question in that business is, what do the carriers want? Any appeal to customers is indirect. Most of the cell phones around here are cheap and clunky and minimally functional, and most of the time they're only considered as phones. But they're free with the service, and they work just fine as phones.
What Apple can do, and what they apparently have done, is mock up a working design for a cell phone and shop it around to the people in the business. A sort of "this is what we'd like to see done" design. Until Apple can dictate terms to the likes of Verizon and Sprint and Cingular and DoCoMo—fat chance—the best they could do would be to offer a pretty-looking phone that works pretty much the same way that everyone else's does. And perhaps they'd piss off some of the companies with whom they're collaborating on H.264 and wireless and synching technologies.
I definitely see Apple trying to make waves in the industry, trying to influence the direction of the industry. But I don't see any opportunity for them to offer a phone yet. In fact, I'll be amazed if they ever do, just because I don't see the structure of the industry changing in any fundamental way.
The thing is that the devices (be it PDA from Palm/Pocket PC or Smartphones...by moto, s-ericsson, nokia, etc..) they are hardly compatible with our beloved Macs. When I sync the PIM features of my Palm Tungsten T to iCal, they come out different w/ incorrect date/to do list categories and times. This is unacceptable. I'm not even talking about other features such as putting music/video on it, since it is impossible.
The fact is that there need to be more 3rd party devices compatible with Macs such as smartphones. Look at all the iPaq offerings. Besides PIM, you can put videos, music, PPT, Word, Excel (all without paying for 3rd party software).
OR, Apple can solve this by coming out with their own smartphone/PDA/ partner with MOTO not to make iTunes phone, but to make a Mac-compatible Smartphone.
I found and translated a Nostradamus quatrain just this week (I found it in the back yard under a rock). It read -
"When the skies open up like a seive of urine.
Who will fret and moan about towering uncuttable lawn?
The new weather man will be burned at the stake and his children sold on eBay!
The sun will return to the granite state when the great pizza of disappointment is delivered in under 30 minutes."
I wonder what it means!
Depends. you normally watch Al Kaprelian or Chris Thomas?
By the way, if you ever in Manchester check out Beauty's pizza (near the Dunkin donuts across from Blake's Ice cream on the Derry side of Union street. Ish.). Great stuff, I miss it.
My cell phone cost me $29. Can Apple sell an iTunes phone for $29?
Considering that I have to pay monthly for my phone, I'm not that impressed with getting the phone for $29 either, it should have been free. Can Apple offer a free iTunes phone?
Can they make both a phone and deals with providers so that they can give me a free phone?
If they can't, then they can't be in this business. Simple. Nobody wants their iPod cluttered with extranious functionality that will be outdated a lot quicker than the music player itself. Then, rather than a functional device that just works for years and years, you have a kludgy, buggy device that's outdate before your service contract expires. Now you get to throw out a phone AND your MP3 player -- YAY for you!
VOIP. When some combination of a completely unwired infrastructure and VOIP makes it possible for telephony to jump from a telecom company controlled infrastructure to a new, wholly independent, web-based, infrastructure, then, and only then, can Apple offer the phone you imagine -- and so can anybody else.
Telco's won't let themselves be made irrelevant, they will buy, develop, and control new infrastructure, they may sell access to it differently, may retreat from being retailers, but this is all a long way off.
Comments
Originally posted by Amorph
Apple MUST NOT create anything that tries to do so many things that it does none of them well.
Cell phones need good battery life, because when you need a phone, you need it (especially if, as with many younger people, it's their only phone). iPods can afford a lower battery life (and thus, a hard drive) because they're optional accessories.
A cell phone with the battery life of an iPod would be a nuisance.
The PDA is a non-starter, so far. The vast bulk of cellphones in use have minimal PDA capabilities, and no-one cares. As long as the person's memory, paper calendars, and paper notes have a significantly better cost/benefit ratio, no-one will care about this. That's why PDAs and their ilk occupy a niche (in the US at least). The iPod handles a few PDA-like functions; most cell phones can manage a few others (address books, particularly, and simple calendars). Good enough. Apple's synching capabilities are limited to relatively high-end kit. Until they can synch will the phones that are FREE with a 2-year contract (or whatever), none of the services they synch with will be used with any great frequency.
On top of all this, there is the simple fact that the features of a gadget that are easily accessed from the physical interface are the ones that will get used. Anything too far off the beaten path, anything that can't be obviously and easily set and reset, anything buried down under too many submenus... is not going to get used by 90% of the population. The physical interface in particular, and the software interface as well, define the set of features that people will actually use. And the features that people actually use define the desirability of the product as far as word-of-mouth advertising (the best kind) goes. So if you roll out some do-everything widget that doesn't do anything easily or well, nobody will buy it. That's what Apple understands, and that's why they haven't tried making an Everything Gadget to date.
There's one more issue that cell phones introduce: The customer for cell phones isn't the end user, it's the cell company. The companies demand certain features (and the exclusion of certain features!) and you have to design for them. Consumers take whatever they're offered (especially if it's free, and if all they want is a phone). This puts a real crimp in Apple's style, for one, and it means that you have to account for the business models and desires of the cell service providers, more than the end users, more even than Apple itself, in determining what sort of features any widget containing a cell phone can provide.
Well put. You are quite right - I can imagine how difficult the carriers would be in their demands. Thanks for your response Amorph.
However, Apple does have an elegant simplicity to most of their products. They are quite genius in this department - and in some ways, it's what they do best (simplicity). I think they could master the cell phone / PDA OS (OS X Mobile) - better than most companies (especially most cell phone companies). Also, as for the battery - the iPod Shuffle could be crammed into a phone.
A question Apple might ask themselves: Could we make a better cell phone? Yes.
I think that actually says a lot.
-Bubba
Originally posted by wilco
Here's something. Use the "search" function. This subject has been done to death already.
Except no one claimed that Apple "must" do it.
Okay, "bubba"?
Keep going. I'm completely enthralled. Your personal contributions to this topic have so far been extremely useful and thought provoking.
-"Bubba"
Anyway, I wouldn't pay $599 for a phone, even if it had all those features. I'd get my cell phone that works good, and an iPod for music/photos etc. I still have a Cambridge date book, because I can erase appointments and scribble notes easily. Try editting something on a phone once. It would take at least 10x as long as my notebook and pencil. Sure I can't shove it in my pocket, but to me that is not a drawback. I stuff it in my laptop bag and go.
It's more function than style for me.
Originally posted by makeroom4bubba
There's only one obvious question about the future: What do you need to carry in your pocket at all times?
Right now most anyone has a cell phone in their pocket. Socially it's considered the norm. People are shocked when they find out someone doesn't have a cell phone. Of these people who have cell phones - how many have iPods? Quite a lot.
As it stands now, I always need my phone in my pocket - the iPod is optional. However, I need much more from my phone. The OS sucks! The internet sucks on a phone too. The future is with cell phones or multi-functional pocket devices. An iPod/Phone/PDA device would sell like mad. I've seen rumors here and there about an Apple prototype of this sort. An iPod Shuffle could easily fit into a cell phone!
Here's what it needs:
Compatible with most carriers
High Speed Wireless Internet (carrier provided for a fee)
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
Mini-Safari
Email client
mini-iChat
USB or Firewire
iPod built-in
SD slot
Any thoughts on this?
(This is a must for Apple)
-Bubba
For the first time in three years of lurking and occasional posting here at AI, I feel stupider after reading something in Future Hardware -
Since we are on the "jump the techno-bandwagon" bandwagon here, I have to admit the idea that Apple needs to make other popular products TO SURVIVE was originally a silly idea, but then I turned on the television.
BAM! There is Billy Mays screaming at the audience about his bathroom cleaner named KABOOM. It cleans grout, tile, chrome, porcelain, linoleum, hell you could probably use it for a foamy desert topping. And I had a thought, if Apple REALLY wants to be successful they should make their own version of KABOOM. Call it KRABAPPLE! Only aside from cleaning grout, tile, linoleum, chrome, and porcelain, they could also make the bottle be a 256 meg MP3 player, stop watch, GPS device, mini DV camcorder, Mars Rover, and iron lung.
Think of the market for that!
I changed channels, and there were The Blue Angels. I thought "Planes! People love planes!" Therefore Apple must begin the immediate manufacture of airplanes and highly trained stunt teams (The Blue Apples). Only these teams would not only perform complex and dangerous aerobatic maneuvers, they would mind-meld with the audience and synchronize their G-forces with those on the ground thus offering a virtually interactive experience.
I went to the bathroom, sniffed my KABOOM bottle, then returned to the television. WHAM! There it was, the must produce product if Apple wants to remain a viable company for the next ten billion million years, The Starship Enterprise. No doubt with Steve Jobs' vision and Apple's committment to ease of use the holodeck malfunction plaguing the intrepid crew would forever cease to be a problem other than in fiction. Better yet, the ship could be connected via 802.16Z Interstellar Wireless Protocol to all the other ships in Starfleet. Now captains can synch their to-do lists, Klingons on the starboard bow reports, and trade pictures of Lwaxana Troi's wedding without the whole dock in space port, connect docking station computer to ship with big dangerous cable, force only android crewmember to change the location of several hundred little blinking plastic cubes in a hidden panel, and employ the talents of Wesley Crusher to make everything work.
I changed channels again, and there was the Sprint guy, showing off the new Nokia SUP 101 (The only cell phone that is also a rectal suppository, PDA, MP3 player, TIVO recorder, geosynchronous satellite, hybrid car, complete collection of Hummel figurines in decorative display case, umbrella, lingerie catalog, and bacon double cheeseburger) and then I knew Bubba was right on the money.
Otherwise it's curtains for Apple...
Hey... Curtains.... Curtains?.. Curtains!.. CURTAINS!!! APPLE MUST BEGIN THE IMMEDIATE MANUFACTURE OF CURTAINS!!!
Originally posted by BigMcLargehuge
I changed channels....
Jeff, that has to be one of the best posts I have ever read on AI. Thanks for the laughs. How's Merrimack doing these days?
Originally posted by Rhumgod
Jeff, that has to be one of the best posts I have ever read on AI. Thanks for the laughs. How's Merrimack doing these days?
Things are good here, albeit rainy (it's rained for something like 40 days in a row and I am starting to collect pairs of animals).
BTW, I am in Derry not Merrimac, but close
And how are you and yours?
Originally posted by BigMcLargehuge
Things are good here, albeit rainy (it's rained for something like 40 days in a row and I am starting to collect pairs of animals).
BTW, I am in Derry not Merrimac, but close
I know....25 years ago (dear God!) I used to live there. Quaint.
40 days, eh? Where's Nordstrodamus? He'd probably have something to say about that!
Seriously, Apple is about simplicity....not the do-all wonder-gadget.
Originally posted by Rhumgod
I know....25 years ago (dear God!) I used to live there. Quaint.
40 days, eh? Where's Nordstrodamus? He'd probably have something to say about that!
Seriously, Apple is about simplicity....not the do-all wonder-gadget.
I found and translated a Nostradamus quatrain just this week (I found it in the back yard under a rock). It read -
"When the skies open up like a seive of urine.
Who will fret and moan about towering uncuttable lawn?
The new weather man will be burned at the stake and his children sold on eBay!
The sun will return to the granite state when the great pizza of disappointment is delivered in under 30 minutes."
I wonder what it means!
Originally posted by BigMcLargehuge
I found and translated a Nostradamus quatrain just this week (I found it in the back yard under a rock). It read -
"When the skies open up like a seive of urine.
Who will fret and moan about towering uncuttable lawn?
The new weather man will be burned at the stake and his children sold on eBay!
The sun will return to the granite state when the great pizza of disappointment is delivered in under 30 minutes."
I wonder what it means!
I think that was Codename pretending to be Nostradamus. He was talking about the upcoming Tablet in another thread.
Either that or King Kone is no longer....
Originally posted by Rhumgod
I think that was Codename pretending to be Nostradamus. He was talking about the upcoming Tablet in another thread.
Either that or King Kone is no longer....
I think King Kone is still around... I will have to check
Originally posted by BigMcLargehuge
For the first time in three years of lurking and occasional posting here at AI, I feel stupider after reading something in Future Hardware -
Since we are on the "jump the techno-bandwagon" bandwagon here, I have to admit the idea that Apple needs to make other popular products TO SURVIVE was originally a silly idea, but then I turned on the television.
BAM! There is Billy Mays screaming at the audience about his bathroom cleaner named KABOOM. It cleans grout, tile, chrome, porcelain, linoleum, hell you could probably use it for a foamy desert topping. And I had a thought, if Apple REALLY wants to be successful they should make their own version of KABOOM. Call it KRABAPPLE! Only aside from cleaning grout, tile, linoleum, chrome, and porcelain, they could also make the bottle be a 256 meg MP3 player, stop watch, GPS device, mini DV camcorder, Mars Rover, and iron lung.
Think of the market for that!
I changed channels, and there were The Blue Angels. I thought "Planes! People love planes!" Therefore Apple must begin the immediate manufacture of airplanes and highly trained stunt teams (The Blue Apples). Only these teams would not only perform complex and dangerous aerobatic maneuvers, they would mind-meld with the audience and synchronize their G-forces with those on the ground thus offering a virtually interactive experience.
I went to the bathroom, sniffed my KABOOM bottle, then returned to the television. WHAM! There it was, the must produce product if Apple wants to remain a viable company for the next ten billion million years, The Starship Enterprise. No doubt with Steve Jobs' vision and Apple's committment to ease of use the holodeck malfunction plaguing the intrepid crew would forever cease to be a problem other than in fiction. Better yet, the ship could be connected via 802.16Z Interstellar Wireless Protocol to all the other ships in Starfleet. Now captains can synch their to-do lists, Klingons on the starboard bow reports, and trade pictures of Lwaxana Troi's wedding without the whole dock in space port, connect docking station computer to ship with big dangerous cable, force only android crewmember to change the location of several hundred little blinking plastic cubes in a hidden panel, and employ the talents of Wesley Crusher to make everything work.
I changed channels again, and there was the Sprint guy, showing off the new Nokia SUP 101 (The only cell phone that is also a rectal suppository, PDA, MP3 player, TIVO recorder, geosynchronous satellite, hybrid car, complete collection of Hummel figurines in decorative display case, umbrella, lingerie catalog, and bacon double cheeseburger) and then I knew Bubba was right on the money.
Otherwise it's curtains for Apple...
Hey... Curtains.... Curtains?.. Curtains!.. CURTAINS!!! APPLE MUST BEGIN THE IMMEDIATE MANUFACTURE OF CURTAINS!!!
This is exactly the conversation I wanted! And perhaps more.
Dali once said: "Why then, when I order a lobster does the waiter not bring me a flaming phone book??"
After reading this response (and picking myself up off the floor from laughing so damn hard) - I couldn't help but think of Brando (in Apocalypse Now) reading your words - in the style of Kurtz.
You're damn funny.
-Bubba
Originally posted by makeroom4bubba
This is exactly the conversation I wanted! And perhaps more.
Dali once said: "Why then, when I order a lobster does the waiter not bring me a flaming phone book??"
After reading this response (and picking myself up off the floor from laughing so damn hard) - I couldn't help but think of Brando (in Apocalypse Now) reading your words - in the style of Kurtz.
You're damn funny.
-Bubba
The horror... The horror...
Originally posted by BigMcLargehuge
The horror... The horror...
I think I understand exactly what you're saying....
Look:
http://www.iPodalypse-Now.com
-Bubba
Originally posted by makeroom4bubba
Well put. You are quite right - I can imagine how difficult the carriers would be in their demands. Thanks for your response Amorph.
However, Apple does have an elegant simplicity to most of their products. They are quite genius in this department - and in some ways, it's what they do best (simplicity).
Exactly.
How do they do that? By trimming off features. Posts like yours popped up within seconds of Jobs unveiling the first iPod, and guess what? Years later, the iPod still does the same thing with a similar interface.
A question Apple might ask themselves: Could we make a better cell phone? Yes.
But that doesn't matter, because the only relevant question in that business is, what do the carriers want? Any appeal to customers is indirect. Most of the cell phones around here are cheap and clunky and minimally functional, and most of the time they're only considered as phones. But they're free with the service, and they work just fine as phones.
What Apple can do, and what they apparently have done, is mock up a working design for a cell phone and shop it around to the people in the business. A sort of "this is what we'd like to see done" design. Until Apple can dictate terms to the likes of Verizon and Sprint and Cingular and DoCoMo—fat chance—the best they could do would be to offer a pretty-looking phone that works pretty much the same way that everyone else's does. And perhaps they'd piss off some of the companies with whom they're collaborating on H.264 and wireless and synching technologies.
I definitely see Apple trying to make waves in the industry, trying to influence the direction of the industry. But I don't see any opportunity for them to offer a phone yet. In fact, I'll be amazed if they ever do, just because I don't see the structure of the industry changing in any fundamental way.
Apple is doing just fine without a cell phone or PDA!
I agree would be nice to have it, but Apple would survive very well without it.
The fact is that there need to be more 3rd party devices compatible with Macs such as smartphones. Look at all the iPaq offerings. Besides PIM, you can put videos, music, PPT, Word, Excel (all without paying for 3rd party software).
OR, Apple can solve this by coming out with their own smartphone/PDA/ partner with MOTO not to make iTunes phone, but to make a Mac-compatible Smartphone.
AL
Originally posted by BigMcLargehuge
I found and translated a Nostradamus quatrain just this week (I found it in the back yard under a rock). It read -
"When the skies open up like a seive of urine.
Who will fret and moan about towering uncuttable lawn?
The new weather man will be burned at the stake and his children sold on eBay!
The sun will return to the granite state when the great pizza of disappointment is delivered in under 30 minutes."
I wonder what it means!
Depends. you normally watch Al Kaprelian or Chris Thomas?
By the way, if you ever in Manchester check out Beauty's pizza (near the Dunkin donuts across from Blake's Ice cream on the Derry side of Union street. Ish.). Great stuff, I miss it.
Considering that I have to pay monthly for my phone, I'm not that impressed with getting the phone for $29 either, it should have been free. Can Apple offer a free iTunes phone?
Can they make both a phone and deals with providers so that they can give me a free phone?
If they can't, then they can't be in this business. Simple. Nobody wants their iPod cluttered with extranious functionality that will be outdated a lot quicker than the music player itself. Then, rather than a functional device that just works for years and years, you have a kludgy, buggy device that's outdate before your service contract expires. Now you get to throw out a phone AND your MP3 player -- YAY for you!
VOIP. When some combination of a completely unwired infrastructure and VOIP makes it possible for telephony to jump from a telecom company controlled infrastructure to a new, wholly independent, web-based, infrastructure, then, and only then, can Apple offer the phone you imagine -- and so can anybody else.
Telco's won't let themselves be made irrelevant, they will buy, develop, and control new infrastructure, they may sell access to it differently, may retreat from being retailers, but this is all a long way off.