Nicely done, Apple

[da]

This article from Time has a hands-on description from a reporter, and makes it look that much more appealing. If you're interested in such things, and are willing to shell out the money, that is. I bet lots of people are.

"To Jobs's perfectionist eyes, phones are broken. Jobs likes things that are broken. It means he can make something that isn't and sell it to you for a premium price."

That seems about right. As an example: apparently, they've borrowed the multi-touch gestures that I first saw last autumn where pinching your fingers together on the screen zooms out and drawing your fingers apart zooms in.

I wonder whether the revisions they required Cingular to make so all their network features would work, will filter down to other cellphone companies as well. And I like that this "phone" is actually a sneaky reimplementation of the ideas behind the Newton. Apple has 200 patents for this little device. I'm looking forward to seeing a writeup of the more interesting ones.

But personally, unless I can see one hands-on and decide it's going to change my life in a real way, I can think of better things to do with $500 US.

Incidentally, lost in the news from Cupartino, is news of a real full-size Macbook Tablet, made by Axiotron. (Yeah, who?) Oh well. It's got GPS built in. (I wonder if I can get that as a PCMCIA card for my Mac Book Pro yet?)

Comments

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

..did they? It looks they might've patented multi-touch themselves. (along with a universe of other things). Hope this doesn't mean every interface designer is going to be cursing Apple once it becomes clear what Apple requires licenses to use.

[thingo.livejournal.com]

Hm. I had heard rumours that Jeff's work had been acquired by Apple. That may be complete bunk, or it may be true but not applicable to the iPhone. Web searchers on "Jeff Han" and "Apple" definitely turn up a lot of pages where the two are mentioned together.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll believe your rumours.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

WTF? Multi-touch has been on the market for many years. How can you patent something that other people have working, buyable products implementing?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Hm, looks like they might be doing a botch job with the name "iPhone," even.

Must be tough, being Apple. :)