The Interesting Thing About the iPhone 3G
After following the coverage of the stevenote this morning I’m impressed, but not by what I thought I’d be impressed by.
Steve covered the new hardware last, but I’ll get it out of the way first. The new iPhone adds 3G networking and GPS. That’s about it, other than a headphone jack that isn’t jacked up. This means that mobile data speeds are about twice as fast and that the location based stuff is more accurate. Both are needed and obvious improvements but not real game changers. Note that the storage hasn’t changed and it appears that the processor speed is the same too.
Also only briefly mentioned was the new pricing: $199 for the 8 GB model and $299 for the 16 GB model. I’m guessing that this represents a carrier subsidy of about $150. This lower pricing is what is going to make the much discussed 8 million iPhones in 2008 an easy target to hit.
The real focus of the presentation though was software. It would have been appropriate if Steve has jumped up and down screaming “Developers, Developers, Developers, DEVELOPERS!”
Ok, maybe not appropriate but funny. The iPhone has suddenly become THE mobile software platform. Not only does it have a serious foundation, solid tools and a growing customer base, but it has the ability to easily download and purchase new apps on the device itself, over the air. Want to buy Super Monkey Ball on a whim? You can do it while riding the bus
This ease of selling applications is going to create a frenzy of software development that is going to spur some real innovation.
Also on the software front, it appears that Apple has addressed all the concerns that people had when the iPhone was first launched. Not only that, but they’ve brought enterprise type features to individual users via the Mobile Me service and synching.
In any case, as excited as I was about the new hardware (which I waited for) it is the software and the possibilities it holds (which is going to work on the old hardware too) that has me really excited now.
I should add that I find Google’s Android platform compelling as well. However with so many devices to support as well as perhaps not having the built in over-the-air distribution channel I wonder if Android doesn’t have some inherent disadvantages when compared to OS X iPhone.
Comment by a random John — June 9, 2008 @ 3:47 pm
I hope developers jump on the bandwagon quickly. It’s almost like a PSP, I can imagine playing a lot of games on it.
Comment by jjohnsen — June 9, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
I’m pretty stoked about the new software. People will come up with all sorts of ridiculous stuff. I’ll bet someone will utilize the GPS capability and turn the phone into a Garmin/TomTom device. There will be all sorts of games and emulators. There will be improvements on the existing software. It’s going to be fantastic. And $199 for a new one is not too shabby.
Now if I can just convince my wife that she needs my current iPhone…
Comment by Rusty — June 9, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
Rusty,
Half the point is that your current iPhone will do 90% of what the new one does, and more cheaply since the 3G data plans will be more expensive.
Comment by a random John — June 9, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
I have an iPhone right now, but work changed to Verizon, so now I just use it as an iPod/media player around home.
Comment by jjohnsen — June 9, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
The big difference between Android and OSX Mobile is that Android doesn’t appear to me to focus on UI quite as much. I’m sure it’ll be better than Windows Mobile though.
Comment by Clark — June 9, 2008 @ 5:26 pm
jjohnsen, you looking to unload that iphone?
Comment by Supergenius — June 9, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
What about the “rumor” that Apply might backhand At&t by claiming its contract with At&t to be the exclusive seller of the iPhone only applied to the last generation phone so that Apple could sell the new iPhone through other carriers (my big problem - my whole family is on Sprint)? I was really hoping to watch that drama unfold.
Comment by Dan — June 9, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
Dan,
From what I’ve read today it seems that you are right that the original agreement only applied to the old iPhone. However AT&T and Apple have a new agreement in place for this generation of phones. Verizon must be kicking themselves for turning it down.
Comment by a random John — June 9, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
I think AT&T and Apple will stick together. There’s been a lot of questioning whether single vendor deals in each country have been wise for Apple. (Especially in Europe where that sort of thing is much rarer) I don’t know. I’ve actually been with AT&T since 1994 and have the same number. I’ve just upgraded whenever I get a free phone. I mainly just use it as a phone.
The iPhone is the first smartphone I’ve considered. I’m seriously thinking of picking one up. And $200 is pretty cheap all things considered.
The big thing that was holding me back from the last phone were certain apps I wanted. (Mainly a spreadsheet) We’ll see if such things appear with the SDK being out for so long.
Comment by Clark — June 9, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
BTW - I must confess I was much more interested in Snow Leopard than the iPhone. That’s because the two new iPhone features (GPS and 3G) have been expected since the initial iPhone came out. The price was a nice surprise. But the real questions will be what software gets released in July and August.
Comment by Clark — June 9, 2008 @ 11:14 pm
Clark,
I’m also interested in Snow Leopard, too bad that session was under NDA. I’m sure details will be leaking out, but there will probably be a lot of confusion over the details for a while. Remember all the nonsense over ZFS that lasted for months?
Comment by a random John — June 9, 2008 @ 11:25 pm
A lot is known. For instance Apple put up a page here. It seems very vague and very server-centric.
No word on dropping PPC although I think that’s been confirmed backchannel wise. The big question is whether it’ll be 64 bit chip only and whether Rosetta goes.
It sounds like ZFS is a go, albeit without booting.
No word of res-independence.
It sounds like there are more libraries to make harnessing GPUs easier. (All the graphic card guys are going in that direction now that the high end gamer market is drying up) Then there appears to be some interesting new threading stuff although it’s not clear how useful it’ll really be. (i.e. if it makes things slighter nicer but doesn’t really do that much beyond your roll your own threading) The real question is over the GUI and threading.
Beyond that nothing really has come out.
Comment by Clark — June 9, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
BTW - was it just me or did Steve Jobs look to be on his last legs? Scary when you think about it.
Comment by Clark — June 9, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
But Clark, I just read on Ars Technica that ZFS is OS X Server only. Also, what current servers have high-end graphics cards in them? Will OpenCL benefit servers much? Will new xServes have a big, hot graphics chip in them?
Comment by a random John — June 10, 2008 @ 8:07 am
SG, I thought I’d want to unload it as soon as we switched to Verizon, but I’m having second thoughts. It’s pretty handy for vacation and trips, the kids can watch movies on it and it’s kind of nice to have game to play when you’re bored. I’ll let you know if I change my mind though.
Comment by jjohnsen — June 10, 2008 @ 9:07 am
That’s what’s weird John. Is most of what they are talking about publicly is server oriented. (Note the page I linked to which is the Snow Leopard page) I agree that OpenCL and the (presumed) expansion of CoreImage and CoreAnimation don’t make sense for a server.
One other problem is that the massive threading and use of cores tends to benefit the MacPro and nothing else. Apple really needs a midline Mac between the iMacs and the MacPro.
Comment by Clark — June 10, 2008 @ 10:16 am
Isn’t everything (even the much maligned mini) at least dual core now? In the future things will only get worse. The MHz/GHz race is about over. It’s all about putting more cores on a chip and more chips in the computer. Apple is smart to attempt to address this now. Multi-processor programming is hard and not well understood. If they can make some sort of breakthrough in that area it would be an incredible advantage going forward. If they only manage to make simple things easier to do by default that is still an great improvement.
Comment by a random John — June 10, 2008 @ 11:35 am
Everything is dual core but the optimizations are oriented around 4 - 8 cores and significant GPUs. But that basically entails the MacPro and not much else.
Comment by Clark — June 10, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
just wait. better to lay the foundation now than after your laptop has 16 cores.
Comment by a random John — June 10, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
16 cores? That’s a lot of power. I can’t see that any time soon unless some significant breakthroughs happen.
Comment by Clark — June 10, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
What is “any time soon”? There will be 4-way MacBook Pros by the end of the year. Such machines will be more compelling products if the OS leverages those cores and aides application developers in fully utilizing them.
My understanding is that very few applications take any advantage of the 2-way machines, not to mention the 8-way machines that have been around for a while now.
I think Apple recognizes that some of the computing paradigms of the last 20 years are changing and they need to lay the foundation for the next several years. While they’re painting this as a clean-up release if you look at what they’re doing it is really not that at all. It looks like it is more of an opportunity to end-of-life old technologies and a chance to throw in some major new ones. That isn’t so much a clean-up as a remodel. I’m actually surprised that they’re calling it 10.6. I’d be tempted to call it 11.0.
Comment by a random John — June 10, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
Nehalem definitely is cool although it is closer to the old hyperthreaded chips rather than true 4-way.
One problem is that most programs simply are oriented around serial programming. Apple might be making the UI easier to thread - although one has to be careful. BeOS had threading everywhere which was great for small applications but absolute hell for large ones.
I suspect what Apple’s done is taken some of the code from FCP, Aperture and other pro apps and made it into a framework. However it’ll also mainly benefit applications like that.
Having done some threading in the past, I can say it really takes a different mentality for designing ones code. And you have to do a ton of strong thoughtful planning. Not just for program communication and processes but figuring out how to debug which is non-trivial.
Comment by Clark — June 10, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
If all Snow Leopard does with Grand Central is implement UI fixes that stop Safari from beach balling then I’ll be content.
Comment by a random John — June 10, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
Some are speculating that Grand Central is NSOperation (that was introduced with Leopard) combined with dynamic compilation via LLVN to get some code better optimized for multicores. I’m skeptical that would work that well for most code. We’ll see I guess.
I should add that I’m 80% sure I’ll be getting an iPhone come July since it is only $30 more per month for the data plan.
Comment by clark — June 10, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
BTW - I think many of the beachballs in Safari are due to Flash which I can’t see Apple having much control over. Flash has always been poorly optimized for OSX although the Intel builds are head and shoulders better than the PPC builds.
Comment by clark — June 10, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
i was able to get hold of this thing a few weeks ago, but still im scratching to the surface and VPN as here in Saudi Arabia, it is a compeltely new thing. I have reconfigure the web, access points since it is not yet available in the kingdom setting. But truly, its a wonder, especially the 8GB memory.
Comment by kenjebz — June 10, 2008 @ 10:41 pm
Odd then that Firefox doesn’t beachball all the time.
Comment by a random John — June 10, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
It does for me. Firefox is way more unstable than Safari too.
Comment by Clark — June 11, 2008 @ 9:39 am
I basically live in firefox and haven’t noticed that.
Comment by a random John — June 11, 2008 @ 11:03 am
You running 3.0?
Comment by Clark — June 11, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
2.0.0.14
The only extension I have is FireBug, which is pretty much the best thing ever for web development.
Comment by a random John — June 11, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
Ah. That explains it. Although FF2 had that weird thing where it would start loading the pages for links for the page you were on in the background. Nasty. Lots of memory expansion problems that would eventually flail your virtual memory system worse than Safari 2 would.
There’s supposedly a new build of FF3 out that I ought download. But I primarily use Safari so it’s not that big a deal for me.
Comment by Clark — June 11, 2008 @ 5:07 pm