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TMO at Macworld - iPhone: Look But Don't Touch
by , 2:00 PM EST, January 10th, 2007
San Francisco, CA -- After spending an entire keynote discussing the iPhone, you'd naturally expect the product to take center stage at Apple's booth on the show floor here at the Macworld Conference and Expo. But for whatever reason -- be it limited hardware supply, incomplete software, or executive decision -- the only way to see the iPhone in person is through an inch of lucite.
The phone stands about six feet high, encased in a clear cylinder. Personnel nearby keep the case clear of fingerprints. A hundred feet away, there's a stage where booth staff repeatedly demonstrate the iPhone's key features. This space was completely packed with attendees all day Tuesday.
The fact that the iPhone isn't available for tinkering doesn't seem to bother the folks at Apple very much. They have decided to take their limited quantities of iPhones and use them for demos or extremely slick displays. The result is a sense of luxury, and of a product that is pointedly unattainable. The displays, then, fit perfectly with Apple's image as a purveyor of high-end, touchable, beautiful and lustworthy products.
In fact, the two iPhones in lucite are the only viewable instances of the product at the show, creating a sense that they are the only ones that exist in the world. If the public reaction is any indication, though, those proud and lonely iPhones will be spawning rapidly come June.
Apple's new iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco. Image Credit: John F. Braun
Observer Comments
Wed Jan 10, 2007 3:22 pm Subject: just watch the movies
the email rocks!
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/
The email is slick. Very much, if not exactly like, OS X Mail. Right down to the little red circles with numbers showing new mail on the Mail icon. It looks like SMS is tied into iChat somehow, too.
According to Pogue's NYT blog, some apps on the iPhone aren't ready yet, so that's likely why they aren't letting people play with them. Too much chance of coming across an unimplemented feature and crashing the phone or something, perhaps.
Wed Jan 10, 2007 4:07 pm Subject: I hope to spawn one in my house
Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:25 pm Subject: no shmiphone, WIFI!
Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:29 pm Subject: Funny economics
QuoteGuest wrote:
Web browsing (and dowloading mail) by phone is prohibitively expensive - to do so with the iPhone (due to its graphic nature) means you will have to have the "unlimited" data plan costing $45 to $60 per month (yes thats $550 t0 $700 per year). That plus the cost of this phone and the fact it is only going to be available to GSM carriers means this phone will have a tough time catching up to Blackberry and TREO much less beating them.
How? The Treo costs the same per month. Remember that they're not aiming for the great majority of cell phone users, but the top 5% or less. For those people, $600+ per year is another business expense. It's less than a single business trip.
Another thing to consider is what this will do to the other manufacturers. The upper end users will no longer be satisfied with the user interface of the Treo and its clones. In the same way, Ford was forced to offer hybrid cars--it had to license the technology from Toyota, as it had none of its own.
Last, think about the iPod. The original 5GB iPod was $399 in 2001. At 3% average inflation, that would be $462 in current dollars. Sort of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:51 pm Subject: Not all data plans are created equal.
Cingular has flexibility with their mobiole data plans and will likely be offering it at a modified iphone rate once these phones hit the marketplace. I left Cingular last year to get a MS Smartphone offered by Sprint. When I told them that the unlimited EVDO data from Sprint was only $15.00/month, they offered to match it. It is likely that inorder to coax over customers, they will do a special pricing deal for the iPhone customers...but time will tell. Either way, I will likely be purchasing one once the Rev B units ship. I DO wish they were offering it on Sprint's CDMA/EVDO network...MUCH faster than EDGE.
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