Sysadmin Field Notes

June 13, 2007

So opinions are all over the map. The "experts" all have their opinions (generally considered failure), as do the fanboys and stock analysts (wild success). Here are my predictions, which are somewhere inbetween.

• Scoble said on some video "If you took the Apple logo off and put a Nokia logo on, the story would be that it's the 'crappiest phone of all time.'" I'd say it would be crappy, because it's likely the interface would be the same warmed-over inconsistent, confusing pain that has cell phone companies have been beating customers up with since the beginning. The beauty of the iPhone is in it's software, and ease of use (assuming Apple has really gotten in right, which we won't fully know until launch day).
• Camera. Seriously, people are actually arguing specs on a cell phone camera? No one has seen a decent picture, but it's a lot more than megapixels that determines camera quality. I've never seen a cell phone camera that didn't terribly suck because of terrible optics, a way way too tiny sensor, and terrible image processing. My secret hope is that Apple had a hand in the design and the thing actually takes decent pictures. If not, who cares, I only use my phone camera for very limited things, and frankly if I'm going to take terrible documentary-only photos, I'd rather they take up less space on my hard drive. Jury is out on the camera, but I don't suspect it will be terribly worse than other cameras.
• Battery life. First, we don't know what battery like is like, so it's amusing to pan the thing for that. The stated 5 hours of talk/video/web or 16 hours of audio seems reasonable. Remember, it's only got 8gb, so you're going to want to sync the thing anyway...contacts, videos, songs, etc. I think people will find that as long as it can 100% reliably get you a full, active day of use, it's not going to be so onerous to toss it on the charger (and since it's a dock connector, there are already millions of car, wall, and computer charging cords out there). If it meets the quoted times, I'm happy.
• Hype: Way overhyped at this point, so there will be a natural backlash. And there will be a natural dip in sales after an initial rush. Pundits will call it a failure when that dip comes. But it's not like Apple will be sitting still, and they'll still be moving units. They have invested in this game, and the iPod cash cow will give them time to get it right. So you won't be able to write the success or failure story right away.
• Flexibility. This is one area that will hurt adoption with the geeks. It's going to be very frustrating for a lot of people to have this totally kick ass Mac OSX platform, with wi-fi and EDGE internet, and be so limited in how you can use it. The "Web 2.0 apps as apps" idea is a good one, but not nearly as satisfying as actually using it as a more general purpose computer. The big question is does it evolve more like the iPod, where it's expensive and closed to get anything onto it, or more open like a smartphone. I'm hoping open, but I'm suspecting iPod-style closed-ness, and that's always going to be frustrating. Geeks are going to want to -play- with their phone and explore it. There's not much to explore here I suspect. It's more utilitarian than fun, it will be a cell phone that actually works like you expect. It sucks that you have a pay such a premium for a device that works like it should, but I think it's true.
• Finally, price point. This is going to obscure the success story even more. It's really expensive, spin aside. Subsidized smart phones (that can run your own apps) + an iPod are very much cheaper. This more then anything is going to cause that "iPhone hangover" I suspect. Most purchasers and potential purchasers will like it, but they'll either be reluctant to spend or regret spending the premium money on it. Again, it will impact the mid-term story, but the long term is that there are going to be many more iPhones, and the price will gradually come down. Given the investment that this thing must have taken, again, Apple is in it for the long haul.

I'm buying one on June 29th because my old phone is falling apart, and I've never met a phone I didn't passionately hate (except for my old Nokia 2160 and 6160; those things rocked). I'm probably going to say something like "it's cool, but not quite $600 cool" after a few weeks of use. Eventually, Apple will get to the price point it needs to be at to move a lot of these things.