Like many others, I did a post about the iPhone after the Macworld Keynote. Why? Because I was excited about the possibilities a device like the iPhone could bring, particularly when coming from a company I share so many values with, Apple. After reading through everything that’s been said and written, however, I’m not as excited as I was, the reasons being outlined below.

Provider lock-down

If you want to buy an iPhone in the US, you’ll have to deal with Cingular. I’m not saying their service is good or bad, as I have no experience with it, but this forced contract doesn’t appeal to me as a consumer. I want to have the best combination of device and operator, not the combination forced upon me by one of these parties.

There’s also no word from Apple on how the device is going to market in Europe or Asia. We’ll have to wait, but I’m assuming we’ll see similar contract lock-downs to providers, or a dramatic price increase.

Feature lock-down

One of the first things Jobs mentioned in the Keynote was that the iPhone runs OSX - I find that to be a gross exaggeration and clearly one for the eyes and ears of the press (it did get the crowd to cheer). The iPhone runs its own platform (sure, they can call it OSX as well), bearing little resemblance with Apple’s operating system.

The iPhone is a walled garden. It has what seem to be great applications and services, but Jobs himself said no third party would be allowed to develop for the phone in an interview with the NYT:

“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

This is a grave oversight. Jobs announced the product as a revolution but fails in not realizing that the real value of the product is as a platform to build upon. Steve, we don’t want it to be like a PC, but we do want it to be like an Apple computer.

Ironically, Nokia seems to be going in the opposite direction - that being a good thing -, with their N700 (and now N800) mobile devices which anyone can develop apps for as they’ve made all the necessary tools available, free of charge.

The bottom line on this point is that without openness in the iPhone platform, it will just be another good looking device. You can just imagine the possibilities if your favorite developers could create applications for your new phone.

In conclusion

I must start by saying it’s still a remarkable device. It innovates in several aspects, and for those who need a phone that “looks good, works well”, you’ve got it. For those of us who were looking for a device we could work on and develop for to become an extension of our businesses, well… We’ll just have to keep on looking.

All this post, written on an iMac, wrapped up in a Macbook Pro, playing music from an iPod. I’m clearly a fan - but Apple doesn’t seem to listen to fans that often.

Photos by Niall Kennedy, released under a CC non-commercial license.

Related reading

Dave Winer has a very good post on this very same issue, as does Mathew Ingram.

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You’d have to be under a rock or away from a connected computer not to read or hear about how people are excited about the Apple iPhone - I know I am. The truth is, if things are as good as they seem, they’ve done it again, and I may have found what I was looking for.

Why Apple read my mind

I have been looking for the smart smartphone for a long time, and the reason why I didn’t buy one before was because all existing solutions presented me with a scary mix of bad interface and frustrating feature/pricing combinations. The iPhone seems to deal with both just fine.

Now, this doesn’t mean the iPhone is cheap (it isn’t), and it sure isn’t going to be for everyone, but for $499 (or $599, depending on your storage requirements) you get a pretty compelling solution to be connected. And you get the fantastic user experience Apple’s gotten us used to to boot. In fact, I highly recommend looking at the phone demos just to get a taste of what Interaction Design really means.

Wishes and concerns

As I said in my “ultimate connected device” post a while ago - where I hinted on the real need we have for something like this -, a phone like this can become a platform for just about anything if developers are given the right tools. From what I’ve seen in the iPhone demos, the phone will support widgets like the OSX dashboard already does.

But I’d love it if Apple took the next step of allowing people to actually build fully functional applications based on the software and hardware platform they built. Widgets are fine, but if there’s direct access to the full capabilities of the phone the possibilities become virtually endless.

All this being said, I only have one concern about the phone - the battery life. I would need to have real test data to confirm my worries, but 5 hours of active use may be a little too short for some people. Ah, we’ll see. Truth is, I’m excited as hell about this product - Apple’s designers and engineering teams need a round of applause.

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… Unless you’re going for the iMac, that is. Because the new iPod with video isn’t there. Believe me, I tried. Me and Mike (TechCrunch) read about the announcement and literally rushed out the door to the Apple store. That is, without really reading the part where they said “on sale next week”.

Good news is Apple did it. I am usually quite good with predictions but I don’t know how this one is going to play out in the videoblogging world. Still, I could say I’m excited (well, excited enough to rush out to shell off 400 bucks). Now, I’m not super excited with keeping the iPod layout - I’d love it if they had really gone video-centric and made the display horizontal and wide instead of just expanding it towards the borders.

… I’m going to start videoblogging. The reason: because I love independent media, and an iPod video may become the best possible vehicle to get indie media in the hands of people (if it happens, that is). I remember a few months ago when I got back to blogging, I was paying a lot of attention to the emerging podcasting market (this was when I first posted about Odeo) and wondered about whether vidcasting / videoblogging would ever pick up or how fast that would happen.

Now, it’s a (growing, sure) reality. There’s a growing number of videoblog aggregators, and people creating small videos (some of them, really good). For me, and apparently for Peter Van Dijck (of mefeedia and who wrote a very good book very good book on information architecture) agrees, the video ipod will ultimately be a vehicle for independent media and not necessarily blockbuster movies (even if they obviously play a big role in the media market).

Will the indie media revolution happen? Well, it’s already happening with podcasting. Will it happen in the video market? That, we’ll have to see. But the iPod video sure would help. Not that I’m unhappy about the PSP, though.