OK, so here’s me jumping on that big iPhone bandwaggon. You’re probably sick to the teeth of these types of blog post now if you collect RSS feeds, but at least it lets you know I am alive, well and very excited.
I followed most of the keynote yesterday on MacRumours and engadget , and was as pleased as anyone else to see the final unveiling of a brand new type of Apple product. In a way it’s funny that everyone is overlooking Apple TV as on any other launch that would be the talk of the town, but today, that’s not the case.
There are a number of blanks that still have to be filled in. Jeff Croft spotted that if it launches in June, it’s likely to be running Leopard (OS X 10.5) and I’d say that’s a fair guess. Also when this thing does finally turn up in the UK, what network is it going to run on. I had this discussion with Butts last night and we narrowed it down to likely be Orange or 02 (Three won’t get it, Vodafone are not business/high-end orientated and Virgin piggybacks anyway).
The multi touch technology stuff is an incredible advancement in portable device interaction, and you can guarantee at some point in the next 5 years this will end up on other small electricals like laptops (if Apple does what it does best and surprises us, we may see it sooner, but not this year). The one downside is tactility, which the iPods have, but this seems to totally skip, and is an accessibility issue whichever way you look at it.
It is sort of the holy grail of user interaction – gesture driven controls with real and physical feedback. Admittedly sound goes some way to solving this, but with totally visual buttons the only solution I can think of is a hover system where a visually impaired user can run their finger over the display face and hear the button they are hovering over before they press anything. It’s not quite as good as touch feedback, but who cares when the rest of the product is so goddamn perfect.
I think most people who had anticipated the product had assumed that wide-screen would mean a full length display, but in reality this is much better. Placing your hands over the screen to hold it would have been clumsy, so the bars at the top and bottom are nicely thought out, albeit at the expense of a slightly smaller screen.
What will be most interesting will be the new generation of iPods that follow. Has Apple defined it’s new style? I would have thought the iPod may well follow suit to use the touchscreen too. Thankfully battery life should be better on any units without phone capability, 5 hours talktime is pitiful (standard is between 7 and 9 on a standard smartphone I am reliably informed), but 16 hours of music playback is pretty good as far as iPods go.
And will I be buying one? Well probably, depending on my phone contract arrangements, although it probably won’t be until this time next year that I will even be able to consider it. Someone remarked yesterday that Apple were entering a new market they know nothing about, but I think that is where they have previously thrived; all you have to to do is think iPod. Oh, and a rare public appearance by Jonathan Ive ; I think Steve might have insisted that he make some kind of contribution to the keynote, as this one could be a big one.