Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Apple, Inc is up 8% in the stock market after they announced a new cross-technology product at Macworld 2007 today, the Apple iPhone:

The iPhone is a smart phone running some version of OSX, sporting a wide-screen touch-sensitive display, iTunes, Safari, Widgets, and other mac apps, 8 GB of Flash Storage, support for GSM, Wifi, Bluetooth, and Edge networks, 5 hours of talk time, and 16 hours of music time. The phone is just 11mm thick, and will go for $599 ($100 less for a 4GB version) exclusively from Cingular. Deals were also announced with Yahoo for push-mail, and Google for Maps. Some problems with this in the future:

• Vendor tie in w/ Cingular will limit market share
• Availability will be a big issue–can Apple meet the demand?
• Battery-life issues will be important. Everything here is innovative, except for battery life, which has not improved
• Can Cingular provide the iPhone with enough bandwidth?
• Scratching, smudging and assorted damage to the touch-screen
• TM lawsuits from Cisco / Linksys, who own the iPhone trademark
• Lack of open standards for programming in the new “OSX-like” iPhone OS

I predict, like the iPod v1.0, future versions of the iPhone will solve these problems and more. I’m still buying one in June, though! Update: Engadget has a nice comparison of the size of this baby on their blog. It’s a nice size!

The current LG Chocolate phone kind sucks. It’s bulky but solid, with a slider that doesn’t do much. It’s got a nice rounded feel, and it’s decently small, but it feels like a Zune against the iPod. Besides its slider and form, I liked it. Now, here’s the Choco 2:

With its 400×240 touchscreen, camera, and great looks it might be a winner. The only problem is all the smudges that LCD will pick up over time. So much for the next-gen cellphones being … clean…