iPhone news roundup
Phew! I’m back from my business trip and have finally managed to sort everything out. Apple certainly didn’t wait for me in terms of news and there have been a few developments with the iPhone since.
First of all, Apple has finally confirmed the iPhone launch date. Unlike their bigger announcements that warrant media events, Apple chose to announce the iPhone launch date via advertisements that appeared on prime time US TV.
Four ads have been spotted so far, and they are all available on Apple’s iPhone website. All four ads feature a simple presentation style and simply demonstrate the iPhone’s user interface. Even ads can elicit a response from Mac fans as Daring Fireball discusses how effective and clever the advertising is and TUAW says all advertisements for Macs should be like this.
There’s also been talk that Apple may introduce a developer kit for the iPhone at WWDC. This comes against the backdrop of Steve Jobs reiterating that the iPhone runs “real OS X� and revealing plans to ultimately allow third party applications on the iPhone.
With all this iPhone talk I’m starting to feel really left out. We have no idea when the iPhone will be available here in Asia so perhaps I should consider a different phone instead. But while I was catching up with my feeds I found a story that gave me a gem of hope for my iPhone anticipation. Ars Technica reports that Quanta Computer may be contracted to produce a new version of the iPhone with a slightly different design and slated for “other markets”.
Hmm.. it may be wishful thinking, but maybe we’ll get 3G iPhones here in Asia sooner than later.
5 Comments
Why 3G? Seriously, with wifi abilities like those, 3G is effectively passé. Of course, the whole city has to be wired for wifi, or you use it at home / office with wifi, but then again it’s better than paying extra every month for something that people don’t use always. My friend in Brunei got a 3G phone and service and I’ll be damned if she even uses it to the fullest more than twice a day.
Seriously. It’s a waste of money.
Ian, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he said it was 3 things:
While the iPhone does have WiFi, to achieve the 3rd goal, it will need to have ubiquitous access to the ‘net for it’s Maps feature, emails and who knows what else.
While I agree that 3G will be expensive and I am pretty happy with DiGi’s EDGE network at the moment, the fact remains that 3G remains the most readily available, proven, wide-area mobile broadband solution.
Also, if the rumour is true and Apple is producing an ‘Asia’ version of the iPhone, I bet for sure they are targeting Japan and Korea (with South East Asia only a secondary market), so 3G will definitely be an important feature in these markets.
From what I heard, someone mentioned the iPhone retails in the US for $1300.
I can’t imagine when it reaches our shores. RM2500-3000 for this PDA-like phone?
My friend spent RM4K on the Nokia Communicator 9500 when it first came out. So we all know its possible.
I doubt the iPhone will retail at just RM2500 - RM3000.
By the way, in this day and age, it certainly makes sense to use the internet communications device only in your office or house and not a good idea to make it shown to the general public.
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