Apple's iPhone Revealed: A First Hand Account From MacWorld

A first hand account of Steve Jobs' keynote address, live from MacWorld.

I arrived at the keynote line at about 4:15 AM. Our group was about 150th in line then. Now at 5:30, the line stretches for blocks...

In rapid succession, we just saw both Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and Steve Wozniak ride into Moscone west on Segways. Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, followed close behind, but he preferred arriving on foot...

Speech time. Jobs is talking about an announcement that will change everything. He is announcing three new products: a widescreen ipod, a phone, and an internet communicator, all wrapped into one product.

The iPhone (yes, that is the name) has a touch screen interface and a giant screen that reaches to the edges of the screen, and stop Mac OS X. They have patented the multitouch user interface, that allows multiple finger touches. They have desktop class applications and networking, because the os has it, and they have built on it.

It syncs with your pc via a dock, and moves all your email, music, etc over. The iphone has a 2 megapixel camera, as well as a proximity sensor to lock the screen when the phone is to your ear. It also has an accelerometer and allows switching from landscape to portrait mode. It has only one button, called the home button. It does have a SIM card, implying GSM.

The user interface user finger gestures and flicks in very natural ways. Its music playing capabilities are better than any ipod to date, including video. It also has a speaker and does cover flow.

The phone functions are new too. It has quad band, as well as WiFI and EDGE. It has visual voice mail, allowing you to select which voice mails to listen to; this is a collaboration with Cingular. It uses the same flick scrolling for the address book. The address book has favorites too.

SMS texting includes multiple sessions with a virtual keyboard on the screen. It looks like iChat.

Now the Internet communications. They have put rich HTML email, as well as Safari on the phone. They have Google Maps as well. The phone detects WiFI and uses it when possible.

The phone does full web pages. You pinch the page with your fingers, and it expands. It also does multiple pages of browsing simultaneously.

Apple did a deal with Yahoo to provide push IMAP email to all their users. Phone numbers in rich email can be dialed with one touch.

The phone also does widgets, allowing stock checking, weather, etc. But Google Maps is killer, with gorgeous animations not on the Web. Steve ordered 4000 lattes to go in the demo. Of course, it has Google satellite images as well.

"It is the Internet in your pocket." He brought out Eric Schmidt to talk about the Google integration and Jerry Yang to talk about Yahoo.

Steve showed how phone calls fade out music playing and reinvents the whole interface. They are introducing new headphones, both wired and Bluetooth. The phone gets about 5 hours of battery life doing Internet or phone, 15 hours with music. It will sell for $499 for a 4 gig model, and $599 for an 8 gig model. It will not be shipping til June because of the need for FCC certification.

Apple has signed a multi-year exclusive deal with Cingular to innovate on services integrated with the Apple iPhone. Steve's clicker jammed, so he told some personal stories. Steve targeted selling 10 million phones in 2008.

To reflect the change in focus, Apple will change its name to Apple, Inc.

John Mayer performed to close the show.

The iPhone in all its glory

Comments

[Kris Tuttle:]

HELLO?! Price is with a TWO YEAR CONTRACT with Cingular! Yech!

If you are going to report on the event and leave out the biggest gotcha why go?

2007 Jan 09 04:12 PM

[Manny:]

Im guessing Cingular will offer a mail in rebate of some sort. Cingular is the only shoice considering it has to be GSM. Would you prefer Tmobile? Or perhaps an MVNO. Either one of those two will get you screwed. This was the only way. Remember the original ipod also priced most of America out of the picture and still did fairly well and im sure you know what happened when prices dropped.

2007 Jan 09 10:12 PM