The following is an email conversation that I had with a colleague. His email is in bold, my response follows.
I just saw a commercial for the iPhone, and I wanted to ask you if you own one
No, I do not own an iPhone, but I do own an iPod Touch. (An iPod touch is just like an iPhone, but it doesn’t have a phone and it doesn’t have a camera.) To buy an iPhone you have to have a phone plan with AT&T and we have Sprint as our cell carrier. Some day I hope to have an iPhone, but I really don’t want to switch to AT&T, so I’m hoping that Apple opens up the phone for other carriers.
It a little crazy to me, but it looked like something you would know about. What do you think about it overall?
The iPhone is a really slick piece of technology. For starters it’s absolutely gorgeous. It is very well designed and it looks great. The iPhone has several key features that make it shine above other phones. First off is the interface. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use. It looks good and it works. The interface on my Motorola Razor phone (one of the more popular phones of the day) is mediocre at best. The menus work and it’s not terrible, but compared to the iPhone interface it looks like something you would pull out of a trash can.
The iPhone also is an iPod, and as such, makes for a good MP3 player. Something that no other cell phone seems to do well with. Finally, one of the best parts, the iPhone has wifi capabilities. What’s more, it has a “full feature” web browser on it. With “Mobile Safari” as the app is called you can surf the web just as you would at your computer. You can zoom in and out of the web pages, you can go to any site you want, it’s amazing. (I say “full feature” but in reality it doesn’t allow Flash or Java to be run. The main reason for this is probably memory, as the iPhone only has 128MB of RAM. But I like it because it means that none of those stupid flash banners show up as you surf either!)
The commercial I saw says it changes everything. Is that true or false? Any idea. I’d bet false.
It really depends on how you look at it and how you much “everything” covers. Here are a few things to think about:
The iPhone came out with new features that no one had yet, instantly everyone started to try to copy the iPhone. Now if the iPhone is really good and everyone is trying to copy or even out do the iPhone, this is great for end users.
The iPhone has introduced concepts like “Visual Voicemail” which treats voicemail like email, you can select what you want to hear from a list rather than listening to them sequentially. Why didn’t someone do this before?
A large number of people have purchased the iPhone, which means a large number of people are using their iPhone to surf the internet. Surfing the internet on a small screen is different than using a 24 inch monitor, how will this change the internet? (Apple made a push for “web apps” when the iPhone first came out. These were “applications” that would run on your ipod, but in reality they were just websites that you could point your browser too and use them if you were connected to the internet. These apps included maps, to do lists, games, etc. How do web apps change the internet?)
The iPhone has created a new set of expectations, what effects will this have on consumers?
What about this, “App Store”, where users buy things from other users.
Okay, I feel that in order to write a complete response I have to dive into some history. So here we go:
When the iPhone first came out people were complaining that you couldn’t put applications on it. The phone came with a web browser, a map program, a mail program, a calculator, a calendar, photos viewer, movie viewer, etc… but you couldn’t make your own app and put it on your phone. Apple said that they were working on making it possible for developers to write applications, but they wanted to do it right. Apple wanted to make sure that the end uses would have a good iPhone experience, and if they opened up the phone for all developers they knew that some bad developers would write poor software which would crash or worse, people would write malicious software for the iPhone.
So finally Apple announced their plan: They would release their SDK and developers could use it to write applications. This was great but the developers needed a way to get their apps to users. Apple’s solution to this was that they would set up a section of the iTunes Store for iPhone Applications. A developer write an application, then submits it to Apple and after Apple checks it over to make sure it’s not malicious, and then they put it up in the App Store. Consumers can either use iTunes or their iPhone to go to the App store and buy/download applications.
There are a few clarification points here. There is a one time $99 fee for every person/company who wants to sell their application on the App Store. From what I’ve heard, this is meant to act like a “stupid filter” so that if you want to get your app on the app store, you really have to mean it. Also, developers may give their application away if they like, (that is, some apps are free). If you are selling your app, apple takes a 30% cut of the price, which actually is really good compared to deals with other phone companies.
Any idea what they might sell there? Everything? Junk? Anything else worth noting about it?
I think that many people are disappointed with the offerings available at the app store. When Apple launched the app store they touted that they had 500 applications.
In the words of Mike Lee: “When people started talking about 500 apps on the store for launch, I counted all the developers I knew. Then I wondered where the other 450 apps were going to come from. This lower 90% seemed like it might be unpleasant, and oh my sweet chocolate lord did that turn out to be so.”
That being said there were some amazing applications that made it into the app store. There was a version of Super Monkey Ball along with a number of other really fun games. There’s a huge selection of ToDo list applications. They have everything: tip calculators, eBooks, photo applications, chat programs, drawing programs, weather apps, etc. They have lots.
Most of the stuff in the app store is free. Most of the paid apps are under $10. Some higher end applications can cost $20-40, depending on what it does and the target audience.
For my money, I have only found a few (under 5) apps that I have found worth paying for. The quality of many of the apps are sub standard. They need to be debugged and tested, but since it’s really hard to give out your app without going through the app store, it’s hard to test and debug your program. User feedback in the reviews tends to be be rather unhelpful for the developers.
I don’t want to beat down the app store too much though. There are a few applications that are solid gold. I have a few that I use and they are indispensable. It will be interesting to watch the App Store as well as the apps in it evolve and get better.
