Wednesday 10 January 2007

Apple, Inc's new iPhone

Unless you've been living in a cave, you will of course know that Apple have launched their new iPhone (also see Wikipedia's entry on the iPhone) today at Macworld 2007 (see the coverage on Engadget) in the US. Basically its a PDA phone on steroids.

Other than the basic Apple design approach to the thing, two key features stand out:

  • New patented "multi-touch" touch screen, rather than a keypad or stylus.
  • Runs on Apple's OS X, which means a whole range of integrations and software can run on the iPhone, including a "Full strength" Web browser (Safari), other widgets and special Google and Yahoo services.

The fact alone that the iPhone is running on OS X should make it an excellent information platform. But if we take a step back, is there anything else revolutionary about the iPhone (rather than excellent execution of the converged?

For example, unless I've missed something, there is nothing particularly "social" in the base iPhone. Nokia, Microsoft and I'm sure there are others out there that have at least tried to do something interesting in respect to innovating with mobile technology, e.g. Zune and Sensor.

Also, the specs I've seen say its setup to run on GSM and EDGE. EDGE sounds like it is near 3G, so does that mean it will run on the next generation mobile phone networks rolled out in Australia?

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