Apple iPhone

The top tech news story of the week is, of course, the long-awaited Apple iPhone.   The headline that summed it up for me was Good Morning Silicon Valley's Keyboards across country shorted out by "iPhone drool."  The device will have the innovative user interface we have come to expect from Apple, but several open issues remain before it can be considered a breakthrough.  Tom Evslin and his readers cover a lot of them.  My main concerns:

• How open is the platform?  It is based on OS X, but Apple has been silent on whether it will allow independent software developers to provide applications.  Will it be open like the Palm and Windows Mobile or a walled garden like Verizon's Get It Now?  This will be especially important to people wanting connectiviy to Microsoft applications such as Exchange.
• When will Apple provide provide 21st century data service via HSDPA rather than the pokey EDGE technology they announced this week?
• How usable is the touch screen?  It looks great in the videos, but as David Pogue has pointed out “Typing is difficult. The letter keys are just pictures on the glass screen, so of course there’s no tactile feedback.”  How easy will it be to make a call while driving a car?
• How long will the exclusive arrangement with Cingular be in place and/or when will an unlocked version be available?

In my opinion that the success of the iPod was due to three factors:

• innovative UI and excellent industrial design
• a powerful brand which enabled a higher price point and thus a new threshold of functionality
• market momentum which motivated hitherto intransigent partners to cooperate

My hope is that Apple will take advantage of being one of the few players who can step out of the traditional role of providing a restricted set of features via a restricted set of carriers and turn loose a new wave of creativity for mobile applications.