iPhone

Looks like they finally introduced it...I want one.

iPhone

Thats cool...

Lots of other neat stuff coming out too!

Too bad Apple was too late on getting the "iPhone" name trademarked, Cisco already put out a phone with that name like a month and a half ago...

CISCO HAS activated an old trademark and released its own cell phone called the iPhone.
According to Business Weak, while many Apple fans were waiting for his holiness Steve Jobs to announce Apple's iPhone in January, the last thing they were expecting was for Cisco to release one with the same name.

Apparently Cisco's Linksys unit registered the iPhone as a trademark for a Web-enabled telephone handset designed to work with Internet calling services. It has owned the trademark since 2000 when it acquired Infogear, which had registered it in 1996.

In fact the first iPhone was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1997.

This could cause problems for Apple, which has been buying up website domain names for the imminent release of its iPhone product. As could be expected, Apple is not making any comment about the release.

I'd almost be able to stomach the purchase price for the iPhone, but there's no way I'll go for Cingular's service. They charge $40 a month for unlimited data on top of your voice plan, and have complete crap phone service. I'm really disappointed that Apple entered into a "multi-year exclusive agreement" with Cingular. The iPhone does completely kick ass, though. I'll stick with my buggy WM5 Sprint PPC6700 for now at $50/month voice/unlimited data/unlimited SMS.

The "iPhone" name issue with Cisco/Linksys is just about resolved. ( link )

I'm also a little disappointed at the fine print on the AppleTV. I had been waiting for this one for awhile, and planned to order one the day they were available (today), but the fine print says its only compatible with widescreen (16:9) enhanced- or high- def TVs. I have an HDTV, but its normal aspect ratio, not widescreen. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to make the product work with 4:3 HDTVs as well. Grumble, grumble...

Quality of service depends on where you live. Cingular is awesome here in Houston. (Edit to add that their customer service still sucks). All my family, my wife's family and just about everyone else I know is on it. However, is there a good summary for everything they talked about today? Or is this so new that we'll have to wait for someone to summarize it? I guess I can read this tonight, but was hoping for a quick summary for me while at work.

http://www.yahoo.com/s/478956

ditto. I love my ppc6700.

Maybe they should register IforgottoregisterIphone, or Ifuktup, I4gotaboutgodaddy ???

MGJ

Took the words right out of my mouth. Cingular has pure GARBAGE service around here. And by "around here" I mean from southern Illinois all the way up to Canada. I've road tripped both ways with friends with Cingular phones and they had little to no signal way too often. My run of the mill Verizon phone has solid service all over.

This will take off just like the iPod. Insanely expensive with only the gadgetheads and highly self-concious hipsters dishing out the bucks for it, but that drives the soccer moms to see it as "cool" and get it once the price comes down in a couple years.

Great design and I'm looking forward to a couple/few years from now when one of these things is actually priced correctly.

I remember when Razrs first came out and a single buddy of mine bought one for $500 for the sole purpose of impressing chicks in bars. At the time it held the title as "pus** chaser" phone since it was the phone all those Night At The Roxbury types had to have.

With the introduction of this phone, we now have a new king pus** chaser.

$600 price tag =

subpar carrier 2 year contract requirement =

overall design =

Thanks. Still no radio, can already get a slim MP3 Player phone if I wanted to and as usual... too high of a price tag. Guess it wasn't worth the wait for me.

If a phone got yer buddy pus*y, 1 of two things was happening, the shallowest, most drunk women were in the bar that night, OOOORRRRR, yer friend probably has really big "hands" holding the phone....

(((Note: this message came from a female co-worker sitting here- she also states I could NEVER BE that witty))) I concur.

MGJ

Don't kid yourself - we're all guilty of chasing brands to one extent or another. And we're probably all guilty of being impressed by others that chase brands as well. Heck, we're all here on an XTERRA message board for gods sake.

I'm 32 and if you're anywhere near my age you probably don't put much stock in the kind of phone you have (or others around you), but kids/young adults today still need to feel cool - and a phone is the number one accessory for that now.

It's the same reason why you see people showing off their new technology at Starbucks instead of utilizing the wireless internet they're paying for at home. People need to be SEEN with this stuff.

The bar, Starbucks, the mall, Borders - this thing will be the pus** chaser self-concious young adults the world over will want to pull out of their pockets to impress potential partners. And the sad fact is that it will work.

38, and I own a POS RAZR... there's some twisted irony in that somewhere, Mish (the girl making the comment) left already, will have to show her this......

M

my guess is, an iPod connector GPS will very soon be available making this thing that much sweeter. It's pretty amazing. 160 ppi! That's like magazine quality. The whole OSX thing is pretty amazing. I'd like to see more on the multitouch controlling. I remember seeing someone utilize a multitouch type display a while back, a la "minority report".

$599 is inasne though. Fuck. It's gonna be almost $90 a month as is, at 2 years, that's 2160, PLUS 600. $2760 for 2 years? I'm thinking let Cingular foot a little more of the bill. I doubt that Apple is losing on this at that price. 8gb of memory is probably costing them $50 by then. We are paying for all that other cool shit.

I wonder if it'll be offered without a data plan. I am thinking it'll have to be. Think about it. What kid or parent is going to spend $90 a month for a phone? The market just got a lot smaller.

From what I just read, the phone isn't 3G, doesn't have built in GPS, can't edit documents created by MS office applications...way to miss the boat completely on functionality Steve.

Cool as hell though...just utterly useless for me.

Not that I'm about to spend $600 on a phone, but it's more than a little dissapointing that it is only being offered through Cingular.

I think they named that company after the bars of reception you can get with them at any given point in the continental United States. Actually if that were the case then they'd be called "Nonegular".

Cisco are suing for breach of Trademark

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070110/ap_on_hi_te/cisco_apple

Bah.. doubtful the lawsuit will go anywhere. It's just to get Apple off it's ass in negotiation - they were already talking.

A closer look at the interface

Not crazy about Cingular.

Kicks the crap out of my 6700

Still not in a hurry to switch (well, that and having another year on my contract).

Screw the phone, I want a tablet with that gesture interface!

WOW! thats a crazy method of zooming in on a picture.

What trademark?

That interface kicks ass! I like it. Too bad they don't offer that for U.S. Cellular.

6700s rule.

Where did you find a charcoal 6700??? I have the T-Mo version of it...or close enough (the 6700 is actually made by HTC, just branded as a UT Starcom, as my MDA is branded "T-Mobile) and they do kick arse.
I would love to EVDO speeds, but Verizon screwed me and my wife 2 yeras ago so they will never get our business again, and Sprint wouldn't work with us recently. So off to T-mo I went with a smokin' deal from my company's T-mo rep

I'm all about a phone from apple. You talk about the geeks and hipsters that will be the first to buy this and I say I will be in that bunch for the sole purpose that I cannot find a good phone to sync with my macbook.

My PPC-6700 (Windows Mobile 5) syncs perfectly with my iBook using The Missing Sync . It also has much more functionality, is about $300 cheaper, and I'm saving about $50 a month by using Sprint instead of Cingular.

The iPhone will be the H2 of cell phones. All flash and style, with no guts behind it. Just something to impress the ladies and compensate for what's (not) in the shorts.

Whatever guys I'm just a mac guy. Its in my blood. How can u say H2 its got osx which makes it better than any smartphone running windows which if I'm correct turns them automatically into smart yet completley unreliable phones.

BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

My winders mobile phone is stable as all hell.

How stripped down will OSX be to make it run on a phone?

As a fellow Mac guy, I understand where you're coming from. I was thrilled about the iPhone until I read the fine print.

• Cingular sucks for data (speed and cost)
• The iPhone doesn't support 3G data network access
• The iPhone doesn't allow 3rd-party apps to be installed
• The iPhone's version of "OS X" is not complate at all. It is lacking most of the GUI libraries. You will never be able to run normal apps on the iPhone
• No built-in GPS

The user interface is unique and great, but if it costs 2-3x as much as a smart phone, and doesn't do much more than a standard flip phone, it just isn't worth it. Steve Jobs really screwed us over with this hunk 'o crap.
FWIW, my WindowsMobile smart phone is very stable.

I noticed yesterday that the CNET review page for the iPhone has approx. 450 (mostly perfect) reviews already........for a product that doesn't release for another 5 months.

Wow.

Actually, it has a rating of 6.7:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Apple_iPhone/4505-6452_7-32180293.html

I will never listen to user ratings from there, only editors. Too bad Mr. Kim died. Do they have his replacement yet?

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/55906.html

Lawsuit settled - They are both gonna use iPhone!

A detailed analysis of the Macworld keynote

Pretty good commentary. Speculating on a few things. I think the one icon he talks about in google maps looks like a knife and fork - probably to show restaurants or other points of interest, like he alludes to.

I am planning on purchasing the iphone when it comes out but I have a question that hopefully someone here can answer. I do not get Cingular service in my building at work and we do not have wi-fi there either. I am wondering if I can connect the iphone via its bluetooth to a bluetooth enabled LAN connected pc to surf the web on my iphone? Any thoughts?

So basically, you want to surf the internet while you're on the crapper at work.

So let me get this straight. You want to connect your tiny ass little screen (Ok - It's bigger than most other similar devices) to a full size computer and surf the net on the phone, rather than on the perfectly good computer sitting right next to it???

Am I that obvious? Unfortunately, my crapper is more than 30 feet away from my desktop. Ha.

Bueller? Bueller?

Well, no one's going to know for sure until the phone comes out unless they work for Apple, and then they are not going to say.

My guess is that it won't work. I can't do that from my current bluetooth enabled phone. I can connect the phone to my Mac using bluetooth, and use it as my internet connection, but not the other way around. I can connected to my palm and use the Palm as the browser with solves your toilet problem. The phone expects to use it's data services when the browser is launched (or any other data application running on the phone, there's no way to tell it to try to get the data over the blue tooth connection).

iPhone commercials...

I learned quite a bit about the latest batch of phones out there back a couple months ago when I upgraded to an XV6700.

Knowing what I know now - I gotta say the iPhone doesn't look nearly as cool as it did before.

My phone updates weather reports every 2 hours, including dozens of radar/doppler/cloudcover/precip maps that allow zoom in and map in motion.

I can also watch and control my home TV on the phone, including any On Demand or DVR'ed programs. Never miss a Cubs game again (although sometimes I wish I could)! The 2 gig card allows me to load 10 hours of movies onto the phone as well.

It's touchscreen, allows third party applications and can open/create/improve MS office attachments. Wifi enabled, Google maps has a cool as hell app for it, and last but not least - I can even run some sweet as hell planetarium software on it that can actually control my telescope wirelessly, track about 2,000 satellites, asteriods and comets in real time and so much more.

Oh - it has a full QWERTY slideout keyboard and it's 1/3rd the cost of the iPhone.

I have to imagine the iPhone will have a cool looking interface, gorgeous screen and a great MP3 player, but beyond that, not impressed. Even texting will be a pain in the ass with no keys to feel.

Beyond iPod fashionistas, Mac cultists and the drastically insecure, I really don't see who would want one.

That doesn't mean it won't sell though. Between iPod fashionistas and the drastically insecure (one could argue that they are one in the same) - we're dealing with a market of millions.

$499 or $599 for a damn cell phone!!!!!

Wow!!!!! Either some people have far too much money (please PM me and I will help with some of that money ) or they dont abuse phones the way I do!!!!

I buy the cheapest phone that makes calls and im happy with that.

Hell the only reason I have a cell is because it is stupid to have a home phone and a cell.

I currently have Sprint (which sucks donkey balls) and my wife has Alltel. We will be switching to them as their rate plans for the 10 unlimited people will work for us and for her damn addiction to texting!!!!!!

The iPhone is pretty cool but that is far too much money for something that sits in my pocket for my puppy Boxer to vault herself onto when I come home.

I guess I need to get with the times.....oh well.

Whenever someone gets one let us know what you think...curiosity is a bad thing!!!!!

Tim

I also have the same phone, and agree with everything you are saying... there really not that many more things the iphone can due than anyother smartphone.... plus the battery life on these phones (including the xv6700) are terrible if you intended to surf the web, or are constantly using it for email...

I may end up getting one. Simply because I use my cell phone for two things; phone, and music player. I don't care about any other features, necessarily. I would expect the iphone to be a very good music player, so it's a possibility for my next phone.

But it'll be a long, long while, because AT&T has the sole source for it for 2 years. And I will NOT go back to BellSouth, or any fucking company that has anything to do with BellSouth, Cingular, or any of that other crap... In fact, when Cingular bought out AT&T Wireless, I switch from AT&T to verizon; cancelled my service the same month their merger got approved... I won't have anything to do with that company, or anyone that buys them (again) in the future.

AT&T is definitely not Cingular. AT&T's customer service is one of the best I have seen from a company that size. It's ironic too because Cingular was one of the worst, if not the worst. And as much as I love AT&T, I will definitely not be throwing away cash on this phone. I pretty much agree with what Kevin said. However, I'm sure they'll meet their quota off the Mac drones though.

Ah, here we go again with the name calling from the other side. Of course the major arguement from that side is - 90% of the world runs windows, so it should be good enough for you!. Which one's are the drones again - the lemmings who follow along with the rest of the pack, or the individuals who are overly proud of their independence from the MS brainwashing?

That said $600 for a phone is to much, I won't be running out to get one, and will probably end up getting a Windows Mobile Device instead until the iPhone comes down to reasonable prices, and gets on a decent network.

Yup! And with Apple's fanatical attention to detail, hopefully they will get it right. I love visual voicemail. I hate normal voicemail systems, and I can't believe it took someone until 2007 to come up with the idea to use the screen to navigate voicemail!

Another stroke of Apple genius - turn off the @%#$ touch screen when the phone is pressed up to the side of your head while being used as a - gasp - phone! I'm stuck on the side of the road after being rear-ended last friday, trying to call my insurance company. I dial the phone, put it up to my ear - and nothing. I wait a second, still nothing. Pull the phone down (Treo 700w WM5 smartphone) and I have the Windows Mobile spinning beach ball of death. Great. I wait, and I wait - I have no idea what got clicked on the @%#$ touchscreen when I put the phone to my head, but now it's off in la-la land... I had to pull the battery to get my damn phone back!

No wonder all the current smartphone users are freaking out that the battery isn't removable in the iPhone - they have been conditioned to see it as a critical feature for the use of their phone

I'm not getting one right away - the first iPod was a dud as far as I was concerned. But if they are released for a while and don't seem to have any critical flaws, I can't wait to dump my current piece of shit and get something that is hopefully faster and more reliable.

I find it comical when ya'll get upset when someone that dislikes Apple comes back with a name when that's all Mac owners do. And I especially like how you try to turn my comment around on the vast majority. That's basically how al qaeda thinks. I don't really care who buys what, but we who make up the 90% don't buy Windows because it's made by Microsoft. That's what the majority of Apple buyers do. That's what spawned my comment. Just look at the second to last comment on page 2 of this thread. The iPhone is a really cool concept, but that price is absurd. Especially for people who just use their phones to talk and play music the majority of the time. I'd love to hear and actual reason why people don't like AT&T though. Maybe the network sucks in certain cities.

I'm in DC. I originally had AT&T Wireless (starting in '98). Great service, great customer service. As soon as Cingular bought them, I started getting dropped calls, poor reception, and at one of the stores they mysteriously added the "international package" to my bill. Yeah...I've NEVER made an international call...why would I want that?

In theory, they SHOULD have the best network, combining AT&T and Cingular. Problem is, too many subscribers. I don't believe the "fewest dropped calls" at all.

I don't have a problem with AT&T. Except that they're not AT&T anymore.

Keep w/ me, here...

AT&T spun off their cell phone company as a standalone, AT&T Wireless.

AT&T Wireless is sold to Cingular.

SBC buys AT&T, then changes their name to AT&T.

The new AT&T (SBC) then buys BellSouth (which owns Cingular).

So now there is a company by the name of AT&T, that has absolutely none of the history of AT&T. Until the new owners can prove they can run a company this big, I'm staying away from 'em.

Yes, we've all seen this by now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtFtcp4mNzA



Still, I had Cingular and Time Warner Cable. After all that crap took place, I now have AT&T everything and their Customer Service has been night and day compared to the crap I dealt with at Cingular.

I'm not upset, if I was upset I'd just delete your comments and be done with it.

Every company in the world want to create a brand loyal customer. Apple is just better at it than most, probably because of their attention to design, engineering, and use of use with their products, but they do tend to charge for that when they first bring out a product.

Your right, nobody buys Windows because it made by Microsoft, they haven't achieved any brand loyality, because for the most part they don't inovate anything, they just use their monoloplistic predatory practices to eliminate the competition (which of course is also what every company in the world wants to do, and Microsoft seems to better at this than most).

You probably wouldn't believe it, but we have just as many Windows PC's in the house as Mac's. My wife uses Windows, because that what she used when she was a PC programmer, and refuses to learn anything else, and she uses it to read email and internet surfing. My son got a Windows PC because of the game issue, that all he does on him machine other than some lite word processing. I happen to have two Mac's because when I replace one I don't need to trash the old one, I keep it around as a fileserver/backup machine. The machines that do the most work in the house are Mac's.

I never said ATT network sucks, I just said it wasn't a decent network, you might want to check the Cancelling Sprint thread to understand my opinion.

Great points. I forgot about the visual voicemail. That's a huge step forward. I swear Verizon has their V/M system tricked up so that it takes forever to toggle through all the messages (more chewed up minutes equals more $$). It takes a minute on the nose to listen to and delete one V/M. That's no accident since a one minute one second call gets billed as two minutes.

As for Windows Mobile, I've had mine freeze up on occasion. It's an inconvenience to soft restart or pull the battery out, but 99% of the time it's just that, an inconvenience. Hopefully Apple will raise the user interface bar so high that all the other cell phone manufacturers will take notice and drastically improve something that hasn't really moved in a positive direction in a few years.

The iPhone will offer some new things right off the bat, I just don't think it warrants $600 plus a two year commitment to a crappy network.

Off topic, but...

On my Verizon account voicemail doesn't count against minutes. I think if you actually dial your number it is, but if you use *86, it should be free.

Modify your voicemail contact to be something like this *86ppp#1234# (where 1234 is your pin) and you'll get into voicemail with one key. You can also set the system to use rapid prompts which speeds things up a bit as well.

Thanks for the tips. I didn't know about rapid prompts, or that it didn't count against minutes. I thought that's how they made their bread and butter with so many people addicted to voice mail.

Cingular was a joint venture of BellSouth and SBC (aka Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell, SNET, and Cellular One at that time) Acutally, they're more like the old AT&T now than they have been in almost 25 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture

From The Onion:

Apple is set to release the much-hyped iPhone Friday, June 29. Here are some of its most highly anticipated features:

• Nanotechnology enables it to reassemble itself when thrown against wall
  Exclusive link to Google Street View so you can watch yourself using your iPhone at all times
  
  Takes Polaroids
  
  When moved from hand to ear, makes Lightsaber sound effects
  
  Prominent Apple logo
  
  Reproduces through asexual budding
  
  Has way, way more PRAM than the last thingy
  
  Comes with an iPhone hat, so people know you own an iPhone during the brief periods you're not using it

This is some funny stuff, especially the bullet point about some of the most anticipated features being a prominent Apple logo and a hat so for the fleeting seconds early adopters aren't flashing it around, people will still know they spent over $600 for an average-featured phone.

That is some pretty funny stuff.

But how is the phone "average-featured?"

Seriously. I really don't know a lot about phones, other than the one I have - the Dash. I know the iPhone isn't 3G, but other than that, how is it average?

There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash, which deprives you of millions of Web videos.

The two-megapixel camera takes great photos, provided the subject is motionless and well lighted . But it can’t capture video. And you can’t send picture messages (called MMS) to other cellphones.

Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee.

Aside from the battery issue (which you can do yourself on an iPod, if so inclined, so I imagine they are working on it for the iPhone), what phones have all that other than Smart Phones? And how many of those have wi-fi?

I wouldn't call it *average*.

Aside from the battery issue (which you can do yourself on an iPod, if so inclined, so I imagine they are working on it for the iPhone), what phones have all that other than Smart Phones? And how many of those have wi-fi?

I wouldn't call it *average*.

---

For the price you're going to pay for an iPhone it should be as feature rich as a smart/pocketpc phone. Pretty much any new smart/pocketpc phone made by HTC (including the Sprint and Verizon phones marked as UT/Starcom) has WiFi built in. If I'm paying as much as I would be for an iPhone I should damn well be able to buy a second battery for it, so that on heavy usage days I can pop the spare battery in and keep using my phone when I don't have an outlet or charger near by. I should not have to wait for someone to "figure out" how to change the battery in my phone when it dies.
Oh, yeah, anyone can develop an app for my smart/pocketpc phone...and honest to god programs not web applications...c'mon it's lacking in features...cool design/idea, but craptastic execution.