Wired's Latest Article on Apple

Wired has just posted online their latest look at Apple, "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong." The author, editor Leander Kahne, has a new book coming out in a few weeks, Inside Steve's Brain. The article is worth a read, if not entirely accurate. And check out some commentary around the web.

Fortune Magazine's Steve Job Interview

A few interesting iPhone tidbits from Fortune Magazine's interview of Steve Jobs:

"We had a different enclosure design for this iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one Monday morning, I said, 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.'

And we pushed the reset button. We went through all of the zillions of models we'd made and ideas we'd had. And we ended up creating what you see here as the iPhone, which is dramatically better. It was hell because we had to go to the team and say, 'All this work you've [done] for the last year, we're going to have to throw it away and start over, and we're going to have to work twice as hard now because we don't have enough time.' And you know what everybody said? 'Sign us up.'"

They might have said, "Sign us up," but they were probably thinking something else. Like, "You son of a ..."

Job's "do it over until it's right" approach is something only companies as rich in cash as Apple is can afford to do, especially on a project as big as the iPhone. Yet I am glad, as are Apple shareholders, that Jobs took the time to get it right before releasing it. They could have released a different phone and still made tons of cash in the meantime because it was an Apple product. That's one stone in the good karma pile for Apple, at least in my book.

"It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with. And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real question. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did."

What I find curious is that when they were thinking about putting OS X onto a phone, where did the touchscreen part of it come into play? Did the touchscreen phone idea come first, and touchscreen OS X would need to be created from scratch? Or was the software and hardware already sitting around in some form, and just needed to be molded into the iPhone?

The article is a good read, despite Fortune Magazine spreading it across 15 web pages. I copy & pasted it into a text document first.

4 Months Until SDK and Then What?

Assuming Apple releases the SDK at the end of the month of February, as is their way nowadays, it could be much longer before we see a large number of apps on iTunes. Apple will have to hire new employees and build infrastructure to test out these apps. It's likely they are using the time until the release to build that infrastructure. I'll wager that is the reason for the long wait, not the SDK , which is probably mostly finished.

It also wouldn't surprise me that they have already given a rough version of the SDK to a few select vendors who will have apps ready for sale come the public release of the SDK.

$100 Apple Store Credit

Ya done right by me, Steve Jobs. Ya done right by me.

I'm already thinking about how to spend my $100. Now, if they'd only drop the the Apple TV by $200, they might have another million products sold.

iPhone Sees $200 Price Drop

Where's my $200 back? I have to admit, that was the first thought in my head. Selfish, selfish, I know.

The price drop was a very wise move for Apple to make, especially before the Holidays. Everywhere I go, people tell me they love the iPhone, but, "It's just too expensive." There was no way around that.

So, what will a $400 price tag mean? First, it means that the new iPod touch won't sell. Let's see, an 8 gb iPhone for the same price as a 16 gb iTouch? I think I'm going with the iPhone. Some would argue there is the little matter of $60 a month over 2 years for phone service. But people are paying that much for their current cell phone. Might as well do it on the iPhone as a crappy Samsung flip phone. So, does a $400 price tag mean sales of say, 5 million, by January 1, 2008? I would guess no, but I'm no longer a teenager, and teenagers are the ones you gotta sell it to. $400 sounds about right for a good Christmas gift for a spoiled middle class teen, a no brainer for a rich teen, but it's too expensive for most regular to lower middle class teenagers. I think their parents will be buying them a Wii instead.

Did you catch how Steve Jobs said Apple was getting ready to sell their millionth iPhone? I honestly thought they had sold more than that, but when I think about it, it makes sense due to its limited market. 1 out of 30 people own an iPhone in the US (assuming all patrons were US citizens, which they weren't).

The price drop means one more thing: Apple is a lot smarter than Sony. Sony should have taken the early adopter's money and dropped the price of Playstation 3 to meet or beat the 360's price by now. I don't care what it costs to make it. You want to stay in the race, don't you? But I am curious, why did Apple price the iPhone so high in the first place? I feel like I had to pay the I'm-a-single-dude-with-discretionary-income tax. Ya got me Steve Jobs. Ya got me.

Which Features on the iPhone Can Suck?

Not all features on the iPhone are going to work perfectly out of the box. So, I was wondering, which features must be perfect, and which features can be not-so perfect?

1. The phone feature has to be perfect. No question. My grandma needs to be able to make a phone call on the iPhone and then check her voicemail. There must be no fumbling with features. There must be one and only one button to push to answer a call. My current cell phone gives me that. I expect to make and answer calls on the iPhone flawlessly. Has Apple built a user interface that will make that happen with a touch screen? Sounds like a tough job, and we'll soon see.

2. The iPod feature has to be perfect or close to perfect. This should be easy for Apple to pull off, but the touch screen interface could present some unforeseen challenges. The iPod feature is what will make or break the $600 price tag. I do not want to pay $600 for just a great phone. No, $600 should get me a phone and an iPod.

3. The Internet feature can suck. It'd be nice to be out in downtown Chicago and be able to whip out my iPhone and catch up on Engadget while I'm waiting for the bus, but it's not something I will be let down by if it doesn't work well. Besides, I can't afford AT&T's data package, so only the wifi is relevant. How pervasive is wifi? Wifi in downtown Chicago is not as saturated as San Francisco. For most of the country, wifi is random, undependable, and thus un-Appleish.

4. The touch screen keyboard can be average (but can't suck). I'm so used to taking a few frustrating minutes to pound out a 10-word message, I find it hard to believe Apple won't be able to improve on the experience. At the recent D: All Things Digital Conference, Steve Jobs said users will need to learn to trust the keyboard, and it will take about a week to get used to it. Hmm, I thought a good user interface was intuitive. Sounds like this is already working against the iPhone. Not a deal breaker for me though.

5. Other iPhone features that can suck: calendar, note taking, games, and photo viewer. However, they all can't suck. If they do, you'll hear grumbling about the price.