Macopinion

iPhone Expectations (Part 1)

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

What a weird world we live in today! Has there ever been a more over-hyped product than Apple's supposed "iphone" that has never been officially even mentioned as a possibility? There have been a lot of hyped products over the decades but the hype was usually encouraged or caused by the company. Apple is completely mum on the iPhone. Fortunately, that's about to change. Or at least we hope it is. Expectations are high that Apple will finally put the rumors to rest next week at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco and reveal to the world the big secret. Frankly, I can't wait -- mostly so I don't have listen to ridiculous theories, wild gossip, and baseless rumors.

But the iPhone's potential unveiling does inspire a little prognostication, mostly out of curiousity to see how accurate I can be. If Apple does announce an iPhone, I'll compare my predictions with the reality. Absurd theories, fantasies, and personal preferences aside, what would an iPhone be like? Let's explore.

Learning From History
Wild guesses about an iPhone's capabilities are as useless as dreams. To get a guess closer to reality we need to look to the past and learn from Apple's history.

The first thing we learn is that Apple -- while justly being credited an innovator -- is usually credited for the wrong innovations. For instance, who today thinks of Apple as the inventor of the personal computer revolution? Microcomputers existed before Apple came along, but they were either electronic construction sets for geeks or designed primarily for specialized functions (such as video game machines). It was Apple who figured how to create a general purpose microcomputer with the right combination of hardware features to actually be usable and useful by regular people.

By the same token, Apple did not invent the GUI (Graphical User Interface) nor the digital music player. In all cases Apple refined existing technology to create something unprecedented. That's a different kind of innovation than Apple usually gets credit for. Actually, it's the more difficult innovation. Coming up with a new idea isn't that hard: what's challenging is simplifying that idea into practical, real-world, workable, universal designs.

There were many MP3 players before the iPod. But it was Apple who saw the future of massive digital music libraries and realized that no handheld could properly manage so much data and that that task was better left to the computer, keeping the handheld simpler.

Right there that tells me something about the iPhone. For instance, have you ever tried managing contact information on a cell phone? It's a nightmare: tiny screen, an awkward and bewildering menu system, poor keyboard, confusing buttons that do different things in different modes... yuck! What a hassle just to duplicate information you already have on your computer!

Prediction #1: The iPhone will offload contact management to the computer (probably Mac OS X's Address Book app). Syncing will be transparent via Bluetooth. Because contact management won't be on the phone, the limited information most phones contain won't be an issue with the iPhone. You'll be able easily incorporate all kinds of data about a person: multiple contact numbers, email addresses, iChat id, mailing address, comments, etc. Granted, some geeks will complain about this "limitation" and bemoan not being able to "type" all this info on their phones on the fly, but the rest of the world will rejoice and wonder why phones weren't like this from the beginning.

Learning From Mistakes
I keep reading iPhone wishlists where people talk about "smartphones" and demand that the iPhone incorporate a keyboard, a camera, a touchscreen, handwriting recognition, support for a "Lite" version of Mac OS X with mini-iApps, compatibility with PDF and Microsoft Office documents, and more. What ridiculous nonsense!

In the first place, smartphones as a concept are over-rated. Even if you somehow managed to make an insanely great smartphone with all those features and good battery life and ease-of-use, 90% of the world wouldn't want one. The truth is that most people don't want or need all those useless extras. We think we do, which makes sense, since that's how products are sold to us (by feature count), but deep down we really prefer simplicity. The vast majority of people just want something that works. That's it.

Going back to our Apple history, we see that Apple already made a product like some of the wild descriptions of the iPhone. It was called the Newton and it was a dismal failure. It was too expensive, underpowered, and tried to do far too many things. Sure, it had some nice features and ideas (some still unequaled), but it lacked focus and was more a product trying to find a purpose than a tool solving a problem. Apple's not going to make that mistake again.

Prediction #2: The iPhone's software will be simple and almost featureless from many people's perspectives. It won't do a tenth of what most smartphones do and probably half what regular phones do, yet it'll have just the right set of essential features people really need, not extraneous fluff that just makes a product more complicated and underpowered. So no mini-QWERTY keyboard, no web browsing, no emailing.

While I'm predicting the iPhone's software will be on the simple side, the iPhone's hardware is more of a gray area. For instance, I doubt Apple will include a camera. That may sound shocking to some, as cameras are practically standard on cell phones today, but it makes sense to me that Apple would leave it out. Cell phone cameras are low resolution and the quality sucks to the point of near uselessness, and a camera adds considerable complexity with minimal benefit. While some people do use their camera's photo capabilities, the vast majority of people don't.

That said, I'm hedging my bets on this one, for two reasons. First, if anyone can do an integrated camera right it's Apple, and second, if Apple did make the phone support VOIP video conferencing a la iChat AV, a built-in iSight camera would be required. Imagine, the video phone of the mythical future finally here!

But I'm still skeptical, especially with iPhone 1.0. Thus:

Prediction #3: The iPhone will not play video or include a camera. I picture it as more like an iPod nano with phone capabilities. Video is useless with such a small screen and merely drains battery life. A camera adds tremendous complexity with minimal payoff; it's a distraction, a gimmick to sell crappy phones people wouldn't otherwise buy.

Speaking of simple hardware, rumor sites are practically guaranteeing the iPod will have a dual-battery system. The theory's that one battery will power the phone capabilities while the other powers the music playing. That way your music would never drain your phone's talk time. That's silly. Why would two batteries be better than one larger one? Two batteries just makes everything much more complicated to build and manage and wastes space. I can't imagine Apple being so foolish.

Prediction #4: The iPhone will not include a dual-battery system. Power management would be handled via software, with clear alerts as to the system's power requirements. It simply would not allow you to play music when power's under a certain threshold. Or perhaps the power settings would be user configurable, similar to the way the first generation iPod Shuffle lets the user set how much memory to reserve for disk use. That way music lovers could reserve more power for music and people who mostly use their phone for talk could give cell capability priority.

Next Time: In Part 2 Marc continues with his iPhone predictions, looking at ways Apple can simplify and improve traditional cell phone designs.

macopinion@designwrite.com