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Scott Bourne - Executive Producer - Podango Studios
Andy Ihnatko - Co-host - Celestial Waste of Bandwidth and Sun-Times
Chris Breen - Co-host - Macworld
Liana Lehua - Site of the week picker - Girls Gone Geek
Achim Voermanek - Foriegn correspondant
Our one year anniversary!
On this week’s show:
Scott asks Andy, “What is the most noteworthy iPhone thing that has happened in the last year?” Apple’s ability to convince the entire world to create a third version of the world wide web. Popular websites often have a bit of code that notices when you visit on an iPhone and creates a web-application like page just for you, Mr. Iphone user, we love you we love you we love you.
Scott posses the same question to Chris. The swiftness in which the iPhone became popular. Also significant is the jail breaking community. The things that this user community has been able to do really shows off the power of the iPhone which makes the release of the app store even more exciting.
Scott’s answer, the excitement factor of the iPhone is the significant. Scott attended NAB recently and every time Scott pulled his iPhone out around people from outside the US he couldn’t get his work done. People wanted to see his iPhone. The worldwide community still has that frenzy that we had in the U.S. before the phone was released last June.
Achim says that the excitement for the device is still strong in Europe. Having the iPhone accessible and usable in the UK and France was important. Even though other device makers have released smartphones, Apple has set the new standard for smartphones in Europe.
Scott asks Achim, “What do you think is the most significant iPhone reaction since [the release of the iPhone in Europe]?” It shows how segmented the market is. Apple goes by country. Achim thought the release of the iPhone across Europe would have been faster. Local copyright, trademark, and negotiations have slowed the release o the iPhone across Europe from what Achim expected. Scott states that they’ll be reporting on that more.
Andy confirms that Achim has, “nailed it.” This is the first time that Apple has really had to fight to sell their product in every single country. Apple has a little experience with this in the iTunes store. The unslung hero of the iPhone story is those really boring teams of lawyers that are busy finding ways to sell the iPhone in Canada.
“Chris, what kind of feedback do you get from foreign readers of Macworld?” asks Scott. Generally, they are impatient if they don’t have the iPhone and he hears an awful lot from Canadians. They seem to be the last country on Earth to get the latest Apple products. When the iPhone comes out in a new country, iPhone Central sees a lot of email from people in that country excited that they just got the iPhone and sharing how much they love it.
What is coming down the road?
Scott asks Chris how certain we are of a 3G iPhone announcement at WWDC in June. Chris is pretty darn certain that we’ll see that in the next 6 weeks to 2 months, commenting on Walt Mossberg saying that we’ll have the iPhone in the next 60 days and then taking that back. AT&T has said that all of their smart phones will be 3G compatible within months. Also, the 2.0 software is coming out along with the SDK.
Does Andy have any particular take on this? Andy is interested in how 3G will change how people use the device. The YouTube application is the most forward looking application as it was designed for 3G speeds, not dial-up modem speeds. Andy would not like to see this turn into a device that requires a high speed connection. If what it does and how it communicates with the network becomes so wasteful that it requires you are having a really good day on the AT&T network or else you’ll have a bad time doing the most common things with the phone. Transformative experience, Andy is looking for content creation. Write something, download something, record something, capturing movies would be good. Andy would like to see the iPhone as a way to push things out into the world and not be such a one-way device.
Scott would like to see the opportunity to use more storage and brings up a rumor that says there won’t even be an 8 gig iPhone. Chris says that it makes sense since memory is getting cheaper. Chris like’s Andy’s idea of the iPhone being money. Location based services, such as being able to order coffee and paying for it via the iPhone. Extending that model out to other retail places. Using the iPhone or iPod touch as your means of payment and not having to whip out that credit card is interesting to Chris.
Scott brings up that whole push thing. As an example, walking into Home Depot and getting a map to help you navigate the store. By addressing the enterprise stuff first, Scott believes that they will be solving adoption problem. Will GPS, better camera, etc. be part of the 3G iPhone? Scott doesn’t have any information.
The last time Scott looked, AT&T didn’t offer 3G in 15 states. Andy says even in a major metropolitan location, like Boston, 3G service can be spotty. Getting just out of the metro means you can’t count on getting the 3G signal.
The poll that was done several months back asked people what their favorite app was on the iPhone and Safari browser won hands down. Browsing on 3G will be better but even on the edge network it isn’t bad. Liana Lehua has been tasked with picking the iPhone website pick of the year…
She can’t pick one. She picks two. Jott and iwantsandy, working together, offer a service that is helpful when using the iPhone. She can call in a calendar entry or todo item and it will sync back to her iPhone through Google calendar and iCal.
Jott allows Liana to call in a reminder to iwantsandy, which adds it to her calendar. She can then access the info in a number of different ways, including visiting the iwantsandy website from her iPhone. Scott says that this is a legitimate use of picking two sites for pick of the year.
Scott asks Chris what website he uses the most on his phone. Chris visits Google News and political websites a lot. The Safari browser is good enough that he generally doesn’t use iPhone specific sites.
Scott asks the same question to Andy and Andy’s response is Google Reader. The rewrite several months ago turned Google Reader into a real iPhone application. So much of Andy’s daily job is keeping in touch with what is going on in the tech world, plus keeping up with the items in his personal life that can be turned into RSS feeds, such as a friends Flickr feed. All of this is right there in one scrolling window.
Scott’s favorite is administering all of his blogs, moderating comments, etc. Right from the iPhone.
Scott thanks Liana for going through all the submissions for website pick of the week and being apart of the show for the last year. We’re looking forward to another year of website picks.
That leaves Chris, Andy, and Scott, the three who started the show together. Going from the original Apple haters that were predicating the demise of the phone to people now drooling over it. Scott thinks it is significant to see the big impact that the phone has made on the market place.
Scott asks, as 2.0 is released, will the reporting be less on the impact of the iPhone and more into how to do various things with the iPhone? Andy hopes that we never get past that excitement. He thinks it is a great sign to see how successful the Safari and mail applications were in getting people to think that they were just using another web browser or mail application and not a slimmed down mobile version. Andy is eager to see the release of the 2.0 software because the device he already loves is about to become even lovelier.
Chris purchased an iphone for his wife about 7 months ago. Nearly everyday, she comes up to him while holding the iPhone out and says, “I love this.” Chris points out that she has no interest in technology. When Chris’ wife is excited about technology, it means that something is really reaching the common people and that it will be successful. There will always be room for talk about how to do certain things on the iPhone and how to do them more efficiently and how to do them slicker. But as long as Apple keeps working on this and now that third parties are involved, we’ll be able to continue saying, “Wow, would you look at this.”
There are legitimate areas for improvement, no matter how much we like the iPhone. What are the top two or three things that you’d like to see? Andy is hoping to see better integration into his digital world. He’d like his iPhone to connect to a mac via a secure connection using blue tooth. He’d like to use the iPhone as a way to check the status of his mac, such as viewing the processor load or how much time is remaining until the mac is finished ripping a DVD. Andy is going to exploit a 3G connection to the internet. Andy is going to exploit the thousands of applications available. But Andy is looking for that magic carpet that says because he has his iPhone with him, his location in the world is largely irrelevant.
Chris hopes that the iPhone will talk to itself better, such as seeing data detectors on the iPhone that say, oh I need to add this to my calendar, or I’d like to take this bit of text and move it to the note application which can later hopefully be synced to the computer. It would be nice to have the iPhone feel like a whole instead of an old system 6 experience.
Scott has some simple requests: A little better camera or camera software. He hopes Apple doesn’t put a GPS in the phone. He hopes that the platform isn’t buggy because of all the stuff that is being added in version 2.0. He wants it to continue working with as much stability as it does today. Andy can’t remember a time, even after using the iPhone for a year, that it has told him that it can’t do something. It is very stable.
The Apple Phone Show is still in the top 100 in iTunes each week. The blog gets lots of traffic. Here’s to another year of the Apple Phone Show.
Chris can be found at Macworld.
Andy can be found at the Celestial Waste of Bandwidth and Chicago Sun Times.
Scott is at Podango and Twitter.
Thanks to Greg Martin who does a great job of engineering.
Thanks to John Nutzman (Hey, that’s me. Woo Hoo!) the new show notes taker. Thanks to Shash, and Vinny Ferrari, previous show notes takers, thanks to them too.
Thank you to all who have listened, weather you’ve loved Scott or hated him, you’ve made the show what it is.
We’ll end this show like we have the previous 51 shows. When the Apple phone show calls, please don’t hang up.
Thank You
Scott, Andy and Chris for a year of fact without fantasy (except perhaps Andy’s amusing ego).
You remain the nest dang iPhone show around. Here’s to another year.
That Ray Guy
Congratulations on your first anniversary! I can’t wait to see what the G3 phone with applications brings you to talk about.
A question - what are those “water droplet” sounds in the background? I hear them in a lot of the podcasts and have always wondered what they are.
Congrats on the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! I have listened to every show and value your insights and comments. Best wishes for a GREAT SECOND YEAR!
Some comments on the “2.0 Hope List”: I hope that Apple will finally provide full iCal integration with the iPhone. I am still amazed that Apple released the iPhone with only partial iCal integration. Why no syncing iCal To-Do items? (The Mail To-Do items are lame and poorly integrated with iCal or the iPhone.) URLs in iCal items (in the URL or Notes fields) don’t appear in the iPhone Calendar app. And then there are Notes on the iPhone. No integration with Notes in Mail (in Leopard) or with anything on the Mac. Hopefully iPhone 2.0 will resolve these integration “oversights”. –Mike
Congratulations on 1 year! I really enjoy your show and love that the iPhone continues to receive so much attention. I agree with Mike Weasner’s wish list and would add one more. I wish rotation were available on all applications. Question-What do you anticipate will happen with 3G if you live in an area without 3G service. I love Edge. It works great for me.
Thanks,
Pam
Thanks Pam - if you live outside a 3G area, the phone will simply revert to Edge.