The 3G iPhone Lands Next Week, Something Way Cooler Coming June 9th
The 3G iPhone is on its way and the rumors have been circulating for months. Ever since the original iPhone shipped sans-3G, people have been speculating about when it would be released.
In April, Switch To A Mac published a rumor saying that the 3G version of the iPhone would not be the big news at the Worldwide Developer Conference in June, instead, a new touchscreen-enabled device would make its debut. Steve Jobs’ reasoning for skipping 3G in the iPhone came down to battery issues, however Steve Wozniak isn’t buying it:
“I don’t understand why it would be a battery issue. I get as much life on my 3G phones as I do on my non-3G phones. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not paying close enough attention. But I don’t think that’s it though.”
Woz is obviously a smart guy, and knows Jobs well, and that’s why I think there’s something more to the 3G story.
In all of Steve Jobs’ presentations on the iPhone (debut and the SDK launch) he has touted its WiFi abilities far more than its cellular antenna, and has rarely made mention of Mobile Safari load times when accessing sites on a normal cellular network and not over WiFi. Apple builds wireless devices, operating on the newest standards (one of the first with a 802.11n product) and the iPhone is no exception as it thrives in WiFi-enabled areas.
Keeping in mind how advanced the wireless technologies are in all of Apple’s products, I can easily see Steve saying to his crew “people are going to use WiFi anyway so f*ck 3G” when it was first being launched. Steve is famous for picking a solution he feels is superior to what’s out there, and then dropping it into a product and leaving no alternatives. He hates the stylus so not only does the iPhone use touch to navigate, he lambasted the stylus in his iPhone launch presentation. Apple was the first to kill the floppy-drive in its original iMac, mainly because Steve felt the CD was better so that’s all there was to it. Now, in the MacBook Air, he has rationalized away the optical media drive altogether saying that since you’re wireless (and WiFi is everywhere, right? Right?) you don’t need to lug around optical media, you can just get things from The Cloud™ over a fast connection. Yeah, it has the remote drive software feature, but that seems like a way to appease people who can’t 100% agree with Steve’s CD-free decision… yet.
So applying all of what I know about wireless capabilities and Apple’s technological leap-frogging ability, I see the addition of 3G to the iPhone as merely an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary one, and Steve only announces revolutions. I guarantee that Jobs hates the concept of 3G and sees it as a backwards step. In his mind, the prevalence of WiFi hotspots will only grow in the future, and even more mile-spanning frequencies are on the horizon like WiMAX and the recently-auctioned 700Mhz spectrum. These are the future, so why support 3G? Well, so that iPhone naysayers no longer have a checklist point to write about when comparing the iPhone to other smartphones out there. Give the iPhone 3G and there’s no longer a “but…” in iPhone reviews. Once iPhone v2.0 software is out with all the enterprise features, and it’s got 3G, what else can you say about the Blackberry?
The iPhone Is Out
The iPhone cannot be ordered at Apple’s online store as it has been “currently unavailable” for about a week now. You think this is merely a function of Apple forgetting to order enough? Absolutely not, and if it were, Jobs or Apple would have made a formal announcement as to not upset shareholders. The iPhone’s unavailability is a sign that a refreshed iPhone is not only on the horizon, but coming fast. How many more days will go by before Apple lets customers buy their start product from their online store? My guess is that the 3G iPhone will be released this week or next week, with only a press release to signify its arrival. Steve has bigger fish to fry.
iPhone pad, iPad, iPod pad, Or Some Other Name
A quote from the previously linked Switch To A Mac entry:
Over the past 12 - 18 months, several sites on the web have speculated about the existence of an Apple mobile device. Some have questioned its existence, whether it will be a Mac tablet or next generation Newton, and if it will resemble the iPhone and iPod touch. The existence of an Apple Ultra Portable Device can be traced back to 2004 when Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs hinted at the All Things Digital conference that the company developed but decided not to ship an Apple PDA.
The touch technology developed for the iPhone has already made it to the iPod touch, so why not more devices? When Jobs introduced the iPhone, he said that touch technology was a revolutionary step in the history of user interfaces. First, the mouse. Second, the click-wheel on iPods. Now, the iPhone’s touch screen. Another Apple product using the touchscreen is coming, and I think it’s coming in June.
The product has been rumored to be a tablet with a 720×480 resolution display, full touch capabilities, and about 1.5-2x the size of the current iPhone. Jobs was quoted as saying that Apple did develop such a device in the labs, but decided not to ship it, and this was back more than 3 years ago. Now that the iPhone is out, you don’t think that Apple has learned a lot in the past 3 years, enough to create another leap-frogging innovation like a tablet?
The 3G iPhone is coming in a few days, and the next generation of Apple products is being released at the WWDC on June 9th. Baleed dat.
heathsnow # —
I just read another blog that has a compelling counter to your prediction, stating. . .
“Before Apple can start selling a 3G iPhone in the U.S., it needs to be approved by the FCC. And as of 10:45 this morning, the FCC hasn’t approved any new iPhones. Last year, the FCC approved iPhone 1.0 on May 17. It didn’t go on sale until June 29 — 43 days later. We expect to see FCC approval for the 3G iPhone sooner than later, but we don’t expect the phone to start selling for a few weeks (or longer) after it’s approved by the Feds.”
Seems reasonable that the next-gen iPhone won’t arrive for at least a couple weeks from now.
Mike Rundle # —
Hey Heather, I was thinking about that too, and the date between when the FCC approved the iPhone and when it went on sale isn’t a mandate given by the FCC, that timeframe was chosen by Apple. I don’t know what the exact timeframe between the two events needs to be, but if it’s announced this week but shipping is delayed until early June, then perhaps that’s enough time to make it out. I just can’t see Apple keeping iPhone orders shuttered at their website from now until June because that’s a lot of money they’re losing.
Post A Comment