Steve Job's announced earlier today.
The iPhone
"This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half
years," said Jobs. "Every once in a while a revolutionary product
comes along that changes everything."
In 1984, said Jobs, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and changed the
computer industry. In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, and changed
the entire music industry.
"Well, today, we're introducing three revolutionary products of this
class," said Jobs. "The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch
controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. The third is a
breakthrough Internet communications device."
"These are not three separate devices," said Jobs. "This is one
device. And we are calling it iPhone. Today Apple is going to
reinvent the phone."
Jobs explained that smartphones provide phone and e-mail and what he
called "the baby Internet. They're not so smart and not so easy to use."
"We don't want to do these," he said. "We want to do a leapfrog
product that's way smarter than these phones and much easier to use.
So we're going to reinvent the phone."
The iPhone does not use a keyboard, nor does it use a stylus, as many
smartphones do today. The device uses new technology called
"Multitouch."
"We're going to use the best pointing device in our world," said
Jobs. "We're born with 10 of them, our fingers."
Multitouch is far more accurate than any touch display, according to
Jobs. It ignores unintended touches, supports multi-fingers gesture.
"And boy, have we patented it," he added.
The iPhone runs Mac OS X, said Jobs. "We start with a solid
foundation," he explained.
"Why would we run such a sophisticated operating system on a mobile
device? It's got everything we need," he said. "It's got
multitasking, networking, power management, awesome security and the
right apps. It's got all the stuff we want. And it's built right in
to iPhone. And has let us create desktop-class applications and
networking.
iPhone also synchronizes through iTunes. It syncs media, contact
information, calendars, photos, notes, bookmarks, e-mail accounts.
"All that stuff can be moved over the iPhone completely
automatically," said Jobs.
The iPhone features a 3.5-inch, 160 dot-per-inch color screen.
There's a small "Home" button it. It's also remarkably thin -- 11.6
millimeters, thinner than any smartphone out there, according to Jobs.
On one side, the iPhone sports a ring/silent switch, volume up and
down controls. On its silver back side is a 2 megapixel digital
camera. The bottom features a speaker, microphone and iPod dock
connector.
The iPhone also incorporates a proximity sensor that automatically
deactivates the screen and turns off the touch sensor when you raise
the device to your face. An ambient light sensor will sense lighting
conditions and adjust brightness levels accordingly. And an
accelerometer can tell when you switch from portrait to landscape mode.
Jobs' demonstration of the iPhone began with iPod-related features.
An iPod icon along the bottom of the screen brings up a list of
music, and Jobs flicked his finger to scroll up and down. He flipped
the iPhone on its side and it reoriented to landscape mode,
displaying album art in iTunes' "Cover Flow" mode. Jobs also showed
video on the device.
"We want to reinvent the phone," he reiterated. "What's the killer
app? The killer app is making calls! It's amazing how hard it is to
make calls on phones. We want you to use contacts like never before."
The iPhone can synchronize contacts from a PC or Mac, and features
"Visual Voicemail." He described it as "random access voicemail" that
lets you navigate directly to the voice messages you're interested in.
iPhone is a quad-band phone that operated on GSM and EDGE networks.
That's the most popular international standard, said Jobs, though
Apple plans to make 3G phones in the future. It also integrates Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, and will automatically switch from a
cell phone data network to Wi-Fi when it gets in range.
Demonstrating the phone's ability to make calls, he touched the
screen's phone icon and scrolled through his contact list, pulling up
Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design. Phil
Schiller then called Jobs -- visible through call waiting. Jobs
pressed a "merge calls" button and then created a three way
conference calling.
The iPhone's text messaging interface looks similar to iChat -- user
dialogue is encased in bubbles, and a touch keyboard appears below.
And the phone's photo management software enables you to use a
"pinching" motion to zoom in and out of pictures.
The iPhone's Internet connectivity includes HTML-capable e-mail that
works with any IMAP or POP-based e-mail service. Apple has also
included its Safari Web browser. Jobs called it the "first fully
usable HTML browser on a phone."
The same finger-pinching trick also works with Safari, to zoom in and
out of images on Web pages.
Jobs said that Yahoo will offer free "push" e-mail capabilities using
IMAP to all Yahoo! Mail users. "When you get a message, it'll push it
right out to the phone for you," he said.
The iPhone also supports Dashboard widgets, starting off with weather
and stocks.
"This a breakthrough Internet communicator," said Jobs. "It's the
Internet in your pocket."
