The Apple iPhone changes everything
Don’t confuse me for a die-hard Apple-rules fan.
I’ve been pondering the news of Apple’s iPhone for about 24 hours now and I’m confident enough to assert now that their iPhone changes everything.
In an industry that was in absolute dire need of innovation, Apple have swooped in and made every single handset manufacturer look ridiculous. The greatest asset with the iPhone is that it’s running Apple’s OSX — a proper big boy, grown up operating system, that affords phenomenally huge opportunities.
The introduction of the iPhone is what changes everything. Not the actual piece of hardware. The fact that someone has dared to innovate and offer such wide potential in a connected handset is what changes things.
Irrespective of whether the iPhone is actually any good, it’s effect should soon be seen.
Innovation demands innovation.
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola — they’ll be motiviated to up their game, big time. At least, I hope so. Such a ‘leapfrog’ offering should prompt action and innovation from the rest of the players, manufacturers, operators, software designers. That’s what changes everything. That’s from where my utter excitement is derived.
Continuing on the theme of the iPhone changes everything, here’s what I mean. I’ve been thinking not about how delightful it will be to flick through my iTunes albums on an iPhone, but about the market potential. Tons of companies, known well to SMS Text News readers, have been going through my mind.
Move your mind to the point whereby the Apple iPhone has been launched and is receiving broadly positive reviews. Consider then that hopefully some other manufacturers (Creative even?) should come along with their me-too hardware, innovating themselves. (Although, what they’ll do about software…. forget that for the moment!) Work with me and assume that people begin to warm to open platform iPhone style devices.
Can you imagine what Hotxt could do, freed from having to arse around with stupid limitations imposed (often involuntarily) by mobile handset manufacturers and operators? They could focus on delivering a really, really good communications service. All of a sudden they can easily update and improve their offering without having to guide every single user along a complex and challenging upgrade path.
Justin and the team at BuddyPing would be free to design entire interfaces that work beautifully. ShoZu could substantially innovate without having to worry about silly limitations.
When you actually sit down and think what the industry could do with a lot of people using open-platform devices running something like Apple OSX, well…. geez. It’s like imagining every single person is sat there with a computer. Now you can control the presentation layer. You don’t need to arse around with complex certificates. You want to introduce a better way of texting? Cool. Come up with an application, drop it on to the device and see how folk react to it.
If I wanted to activate a Hotxt style application on my iPhone, all I’d need to do is visit hotxt.com, click ‘install’, press ‘yes’ on the device and …… woooooosh…….. I’m now using Hotxt. When they make a change, I get the update sent to my device and implemented immediately. When I open up the application, it immediately interfaces smoothly and transparently with the mobile phone systems, the audio systems, everything. Gahhhh. It’s all there, you see.
You know what would be cool? Linux. Someone get hold of a really good device — something similar to an iPhone in terms of form factor, and stick Linux on it. Then let the market decide which flavour works.
If you’re a fitness community and you want to offer a really smart fitness service, you might choose to do so via the device web browser. But really. Screw Mobile Ajax… just build the little application in Linux or Apple OSX or whatever, and get it on to my device in a click.
If you’re a dating site, you can now finally control the experience on mobile. You don’t have to accept the horrifying limitations imposed by Symbian and the various other operating systems. You might choose to make it all web based. You might decide to build a slimline client. You might decide to create an application to run on the device. Who knows. You decide and then get it live. Then the audience, the market, they decide. That’s what changes everything.
Ooooh it’s exciting.
