So amidst the, now minor, announcement that is Apple TV Steve tried once again to create his reality distortion field as he introduced a product that was phone, widescreen ipod and Internet device all in one. I must admit the device looks stunning. Jony Ive was called on an iPhone by Steve during the keynote, Steve asking him “I have to get back to my keynote… Jony, do you have anything to say on the first phone call?” Jony responded “It’s not too shabby, is it?”. There are bags of picture of the iPhone on Engadget. The Apple design team appear to have done a great job.
Remember that Apple, until recently it appears, did not own the brand name that is iPhone. Linksys released a product called the iPhone quite recently. A quick look at the cached copy of iphone.com on Google reveals the original website owned by Nuvio. Now iphone.com redirects to the Apple website.
It will be the middle of the year before the US public can get their hands on one of these new phones. At the moment it looks as though they’re bound in to the AT&T Cingular network. The question begs what will be the situation for us Europeans? Well we have to, once again, wait for nearly a whole year before we can get our hands on the iPhone. Will Vodafone have the exclusive contract? Will it be Orange (currently the only UK carrier to offer GPSesque positioning using their network)? Will it be O2? Who knows? It’s interesting that Apple announced partnerships with classic Web companies like Google and Yahoo! rather than focusing on their own .Mac service. I was looking forward to a boost to .Mac, it’s been very neglected of late.
So nothing about Leopard, no larger or faster iMacs, no new iPods. The keynote was all about iPhone. But at $499 for a 4GB and $599 for an 8GB model how many people are going to plumb for that? Especially as it ties you in to a 2 year contract with.. well Cingular. But they have no presence in the UK. Five hours of talk time is reasonable for a device of this calibre (comparable with Windows Mobile 5 smartphones) and 16 hours of audio playback is comparable with a current iPod.
Can an amazing design carry the iPhone? At that price it has begun to price itself out of the range of kids who have iPods. Christmas or birthday present? Possibly. Will I be getting one? Most likely. 
The announcement appears to have done wonders for Apple’s stock price.
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