Apple looks peachy
You would be forgiven for not knowing that Gates delivered a keynote address at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, speaking in San Francisco at the Macworld expo, stole all the attention from the Microsoft cofounder. Jobs had the Mac faithful — and technology journalists — eating out of his hand last Monday when he announced details of the long-awaited iPhone. “Today,” he told 4000 cheering Macworld delegates, “Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
At CES, 670km away, Gates delivered a keynote about “a new generation of connected experiences” — about how static and mobile devices will interact seamlessly online. We’ve heard it all before. One journalist described Gates’s address as nothing more than a “long infomercial” that delivered nothing new of interest. Gates has been promising these “connected experiences” for the best part of a decade. Yawn
Jobs, on the other hand, didn’t disappoint. News of the iPhone, which will be launched in the US in June and in SA in 2008 (maybe), sent Apple’s share price soaring nearly 10%, pushing the company’s market capitalisation above US80bn for the first time.
Investors have good reason to be excited. Not only is the iPhone an Internet smartphone and wide-screen iPod music and video player in one, but Jobs has once again stolen a march on his chief rival. Microsoft, with its recently introduced Zune media player, has been attempting to unseat Apple in the market for digital music players and online music sales. With the iPhone, Apple has left the Zune in the dust.
The 135g iPhone, which runs a version of Apple’s acclaimed Mac OS X operating system, has a number of features that sets it apart from its rivals. The most impressive of these is a new user interface using a patented technology that Jobs calls “multitouch”. This touch-screen system allows you to control the device by using your fingers, rather than a stylus, to glide through music albums, flip through photos and zoom in and out of Web pages on the high-resolution, 320×480-pixel screen.
What has also set tongues wagging is the iPhone’s use of sensors that detect when the device is rotated. The picture is automatically adjusted to portrait or landscape mode depending on whether you hold the device vertically or horizontally. This is useful when watching video or reading Web pages.
The iPhone has built-in Wi-Fi for browsing the Web and making Internet phone calls. Controversially, the quad-band iPhone lacks support for fast 3G networks. When away from a Wi-Fi hotspot, users will have to rely on slower Edge technology. Smartphones from the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson already support both Wi-Fi and 3G. Apple has hinted, however, that a 3G version of the iPhone could be in the offing. Perhaps by the time the product is launched in SA it will support 3G.
There’s little doubt that the iPhone represents a big problem for Microsoft. The Zune, already a poor second cousin to the iPod, looks prehistoric next to the iPhone. Will Microsoft, which has shunned the idea of developing its own branded cellphone in favour of providing its Windows Mobile software to third-party handset manufacturers, build its own iPhone-like device and risk alienating its hardware partners? It’s already done it in music with the Zune, so why not with cellphones too?
Perhaps CES delegates won’t need to bring pillows to next year’s keynote by Gates. But don’t bet on it.
Loading ...