when it was announced, the iPhone was the be all and end all of mobile phones. despite the fact that some companies, not to mention names, are making it so damn expensive for a meager amount of data that it’s ridiculous, the iPhone still has that zang. it was that zang that got it all over the news when it was announced. and it was that zang that got it all over the news when it actually came out. even the NZ news covered it, even when the phone was released solely in the US.

what about the T-Mobile G1? twas announced earlier this week. no NZ news. and Apple didn’t even market it

how can Apple take the iPhone even further? get themselves out of the exclusive partnerships, first of all. it’s gonna be harder for rival companies to tell Apple that they don’t want x in the phone when their competitor has it.

but there’s an even more drastic step they could take.

the time of wired connections is drawing to a close. with WIMAX and varying other wireless technologies that let us have access to the internet just like we get access to phone towers there would be a colossal advantage. and that seems to be where we’re going. there’s free public WIFI in many major US cities, and within the century we’ll have that here too. but things move on. soon the internet will be like the cell phone network. everywhere. no need for wires. merely turn the device on and you’ll be on. this will be a big thing not just for computers but for phones too.

apple does computers and apple does phones. this couldn’t really be done as a Chrome sort of thing. there’s far too much of an infrastructure cost. so apple would have to go in playing hardball- trying to get a big enough chunk of the cell phone market to make it viable- and this would go along with apple’s vertical market at the moment- they make the software and they make the hardware and tie them together. an Apple cell network would let Apple do what it wants on its network, rather than having to share its toys with big telcos. and Apple would make it attractive, as they do with practically everything they do.

but how wise is it to invest in a telco (for that is what Apple would become if they had a cell network) it doesn’t seem very wise, when one realises that one can VOIP someone for a lot cheaper than calling them. but the strength of the phone is that it’s small. if I’m on the subway and want to call someone, I don’t want to whip out my computer and call someone, that’s far too clunky. so the phone needs to be the integral part of the system so as to not be replaced entirely by the computer.

but the problem here is the iPhone itself. if there were an Apple cell network, there would have to be more than just the iPhone, just as there is more than one mac. admittedly, there are different iPhones available, but they are not MacBook-MacBook Pro differences, they are 15 or 17 inch MBP differences.
but the iPhone is a computer, you say. the thing is that the phone and the computer need to be interdependent- there’s no chance that everything computer-wise will be done on an iPhone sized screen- people are buying bigger and bigger displays- so there will have to be two devices, the computer we all think of at the moment, and the VOIP phone, because cell phones are gonna die out when VOIP capability becomes ubiquitous. so Apple should actually start an ISP. and they would do it Apple style- ie well. that would put another layer on the Apple ecosystem. and it would put Apple in control not only of what people would do with their iPhones, but it would also let Apple drive the bus in the direction it wants with file sizes and other things similar. at the moment, one of the major limits on Apple’s vision for a HD future (the Steve said at Macworld 2005 that 2005 would be the year of HD, yet it’s only in 2007 that we get HD movies on the iTunes store and 2008 that we get HD TV shows from same.) HD files are massive, and there’s no getting around that. the ISPs can’t really take everyone downloading truckloads of HD video, and connection speeds limit who can actually get the data in a reasonable length of time, and there are plenty of places worse off speed wise than the US, so don’t complain.

while this lack of capacity is entirely on the ISPs shoulders, there is a good reason why they are not investing in the super-duper insanely high speed network we all long for- it’d cost too damn much and by the time it would be rolled out nation/world-wide, there’d be an even high standard capable of being reached and could well be overtaken speed wise by a cell-phone sort of wireless ISP. but should the consumer suffer because of this? hell no.

a lot of Apple seems to be about control- the software, hardware, and a myriad of other things to create a (nearly always) unbeatable experience, which people are willing to pay for (take a look at the iPod, the MacBook and the various iterations of the iMac, the computer that saved Apple.) this would be another step in that direction. and i think it would be a damn good one