THE Treo Killer - the iPhone

[whmurray]

I will be happy to drop palm for apple, only, if, it adds CDMA with EVDO or better, and the price comes down.

I'd like to see expandable memory, too.

You will and they will. Remember that the iPod has 75% of the market and still sells at a premium to all of its competitors. None of us are Treo users because we buy on price.

 

[whmurray]

Look on the bright side. The price of the 750 should very quickly drop to a purchasable level!

It has WM. They will have to pay me to take one.

 

[PDR447]

Not. I made enough money on my 100 shares of Apple to buy two before Jobs finished talking.

well if I had 8k liquid to invest in apple stock I don't know if I'd be worried about the price of the iPhone in the first place.

 

[whmurray]

well if I had 8k liquid to invest in apple stock I don't know if I'd be worried about the price of the iPhone in the first place.

Bingo! (I would have even more if I had never invested in Palm and MS.)

 

[Bronxboy]

I phone is like a Palm TX & life drive with a phone. Come on Palm Just do it!
Just make an unlocked Life phone with a camera. Whats the big F***ing deal?
You don't need to sell it to the carriers we will buy it all on our own. So help me God! That?s the only palm device id ever buy again.

 

[whmurray]

I phone is like a Palm TX & life drive with a phone. Come on Palm Just do it!
Just make an unlocked Life phone with a camera. Whats the big F***ing deal?
You don't need to sell it to the carriers we will buy it all on our own. So help me God! That?s the only palm device id ever buy again.

They just don't get it.

Does anyone really believe that Apple will sell one more iPhone through Cingular than they would sell with any other carrier?

 

[curlinmerlin]

Count me in, Apple. I can't wait to ditch this ugly, buggy Treo 650 for a beautiful iPhone. I only hope that I can hold on until June! I can live without 3G and a removable battery if I get to escape the living hell that is PalmOS. I'd be more than happy with Apple Mail as I'm sick of upgrading Chattermail every other week and finding it is still full of bugs and slow as molasses.

I suspect Palm will be DOA within two years if the iPhone is a success. There is just no way for them to carve out a profitable niche against a competitor like Apple given how crowded the phone market already is. Microsoft appears to be serious about taking market share and allegedly have a half decent product although it lacks the cool factor of Apple. Blackberry seems to have some sort of corporate appeal that might save them from the same fate. That leaves the Treo and PalmOS looks like a freaking Edsel compared to the iPhone, and coming in at the bottom of the pack against Microsoft and Apple will be brutal.

It's ironic that I was also considering ditching my Vaio for a MacBook as all the developers in my company have switched to OS X, and the Vaio won't run enough RAM to support Vista. I'd get the best of both worlds there....

 

[bruckwine]

its a mass murderer....blackberry....windows mobile device...etc...are all garbage compared to iphone.....

No way man..don't over-exaggerate...more a sony ericcson nokia killer as it will appeal more to the casual phone user than the smartphone user! I'll get it once it pricing becomes more reasonable for situations when i use my iPod i.e. jogging etc - and maybe i'm a bit more immune to the apple bug..I use one at work and love it but I have a PC too and love that too! So I don't see myself ditching my treo anytime soon!

Sorry, but am I the only one disappointed with this? As everyone else drools (sure, it's sexy, but get ahold of yourselves!), I keep thinking about the fact that it will only do EDGE. This isn't coming out till June and yet it's using cellular communications technology that came out a couple of years ago! Now that I have EVDO, I can't go back to speeds that are 1/3 - 1/8th what I get on my 750P.

I'll just have to get the next iPod that integrates the same touch screen stuff. Heck, Apple could probably even sell it to me without the phone, just Wifi, although I don't think I could deal with only 8GB of memory (let alone 4GB). When or if Apple decides to make the phone for other carriers, in particular EVDO carriers, I might go for it - or when they integrate HSDPA even! But for now, I can't do it. Plus, I'm only 6 months into a 2-year contract. Will this phone be so alluring to some that people will pay $300 on top of the $500-600 in order to break their contracts with all the other carriers? There's no mention of an unlocked version, either, and it sounds like they are doing some special stuff that only Cingular has (the voicemail stuff)? So talk about proprietary! Ugh!

Finally, no mention of A2DP, which to me says that it won't have it...

I can def see a new souped up iPod coming out! However the last two are disappointing esp for international consumers...ONLY CINGULAR?!?! Gonna be a pain getting someone to unlock that not to mention the cingular branding! Hear they have exclusive rights until 2009 :thumbsdn:

Unlocked version? - you are talking about Apple = proprietary locked down. Looks like a lovely device, can't wait to play with it when it comes out. UMTS will be available in a later version. But integrated limited memory, no removeable battery, I can already hear the rumblings....

this might be the biggest prob...changing the battery on my iPod for a newer more high capacity version from Asia was very difficult with plastic tools and all...will we have the same problem when the iPhone battery dies in 12-24 months? I think so..Apple makes all its portable devices like this - forces you to buy one every other year if you're not resourceful enough! :hmm:

 

[bigwalton]

Addressing a couple of well pointed critiques:

1) Only an 8gb hard drive - this is irrelevant as you will sync your iPhone through iTunes on your computer. Whatever data you need on the iPhone will sync seamlessly. And not only is 8gb more than 64kb, the treo I think can only use 4gb SD cards.

Bingo.

Think iPod video shuffle...

Apple's already got a massive iTunes/iPod customer base out there. These people already know all about syncing their iPods and iTunes already has the feature to auto-fill based on presets/random selection for a certain amount of space. Use that with the space on the phone (which you'll access more often since it's a phone/PIM) and you have everything on your computer available to fill up your phone however you like.


Of the iPod/iTunes crowd, I'd be willing to bet 98% of whom have cell phones.

Out of that 98%, half of them will have contracts that they will be out of inside of '07 (assuming 2-year contracts), 100% will be out in two years.

By going with one carrier, Apple's giving themselves time to fix bugs and get out new phones to keep the hype going and limiting how much trouble they'll have fixing any issues. They also lock in that user experience to really make it work the way they want.

I bet Cingular couldn't sign on the dotted line fast enough...

I imagine EDGE is the compromise to get it to market this fast... as a cingular user, this will be the one big PITA with the iphone.

 

[bruckwine]

Hmmm..the more I think about the virtual keyboard the more I DISlike it..I've had my treo 680 for what 3 weeks and already I can type w/o even looking at my phone - simply by feel and knowing the qwerty layout...

With the iPhone it means constant looking at the screen to make sure I'm even pressing a button and not the spaces in between lol! And one-handness goes out the door as the thumb isn't th ebest thing to use a touchscreen with imo. Not to mention screen protectors maybe being pointless or possibly interfering with the experience (gotta be pretty thin I'm guessing).

It looks beautiful but as I said before this will be more my plaything than my productivity thing once the price falls (think 3rd gen)!! A great everyday phone to replace my iPod mrore than my treo - it'll be nice to have both!

 

[KevMeister]

Interesting article: "iPhone: 20 questions you need to ask"

Read it here:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8077

 

[gargoylejps]

Realizing this is the iPhone forum and the Apple die hards are understandably wound up, still, I have to say my first reaction is "Wait and see." This is not the first time some faction has claimed the next hot thing is the big Treo killer. For me personally, the lack of a physical keyboard is pretty much a deal breaker, and seems to be for many others.

Beyond that, the price point Apple has set seems somewhat high for their target market. In particular, since they will likely have to rely almost exclusively on consumer purchases, this device likely has very, very little business marketability. Moreover, we'll just have to see how the lack of a removable battery works out for such a media centric device. It's one thing if your mp3 player can't make it through the day; it's another if your phone doesn't.

What I'll really be interested to see is what array of applications are ready for it when it finally gets here. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing, but if it doesn't have a critical mass of apps available, a lot of people will have problems dropping several hundred dollars to replace their Treo. Therein lies the rub, this seems like a consumer device targeted at the ipod crowd, admittedly a good sized crowd, but are the people in that group the kind to drop $500 - $600 on a converged device? Frankly, they don't seem like the group frustrated with carrying an mp3 player, a pda and a cellphone. We'll see, Jobs is smart and has created a lot of buzz, but buzz doesn't always equal sales.

Palm is supposed to have a few new devices hitting the market in '07, and will probably have at least one before the iphone actually gets here. Again, we'll just have to see.

JMHO

Gargoyle

 

[MacUser]

Not. I made enough money on my 100 shares of Apple to buy two before Jobs finished talking.

I was at a dinner party on Sunday evening before the Keynote and I told all of them that there was likely going to be a big release--an Apple Phone--and the stocks were going to surge. I wonder if anyone of them listened...

Nice job, whmurray

 

[whmurray]

I was at a dinner party on Sunday evening before the Keynote and I told all of them that there was likely going to be a big release--an Apple Phone--and the stocks were going to surge. I wonder if anyone of them listened...

Nice job, whmurray

They might not have listened but they were listening. The stock was flat on the day when Jobs began to speak but up 5% when he finished.

 

[oalvarez]

Under what circumstances? Are you a new user? Did you sign a two-year contract?

Give us some context, please.

under no circumstances. yes, a new cingular customer like many new Treo 750c buyers. yes, i signed a 2 year contract. do i have the option of returning it in 30 days if i'm not satisfied? absolutely.

 

[west3man]

under no circumstances. yes, a new cingular customer like many new Treo 750c buyers. yes, i signed a 2 year contract. do i have the option of returning it in 30 days if i'm not satisfied? absolutely.

Those were the circumstances I meant. Thanks.