Tim Howell’s Weblog

After yesterday’s euphoria (and it wasn’t just you, Rod), everyone’s had time to think about the iPhone and its Achilles heels. Like most people, my initial reaction was “I want one,” but now I’m having to think twice - lucky I’ve got 12+ months to think about it before it arrives here in New Zealand.

Key weaknesses or unknowns for me are:

• Limited battery life (up to 5 hours) which is not great for serious usage or for when you want to watch video on a long plane ride and then use the phone. Why isn’t there a way to replace the battery?
• The robustness of the touchscreen is unknown. If the phone is used as an everyday device, how beat up with the screen get? I carry my Blackberry in my pocket and it’s stood up to a lot of wear and tear.
• What the device doesn’t have: 3G, slot for expandable memory, Wifi syncing, ability to swap batteries etc.
• No support for native Exchange or Office, which will limit its market for those of us who need this for business - not that this is Apple’s target market.

Paul Kedrosky and Scoble elaborate further, and these are indicative of other comments I’ve seen.

No doubt we’ll ignore these weaknesses given the sexy looks and interaction model, plus the increased forgiveness we have for anything carrying the Apple brand, although it cannot be disputed this is a revolutionary device.

The Venice Project is the next venture from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, serial entrepreneurs and founders of Kazaa and Skype. The Venice Project, as it’s known, is a venture for distributing TV and other types of video over the Web, with the intention of disrupting media in a similar way to how Skype disrupted the telco space.

More coverage is available at GigaOm, amongst others, but I’ve just received my beta invite and will be trying it out soon. Let me know if you want an invite when they become available.

Recognizing that they are more than a computer company, Apple’s changed its name to Apple Inc.

Way more interesting, though, and inevitably something that will be covered in blogs and in the press for weeks, were its iPhone and Apple TV announcements, proving once again that Apple is thinking different - and thinking big - when it comes to consumer electronics.

More revolutionary to be is the iPhone which, at less than half an inch thick, the doesn’t use a keyboard or a phone keypad for interaction, instead using a touchscreen to access a broad set of features including making phone calls, watching videos, listening to music, surfing the Web and checking e-mail.

I really like the way in which the device appears to “switch” between roles when you’re listening to a phone call, emailing someone and listening to music, although time will tell whether a multipurpose device such as this will succeed against more specialist devices. It sure gives the Zune a run for its money, though.

Also, the way in which you can flip between contacts and things like album art, using the tip of your finger, sounds like a really interesting approach to interaction - can’t wait to try it.

While FCC approval is now being sought, the release timeframes indicate a midyear 2007 release for the US, through to an early 2008 release in Asia. Cingular is the telco they’ve partnered with, and the partnership appears exclusive for the short-term at least. Presumably this means the devices are locked down, preventing their use elsewhere. I guess that means a release is 12-18 months away here in New Zealand.

Nevertheless, Apple had to impress at this year’s Macworld to distract from their recent options issues, and with the iPhone and Apple TV, they surely have.

Not really technology related, although there are parallels. The New York Times recently had a great article bemoaning how modern society was suffering an “epidemic of diagnoses.” Or, in other words, despite the fact Americans are living longer - as are we here in New Zealand - more of us are being told we are sick:

Most of us experience physical or emotional sensations we don’t like, and in the past, this was considered a part of life. Increasingly, however, such sensations are considered symptoms of disease. Everyday experiences like insomnia, sadness, twitchy legs and impaired sex drive now become diagnoses: sleep disorder, depression, restless leg syndrome and sexual dysfunction.

Perhaps most worrisome is the medicalization of childhood. If children cough after exercising, they have asthma; if they have trouble reading, they are dyslexic; if they are unhappy, they are depressed; and if they alternate between unhappiness and liveliness, they have bipolar disorder. While these diagnoses may benefit the few with severe symptoms, one has to wonder about the effect on the many whose symptoms are mild, intermittent or transient.

And the parallels for the technology industry? We’re all told, especially in the Web 2.0 era of Web 2.0, that there are solutions out there, but are they really solving the problems we need to solve?