Firstly, I have another twelve months left on my phone contract until I am eligible for an upgrade, so I’m not one of the many people cursing at Apple for not disclosing anything about this product (well, supposed product) and praying it comes before their Samsung bites the dust and they are forced to upgrade to a D900 or something. I’m not holding my credit card and watching my RSS feeds in my boxer shorts every time there is an Apple conference.
I do, however, really want one.
You see, I didn’t like the iPod at first. I thought it was a stupid idea to rip 10GB of your music to a lossy compression rate and stick it on a £300 jukebox when I could grab my Diskman, put in a CD, and that would entertain me on the way into college. I used one, I got one, I discovered iTunes, and Podcasts, and I fell in love. I guess if it wasn’t for the iPod I wouldn’t have bought a Mac.
So now I have this great computer that compliments my lifestyle perfectly. My iPod that plugs in and automatically updates my updated songs and Podcasts, and will even sync with iCal! But you know, I still have to have my phone with me all the time. It’s good, but it need a separate charger, and it’s one more thing to carry around, and I don’t know how to copy the photos from it in OSX, and when I turn my iPod on I need to put my phone on silent, and it’s kinda as though the phone is this spare part that doesn’t really get used to it’s full potential just because the people who designed it didn’t think about Mac users.
When I bought this phone, the Nokia 6111, I said “I want the smallest thing you sell. I don’t care about playing MP3. I just want a phone”. This is what I got, and I still stand by that decision, and my thoughts are echoed by a huge amount of people right now. The reason is, as I’m sure you will have experienced, there aren’t any phones that play music as well as an iPod. Many of the iPhone’s critics are saying the same thing.
But the iPhone is something that I would use for a) the fact that I don’t have to carry, update, charge two devices and b) it would have the same intuitive interface/connectivity that the iPod already has. However, I think Apple need to pitch at least one of the phones (there are supposedly two phones on the way) at the Nano market, rather than the Smart Phone market:
1) Form factor no bigger than the iPod Mini
2) 4GB storage
3) Video
4) Cellphone-like battery life
I’m being realistic: I can’t see anyone wanting to buy a 30GB iPod with a phone built in. It would be too big, too expensive, the battery wouldn’t last - and if you are the sort of person who uses the new video iPods then the chances are you don’t mind a bit of extra plastic in your pockets. But I can see a lot of people like me, who love the size (physical and capacity) of the Nanos and Minis picking a device that does the job of two over a similarly priced iPod video.
Whatever happens, I’d be interested to see how Apple market this one, given they dominate the portable audio space and they aren’t going to want to give that up to a cellular telephone. It could be the “iPod Phone” I guess, as long as it’s designed from a phone perspective, rather than an iPod with a phone as an afterthought.
It’s the iPod that will bring people, but I hope it’s the phone that makes it live up to the hype.
