Worst kept secret

Hello and happy new year.

Yesterday, January 9th 2007, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, announced the launch of the new Apple phone, the iPhone. For many in the IT sector, this was more the confirmation of one of the biggest rumours from the last 6 months as opposed to anything new.

Many new stories claim to have had early and exclusive pictures of the phone. However none of them seem to have gotten it right - they were all wide of the mark. The iPhone design seems to taken everyone by surprise - it looks fabulous - now all it has to do is to work as well as it looks. The 2 images to the left show 2 views of the phone, the top shows the user interface whilst the second image shows the iPhone with an image acting as the wallpaper.

Why should everyone have been surprised by the look? Beats me. After all, Apple's chief product designer, Jonathan Ive, has a history of great design with Apple. Just look at all Apple products, the iMac, MacMini, MacBook, all the iPods - not a poor or substandard design amongst them.

however, the quality of the user interface also looks to have caught people out. Today, as mobile phones become more and more complex they seem to become less and less intuitive to use. Apple may just have broken the mould.

However, it's not just a phone, it's a wide screen iPod as well capable of playing music and videos - in portrait or landscape with a sensor built in to detect which way you are holding the screen. Not only is it an iPod but it can browse the web and the size of the screen and ease of use may just make the iPhone the best way to browse the web on the move.

So, what can it do as a phone, well all your standard phone things, make and receive calls, collect voice mail (AND let you listen to your messages in the order YOU choose - not just in the order they were received - you can send and receive SMS text messages and use the 2MP camera to take photos. Of course, with plenty of storage space on board, you probably won't have to worry about running out of space for your photos.

Back to the web - not only do you have a fully featured web browser but access to your email, access to maps (provided via my favourite on-line mapping service, Goggle Maps) and desktop widgets - which allow great tools to be added to the iPhone.

Oh, and the iPhone is controlled through the use of a touch screen that is set up to accept your finger as the key "touching" device - no more fussing with (and losing) fiddly styli. And it has wireless networking, making it easy to transfer music and photos to and from your home computer and allowing to use wireless access points when you are out and about.

I have to say that I am certainly impressed. If the user experience matches the design (and I have a feeling that it will) then I have only one comment to add......where do I join the queue to buy one?