Why the I-Phone Will Be Apple’s Huge Blunder

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Search “Apple i-phone” on Google like I just did and you’ll get 1, 570,000 potential matches.

In my humble opinion that’s an awful lot of interest in a device that is almost certain to be a downer for a company loved by so many. Now hold on a moment. Don’t go thinking I’m some Mac-hating PC weenie. I have both Mac gear and PC gear and I appreciate the strengths, weaknesses and differences between both. I’m typing this post on a fifteen inch Macbook Pro in fact.

But consider this for a moment from Apple’s perspective. You’re a company famed for developing what many believe to be the best user interfaces in the world. The iPod is art. No one with half a brain argues that for a moment. OSX…maybe not art, but in my experience (which spans more than twenty years) I’d be hard pressed to name a better UI and I’m certain that I can’t name a more complete one.

The thing is, if this is your reputation, and your fans tend to be die hard extremists that hold your products in near reverence; you’ve got a problem when it comes to the mobile phone.

Why? Find me one person - just a single solitary person who will honestly state that writing an email on a mobile phone is a satisfying experience. Or find me another that thinks that web-browsing on a mobile phone does not leave something to be desired. How about reading an eBook? Viewing a PDF? Or what about making a phone call on a phone-enabled PDA? I mean besides how stupid you look holding that flat square device against the side of your head or the greasy face mark you’ll leave on the display when you finally disengage it from your sweaty cheek. You see my point?

Apple can deliver nothing short of a revolution to be sucessful with a handset. A revolution along the same continuum that the Newton was on in the sense that they had all the right ideas only they executed them about twenty years too early for the necessary technologies to be fully baked. Face it, handwriting recognition still mostly sucks. Voice recognition isn’t much better for the most part and we’re still light years away from having a phone that offers all the advanced features we demand AND really good battery life. I know. I have gobs of smart phones. As a result, I have a thousand dollars worth of phone batteries too.

Maybe Apple can deliver a breakthrough in one or even two of the areas above. That would be astounding and I’m pulling for them to achive that, I really, truly am. But it’s asking a lot to expect a company, even one as revolutionary as Apple to cut to the quick of a dozen problems all at once and deliver for our yakking, hacking and grokking pleasure a mobile phone so good…so vastly superior in fact, that Steve Jobs can unveil it to a world that’s holding its breath, utter the words “isn’t she beautful?” and not end up looking like a liar…

Mark my words; Mac addicts are the toughest critics in the world. They’ve earned the right to be with the heavy refinement they’ve come to expect from the surgeons that design product for Apple. The thing is Apple’s own success will be its downfall with the phone, the expectations are simply too high and when people discover that it is after all just another phone; or figure out, god forgbid, that Nokia has actually done a better job with the N or E series devices - the failure to deliver on what was truly an impossible challenge will be mud on the face of the company the way the Newton has been for well over a decade.

No, no, no. Don’t do it Apple. The odds are so stacked against you on this one it is hard to imagine any gambling man wanting to take that bet. Of course Bill Gates plays poker so maybe he likes the odds. In fact, come to think of it he probably likes them a whole, whole lot.

Tags: i-Phone, mobile, wireless, Newton, Mac, BillGates
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