mercurious

The “One More Thing”

iPhone 4 wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone paying attention. I think this FaceTime mobile videochat is the biggest news (of course his “one more thing”) — it has vast implications for mobile communications of all sorts (and the notion of telepresence, in general). Will consumers fall for FaceTime? That’s the big if. If so, then we are probably officially “in the future.” If anyone could deliver ubiquitous videochat, it would have to be Apple.

The Bad News

Apple still doesn’t have a cloud service (eg., Google Docs) — that’s really holding them back. I was disappointed that rumors of a new cloud product didn’t emerge. This would allow all your files and media files to be synced over wireless and we can ditch that USB cable leash. The iPad really stinks without this capability. To add insult to injury, AT&T’s data-plan repricing will keep us tethered to WiFi and our PCs for some time to come. Let your iPhone share its 3G connection to your iPad? Fuhgettaboutit.

The Good News

I would agree that Apple’s competition simply cannot keep up with this rapid pace of development. Apple has managed to compress the development cycle down to a year and still manage to release consistently significant products that push the whole industry to innovate, and hopefully we all benefit. The cost of the software continues to go down, the revenues for developers go up, and the quality of the experience gets better and better.

The Prediction

No Verizon (and/or Sprint) iPhone until mid-2011, earliest.