Apple Takes Wraps Off Long Awaited “iPhone”
Posted January 9, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s a cell phone with only one button on it.
And if you believe the hype from one of the tech world’s biggest innovators, it’s about to replace every single device you own.
Apple finally unveiled it’s long speculated-on but never before seen iPhone on Tuesday.
And what’s in this new technology poses a definite threat to your current mobile phone, your BlackBerry and any PDA you might be using.
What’s so amazing about this thing and why does it have only one button?
It turns the device on and brings up a much easier to use touch screen that will allow owners to access a menu, dial phone numbers and record data into a built-in hard drive.
“We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with,” Apple guru Steve Jobs explains. “It works like magic … It’s far more accurate than any touch display ever shipped. It ignores unintended touches. It’s super smart.”
The new device also contains an 8-gigabyte iPod that can store music, and takes and displays photos with a built-in 2-megapixel camera.
And in a huge change, it can also ingest full-length wide screen movies you can view on its larger screen – or on your HDTV at home.
It runs on Apple’s OS X and comes with the standard Safari browser that allows for real time WiFi Internet Surfing.
It can display Google maps.
It allows for conference calls.
It can connect wirelessly to a printer to allow you to get a document of anything stored on the phone.
It has a ‘visual voice mail’ feature that lets you pick which message you want to hear while bypassing all the others.
And it boasts some other innovations. If you’re listening to music and the phone rings, the song automatically fades down.
It comes with a built-in speaker that automatically engages if you move the phone away from your mouth and then shuts off when you move it back.
And it’s incredibly small – measuring only 11.6 millimetres thick with a 3.5-inch-wide touch screen.
Is it really as big an advancement as its creators claim? Jobs insists it is.
“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” he maintains. “It’s very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career … Apple’s been very fortunate in that it’s introduced a few of these.”
It’s due on store shelves in June in North America and sells for $599 U.S. for an 8-gig version or a hundred dollars less for the 4-gig type.
The announcement has already shaken the tech world like an earthquake, immediately boosting Apple stock by five percent – and the thing isn’t even on the market yet.
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