iPhone stops people

All I can say is that the photos of the iphone you took with your N95 look great. I wonder how some photos of the N95 taken with your iphone would look? Long live Crapple for the Sheeple.

OK, I just took a look at Patrick's Flickr. That is one crapple camera for $600.

I for one am glad there will not be a 1st gen iPhone here in Australia. No MMS? No video? no MP3 as ring tone? 2mp camera?

I'll take the 3rd gen version (no doubt in planning already)

Fuggeitaboutit!

Let's face facts; phones have become a status symbol. Haha, and don't pretend they're not. People don't want "ugly" looking phones, they want cool looking phones that make people go "ooh, look at that. That's cool"

Apple made a phone without buttons. People flock to it because intuitively it doesn't make sense. Phones need buttons! What is this paradox of equipment? The RAZR was the same way. Sure there were lots of phones with a camera and a large screen or whatever... but look at how thin! And of course, people would flock to see how thin.

Even though the iPhone isn't the "best" it will survive as a new status symbol. Crazy.

Mr. Scoble, at dinner last night (sushi) the waiter asked if I was tinkering with the iPhone. "Yep. Wanna hold it?" He just about wet himself :) Got a free desert out of the deal and put him a wee little bit closer with a fine tip to boot. So fun!

The iPhone will turn to be very interesting. Whether or not your an apple fan, an ipod ate or a linux geek or whatever, EVERYONE will want to hold this in their hand at least once, which makes the apple execs rest easy. Still, I don't have much reason to thing that the iPhone will be the the next best thing, only because of its price. iPod is most popular for those under 25, the majority who aren't making salaries. The next generation of the iphone is going to rock i'm sure, and hopefully is a little less painful on the wallet :P.

The hype behind the phone helped change how people will view cell phones for the next few years. If a new phone does not develop as much hype how can it be so good (or so the PR person dreams). To go average who might not care about the sowhat limited tech features the iPhone is a very big deal.

one of the best marketing campaigns ever. ever.

I have been getting stopped everywhere I go. People are like, "is that an iphone?" or you "OMG, you have an iphone."

The real killer feature of the iPhone is the web browser, and to a lesser extent email. Safari on the iPhone is the best web browser on a mobile phone.

Could it be that your son was more approachable than you? thus people talked to him. Just a thought.

Andre: nope, they weren't talking to Patrick. They saw his phone and reacted to that.

A much bigger leap would have been if something happened that started moving the US into adopting G3, don't you think?

Scoble, the N95 is a fantastic phone. The reason no one cared about it is because not many people know about it, the iphone has been on all the news station for the last two days so by now everybody knows about it, and it looks cooler than the n95.

That said, the iPhone browser is disappointing, and the nokia browser is only a little worse than it. If you want to see the best mobile internet experience look at a nokia n800. when you see this device you'll wonder why apple couldn't make the iphone like it. it has a better keyboard (yes you can type with your fingers) and it runs linux so you can put what ever you want on it. all it's missing is a multi-touch display and non VOIP phone.

If you really have to get an iphone wait until they update it a little first. Don't just buy it now because it's hip, you know as well as I do that it won't stay that way for long, when it comes down to it the iPhone is just another phone.

Ben Gold said "If you want to see the best mobile internet experience look at a nokia n800".
No, just take a brand new 17" MacBook Pro with the HD screen. That will be your ultimate mobile internet surfing experience.

The N800 won't fit into your pocket, the iPhone will.

I agree with sriram - this was one of the best executed marketing campaigns I have ever seen. It will definitelty make its way into the college text books as a case study before long

And the funny part is Apple really didnt spend that much money on it when you consider the amount of attention the phone has garnered. They must have generated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

well yeah laptops too :P n800 fit perfectly in the pocket .

Gwhiz, Justin, I had a similar experience before I even left the Apple Store. The mall security guards, who make minimum wage initially, were working security at the store in addition to some real cops. So, they are standing there, befuddled, watching 300 or so folks throw down the moolah for, usually, two iPhones. More than their bi-weekly paychecks. It was obviously 'look, but don't touch' for these guys from Felony Flats. So, I let one of them hold and handle an iPhone. Made his day!

We sure do have a boatload of people coming over here from the Nokia and Symbian blogs to put down the iPhone. But, in a way, that is good. It shows that, their rhetoric notwithstanding, the release of the iPhone has frightened them.

The item that Ben Gold is referring to as better than the iPhone can be viewed here:

http://tinyurl.com/2b7ptw

Obviously, there is really no comparison between the two. The N800 is an Internet device with 256MB of memory. Big and clunky. The antithesis of innovation. The iPhone is. . . something else.

I bought a VW New Beetle in 98 the first week they were on sale. I was an instant celebrity, mobbed by kids, geezers, Xers, gays, straights, geeks, and nostalgic hippies. When I parked and returned to the car, it was inevitably surrounded by a mob. When I drove, I got smiles, honks, thumbs up.

Did the New Beetle change the auto industry? Sort of. It definitely was the harbinger of cars like the Scion, the new Mini, PT Cruiser. etc. Not all the business went to VW. In Europe, the New Beetle was never the hit that it was in the states.

OK, not a good parallel. New Beetle was all design and nostalgia— no new technology or user experience.

iPhone will change the cell phone market. But not instantly. Come back in three years and you'll see a radical shift. Until now you had mobile phones with SMS and cameras as the dominant product, with a very narrow segment for advanced smart phones that supported email, web, music and video.

Apple will widen the market for the multi-function all-in-one mobile device. They've already made new customers salivate for the broader function phone. (case in point: my sister. Never would have considered a Blackberry, Treo, or N95. She's jonesing for an iPhone and just deciding whether she needs it now or wants to wate for iPhone 2.0.)

LG, Nokia, Moto and Microsoft wil be frantic to match iPhone. Whether or not they succeed, the product has been redefined. The market for advanced smart phones will expand radically. Prediction: Apple and ATT will be able to hold on to a substantial piece of the changed market through rapid innovation in devices, faster network, and new applications.

did I say "wate"? er "wait"

"Not a single person stopped me to talk about my $750 Nokia N95 which has a superior camera."

Has little to do with you carrying it around and more to do with fact that the iPhone has been hyped beyond reason. I would guess the number of people that know about the N95 is miniscule compared to the iPhone. Hell, my Mother-in-law who has never used a computer or cell phone in her life knows about the iPhone. So, what you are seeing is not all that remarkable. Åpple could have shipped a first generation cell phone and people would have wanted to see it.

I am wondering if kids of your son's age really need expensive camperas like iPhone.

"If you want to see the best mobile internet experience look at a nokia n800."

Ben Gold, I have to assume that you haven't sat down and used the iPhone.

My experience is that I owned an N800 (with the updates during May) for about a week and really wanted to like it. Sadly, I found it slow and clunky. Pulling up iGoogle was like pulling teeth. Generally, I didn't enjoy using the browser at all or email. I own an iPhone and it is faster, more elegant and more effective. For geeks who want to tweak, the N800 may work, for people who want to get work done, I've found the iPhone far more effective.

Michael M, I got a similar reaction to my Prius at first. People still ask me about it.

I am the proud owner of a new iPhone and I consider myself a very "techie" person but one other reason the Noikia N95 may not be getting some of the attention it deserves is because it's called the N95.

People have been making a big deal about all the hype over the iPhone but Apple is smart in that they give their products simple and user friendly names and they put a lot of thought into what the consumer wants.

I know it's a sad comentary on how people think but Apple is smart enough to know how important simple names, packaging and interfaces are to sales.

The last hyped tech product I can remember for one day was Windows 95. You may laugh now but you will have to give Microsoft credit back them for the same kind of marketing and making a product that was easier to use that what came before.

I think the stopping is just because when anything is new people are interested, whether it is a device or scandal

You ask how important is conversationality to a product’s future?

It's helpful but I think you might be overexaggerating the impact a bit. I used to have a TC1000 Tablet PC and was constantly getting asked about it by curios people. Did it change the PC market? Nope, it's still basically a niche product. Will the iphone suffer the same fate? Probably not but it is not the conversationality that is the reason.

Patrick,

I also don't think people should underrate the fact that the iPhone is getting more attention just because its made by Apple. Apple could come up with an iProduct and a lot of the press would flock to it. Part of this sure is marketing, and how Apple made the iPod popular. But part of it is the allegiances and priorities of the press. Before the iPod, before OSX, the press was making a big deal about the fruit colored iMacs, how innovative they were, even though they didn't sell well and most people thought they were tacky. In any case, Steve Jobs is doing his job well.