You have to hand it to Apple, they've got this buzz game down cold. They wait until the last possible second (almost 10 days out now) to announce a very substantial upgrade for the iPhone - they've nearly doubled the initial estimates for talk time for the device, from 5 hours to now 8 hours.The first question is how on Earth did Apple manage to do this less than 2 weeks before the launch? I seems a certainty that they've known about this upgrade for a while and have been holding it back. Okay, so why not announce it at WWDC when the whole world is watching? The only thing I can think of is Mel Gibson in Braveheart when he's in battle formation with his men screaming "HOLD!" as the English horses are charging at them. At the last possible second he shouts "NOW!" and his countrymen drop to the ground and pick up their long spears - their secret weapon - it's too late for the English to stop their forward momentum. This battery upgrade is Apple's secret weapon, and Steve Jobs has just executed it like William Wallace sans kilt.
Also noted in the release is that the iPhone will now feature up to 250 hours of standby time (over 10 days), 6 hours of Internet usage (this has gained an hour), 7 hours of video playback (this has gained 2 hours), and 24 hours of audio playback (up 8 hours). For every single one of these features this is obviously great news and given Apple's little competitive chart at the bottom of the release would seem to easily trump all rivals.
Talk time is the single most important feature of a cell phone and Apple just added 3 hours of it - it's simply huge. But perhaps bigger to me personally is the boost in video playback. If the iPhone really can play around 3 full feature length films before sputtering out - I think I'm sold.
Meanwhile Apple's stock has shot up almost $5 a share on the news, so Wall Street clearly knows just how huge this news is.
4 comments:
It's good that they added the extra battery time; I assure you that NO ONE here in Croatia would buy any cell phone that doesn't last one day of normal usage.
Well, no one is gonna buy it anyway (: because it doesn't have a keyboard. It's that simple.
That's a good point Stan. I forget that even though in the United States people seem to use their cellphones a lot, in other parts of the world they rely on them even more as the primary method of communication (not sure if that's the case in Croatia). 5 hours of talk time simply wouldn't have cut it for a lot of people.
Sure, we'll see in 10 days - all those completely empty Apple stores as no one is interested :) I'm still gonna hold off for the iPhone minus the whole 'phone' part. That's what I want.
Heh. Well it's no secret that I'm not exactly in love with Apple. I'll never buy any of their products as long as the lock me in in software (I will never, ever, install iTunes).
But, I'd kinda like the iPhone to succeed; it's an ambitious product. The cold harsh reality of European customers, who are crazy about Nokia and don't really care about Apple, let alone phones without keyboards, probably won't result in it flying off the shelves.
Well it's no secret that I am in love with Apple - but I'm certainly not above criticizing them for what I think are unfocused products (*cough* Apple TV *cough*). I agree though about the iPhone being very ambitious. What would be even better is if eventually it leads to the sale of unlocked phones in America.
Internationally though, I have no doubt you are right - it'll be interesting to see how it does.
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