Signal to Noise

With the availability of Apple’s much-anticipated iPhone at T-minus 18 days, there seems to be a hum in the blogosphere that’s unmistakable–like the weeks leading up to the release of the Wii, or the WoW Expansion, or Avaya Communication Manager 4.0 (ok not so much). For sure, the buzz on the iPhone is everywhere.

If you’ve been watching the NBA Finals, you’ve seen two things: the Cavs being humbled by a team that’s twice the team the Pistons are, and, yup, iPhone commercials. The commercials are in keeping with the original Stevenote introducing the device back at Macworld in January–demonstrations of web browsing, the mapping/nav application, and of course, the media library stuff. All very cool. What we’ve seen about the iPhone up until now has been quite exciting.

What’s most exciting is the stuff we haven’t seen. In the span of a few months, the rumor mill has gone nonstop in three shifts, giving rise to some credible and intriguing rumors. Let’s start with Russell Shaw, who thinks the iPhone will be used for direct wireless access to commercial movie content. While this would be cool, I would much rather see the iPhone sport a form-fitting front-end for my favorite digital media site, YouTube. Not so far fetched, at least according to Jobs.

Then came the mysterious “missing disclaimer”. Originally, the iPhone ads contained a disclaimer line stating that a two-year contract was required. Later, the disclaimer disappeared. Some thought this meant that the iPhone might be available loose, ie. Apple wasn’t going to push the 2-year commitment as heavily as it seemed at first. I for one think the discount-in-exchange-for-contract revenue protection technique is a major pain and Apple should just sell this thing loose for $700 or whatever. Hey, Nokia does it. And people buy em.

It’s interesting to note that, despite the continued non-existence of the iPhone as a commercially-avaiable product, you can already purchase a silicone skin for it for $2 on eBay. My how those eBay entrepreneurs think fast!

Of course, the rumor rubber meets the road only when the facts come from on high at an actual Stevenote. And during today’s WWDC–NO NEW DETAIL ON THE IPHONE except for one tidbit right at the end, during which Steve let the whole room down by announcing there will be no Software Developer Kit for the iPhone, but that web-based Ajax applications will be consider kosher as suitable iPhone add-ons. And the web apps will ostensibly run offline, meaning you don’t need to be on the grid in order to get an Ajax interface into the web browser. Let’s hope this doesn’t end up being too much trouble, as web-based apps on mobile devices often are (even the N800 is painful to use the web on sometimes). But the demo given by the iPhone development people looked very promising.

Still no VoIP or videoconferencing on the iPhone, it would seem.