Photograph of Apple's ubiquitous iPhone. (Credit: Apple Inc.)
Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, is a controversial manager. He’s the type of person you either love or hate; there are no middle terms. However, most pundits will agree he’s a living icon who has greatly contributed to shape the American culture. Imagine the United States without an iMac, iPod or iPhone. It’s like taking the hamburger, the Fourth of July fireworks display or the Thanksgiving dinner away from the American scenario.
Walter Isaacson said these words about Steve Jobs, “Steve Jobs has the same creative imagination and ability to think differently that distinguished Einstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity.”
Great men create great things. Such is the case with Steve Jobs and the iPhone. History will remember the iPhone as the gadget that changed the communications landscape. This technological darling set the standards for the rest of the industry. Since the introduction of the iPhone, the rest of the pack have been playing the catching up game.
On Monday, Apple raised the smart phone standards when it released the iPhone 4 into the wild. In a nutshell this latest release—which by the way, was Apple’s worst kept secret—is faster and thinner than previous models, with a crisper display and a more angular look. It has a 5-megapixel camera which can shoot and edit high-definition video, and a front-facing camera for video chats.
The iPhone 4, has a price tag of $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage or $299 for one with 32 gigabytes with a two-year contract. It’s scheduled hit the shelves on June 24 in the United States and in 88 other countries by September 2010.
Analysts and developers were particularly impressed by the iPhone’s video chat feature, called FaceTime. For now, however, chats can be conducted only with other iPhone 4 owners, and only over Wi-Fi networks. Mr. Jobs said Apple would work with carriers to bring video chats to cellphone networks.
The phone includes a new high-resolution display and is powered by Apple’s A4 chip, the same microprocessor that is in the iPad tablet computer. Mr. Jobs said the phone’s battery life had been improved.
There were signs of Apple’s intensifying rivalry with Google. At one point, Mr. Jobs showed an e-mail message from a developer who said that he had made more money in the first day of sales of his iPad application than in five years of selling Google ads on his Web site.
Even as we speak, Google and others in the smartphone business are racing towards their design tables to cough out new products to beat this newly released baby. Competition is good. Competition works. Good Day.
