ipod phone and marketing skateboards...

[El Beefo]

Call me when it has 30gigs of memory and cost less than $300. For now I think I can handle carrying around both a phone AND a music player at the same time for less than half the cost of that thing with more than twice the memory.

[GPymp]

This just in...

You can't be a toilet paper/longboarding company or a longboarding/toilet paper company.

..and thank god! I like my toilet paper softer than Edger grip tape. Nor do I want it to have holes to place the trucks in.

[chicagolongboards]

But if they offered it loaded with memory, then you wouldn't have to buy a new one every 8 months. I love the way they play the consumers. All of these electronics only improve a little bit each time, when the technology is out there to make it great right now. And with the iphone, you will be wanting more memory when the next gen one comes out, and you'll have to dish out yet another $500.

[Skinart]

This just in...

You can't be a toilet paper/longboarding company or a longboarding/toilet paper company.

This Just in, P&G and Beatrice Foods make almost everything you will ever purchase.
Hell, P&G might be owned by Beatrice.

[pyrate]

i have cingular, am a mac user, and have the OG "itunes" phone from motorola/mac/ciingular. its great to only carry 1 device around with me. that software ended up being in almost all the tech phones like razor and edge and a big hit. the itunes phone is just a step (actually several steps) further down the path cingular and apple already started down. apple is just filling a need in the market, the logical next step. yes, its all useless crap but lets face it. we're already hooked on all that useless crap like portable DVD players, PSPs, treos, video ipods, blackberrys, etc... may a well put it in one little package.

so am i gonna get one, since i am their target audience? yeah, but not right away. when my plan comes up for renewal in a year or so im sure ill be able to get the 4GB for 2-3 hundred, and for me to be able to check my email, manage my contacts, listen to music, watch the occasional family guy or metalocoplypse episode on the train, and oh yeah, get and make calls... and have that all sync up with my computer at home... totally worth it.

anyway in 5 years all phone devices will be like this... all in one mobile entertainment centers. may as well accept the future as it comes.

anyone else watch the APL stock as the news made the rounds? the iphone announcement made the stock jump from around 80 to 90 in 48 hours. a sick margin. i dont trade or gamble as a rule, but my trader friends and i watched it all closely and checked past trends. seems buying APL before macworld in jan is always a good bet, and watch ATT (they own cingular) jump again in may when the phone is about to be available and cingular's TV and print ads hit. same thing happened with the itunes phone 2 yrs ago.

[RJ_Team Breakaway]

They must have done something right. Their stock is up 10 points as of Tuesday (iPhone Announced).

I think it's awesome that they're producing an iPhone. Seriously, $499 is pretty decent being a smart phone (averaging $299 w/ a 2yr contract) and a 4GB iPod ($199).

So you would usually pay $498 for a smart phone w/ a 2yr contract and a 4GB iPod.

But w/ the iPhone you get the same features.
PLUS... on top of everything else, you get:

Video
Widescreen
Multi-Touch
Wi-Fi
Safari Full Internet Browsing
HTML email
Visual Voicemail


AND OR

[cdcorbin]

I think it's a smart business move for them. Mobile phone sales are way higher than personal computers or music devices, and it's a market that still has room to grow.

Convergence will happen and we'll be forced to accept it. It's hard to find a phone without a camera these days, and it will be hard to find one without a music player soon. With improving technology and high sales, prices will continue to fall for the same product. Unfortunately, there will always be something better.

Every company plays the same game: planned obsolescence. It's the only way to keep people buying their products. If they don't get 'better', they don't make money. Of course, better is subjective; I could give two #hits if my phone has a camera...but now I have to have one because that's what the market dictates.

It's not very surprising that the skate market hasn't followed a similar path. That's probably due to the fact that the technology is largely borrowed from other industries and doesn't comprise enough of a market to justify large investments in new technology. It probably also has a lot to do with the business owners; many are in it because they love it, not to make gobs of money (some companies excepted).

We'll see how well ceramic bearings do. Historically, the skate market just hasn't been able to support such (relatively) expensive components at anything but a niche level. But imagine how expensive they would be if the technology were developed specifically for skating. Here we've benefited from the investments of larger pockets and that may eventually lead to a broader adoption.

</rant>

[Partyboypowell]

gravity is a street company?

No. They sell street decks to longboarders.

[pyrate]

oh yeah, 1 more positive...
a common complaint about ipods and PMPs is that they die after a year or so or have almost no aftermarket support and repair options are pricey.
with a phone you can pay $5 insurance/mo for lost stolen phones (not sure if it covers damaged/cracked phones or battery issues but you sure could "lose" a phone easily enough)
thats $60 a year to guarantee an instant replacement. less than my applecare is annualy and even that doesnt replace damaged goods.

i know a whole lot of people who bought new ipods to replace lost/stole/damaged/effed battery ones.

[Partyboypowell]

[pavedwave]

I think it's awesome that they're producing an iPhone. Seriously, $499 is pretty decent being a smart phone (averaging $299 w/ a 2yr contract) and a 4GB iPod ($199).

i think the i-mate Kjam is a closer comparison -- since it also has the full screen vid, wi-fi, internet, html-supported mail, etc... the one thing PDAs still sorely lack against the iPhone is all that fat GB memory. so w/relation to the high-end phone market, price-wise this is one Apple product thats a lot more competitive.

[longboardorific]

No. They sell street decks to longboarders.

no they sell longboards to longboarders. no street decks in the gravity line up

[Directive0]

The iPhone looks sweet. But anyone who's bought a first gen apple product knows to steer clear untill atleast iPhone v2.0

[Steve D.]

i wont get it, not even a standard cell-phone is durable enough for my carelessness

[mrjamie]

I'm swingin' on the same ride as easy.

The iPod, OSX, and now the iPhone all change the way we interact with our technology. The iPod provided an easy, efficient, fun way to interact anywhere with our music. OSX provided an easy, efficient, fun way to interact with our data. The iPhone gives us a new way -- completely touch screen -- to interact with our data on the go. There is no 'reason' for desktop computers other than the storing, running, and creation of data necessitating large physical parts, and the display of that data requiring significant visual space. Apple is advertising the iPhone as a hybrid Cellphone/MP3 Player/Internet Device. In other words it can (a) communicate data, (b) run/store/display data, and (c) create/access data stored elsewhere. In terms of features, this is a equivalent to a computer. With the new touch-screen, Apple has, and I hestitate to use words like 'revolutionized' because this is just one possible approach, attempted to broaden the ways in which we can interact with our computers. This is larger than a phone or a MP3 player. This is an(other) attempt by Apple at changing the idea of a personal computer from something you leave on your desk or lap to a portable media center that puts the control quite literally at your fingertips. Or at least that's my take on it.

I don't plan to buy an iPhone because I don't particularly need any of the features and I can get by fine with my present cellphone -- granted Japanese cellphones are miles ahead of primitive American technology -- but I wouldn't be surprised if similar technology shows up in something (read: an Apple device) I own down the road.

cheers and those of us who own Apple stock, let's plan some snowboaring trips 10 points in one day...whoot.

[Skinart]

A touchscreen is a scratchmagnet you can't protect.

How often do you run across one of those touchscreens at the checkout line that is totally thrashed and funky? How much faster is that going to happen to an internet device?

[mrjamie]

[skategeezer]

Seth Godin's take...

Inventing a new cell phone

Steve Jobs got a lot of press for his recent reinvention of the cellphone. The thing about the iPhone is that it doesn't really re-invent the cellphone. Mostly, it mashes a cellphone together with a few other devices (doesn't mean I don't want one).
The thing about the iPhone is that it is designed to better connect users to the network. You can check your voicemail in a random access way, like email, for example. But what it doesn't do is actually re-invent the very thing that makes cellphones magical: how you connect with other people.
Here's a few things a reinvented cellphone might be able to do:

• Let me leave voice mail for groups of people all at once.
• Let me initiate conference calls with groups of people with just one directory entry.
• Let me call friends based on where they are at a given moment.
• Initiate calls with strangers based on their web of relationships (Facebook style) or their physical proximity and status. If there are friends of friends in the airport while I'm waiting, let me see them! Talk to them?
• Put a dating site into a phone. Pictures and status and location and boom, you can talk.
• Allow marketers to pay money to interact with consumers who opt in, based on needs, location or just plain boredom.
• Let me queue up people who want to talk with me and work my way through the list in a way that works for both of us.

MY POINT IN ALL THIS>>>>>

a number of successfull skateboarding companies (featured in Concrete Wave) do in fact REINVENT SOMETHING (AKA skateboarding) and make it that much more magical.

[Directive0]

its important to note that the touchscreen on the iPhone is not your run of the mill overlay membrane device. It uses embedded sensors which measure capacitance, much like a track pad on a laptop. Will this help it stay scratch free? Hell if I know, but its not quite as soft and smooshy as your palm or pocketpc touch screen.

[rollerbob]

I view the iPhone as Steve Jobs' work coming full-circle. Before founding Apple Computers, he and buddy Wozniak were phone phreakers, seeking free long-distance call time. So he went from stealing from phone companies to hooking them up via iPhone with throngs of geeks waiting to get his product. Oh, and the coincidence of AT&T being the target, as the only phone company (or at least monopoly) in the US in the late 70's/ early 80's, and now Jobs is selling phones via Cingular (owned by SBC, which took on the name, AT&T after acquiring the company). Strange how things work out, isn't it?

For me, I'll wait until it has at least 30GB memory. I like my 1st Gen. iPod with Video. I've never had a problem with it and I've had it for about 15 months. If I'm going to move to one device, it's got to have a lot more memory than the 8GB currently offered. I realize that will likely mean a hard disk, but I'll take it anyway.