The iPhone: what does it mean for us?

I can't see it having a huge impact at the moment as it looks like it would be a pretty limited audience. Like alot of these new mobilephone/PDA type devices. The majority of people are still going to have a standard mobile. Just looks like a bit of a gimmick to me but then what do I know... i've been living in a black hole for the past few hours

I think this has been the major plan of apple. Since it's pretty much a trend lately for all-in-one devices, the iPhone banks in to the popularity and success of the iPod line... Add to that the design style of apple which attracts consumers, and don't even forget about the die-hard apple fans. This will take off and Research In Motion (RIM , builders of blackberry line) and Palm and even the Windows Mobile community should take on a hit for this apple release. Although I suggest not getting this first iPhone and wait for the other generations/reiterations of the device.

In Web Browsing, its not a concern for the moment for us since iPhone is not really used for browsing and basic wap and mobile sites can work perfectly ok for this device. Skimming and Scanning over a small screen is not really what Web surfers would want, I do feel however that the most visited site on the iPhone in web browsing is going to be the iTunes store... The plan really is I feel, that apple is finding a way to make trigger happy song downloaders life much more easier (or miserable). Imagine downloading songs over the air using a device that needs no other external connections, I think this is apples main goal, how to deliver iPod music and get everyone addicted.

I guess the advancement of mobile technology would revert back to the old PC screen since 3G systems support higher Speed and BW rates which is now used by many Young Professionals to connect their Notebook PC to their 3G enabled phone to browse wireless. So in effect they would still use the same browsers we develop for... These are just some of my musings too...

demonhale - I read somewhere that they're not offiering direct iTunes downloads through the iPhone. I forget where that was though (and maybe I'm wrong). Or did you read somewhere that they are?

Another update: Cameron Moll says that iPhone won't revolutionize the mobile web landscape

I think as long as we keep building accessible websites - the iPhone won't have much impact at all!

I think that's what Megan is getting at, because of the new iPhone, does "building accessible websites" mean that we have to keep the iPhone in mind now?

Or... at least that's how I saw it..

Yes, it's hard to see exactly what that browser is doing with web pages but we may need to be more attentive to what would happen to a page when it's manipulated like that. It seems to be using a combination of zooming and scaling widths to fit in to the available space. So, for example, what would happen if you had a block of text with lines too long to fit into the horizontal view at a readable font size?

But really, I'm not sure if we'd have to take any extra steps to make sites work on it or not. Maybe everything will be fine. I think it will be further encouragement to design lightweight standards-compliant pages.

I don't know about you guys but on all my websites I am going to put a little user agent script and if they're on an iphone, I will have the site display "Please download IE for optimal browsing" but I'll make sure they can at least see/read the message, and maybe I'll even put a link to the MS download page .

Seriously though, have you ever browsed on a phone? On almost every website you go to you have to use your horizontal scroll bars. I think the huge majority of cell users will know that horizontal scrolling is required. So I'm not too worried about making the sites fit properly on the screen. Are you sure the iphone doesn't read CSS? On the little demos video, it looks like it displays CSS just fine.

Personally, I think this is a great step in Apple's move to win the technology industry. Let's just hope they don't get too much like Microsoft "we have conquered software, servers and we will conquer the internet!". Then again, no-one is as stupid as Steve Balmer (CEO of MS).

I'd like to answer your questions

The phone will more than likely take on screen media stylesheet for normal pages and mobile if accessing a wap site.

What exactly do you mean do we have to think about the effects of zooming? You should be thinking about these effects from the moment you consider designing your site.

If it is connected through Wi-Fi then the speeds could be anything from 0Kb to 512Kb and more (depending where you are). With it being a smallish device, I doubt download speeds will neccessarily have to be high. Podcasts are generally small in file size, and if you can't get it directly from the phone then connect to a computer.

It will have little impact on Opera's mobile browser - unless of course they bring out Safari mobile for other phones. This would mean quite a lot of work on both Apple's and other phone manufacturer's sides. However, with the technologies displayed with this iPhone, it looks as though the mobile phone world has been rocked already. It's like IE/Opera/Firefox all over again. People will choose and use the browser for their mobile which they see best. Most users will just stick with what's already imbedded.

I believe that the mobile web development will remain unchanged. As the iPhone clearly shows webpages in their screen HTML/CSS format, then we carry on as we are. However, we must now make sure that our sites are diffinately accessible to those on varying screen resolutions.

I think with Opera one of two things could happen: all the iPhone competitors decide that they need to step up their web browsing interface (obviously). Opera is the obvious solution there > Opera gets more business partners. The other thing that could happen is that the iphone becomes so dominant that other players are squeezed to the sidelines and Opera isn't able to get much business with them.

I'm not really sure abou the effects of zooming - whether we'd need to consider that more or not. If this device and others like it become as dominant as some are saying they will, we will definitely need to consider how our pages display on mobiles. But, the iPhone handles display differently from other mobile browsers which could be a complicating factor for developers (not that mobiles display things consistently as it is, from what I understand!). Its like having a new desktop browser that handles things completely differently. On the other hand, it looks like they've done a good job of enableing regular display to work on a smaller screen, so maybe it's a non-issue.

The one thing that annoys me about this (and this is typical for Apple), is that it's so tied together. Good for the avergage consumer, but it would be great to put Opera on there for example, or any other (theoretical) browser or widget rather than being tied in to Safari.

There is no risk of iPhone dominating the industry. In fact, as you pointed out the obvious choice for a better browser interface would be Opera Mobile. However, they could loose out on propietor browsers. It already costs to get Opera Mobile and it only supports Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, Smartphone and Pocket PC. So those looking for a solution for a bespoke OS would either have to get the source from Opera and build on it or to develop their own. I suppose they could contract Opera to tailor the software to them. If several manufacturers did this then Opera would become the browser super-power, in terms of enterprise.

I'm sure Apple won't exclude other software on their devices. They don't do it with their regular systems, so I doubt that it will be the case for their phones. iPods now have software remember (and even an O/S!) so, I wouldn't be too annoyed at them.

Oh, so you could theoretically put Opera mobile on an iPhone? Okay, that's cool then Unfortunately my knowledge of these things is a little limited

I have a feeling that Apple will allow people to write apps for the iPhone. The Mac has a thriving home developer community and I think it will spread to the iPhone.

To lock what is essentially a PDA down to Apple only software would be a bad move for apple, especially when the phone runs on the same OS and has a lot of the same functionality available for developers. Most PDA's support all kinds of apps, especially java. I expect to see iPhone versions of Camino, Firefox and Opera not long after the iPhone comes to market.

Just remember, that Apple only release what they have to in advance of the main product release - there are lots of little details about the mobile operating system and software that they don't have to make public yet.

Personally, I HATE page zooming - I much prefer text zooming and I hope Apple let you choose the type of Zoom that you want (although in my experience apple always think that they know what is right for us and don't let us change it - just look at styling form elements in safari!).

I also hope that Apple allow us to offer up different stylesheets to their mobile device - personally I think they should be identifying their browser as a 'handheld' device. If they don't I'm going to be seriously miffed!

I can't help but think that Safari Mobile will, like Opera Mobile, change the way a web page works rather than expecting the page author to change the way they work.

This will have little impact in my opinion, people are too stupid to design sites that work across multiple browsers never mind devices! Can't imagine this thing being the next iPod either: the iPod really filled a new niche, it was innovative, this is just a well designed phone-Zune (note: I did say 'well designed').

Am wondering whether that thing is based upon KHTML, and if so why there's no Open Source Konqueror Mobile yet?

Just stumbled across OpenMoko, a phone running Open Source software. This excites me more than any Apple proprietary blob, the idea of having a phone that can download and run GNU+Linux apps is very attractive.

What's potentially more exciting about this 'Open Source Phone' is that every phone manufacturer will be able to use it in their own phones, meaning phone companies can develop on a Free common platform. OpenMoko and the iPhone look suspiciously similar though, anyone know if iPhone might use OpenMoko? They've certainly taken some 'inspiration' from it.

All I know is I'm getting one. I'll wait until I have it in my hot little hands, but I'm pretty sure it will replace both my PDA and my current cell phone. I don't have a dedicated MP3 player, or it would replace it as well.

Of course, my cell phone seems to be on its last legs. I'm hoping it will still make it until June...

I believe OpenMoko would be a better choice, particularly since Apple has started threatening bloggers for mentioning a Windows Mobile theme that looks the same as the Apple iPhone (not sure if we're even allowed to say the name of it without being sued) interface.

That sort of behaviour does not encourage me to buy their products, makes me think: Microsoft 2.0

More news on the iPhone, looks like Megan was correct about the applications being Apple-only:

The Register wrote: Apple has confirmed it's a closed device, and only Apple will be releasing software for the iPhone.

Read more at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/12/apple_lockdown_iphone/

Save your money, get a device that will let you do stuff with it.

This is a very interesting development but still I believe that even before this IPhone fly, Apple has to contend with the trademark lawsuit from Cisco.

We'll see if it hits June as planned.

Supposedly, cisco are going to have quite a fight on their hands, there are quite a few issues relating to the iPhone trademark... see here for just a few of them!

Wow interesting chain of events. This trademark battle is getting exciting. I wonder if its really gonna be named IPhone now. But whatever it is named, sure the product will probably hit bigtime with all these buzz.

Thanks for the link Andy.

I think it is too much expensive and I would prefer proper pocket PC and mobile.