The unicorn gadget
There are some dreamed of gadgets that hold a mythical status. The king of these unicorns of the gadget world has been the much dreamed of iPhone. Everyone knew exactly what it was to be called were this ever to be made, the rumour of the iPhone has been bouncing round for few years now but Apple chief, Steve Jobs, has always denied that they were working on it. Yet yesterday during his keynote speech at MacWorld he announced the long fabled iPhone (I thought he might mention it at the last MacWorld in 2006). I guess it was obvious that it was coming, the market is steamrolling its way towards an integrated in-pocket solution. Another indicator was that Apple had made deals with Motorola previously on the ROKR phone. The clincher for me was when I heard that Kevin Rose (Digg.com) had said it was coming on his Diggnation podcast (warning; beer swilling geek millionaires). His prediction of a video iPod nano, which was much derided, was spot on the money. Its also worth noting that the news of the iPhone almost gave Digg its own digg-effect with what is now pushing close to 20,000 votes on the product’s announcement.
I’m not normally an Apple fan; DRM, closed source built on open source, etc. Aside from that they have always seemed to have an army of brand faithful evangelists which isn’t really my bag. But the iPhone is worth sitting up for and paying some attention. For my money, having a full HTML browser is exactly what I’ve wanted from a phone, so I may end up buying an Apple product after all. This really does look like its going to be the sparkling unicorn that you only hear of in myths.
For a full breakdown of what is going to be on offer, check this engadget article.