Pink? Seriously?

It’s been a bitter-sweet weekend for Apple. Technical problems have dogged the launch of both the iPhone 3G, and MobileMe. Problems with Apple’s activation servers left many early adopters, who had waited in line for many hours, unable to play with their new toy. Problems with 02 & AT&T’s retail systems compounded the sense of chaos, resulting in slow transaction processing at many stores. MobileMe’s launch didn’t fare much better. It’s taken several days for Apple to get their Me.com service to reasonably responsive state - far longer than their planned outage time.

In both instances, Apple can take some comfort from the fact that they have been victims of their own success - the interest in iPhone 3G has been off the charts. I’ve personally never seen anything like it. In London UK, there weren’t just queues at the Apple Store in Regent Street, but at every 02 and Carphone Warehouse store across the city. It was quite remarkable, and bodes very well for the long term success of the new device.

But now that the dust has settled, there’s one remaining thing that troubles me. One little detail which will bug me each time I use my Mac from this day forward. Yes, it’s that friggin’ pink iDisk icon that Apple have foisted onto my desktop. Pink? Seriously? That combined with the pastel blue and the cloud makes MobileMe look more like My Little Pony than a cutting edge IT platform. I had thought that things couldn't get aesthetically worse for the Mac than Apple’s new Star Trek inspired desktop pattern for Leopard, but it seems I was wrong. Let’s hope that Apple snaps out the their My Little Pony phase soon.

This round goes to Shaw Wu at American Technology Research

In April, Mac Predictions ran a piece on analyst predictions for the release of the iPhone 3G. Doom mongers RBC Capital Markets, who claimed that technical problems would result in the iPhone 3G being delayed until September-December, were (fortunately) completely wrong.

Most of the other analysts were in the same territory - as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would point out, their predictions seem to correlate more closely with each other, than the actual data. Perhaps some of them were just taking a guess at a WWDC release, or maybe they were simply following the crowd. Nothing wrong with that for a blogger, but analysts actually get paid for their predictions!

One analyst who deserve congratulations is Shaw Wu of American Technology Research, whose “late June, or July” timeframe proved to be the most accurate. At the time, he cited checks with supply chain sources, which should lend more credence to such claims in future.


Too early:

• Gartner
  
• Citigroup
  
• UBS
  
• Bank of America
  
• Current Analysis
  

Pretty close:

• American Technology Research
  
• Piper Jaffray
  

Too late:

• RBC Capital Markets
  

More surprises in store for 11th? iWork Touch?

All has been quiet on the predictions front for a while now. The truth is, there just hasn’t been much to say, so Mac Predictions hasn’t said anything. In the meantime, this blog did enjoy getting the BBC’s attention with our last post - despite referring to them (with some accuracy) as the “British broadcast monopoly.”

But as the biggest day of the year for Apple approaches - iPhone 3G day - the time has come to post a new prediction. What surprises (if any) does Apple have in store for us this Friday? Here’s what we know to expect:

• iPhone 3G launch
  
• iPhone 2.0 firmware download
  
• App Store
  
• Free Apple Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback

This last item was inadvertently revealed by Apple with the developers pre-release version of iTunes 7.7. It’s a great idea - a free app, downloadable from the App Store, for iPhone and iPod Touch, which will presumably allow the user to browse an iTunes library on a remote Mac or PC, using a combination of Bonjour and WiFi. And in combination with Apple’s AirTunes solution for wireless streaming of music to a hi-fi, it may finally complete Apple’s living room audio solution. In terms of the remote interface on the iPhone itself, MacPredictions envisages that this will appear almost identical to the iPhone’s own iPod application - right down to browsing album art in Cover Flow.

Launching a free, high-value App like this is certainly a great way to incentivize users to trial the new App Store, although to be honest, Mac Predictions thinks it would have been more elegant to integrate this functionality into the iPod app itself - perhaps with the option to browse and pair with additional iTunes libraries via a new “Sources” menu in preferences, similar to Apple TV. In the iPod app, a new “Sources” icon would then appear alongside “Songs,” “Artists,” “Albums,” etc. But hey, who are we to challenge Apple on this point. If it must be a separate app, so be it!

...Anyway, what does Apple’s new, free Remote app tell us? Simply this: Apple has surprises up their sleeve for this Friday, and the Remote app may not be the only one. Our bet is that they’ll have more than just free App’s up their sleeves. It seems unlikely that Apple will take a back seat and allow 3rd parties to have all the fun with iPhone app development. That’s hardly been their strategy with the Mac after all. Sure, they bundle free apps with the Mac, such as Mail, Calendar, Safari, etc. But they have plenty of premium apps as well, such as iLife, iWork, Final Cut Studio, Aperture and Logic. Isn’t it likely that they’ll pursue a similar strategy with iPhone?

Why would they not have announced such a plan last month at WWDC? Perhaps because it wouldn’t be very diplomatic to highlight to their community of developers who are just beginning to embrace the iPhone SDK that they’re going to be competing against Apple itself. This blog still believes that the first paid-for apps to see the light of day from Apple will be the mobile for iWork, which we anticipate will be called iWork Touch, and it could be coming as soon as this Friday.

3G iPhone mockups are fakes

There are some images doing the rounds this weekend, claiming to reveal the new iPhone 3G. They’ve been sent to CruchGear, Engadget and MacRumors by an anonymous source. Whilst they are excellent speculative mockups, they’re not real - and here’s why:

Attention to detail:

• The screens don’t feature a 3G icon top-left
  
• Apple normally uses Johnny Appleseed in this kind of context
  
• Video area is square (more likely to be 4x3)
  
• iChat icon is for Mac app - should be square button-style
  
• Apple is unlikely to use an Exchange logo in this context
  

Spelling and typos:

• Wi-Fi is capitalized incorrectly, and missing a hyphen
  
• Windows XP is capitalized incorrectly
  
• (PRODUCT) RED is written incorrectly
  

Missing elements:

• Red iPhone is missing it’s top button
  
• Grey iPhone is missing it’s dock connector
  

Legal:

• No take-down letter from Apple legal!
  

Having said all that, they are great mockups, and there’s a lot that rings true: Mac Predictions also believes that the front of the phone will look the same as the current model. The tapering shape at the back rings true - reflecting the bulging design trend that we’ve commented on before. It appears to be thinner than the current model - which we’ve also predicted. The absence of a black plastic area on the back is probably intended to indicate that Apple are exercising their zirconia mobile phone enclosure patent, which seems plausible. However, we still don’t believe the video conferencing rumor - and the image of Carlos in Times Square perfectly illustrates the problem. Despite Mayor Giuliani’s attempt to clean up the area, if you wave around a fancy gadget at arms length in mid-town Manhattan, you can expect to lose it in seconds! Plus, the positioning of the front-facing camera looks downright ugly!

All in all, we think it’s a great mockup, but we’re not convinced it’s the real thing.

3G iPhone

From time to time, the Apple rumor community gets the bit between its teeth and starts to pull. Often, everyone pulls in different directions, but sometimes all the pundits pull together, and then we must pay strict attention. Now is one of those times. There is an emerging consensus building that on June 10, at WWDC, Apple will launch a thicker, plasticky 3G iPhone, alongside the existing model. The new phone would have two cameras, one on the front, and one on the back, and GPS. Trouble is, MacPredictions doesn’t believe a word of it, and here’s why.

All metal enclosure
We’ve seen some pretty unlikely “spy” shots of the supposed 3G iPhone, with claims that the beautiful metal rear of the current iPhone will be replaced with an all plastic enclosure. This seems unlikely when you consider how, less than 12 months ago, Jobs launched the 2007 range of iPods proudly boasting that they now have all-metal enclosures. The iPod touch, for example, has a similar form factor to the iPhone, except that it has a metal bezel, rather than the mirrored-plastic one on the iPhone. Apple’s current design trends are moving away from plastic enclosures, not towards them. I expect the new iPhone to look like a slightly thicker iPod touch, with a black or silver metal bezel, and less plastic.

One model, not a range
As Leander Kahney explains so well in his excellent new book “Inside Steve’s Brain,” one of Job’s many successful initiatives upon his return to Apple was a drastic rationalization of Apple’s disparate product lines. Apple will avoid fracturing the iPhone product line unless there’s a very good reason to do so - and after all, why would or should anyone buy the Edge iPhone when there’s a better 3G alternative? Besides which, the fact that supplies of iPhones appear to be dwindling globally should put pay to this rumor anyway, and raise questions about any sources that suggested the old iPhone would be sold alongside the new 3G model.

Not locked to a single network
This is one of the few rumors doing the rounds that MacPredictions does believe, and we’ve been predicting such a move for several months now. The fact is that the exclusive operator deals have been unnecessarily limiting demand for the iPhone, at a time in the product life cycle where Apple should be going for global domination. Whilst Apple is likely to continue to have exclusive network partners in each territory, it will probably move to distributing a “sim free” model. However, Apple may have some neat ideas up their sleeves to sweeten the with-contract deal, and continue to take their iPhone revenue on a subscription model (which appears to please their bean counters) - see next point.

Free .Mac services for iPhones sold on a contract
Whilst AT&T and Apple’s other network partners will doubtless not be pleased about the advent of a sim-free option, the introduction of a free .Mac account for iPhone contract customers is likely to sweeten the re-negotiated deal for them. The introduction of Exchange Push support is great for enterprise customers, but since RIM are now targeting consumers with their Blackberry devices, Apple will need to provide a consumer push service in order to remain competitive. The current rumors of push mail and calendar services from .Mac sounds entirely likely. It would be very appealing to Apple to get in on the service-provision act, alongside their network partners. Bundling .Mac would also provide an excellent platform from which to cross-sells Macs to iPhone owners. Who knows, perhaps Apple will also sell .Mac as a service to sim-free iPhone purchasers, including visual voicemail as part of .Mac where operators don’t support it.

One camera, not two. No GPS.
With every revolutionary Apple product announcement, there’s always an area of disappointment for some. Even with the announcement of the original iPhone, there was disappointment that it did not offer 3G. The reason for these disappointments is because Apple thinks about the entire product, rather than simply the list of features. They don’t add things just for the sake of it, or because it’s what their competitors are doing. Jobs is famous for saying that he’s as proud of what Apple hasn’t done as he is of what they have. So what will the disappointments be on the 3G iPhone? Firstly, I suspect that they’ll take a pass on GPS support - for two reasons. Firstly, they’ll want to save space and power consumption. Secondly, they’ll say that their amazing Skyhooks/GSM triangulation solution means they don’t need GPS. The other area for likely disappointment is video conferencing. A lot of rumor sites are claiming that the 3G iPhone will have a camera on the front for video conferencing. MacPredictions doubts this. Steve will say something like “a lot of our competitors have been doing this for a while, and we looked into it, and you know what? It turns out that no one uses it. People don’t want to do video conferencing on their phones. It’s great when you’re using iChat, sitting down in the privacy of your home with a beautiful big MacBook screen, but it’s not so great when you’re walking around with your phone.” Instead, Apple will hopefully choose to improve the existing camera - which badly needs focus, face recognition, higher resolution etc.

World’s thinnest 3G phone
Steve Jobs is not the kind of guy to get up on stage and say “oh yeah, we’ve finally got a 3G model - sorry it took us so long”. No. He’ll have some reason for why Apple waited. It’ll be to do with the size, heat and power consumption of the 3G chipset when they originally launched the iPhone. Technology has come a long way since then, and they’ve got some “awesome partner who has delivered a cutting edge solution working really closely with Apple’s engineers” (implying exclusivity on the chipset without actually saying it). The long and the short of it is that Apple will go for some eye-catching proposition for their 3G offering, like “the world’s thinnest 3G phone.” It may be even thinner than the original iPhone, and with an amazing battery life. And Job’s will round it off with something like: “we think you’ll agree it was worth the wait”.

So, for what it’s worth, that’s MacPredictions take on 3G iPhones. No mockups yet, but we’ll have them for you very soon. Stay tuned!

iPod Shuffle with Multi-Touch

OK, I confess. I’m bored with the current Apple rumor hegemony. Whilst I have to concede that everything is pointing towards a thick black plastic 3G iPhone, I don’t have to like it. (And for the record, those photos of the 3G iPhone doing the rounds have got to be fake - it’s hard to imagine Apple ever producing something so... well... Samsungy.)

So to take my mind off all things thick and plasticy, Mac Predictions has instead turned its attentions to the iPod Shuffle. It seems that the recent drop in price has done the trick in giving a boost to the Shuffle’s flagging sales, but at the obvious expense of Apple’s famously high margins.

There are, of course, two reasons why someone might choose a Shuffle - its price, and its size. For those who are not price sensitive, but are still drawn to the Shuffle’s diminutive form factor, there’s currently a gap in the market - especially since the new Nano has sneakily increased in size. This got Mac Predictions to thinking about what might be done to a Shuffle by adding a screen and Multi-Touch. At first this just seemed like a daft combination, until an idea so awsome, so simple, so... well, Appley, came along.

The screen is square shaped - perfect for album art, which is all it ever shows. The device is a little larger than the current shuffle, and it only has two buttons on the bottom - On/Off and Shuffle. Each time the Shuffle goes from one track to the next, it uses a neat “Push” transition (illustrated) to change album art. In shuffle mode, it transitions quickly between multiple album covers, moving in different directions to suggest shuffling. Swiping your finger from left to right across the screen cues the next track, and in the other direction it goes back to the previous track. Swiping your finger up and down controls the volume. Tapping on the screen toggles between pause and play. It’s that simple.

I love this idea so much - I hope that Apple is already working on it, or reads this blog and develops the idea, because I want to buy one!

Apple Analysts and the 3G iPhone

Company	Analyst	Reason to believe	Time Frame	Details
Gartner	Ken Dulaney	"he has heard from Asian sources"	"As soon as possible"	Apple has ordered 10 million 3G iPhone with OLED displays
Citigroup	Rich Gardner	Overseas meetings with members of the Taiwanese PC and consumer electronics supply chain	April - June	"The enterprise smartphone market will, for the foreseeable future, be dominated by RIMM and Nokia."
UBS	Nicolas Gaudois	various checks, and particularly an HSDPA design win by Infineon	April - June	Apple may not intend to have EDGE-only options in future iPhones
Piper Jaffray	Gene Munster	Supply problems in NYC, discounts in Germany	May-July	3G model to be sold alongside 2G
Bank of America	Scott Craig	"Channel check"	June	3 million will be built in May, to be followed by another 8 million in the third quarter of the year
Current Analysis	Avi Greengart	Electronista	June	Coincide with the iPhone 2.0 firmware
American Technology Research	Shaw Wu	Checks with supply chain sources	Late June - Early July	The current "2.5G" iPhone could remain on the market, using a newer case
RBC Capital Markets	Mike Abramsky	Wall Street Journal	September - December

In our ongoing mission to keep an eye on analysts, we’ve put together this chart of the prognosticators, for a considered view on when we can expect the new 3G iPhone to emerge.

The majority verdict seems to point to some time in June, perhaps alongside the 2.0 Firmware launch… perhaps at WWDC. We still have one pessimist – last we read, Mike Abamsky at RBC was citing technical problems pointing to a delay until after the summer. If this turns out to be true, RBC gets extra kudos for standing out from the pack.

Another popular view that is emerging is that Apple will sell the existing Edge model alongside the new 3G model, although UBS’s predictions seem to contradict this view.

We’ll keep you posted as the analysts tell us more about how we should “think about” Apple, and give us “additional color” on developments. Or alternatively, if you struggle to tell your Gartners from your Garders, please feel free to just skip these analyst posts ;)

Readers Predictions

Here are some interesting ideas that have been sent in by Doug Best...

"Just as the iPod lineup developed and branched out, so does Apple have plans for the iPhone lineup. Here's some of what is being considered:

"A "Pro" or "Max" model, that is noticeably thicker than current model (over 15mm, versus 11.6mm for existing iPhone), to incorporate a battery with almost triple the duration of the existing iPhone. This model is also the 3G model. It is targeted for power users and enterprise, meaning people who may use their phone 2-3 days in a row (on a business trip) without accessing a PC or having the time or opportunity to charge it.

"Existing iPhone stays the same, along with no 3G, just Edge.

"Also being considered, and with engineering and development basically done, is a new entry model, that is slimmer than the iPod Touch (an amazing 6.2mm versus iPod Touch's already amazing 8mm), and slightly less wide (58.6mm versus 61.8mm for iPod Touch). Screen size is the same; this width reduction comes from the casing. It does not offer video playback and has only 4GB. Could be as low as $159. Name to be determined, internally referred to as iPhone Shuffle, definitely not the final name. Edge, of course."