I was following Clay Shirky’s Twitter feed the other day and I noticed him talking about the first Android (Google) phone, the G1. I am definitely not a phone aficionado (it’s not like I leave the vicinity of my computer very often) but he said something that caught my attention:
At this year's disappointing E3 convention, just about the only buzz from the Nintendo keynote was the announcement of the Wii MotionPlus. It's a gyroscope module that plugs into the base of the Wiimote which is supposed to give it 1:1 responsiveness. In other words, the players' motions in 3D space are duplicated in realtime on the screen.
But wait-- doesn't it do this already?
Not exactly. Most people don't realize that the current Wiimote, which uses a combination of an infrared camera and a three-axis accelerometer, is actually not that accurate at translating players' motions. Instead, the Wii relies heavily on software to interpret the data and implement the player's intentions. As anyone who owns a Wii can attest, it's not always very good at this.
So now, nearly two years into the Wii's product cycle, Nintendo is up to it's old tricks-- with a new twist, perhaps. Sell the Wii as the cheapest next gen platform, then make people buy extra peripherals to get a fully-functional system.
It's an interesting strategy, really. Pirates may be able to make copies of the new Wii Sports, but what about the hardware it requires?
As of Friday, the Apple iPhone 3G was available in stores. Apparently they received 300,000 pre-orders, which contributed to an estimated 1,000,000 total sales.
This means that some 1 million people – within two days – took advantage of Apple's swell offer, which was, and I quote: "Twice as fast. Half the price."
Now, way back when Nick was Not Keen on Kindle, he diagnosed what he thought was a developing trend in the release strategies of the lifestyle technology market. Namely, that the companies that manufacture these devices – the Kindle, the Nintendo Gameboy DS, and, I'm going to add, the iPhone – "lead with a subpar, feature-crippled design only to follow it with the design they should of come up with in the first place..."
I'm asking now: Can anybody out there give me any reason that the first-generation iPhone should ever have been mass produced? I mean, aside from the obvious fact that a handful or two million Apple fanboys and gadget-lifestyle types are going to buy whatever Apple comes out with? (Not that this isn't a good reason, from Apple's perspective.)
The first-gen iPhone was not only plagued by activation problems – which would by itself seem to indicate a premature release, at least in some sense – it has been alleged that "something like one in ten of the initial iPhones bought was defective," (and if you don't strictly believe that number, you can still get the point by browsing the comments on that last post).
So here's my question: Short of the first-gen iPhone being defective by design, what changed so much this year as to allow Apple to come up with such a substantially better phone, so much cheaper?
And here's what I'm concerned is the answer: Nothing.
