Comments on: Hivelogic Podcast + Phone Prediction

By: Buzz Andersen

Buzz Andersen — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:46:48 +0000

This is actually a very compelling theory–I certainly hope something like it turns out to be true Tuesday :-).

By: Ton

Ton — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:57:27 +0000

This had me thinking: some of the most popular technical breakthroughs have been in enabling people to commuicate together, such as telephones, faxes, email, mobile phones and SMS.

(As an aside, there’s the popularity of broadcasting, or one to many communication, such as radio, television, DTP, websites, DVDs, ipods, podcasting and videocasting (under the brand of YouTube).)

I think the nirvana for one to one communication is video conferencing. There are solutions currently out there, like expensive enterprise hardware, or video mobile phones which haven’t really caught on, but I’m thinking that Apple may be ready to push “video conferencing for Grandma’s” to the mass market. Robert Cringley planted the seed in my head.

Front Row is just a fullscreen app that calls other programs to do its main work – why not hook iChat into the list of services it provides? The logical extension to this is to have a wifi phone that you can take around with you in your home. But then the logical extension of that is a mobile phone. Which comes back to your idea of a phone with modular add ons. But I think the first add on will be a module to communicate with an iChat server.

Having said that, I hope Apple doesn’t release a phone just yet. I think they have too much on their plate trying to change the music and movie business. Making enemies of the telecoms companies as well would be suicidal.

By: Johnmcl

Johnmcl — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 15:57:37 +0000

Everyone keeps on saying that it’s not possible to make a phone do multiple standards (GSM & CDMA)

I can assure you with 100% confidence that all of the big ‘chip suppliers’ have been working on this for the last several years so it absolutely is possible. Whether they do it or not I have no idea but there is zero technical reason why it can’t be done.

By: Scott Stevenson

Scott Stevenson — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 15:35:14 +0000

Things only seem ridiculous until they happen.

By: Rui Carmo

Rui Carmo — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 15:12:49 +0000

I think that you’re heavily underestimating the time, effort, resources and regulatory details involved in designing mobile phone hardware, and how bits of the technology fit together. For instance, right now there are standard SIM cards, USIMs (for 3G) and ISIMs (a rather more vague notion depending on who you talk to)…

By: richard

richard — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 13:34:33 +0000

i still think this whole discussion about carriers and such is pretty funny. here in this cold part of the world (i.e. not the USA), we’re pretty much used to buying a phone and sim card separately from each other. but oh well, from what i’ve understood, we’re pretty much the exception to the rule.

By: Lucien

Lucien — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 06:36:47 +0000

Very interesting idea.. like Ryan I think I’m a bit jaded too.. I don’t want to get my hopes up for something that.. well, fantastic.

By: Ryan Ballantyne

Ryan Ballantyne — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 03:54:06 +0000

I’m far too jaded to believe that even Apple could redefine the mobile phone market. It’d be like convincing the studios to give up on DRM – it just can’t be done. The existing players are too selfish and stupid.