From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"Mike N."  wrote in message
news:7eqaq21dblot8t5qe5r8iqs1rmp6ea9clm{at}4ax.com...
>> The phone will be offered exclusively through Cingular in the US in June,
>
>  This is a  downside.  It would be really great if they had an open API
> with the cellular industry and sold it as an unlocked option.  I'll bet
> the
> interface to Cingular is not that advanced.
>
>   The only other thing is that if  ITunes will be the primary PC
> interface, I couldn't take a mollasses slow PDA function on the PC.  I can
> tolerate the 10 seconds per click in ITunes since I interact with the PC
> interface only occasionally.

From what I read Jobs forced Cingular to redesign it's voicemail
infrastructure to accommodate the iPhone. Hopefully this will spur demands
for innovation from other cell phone manufacturers


http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1575410-2,00.html

One reason there's limited innovation in cell phones generally is that the
cell carriers have stiff guidelines that the manufacturers have to follow.
They demand that all their handsets work the same way. "A lot of
times, to be honest, there's some hubris, where they think they know
better," Jobs says. "They dictate what's on the phone. That just
wouldn't work for us, because we want to innovate. Unless we could do that,
it wasn't worth
 doing." Jobs demanded special treatment from his phone service partner,
Cingular, and he got it. He even forced Cingular to re-engineer its
infrastructure to handle the iPhone's unique voicemail scheme. "They
broke all their typical process rules to make it happen," says Tony
Fadell, who heads Apple's iPod division. "They were infected by this
product, and they were like, we've gotta do this!"

Now that the precedent has been set, it'll be interesting to see if other
cell phone makers start demanding Apple-style treatment from wireless
carriers. It'll also be worth watching to see how successful they'll be in
knocking off the iPhone's all-screen form factor, which will be very
difficult without Apple's touchscreen technology. Apple has filed for
around 200 patents associated with the iPhone, building an imposing legal
wall. Considering the size of the market, the stakes are high.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5