iPhone 3.0 Preview

Today, Apple released the iPhone 3.0 software, or as I like to think of it, iPhone 1.0.

I have owned at least a half dozen different handsets over the past several years. In fact, I believe I still have each one stored in a box somewhere; not for sentimental reasons mind you, but simply out of concern for the environment and my laziness to take them to an electronics recycler. When Apple initially released the iPhone, I lusted after the device like so many others. The iPhone was the Jesus Phone. However, the lack of two key features (GPS and 3G) were a deal breaker for me. At the time I used an AT&T Tilt (also known as the HTC TyTN II), and naturally it ran Windows Mobile 6.0, but it had GPS and 3G and I used both quite often. I told myself that the day Apple added those two features to the iPhone, I would buy one. So for the subsequent release of the iPhone 3G, I found myself the third person in line at a nearby AT&T store at 5:30a the day of the launch.

Now there is a common understanding that you never fully appreciate what you have until you are forced to live without it, and the lack of certain features like background applications, MMS, copy/paste, and system-wide search in the iPhone was no exception. But while I did miss those features, the intoxicating flavor of the Apple Kool-Aid I was drinking was enough to dull the pain.

Today Apple announced iPhone 3.0, a significant update that appears to finally address the concerns of so many iPhone users. Although it will not be available for a few more months, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, yet I can’t help but feel used and abused by Apple. I followed the play-by-play on Engadget during the event (you think Apple would stream these events live, but that’s a different matter) and I could taste the underwhelming flavor of indifference. Scenes of Mapple in The Simpsons episode flashed through my mind. While some aspects of the presentation had a wowness factor, the features users have clamored about for so long were left to the very end, almost in the Jobsian style of One More Thing®. As an iPhone user, are we supposed to get excited and feel grateful about features that should have been included from Day 1? I feel like Oliver Twist asking “Please, sir, I want some more.“

The answer is no. The excitement we as consumers exhibit only adds fuel to the Apple PR/marketing engine. But will we actually change our behaviors? Doubtful, because Apple makes the best tasting Kool-Aid on the planet and the iPhone 3.0 is an perfect example. Not even Microsoft can take what was a first-generation product and try to make it out to be something more than it is; they tried that with .NET back in 2000 with unimpressive results.