I want an iPhone
A whole lot of Mac digerati -- and a lot of the unwashed masses, for that reason -- spend huge amounts of time pontificating on what segment of the consumer electronics market Apple should attack next. Some people say a DVR box like a ReplayTV or TiVO would be good. Others thing Apple should do its own PDA, a resurrection of Newton showing the Palm crowd how such devices should work. Other folks think that a cell phone is the answer.
Well, my entry into this market doesn't try to cram a million pounds of electronics into a sleek tiny box. All I want is an office phone. An office phone designed by Apple.
Something digital, obviously, and cordless, and working on a frequency that won't bork my AirPort Base Station (or, presumably, AirPort Extreme Base Station, once I have reason to upgrade). But something that's damned sexy looking and something that integrates seamlessly with the productivity software I already depend on.
Apple has much of the framework already there in iSync, which they're trying like hell to leverage with Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and PDAs. And while that's a noble goal, I think it falls short for two reasons: A) PDAs are cumbersome and secondary, as far as I'm concerned, and B) I don't use a cell phone all that much. I have a better idea. Let's call it the iPhone, for short.
Sure, I have a cell phone all right -- heck, they're giving them away at the mall, so they're practically disposable. The problem is, and I'm sure I'm not alone or even isolated here, they don't work all the time. They're also still a lot more expensive than a land-line, even with an unlimited-minutes plan. And frankly, they're not as comfortable to use or as rugged as a good old cordless desk phone. Cell phones have their place, but they're not replacements for the desk phone.
My vision for this thing is basically just a wireless headset earpiece with a base station to charge it, and to connect to the land line and transmit/receive the signal. It could have Bluetooth built in just for simplicity's sake, I suppose -- it really doesn't matter. It'd be just as effective with a USB cable attached to it. The actual electronics of the thing are basic, simple, off the shelf, cheap-as-hell to make parts. The glue that makes it all work, of course, is the software. And this is where Apple could just kick everyone's ass.
The funny thing is, so much of the framework is in place. It's all so tantalizingly close. Address Book already provides Jaguar users with system-wide contact information management. Names, addresses, phone numbers, Web pages, pictures -- it's all right there. And iChat gives you a way to chat with these folks online. iCal lets you schedule appointments with them. and iSync coordinates the transfer of all that info to other computers, PDAs, and cell phones.
iPhone would simply be a bridge to all this on the office desktop -- the real world desktop, not the computer screen. It would dial the numbers for me, so I wouldn't have to do this manually on a separate phone with speed dial numbers (and let's face it, even the best desk phone UI sucks big time).
Where iPhone could really come in handy, however, would be to help me manage my calls and my time. Auditing, for example, to tell me who I'm talking with, how long I've been on the phone with them for, and how much time is left before my next appointment.
It could recognize caller IDs, and cutting in with a private message only I can hear using the Mac's own text-to-speech software, telling me who's on the other line and asking me if I want to take the call.
It'd do the same to remind me of upcoming appointments, the names of my contact's spouse and kids or birthday, for example. It could also manage inbound and outbound fax transmissions.
So much of the framework for this is already in Mac OS X itself and exposed in SDKs, it'd be something that I bet a third party developer could manage too. Any takers?