Honey, I bought the Phone. Confessions from the Cambridge Apple Store.

I have a perfectly good Blackberry 8200 series, but I’ve been waiting for a chance to hit the Apple store to check out the iPhone. If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you know that we’ve been paying attention to this product launch.

Finally, a trip to Boston, over a month after the release, and here I am. In fact I’m writing to you from the Apple store in Cambridge right now. It just so happens that today is a big day for Apple; they are right now announcing a new iMac design, upgrades to iWeb, a rewrite of iMovie, upgrades to iPhoto, and several other announcements. The announcement is still under way, so the staff here is still sworn to secrecy, but I’ve been getting SMS updates on my iPhone from macrumors since the announcement stared about 75 minutes ago.

Yes, I bought an iPhone. I can only say this: the thing is truly sweet, a masterpiece of design in every way. Some people have made sensible comments, such as “It’s only a phone”, and I did actually struggle with why I had the compulsion to buy it. I decided this morning on my way over to the store that I would try the phone out and just see whether I *had* to have one. It didn’t take me long. When I picked it up, saw the slick unlock button, my reserve cracked immediately.

Now after a couple of hours of playing with it (I admit that I have been playing), I realize that while this is *just* a phone, it also somehow expresses something about my tastes in product design, ease of use, and just plain beauty.

Am I being overly romantic? Tell us what you think. You can leave your comment here, or send me an iChat … awarmstrong@mac.com

(Saeed, I think we know how your feel. )

Now, 12 more minutes until I find out whether they have the new iMacs in stock here.

RIM on the iPhone

In a recent conference call, RIM co-founder Jim Balsillie gave his two cents on how much the iPhone is keeping him awake at night:

“I think there’s so many dimensions to the market that we’re in, that people tend to define it too specifically… I’m not really into the ‘my input mechanism is funkier than your input mechanism’. It’s really about the user experience for us. I really don’t pay attention to all these different dynamics, because it doesn’t help me with my channels or my customers any.” via Blackberrycool

That’s right. It’s not about competitors, It’s about customers. And now that Jim has my approval on his product development process, I’m sure he’ll sleep even easier.

iPhone vs Blackberry: Fight!

Read/WriteWeb weighs in, along with 97% of the blogosphere (aka 0.0000001% of humanity), on the iPhone. Specifically, the iPhone vs the Blackberry. Their conclusion: “Watch out Blackberry!” My conclusion? Get a paper bag and breathe deeply for a few minutes because hyperventilation can be dangerous guys.

This is somewhat related to product management; let’s think about some elements of user segmentation and key features. First of all, it has been reported elsewhere that for the moment you can’t get an iPhone on a corporate AT&T account. So form a purchasing perspective, the game is over. But let’s pass on that because AT&T could chage that policy easily.The keyboard would seem to be the most obvious advantage. But, a R/WW commenter says that it will be easier for Apple to add a keyboard than for RIM to make OSX. Really? Is having a OSX-like systems really a key criteria for corporate users? Allow us to reminisce about the breakout product that launched RIM onto the world stage… the RIM 850. This pager-on-steroids was the device that first earned the name “crackberry” among Wall St users. Yes, admire that gorgeous 5-line black-on-yellow LCD display. Admire the operating system that look like it was written by some upper-year computer engineering students after an all-nighter to finish an embedded systems class project. Marvel at the 512K RAM. Enjoy the flexibility of replacing its AA battery any time you want - no messy recharging cables. No hassle sync’ing over USB because there’s no external connectors at all.

Seriously, the RIM 850 is prehistoric compared to the iPhone. It doesn’t even make phone calls! And yet it is absolutely the product that launched RIM. There would be no Pearl or Curve without the 850. So what were those killer features that made the 850 the must-have item of 1999?

1. integration with corporate email and calendaring servers
2. a keyboard
3. brain-dead ease of use

Three things that the iPhone lacks. It has some Exchange support, but not the tightly integrated, seamless solution that is Blackberry Enterprise Server. It doesn’t have a real keyboard. And while I’m sure it’s quite slick, it lacks the one-handed one-two-reading-my-email simplicity of Blackberry.

So while it will be the must-have toy of the next several months, Apple neither needs nor wants to supplant RIM. And RIM will lose absolutely no sleep over the iPhone.

Related: Honey I bought the Phone: Alan buys one and blogs about it.