Meeting Steve Jobs and rubbishing the iPhone to his face
Ok, so it was a dream.
I am not entirely sure how the dream came about, but here I was, sat in front of Steve Jobs, Mr Apple, talking about the iPhone with him. I think it is perhaps related to the amount of flying I’ve been doing recently and being overtired, yet feeling fully functional.
I found myself sat in front of Steve with an iPhone in my hand.
First the good stuff. Yes I would use it. Yes I will certainly get one, whatever the cost (it’s a geek thing) and yes, I really did see the strategy. I remember commenting that I was delighted he’d chosen to enter the handset market and that I hoped he’d continue to shake-up the industry.
He asked me what features I liked and I clearly recall flying straight to the music integration on the device as my number one favourite feature. I liked the web browsing, I liked the calling experience… and in particular, I liked the fact that you activated the device from standby by dragging the little arrow to the right.
‘The flaws?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ I said, thinking whether the guy wanted to hear my real opinions or whether I should dress them up a little, ‘Well OK, the text entry. Shocking.’
I remember he then began to explain in technical detail why it was so smart.
‘Ah right,’ I hesitated… ‘But, well, I want to enter text really quickly. I just don’t think this interface works that well, but I’m willing to give it a go across this week to find out.’
Now the difficult stuff: ‘I really thought you were going to open up the device — I believed your ‘it runs OSX’ slide during your introduction presentation,’
‘It does run OSX,’ he replied, ‘Just a rather cut down version.’
I wasn’t letting him away with it, ‘Right, but you implied that since the device was running OSX you could, theoretically, knock up an application that would run on your MacBook which would also run, more or less, on the iPhone,’
‘We have support for that,’ he replied. I then remember thinking it was a bit of a wriggly answer. Not quite accurate.
‘So I could easily design an application and implement it on to iPhone?’ I asked, wondering how far I could go with my prodding.
‘Yes, well you’d need to talk to us about that. We’re keen to control the user experience.’
Ahhh 
This sort of questionning carried on. Then — I didn’t immediately wake up. I think I went back to sleep.
You should have stayed asleep. Then I wouldn’t have wasted the time it took to read this.
Posted by Drafnosian on June 5th, 2007 at 4:11 pm.Agreed
Posted by ewan on June 5th, 2007 at 4:21 pm.Wow. Lame.
Posted by fog city dave on June 5th, 2007 at 4:39 pm.Don’t act so surprised, the first line reads ‘Ok, so it was a dream’
Posted by ewan on June 5th, 2007 at 4:44 pm.Your dream Steve Jobs was right. What’s a widget? It’s an application that will run on both a MacBook and an iPhone.
Posted by DBL on June 5th, 2007 at 5:26 pm.Wow! You give a bad review of text entry on the unreleased iPhone from using it in a dream you had.
Just how badly do you wish the iPhone will fail?
Are you holding Nokia stock?
Perhaps the dream was actually a nightmare about your potential stock market losses.
Posted by Al on June 5th, 2007 at 5:31 pm.Al, I agree–and disagree.
You’re right. I have no idea how well the virtual keyboard is going to work. I give Apple credit for doing a lot of things right, so I’m inclined to believe that there’s something subtley “different” about how Apple has done their keyboard. It will be one of those, “Once you try it, you’ll love it” kinds of things.
But…
Nope. I’m not paying $599 to find out. I’ll wait it out, thanks.
Posted by Peter on June 5th, 2007 at 6:39 pm.If the text input is as good as the hockey puck mouse, I’m sold!
Posted by Jim on June 5th, 2007 at 7:50 pm.“Nope. I’m not paying $599 to find out. I’ll wait it out, thanks.”
Is anyone stupid enough to pay $599 to find out if they like the iPhone? You could just walk into any Apple Store or AT&T store to get a hands-on experience. For free. Duh!
Posted by Grantze on June 6th, 2007 at 1:15 am.I may just dream about going into an Apple Store and getting a hands-on experience for free. Then maybe I’ll write about the experience I had in that dream and post it online.
Posted by Drafnosian on June 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm.And I’ll link to it, Drafnosian! Or, with your permission, reproduce your dream here
Posted by ewan on June 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm.