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Codebreaker

Eyebrow raisers from the iPhone announcement

John Moe Jun 8, 2010

You may have heard a bit about the new iPhone yesterday, considering the news replaced oxygen as the most common thing in the air. Ars Technica has a good run down.

A few surprises I had yesterday:

Where were the computers? – As near as I can figure, Apple still does make home computers. I bought one recently myself. But they weren’t mentioned at all yesterday. No new laptops, no updates to MacBook Air as rumored. Even the iPod got a mention in passing.

Google remains the default browser, Bing also brought on – Apple is going to play this as giving the user the most options, and that’s a fair point. But Apple is very much at war with Google and its increasingly popular Android mobile device platform right now. Jobs praised Bing and Microsoft but did not kick Google off the iPhone or even move it out of number one position. As a result, a handful of MSFT loyalists may switch settings but it’s mostly a Google experience.

Nothing on home entertainment – I get that it was iPhone’s day but I was wondering if we’d hear about a cloud-based iTunes option or a rebrand/relaunch of Apple TV. Nope.

Netflix and the data plans – Jobs announced a free Netflix app (Android’s getting one soon too) which means tons of streaming movies and TV on your iPhone. This is interesting in light of AT&T’s new restricted data plans. You do a lot of Netflixing, that low use plan doesn’t seem to cover you quite as well. Follow the money, my friends. Follow the money.

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