Steven Levy: Apple Computer Is Dead; Long Live Apple

The problem with making a mobile phone, however, is that you need a cellular network to handle the phone calls and information. Unlike the open Internet, the big mobile nets are closed systems, commonly referred to as “walled gardens,” based on a business model of locking customers into long-term contracts and then charging that captive audience with costly services. Jobs himself once referred to the Cingulars, Sprints and Verizon Wirelesses of the world as “orifices.” But a couple of years ago, he realized that he would have to deal with them. “We talked to several of them and educated ourselves,” he says. He finally decided to deal with AT&T’s Cingular network. “[They] were willing to take a really big gamble on us. We decided what the phone is. We decided what software would be on the phone. And so we could make the product we wanted.”

But it’s not like the walled garden has gone away. “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

Still, since the iPhone runs a full version of OS X, the operating system of the Macintosh computer, it’s reasonable to expect the device to take advantage of that power by running lots of applications, even if Apple has to vet them to make sure they won’t compromise the integrity of the network. In the version we saw last week, there aren’t a whole lot—the notable ones include SMS text messaging, the Safari Web browser, e-mail, iPhoto, Google maps and two mini-applications (known as widgets) for weather and stock prices. Jobs says we can expect more apps on the phone by the time it ships in June. (For instance, one might expect the iPhone to allow users to view Word documents, something that the prototype doesn’t do today.)

But cynics may note that instead of Apple’s instant-messaging program iChat, there is that aforementioned SMS messaging program. On the screen, when you send and receive messages, the display resembles the way you view them on iChat, in colorful text balloons. But because each message is an SMS text message, depending on the billing plan, users may get charged a few cents each time they say “wassup.” (iChat lets you gab all you want for free.) Maybe this won’t be a problem—Jobs hints that Cingular may offer different billing plans for iPhone, though for now he isn’t saying for sure. In any case, Jobs say, “There’s no reason we couldn’t have iChat on here.” So bring it on.

Another intriguing possibility not yet exploited in the iPhone is the ability to take a song from one’s iTunes music library and instantly make a ring tone from it. “Wouldn’t that be cool?” says Jobs, after I brought it up. “It could be done.” Then he rubbed his fingers together, the universal symbol for “that would cost us.” Meantime, he noted, the iPhone has a collection of built-in ringtones in various categories from jazz to Americana. The ones he demonstrated sounded sufficiently tasteful that one would not be mortified if your phone went off during a dinner party.

To Jobs, the whole issue of what future applications may run on the iPhone, and what billing system it uses, really isn’t the point. The big picture, he emphasizes, is how Apple has delivered what he considers a triumph on the scale of the original Macintosh and the iPod. “[The iPhone] is five years ahead of what everybody else has got,” he gushes. “If we didn’t do one more thing, we’d be set for five years!”