The New iPhone and What it Taught Us About Marketing

Well here it is in all its glory - Apple's unreleased iPhone 4G. What's the big freakin' deal surrounding this thing?

Basically an Apple employee left the phone at a bar near Apple headquarters in California. Someone found the phone, checked it out for a while spreading word across the internet like wildfire and then decided to sell it to the highest bidder - internet geek news site Gizmodo.

At first, my interest was to see what Apple thought the improvements to its pretty freakin' awesome iPhone should be vs. that of what independent developers came up with in several "jailbreak" options that void the warranty, but bring the device to a whole new level.

Here's a little backstory on the iPhone jailbreakhttp://gizmodo.com/5520155/gal-1//gallery/2 and why it plays a major role for me. Apple released the current 3G and 3GS iPhone models and labled them as super phones - and compared to any of its competition and predecessors, it definitely was. However, independent software developers got ahold of these iPhone 3G and 3GS' and started hacking away. What they found was a device even more incredibly capable than Apple touted it to be. These developers got their iPhones to wirelessly broadcast its internet connection via wifi, act as a data storage device, attach files to emails, edit files - basically tap the iPhone's real potential to literally be a small computer with the power of something you might have had on your lap about five or six years ago.

Why Apple insisted on restricting the iPhone's capability is beyond me and leaves me wondering. And that's my interest in this story. Did Apple finally unlock the iPhone's potential?

The answer is a loud and resounding no! The iPhone 4G barely taps the potential of an iPhone 2g. Interesting right? Is Apple stalling technological progression to make money on smaller improvements along the way? Are the cellular carriers' systems not strong enough to support all that information being sent/received? Do they feel consumers will be overwhelmed?

I'm beginning to wonder if the software engineer was drinking away his blues after all his great suggestions for the new iPhone 4G were not implemented - even though consumers like me would pay bookoo bucks to be completely at work from anywhere with just my phone.