Bean Blog

On Monday morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone 4 to the world at WWDC10. As an attendee, I have had time to consider this new announcement and discuss it with some of my peers. Here are my thoughts so far…

One thing I keep thinking about with iPhone 4 is the amazing power it has – especially hi res video recording and editing, plus video calling (Apple’s “FaceTime”). But I am thinking of this power a little different than the standard stars-in-eyes way of so many excited attendees to this week’s WWDC.

Rather, I am a little concerned for what will happen if Apple ships 10M or more video phone devices?

Even Steve Jobs, embarrassingly standing in front of the conference and the world, could not have a quality online experience because so many other users here were also chewing up bandwidth. At the conference, it has become somewhat of a nerd joke that if Jobs can get his hands on the bloggers running their own mifi hotspots, he’ll have them taken to Alcatraz for a permanent vacation.

But we are a bunch of tech nerds and you’d expect it from us…what will happen when everyone’s non-tech savvy grandmother is using video calling and chewing up the amount of bandwidth formerly reserved for only us technonerds?

How will our NETWORKS manage all this fantastic new capability?

I think it is clear that as we all begin wirelessly sharing videos, making video calls, streaming Netflix, etc, there will have to be a fundamental change in the way we are networked. And it will have to be significantly more than even the current 4G hype.

Plus, how will the bandwidth providers react to all this extra usage? Typically they make money by charging a flat rate that vastly overcharges most people who use a little bit of bandwidth, and actually undercharges the few people who use a lot. But if everyone is using a lot, providers will likely have to create new, faster infrastructures and either charge a lot for their pipeline or more probably go to a pay-per-use plan to regulate all this heavy lifting.

So I think the amazing tech of the iPhone 4 is the precursor to a fundamental shift in how getting online happens.

At launch, it may be a bit like taking a Ferrari out for a spin on a Matchbox racetrack.

Now, from strictly a features point of view, and considering Bean Creative’s educational work, I think the device presents amazing new opportunities. Specifically, the front-facing camera offers opportunities for personal interaction and recognition to aid learning – it may prove quite helpful for users with disabilities, in that it could work with facial recognition for better understanding or possible security. Imagine a person unable to type a login but recognized automatically by the camera.

FaceTime, the video calling feature, has obvious benefits in connecting remote parties in an amazing, almost sci-fi way. But another potentially overshadowed new feature is the internal gyroscope. Previously iPhone introduced accelerometers that allowed you to tilt and shake your device to control actions… but now adding the gyroscope allows you to turn around 360 degrees and have the phone understand your spatial position – this has amazing implications for augmented reality. Picture mobile gamers spinning their bodies to look around a virtual corner as they spy an approaching enemy. Or imagine augmenting a camera view of a person’s broken leg with a 3d medical scan, so doctors and patients can look at a problem from any angle in 3d and really understand issues while working directly together, not in some abstract way of staring at x-rays on a wall chart.

So, those are just some immediate takeaways from my experiences here at WWDC10 in San Francisco. Looking forward to using some of this great new insight on current and future projects.