iPhone's potential vs. its feature-set at launch

When iPhone hits our pockets in June - pun intended - we'll all have our complaints about lacking features. No GPS. No instant messaging. No installable third-party apps. No video capture (it seems). No iTunes Store (again, most likely).

The reasons for dropping these features are different; some of them would have displeased AT&T, others would have eaten into sales of other Apple products, and some are probably either impossible to implement well because of technical limitations, or the implementation would have changed the device form, specs, or price significantly. It's a delicate balancing act, putting the Internet, iPod, and telephony in your Levi's.

There is, however, at least one common thread to all these missing modules - they're not necessary right now to make iPhone an impressive product. Common diagnoses heard in the cynical layers of the blogosmear include accusations of Apple wanting to "rape" their customers - though I can't figure out how not including a profit-driving feature like the iTunes Store would do that - or, worse, cries that Apple is "dropping the ball" either by not realizing that these are desirable features or by being too stupid to put them in. This is when a cliche from the world of design comes in handy: "Perfection is achieved not when there's nothing else to add but when there's nothing left to take away." (Antoine de St. Exupery)

Look at it this way - Apple has had to put together a twenty-minute demo of the device just to show off its main features. Given that, two keynotes of the phone, TV ads, and a web page including tech specs, our number one pre-release complaint is still that we don't know enough about the phone. Perhaps we should admit that even with the feature-set we now presume iPhone will have in June, there's a heck of a lot for the average and above-average user to play with for quite some time.

I consider myself a well informed and technically savvy iPhone buyer, and I can tell you that I'll spend most of that weekend tapping around my iPhone, learning its UI. It'll probably be a few weeks before I run out of things to be delighted (or at least surprised) by.

Now keep in mind, I'm the developer of probably the very first iPhone web app. I should be spending my Friday making sure that OneTrip runs smoothly on iPhone - and I'll do that as well, to be sure. Imagine if Apple had announced a proper SDK on June 11 - Mac developers would have been pretty caffeinated for a few days after the launch, rushing to get the first apps out. Is it unreasonable to think that this would have resulted in some pretty crummy iPhone apps, seeing how none of these developers would have had a chance to get a feel for the phone's (computer's?) interface, form factor, and performance? Of course, it was still a little goofy of Steve to "announce" that we can make - "can" as in, iPhone allows it - web apps for iPhone. Duh, Steve. But he had to pull that band-aid off quickly.

In any case, that was a disappointment for developers and for those users who wanted their Skypes, Yojimbos, and Terminals on iPhone. But my gut feeling is that those who buy one anyway will spend most of July oohing and aahing over this and that iPhone feature. The desire for more features will eventually set back in, but by then, who knows what updates Apple will be pushing to iPhones? At least this is one thing we can be fairly confident about: like AppleTV, iPhone may grow as a device without pulling on your wallet.

My conclusion, then, is that Apple may in fact be leaving out some features (or at least that they may be ok with leaving them out) because they don't want to overwhelm the user from the first day. If you're not one of those who think they would be overwhelmed by, say, having the addition of GPS on iPhone, remember that there's probably a lot of people who wouldn't be overwhelmed by the addition of some other feature. You try to please all of those and pretty soon the iPhone experience feels a little cluttered. Apple picked the features they consider crucial and impressive, and their bet seems to be paying off if consumer interest is any indication.

Be patient and put things in perspective - it looks to be a fantastic device, and it will learn new tricks if only for the fact that it will be easy for Apple to do so (compared to, say, iPods, which were harder to update with new functionality for accounting reasons, and because developing software for their OS wasn't as easy).