Alex Kidman11 June 2008, 12:00 AM
Bluescreen | We were there. At the Moscone Centre. Sort of. Not really. Nonetheless we bring to you the breaking news... one day late... of the 3D iPhone running Windows ME.
Bluescreen: Alex Kidman satirises the tech industry, causing kernel panics galore.
Bluescreen wasn't actually on the floor of the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the
big announcement of the 3G iPhone. That's definitely a good thing, though -- all those developer feet tend to make the carpet very smelly, especially with that much adrenaline and sweat in the air. It's much nicer in an actual seat. Still Bluescreen wasn't able to attend "in person".
Thanks to dropping "certain appliances" -- purchased from ex-KGB operatives over eBay -- onto the conference floor some time ago, Bluescreen was able to watch the action unfold, albeit from a camera vantage point only 5cm above floor level. Steve Jobs certainly has nice shoes, and Bluescreen wishes the fat guy from CNN hadn't brought in the popcorn, as it made hearing certain phrases quite difficult. Jobs did announce a 3D iPhone, right? And the OS X version of Windows ME?
The end of a Jobs keynote is always an interesting affair, usually punctuated by thunderous rounds of applause from the Apple faithful followed by tons of interesting (and often incriminating) chat from those exiting the keynote room. This time, however, there was a distinctly different sound that echoed throughout the hall, and one which stopped all of Bluescreen's indiscriminate sniping and industrial journalism espionage. Oh well. Bluescreen guesses that guy from the WSJ can keep his job for another year.
Anyway, the sound that obscured all chat was the sound of mobile phones being dropped and trodden on en masse, as the faithful headed their way uphill to the Apple store to begin queuing for a 3G iPhone. Bluescreen's industry moles indicate that those who left mid-keynote "may" get a 3G iPhone on the 12th of July, allowing a full day for all of the contracts to be signed. Everyone else will become part of the San Francisco landscape -- essentially homeless people but with slightly nicer laptops.
Anyway, Bluescreen watched this phone ditching unfold on camera, but the headphones had to be quickly abandoned. You've never heard quite as cacophonous a racket as you get with 800 mobile phones suddenly being ground down underfoot into shards of plastic, glass and metal. Or the howling of that one developer who unwisely wore thongs in the middle of the US Summer.
Anyway, as Bluescreen watched the largely migrant cleaners go to work with broom -- right up until our camera went into a bin bag -- we had time to ponder on what to do with an old iPhone. Apple's always historically been a tad slow on updating models, and it's not really been that often that it's made existing models quite so unexciting quite so quickly. You'd certainly feel foolish if you'd bought one of the last 2G iPhones on Apple's store shelves a month or so back, and were now locked into a two year AT&T contract.
Apple sold some six million 2G iPhones, however, and the 799 that Bluescreen saw crushed -- along with a solitary and rather lonely looking Blackberry -- are only a drop in the ocean. Bluescreen confidently predicts a tsunami of 2G iPhones hitting eBay roughly... ooh, about four hours ago now, actually. Bluescreen was hoping to copyright the phrase
"OMG 2G iPHONE ***RARE*** CHEKK IT OUT!!!!", but missed it by mere seconds. Apparently someone called "Steve" from Cupertino got in before me. Curse him, whoever he is.
*Bluescreen also feels compelled to point out that most mobile shops will take phones in for recycling, or you can check Planet Ark's Recycling Near You Web site to work out where to responsibly recycle your jailbroken 2G iPhone, if you really must. Actually, Bluescreen would LOVE to see the reaction on mobile phone store staff faces if you dropped an iPhone into one of those locked recycling bins so they couldn't get to it.
Bluescreen did not attend WWDC 2008 as a guest of Apple. There was no business-class flight and no frosty looks from PR minders as we asked the hard questions (what is Steve's favourite type of backrub, Phil?) We did not get put up in a fancy-schmancy hotel, nor did we get any free bling. Basically we watched it on webcast which broke up a lot.