Of Licensing Fees and Other Funny Ideas

There won't be any third-party apps for the iPhone, says Steve Jobs:

These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them.

So. You buy a phone, that is in fact still pwned by Apple and Cingular (or Vodafone, as it most probably will be in Europe) – probably split neatly 50/50. That leaves the user out of the equation, who obviously is simply here to pay $599 as a licensing fee to be allowed to use the iPhone – and that is far too much.

Luckily, soon enough, Apple will introduce some new iPhone products, including a rather small one, reasonably priced, without any display at all and only one button, which upon pushing calls a random number out of your adress book. Steve Jobs will have it branded in the classic Apple way:

Life is random: Introducing the iPhone Shuffle.

Tagsoup: Apple, iPhone, iPhone shuffle