I’m of the belief that if Apple does enter the mobile phone market, it will be releasing a mobile version of the Mac OS and the device will probably carry the MacPhone moniker. We know iPhone name is already taken, plus the whole “i” thing is getting tired. The device won’t be just a phone + iPod, but something a hell of a lot more interesting. While Windows Mobile isn’t the best mobile OS around, it’s pretty good but it certainly gets the job done. Should Apple come out with a mobile OS that was better than anything else out there and ship it on a unique, yet easy to use, mobile device, they are sure to have a winner on their hands. We’ll know next Tuesday for sure.

But even if Apple does release a MacPhone, I won’t be the first in line to get one. I’ll be holding on to my Q for a year or 2 before I jump to a MacPhone (assuming it will even exist). The MacPhone will probably be awesome and those who do get it will be very happy. Mainly because they’ll have one and you won’t. I have been a long time consumer of Apple products including some of their first generation of products. Many of these first generation products had some gotchas that became apparent withing the first year of ownership. Let’s have a look back at the history of some of Apple’s first generation products:

Mac OS X 10.0

I was psyched when Mac OS X was first released, but it was dog-ass slow and didn’t support the some of the features you had in Mac OS 9. Hell, CD burning wasn’t supported until 10.1, nor was Apple Share. It really took until 10.2 when OS X was a viable option for Mac users to dump Mac OS 9.

The Blue & White G3

These were kick-ass machines back in the day. By the time 10.2 came around with Quartz Extreme, we learned that you needed a machine with an AGP slot in order to take advantage of it. The G3’s used a PCI slot for graphics which was too slow.
Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro

Again psyched to see these sooner rather than later, but the hardware issues that plagued these laptops were a royal pain for owners. Luckily, I wasn’t one of them this time

1st Gen iPod

My wife has a 10GB model. It’s a brick in comparison to my Nano. It still plays music just fine, but it does not work with any of the iPod accessories.

There are probably more stories I could dig up, but these are the ones that have affected me so far. But if the MacPhone becomes a reality, it will be tow first generation products in one: a new hardware device and a new OS. It will also be a new market for Apple too. And unless a Mac OS Mobile supports Java ME out of the box (highly likely considering Apple’s support of Java in past Mac OS X releases), there also won’t be many cool apps for it out of the gate. These little apps are what help make Palm and Windows Mobile so handy.

So for now, I am interested in the MacPhone, just not the first generation. The second generations are likely to be smaller, faster, cooler, and have a longer battery life, and more importantly way cheaper or you’ll get more for your money. If you compare the Core Duo MacBook Pros to the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros, the Core 2’s give you a hell of a lot more for the same money. Time will tell, but I’m going to sit back and watch this one. On a side note, I’m starting to think 2007 is going to be an interesting year for mobile devices.

Recently, I just grabbed one of those fancy Motorola Q’s to replace my damaged Motorola E815. The Q is really cool and with the Missing Sync, it works like a champ with Mac OS X (although syncing via Bluetooth hasn’t worked so great). Oddly, I actually find myself liking Windows Mobile. Sure I’m a Mac-head, but Microsoft isn’t doing quite so bad here. The first cool app I found was the Windows Live Search for Mobile beta. This is really handy and highly recommended if you have a Windows Mobile Device. The maps and traffic features are top notch for a beta product. What was missing for me though was integrated GPS functionality.

I didn’t really want to have shell out a few hundred bucks for another GPS device since I’m already toting around enough crap. After a bit of digging, I ran across Navizon. You can learn more about what Navizon does here. For me, the most interesting part was that for $20, the Navizon Premium application can creates a virtual GPS device. So far the 15-day trial works remarkably well and plays nicely with the Window Live Search Mobile. Stability is a bit of an issue with Navizon’s map tools, but the V-GPS works great. Now only if I could find a JVM that will run on the Q