After the recent XML (Cross Media Lab) in Melbourne at the Town Hall, I had the pleasure of being able to play with the Apple iPhone (of some of the US-based presenter visitors). It was satisfying to confirm that the virtual keyboard really does seem to correct keystroke misrecognitions to produce accuracy at least equivalent to a normal keyboard on, say, a Blackberry smart phone. And as I knew from the movies on the Apple Web site that so vividly demonstrate the user interface, the new set of controlling hand gestures, powerful applications and elegant OSX-based behaviours make for a truly enchanting experience.
But the iPhone, when it comes to Australia in coming months, will certainly be a premium priced product. Australians will benefit from iPhones connected to the fast 3G network at speeds of 7.2kbps and beyond, but it remains to be seen how data carriage costs will affect usage patterns of the device.
It is interesting to consider, however, that it is not particularly difficult to achieve an iPhone-like experience already, even today. For example, I connect my Apple Mac Mini to an AppleTV and routinely sync video programs, music and podcasts between the two devices. With the addition of a mere two further pieces of hardware, the audio and video from the AppleTV can be piped across today's 3G network to many types of mobile phone handsets.
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The first requirement is an adaptor - usually around $130 - that converts the component video output of the AppleTV to an S-Video signal. This must be mail ordered from the United States (generic devices I tested from Australian electronics shops do not seem to work properly) but is not difficult to obtain.
The second piece of equipment you will need is a Slingbox - which, again, can be ordered from the USA and costs just a few hundred dollars. A Slingbox converts any video source into a stream that can be received across the Internet - including by mobiles. Your pay-TV subscription at home in Australia can thus be accessed in your hotel room throughout the world. You just need to be sure to purchase a PAL Slingbox rather than NTSC.
A small client for your mobile phone can be downloaded and purchased from Slingmedia (www.slingmedia.com) for about $30. This took about 5 minutes to install on my Samsung Blackjack phone. After a couple of minutes of configuration so that the phone can find your Slingbox across the network, you will find yourself able to watch any video or listen to your favourite podcasts on your cellphone.
What's more, the AppleTV user interface is faithfully reproduced on the phone because the Slingbox transmits the AppleTV's entire video output stream. The Slingbox mobile client allows the phone to issue commands to an infrared transmitter that can be taped to the front of the AppleTV so that the AppleTV menus can be navigated on the phone's screen as if you were using the actual AppleTV remote control in the same room as your AppleTV back home. Its like having an instant Apple iPhone already, except it works courtesy of the superior speed of the Telstra mobile broadband 3G network. In fact, it is persuasive to argue it is better in some ways. For example, your AppleTV at home will inevitably store far more content than your mobile phone - so you will probably run out of battery power long before you exhaust your entertainment options.
All this preparation and expense just to have access to your favourite recorded TV and movies, and the podcasts that add meaning to your life such as the ABC Media and Law reports, may be a little excessive. Afterall, Foxtel by Mobile is an inexpensive subscription and BigPond TV now offers a wide range of programming, from comedy, to news, to the latest mass appeal American TV series.
Most people will probably opt for BigPondTV given its easy accessibility, reasonable pricing and, importantly, the fact that it is unmetered whereas the regime I described would incur volumetric pricing charges on both the fixed and mobile networks. For video, my makeshift solution would obviously require the fastest cable or ADSL2+ BigPond plan to deliver the content out of the home via the Slingbox.
However, there is no ignoring the emerging trend towards centralising data farms of fast processors connected to users by high speed networks, as a facilitator of more sophisticated client server models. This means the 3G mobile broadband network can act like a telescope, as it were, pointed back to a grunty server that does the processing work that would choke a mobile phone - even an iPhone. Using this model it will be possible for increasingly sophisticated applications - perhaps even eventually Second Life and other virtual worlds - to be accessed by people from their mobile phone while they are on the move. The small phone screen means the experience will probably never be as good as a PC or Mac, but for those who get hooked on virtual worlds, any feedback will probably be welcomed. Certainly the representatives of graphics card manufacturers such as NVidia were predicting this kind of future at the Barcelona 3GSM conference last January.
The combination of a super fast mobile network (eventually running at 14.4mbps), faster mobile handset processors and more storage, will probably facilitate many links we haven't anticipated between the real and virtual worlds. For example, the ability to track the location of friends in real time, both in the real world and the virtual world, and establish a community of Web2.0 tools to facilitate tagging, rating, referrals and other social interactions, across a seamless avatar to "meat world" membrane, will truly usher in a new era for broadband users. At that point, broadband will deliver not just more convenience and faster ways to do traditional tasks, but rather, a genuinely new set of cultural, social, psychological and political protocols. It will change the nature of each Australian's consciousness. And that is how Australia will remain a prosperous, first world information economy rather than rely, lamely, on minerals and the sheep's back.