KEY POINTS:
A couple of months ago the Vodafone Group (International) let it be known that deals had been secured for ten new countries to have the iPhone - and one of those was New Zealand.
This was a great surprise - no, joy! - to many here, although it's
hard to figure out what Vodafone NZ thought of the whole thing. The announcement turned out to be as much as a surprise to them, although the posting appeared on Vodafone NZ's site soon after.
There are already many iPhones here, hacked to work on our networks, but the latest generation of iPhone has 3G, meaning it won't need hacking and will slot right into Vodafone NZ's network out of the box. That's great news.
If you don't get why an iPhone is so cool, it effortlessly syncs with Macs (and even with PCs to a large extent). On the Mac this gives you all the functionality of your OS X appointments scheduler iCal, plus Address Book and iTunes right there in your pocket. The iPhone is also a movie player and iPod, of course.
That's handy. The really awesome thing is that the touch-screen is high resolution, it's incredibly intuitive to use with your finger tips even for the most technophobic, and when you flick through your Address Book and find a person you want to call, you just touch their number entry on your iPhone's screen and the iPhone calls them.
The iPhone is also a wireless device, so if you're on a wireless network you can get your email and surf the 'net using Apple's Safari browser. If you find, for example, auto electricians in Wellington using the Google Maps' directory feature, press the number field of any listed contact detail and ... your iPhone calls them.
How about the price, though? Steve Jobs announced that the prices he quoted were 'worldwide prices'. In the UK, it has been confirmed that English pricing will indeed match US pricing (US$199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB models - that's about NZ $259 and $397), somewhat surprising jaded Brits.
What about here? New Zealand traditionally pays higher prices for Apple tech, a situation often percieved by Apple fans as unfair. This is perhaps not sufficiently taking into account the fact we're a long way away from suppliers.
New Zealand has been getting Macs sold through sole distributor Renaissance for years now and Renaissance needs to cover its storage, staffing, training and distribution overheads, but even when the NZ Apple market became part of Apple's worldwide pricing structure, when Apple Australia took over the NZ online sales site (click on 'store') we still seem to pay a little more than even Australia, although it's certainly a lot better than it used to be.
Vodafone and affiliates are still not saying what NZ iPhone 3G pricing for the two models will be, although the idea of prepay for the iPhone here has been nixed, although this will be available outside New Zealand. Our iPhone 3G will be contract only, with 'generous' (according to Vodafone) data rates.
Anyhow, the iPhone is an amazing machine. There's no doubt about that. I called Steve Jobs, Apple's ingenious CEO, on my own iPhone to ask him about the svelte device going on sale in New Zealand.
Stroke-stroke, press, stroke ... "Hi Steve! How you doin'? iPhone in New Zealand, wow, hey?"
His answer was, perhaps, predictable: "Who are you? And stop touching me!"
Then he hung up.
(OK, I'll be honest. I don't have an iPhone. Yet. Or Steve's number.)