I am in Ballarat. Eventually there will come a time when a conference of computer scientists eventuates in the vicinity of Ballarat, and when that day comes, as it surely must, I shall not be accounted among the unready. I know this of a certainty, for I have a special bag and my name on a loop of string to go around my neck, and a booklet that says the conference starts tomorrow.

I shall shortly go to explore the many attractions offered by the bustling metropolis of Ballarat (population 91000, according to the woman who drives the university’s bus as a part-time job). Apparently it is a place so exciting that the university was forced to set up its campus some kilometres down the road. They have set up a little village of cinder-block flats (one of which I am occupying this week), lest the students forego their studies for the temptations of the Ballarat Gold Museum, or the Sovereign Hill Historic Re-enactment Tourist Village Place. For my part, I am going to visit the Art Gallery.

There are a couple of points about the iPhone that might be worth mentioning.

When
It won’t be available in the US until June. Apple doesn’t normally announce products that far ahead, but you need to get regulatory approval for cellphones from the FCC a few months ahead of release, and that’s done in public, so that cat would have been out of the bag shortly anyway. Steve Jobs talked about a Europe release in the fourth quarter of 2007, and Asia in 2008. Presumably New Zealand would either be part of an Asia-Pacific release or it would come later, so it’ll be at least a year before we see them here.

Whom
Apple have partnered with Cingular in the US, but that doesn’t tell us much about who would carry the iPhone in New Zealand. Cingular competes with Vodafone in the US, but as far as I can tell they don’t have any part of the New Zealand market at the moment, so there’s no reason who Vodafone couldn’t get the contract here.
An important point is that at least one of the features on the phone (being able to choose which voice mail message to listen to instead of having to hear them in order) requires changes at the network operator’s end. This means that you won’t be able to buy an iPhone in the US and use all its features with another carrier. Where this goes probably depends on whether Apple or Cingular has patents on that feature.

How
Speaking of patents, Jobs mentioned that Apple has filed over 200 patents related to the iPhone, and intends to defend them vigorously. This obviously worked well for them with the iPod, as they’ve prevented competitors from copying the click-wheel. The interface features in the iPhone, however, might be a bit harder to protect – the basic concepts for a multi-touch interface have been doing the rounds in HCI research for a few years, and other companies have devices that do similar things.
If they can defend the patents, they’ll have a very strong lock on the cellphone market.

Whither
This is, of course, the first iPhone. If they follow the same approach as they did with the Mac and the iPod, there’ll likely be a few revisions of it for the next couple of years, then the product line will diversify into different models to suit different kinds of users. Both the Mac and the iPod suffered from design compromises in their first generations, and in both cases they were to do with storage capacity: the first Mac only came with 128K of RAM, and the iPod with a 5 gigabyte hard drive, both of which were on the low side by the standards of their respective times. The iPhone is likewise hampered by only having four or eight gigabytes of storage, enough for a couple of movies and some music, but not to carry around a significant part of your collection. I’d expect the next version to come with considerably more storage, as it becomes feasible to do so without compromising size or price.

I think Apple just ate the cellphone market.

Yes, I am following the Macworld keynote live by obsessively refreshing multiple browser tabs. Why do you ask?

Yesteday I went to the Casino with new flatmate Anna to see Fud performing. I can’t stand the Casino. Fud can’t stand the Casino. Anna had never been to a casino, but did not express anything in the way of enthusiasm for the concept. Fortunately, the gig was in a little bar around a corner from the big room with all the unhappy-looking people emptying their wallets into the blinky-light machines, and it was easy enough to pretend it was another place. A pleasant place, with James Brown music and dolmades.

Feeling rather dejected this morning, I elected to pull up the downstairs carpet. I recommend this activity to anybody who is feeling down, as the carpet makes a pleasant ripping noise as it comes away from the floor, and there is a delightful sense of discovery and possibility as you reveal the floor that lies beneath. In addition, there is the amusement that always arises when cats become bewildered.

I hasten to add that I did not embark on this mission without a certain degree of forethought. It is safe to invite me into your home, as I do not view all carpet as a source of destructive entertainment. The fact is that much work has been down on my floors in recent months. Over the years, due to borer and the inattention of previous owners to proper guttering alignment, the condition of many of my floorboards had reached a parlous state of disrepair. This has all been repaired, and sometime in the near future people will be coming around to lay new flooring. Since it is never wise to lay vinyl on top of carpet, the carpet had to go.

Now, I say vinyl, and vinyl doesn’t sound very pleasant. It will sound even less tasteful when I say that I have selected vinyl tiles with photographs of wood on them. But these tiles are truly a wonder of the modern era, in that they look like wood. Yet they are vinyl. I trust I am getting across the appropriate sense of wonderment here.