More from Pogue:
Typing is difficult. The letter keys are just pictures on the glass screen, so of course there’s no tactile feedback.I guess we'll all have to go back to the old two-finger style of typing. (I actually know a couple people who still type like that.) Or maybe one finger, if you hold the thing in one hand. Or is there some way to squeeze all your fingers onto the screen?
The Web browsing experience is incredible.Ah! This is what I want!
You see the entire Web page on the iPhone’s screen. You double-tap any spot to zoom in. Or you use the two-fingered spread-apart gesture to “stretch” the image larger, or pinch your thumb and forefinger on the glass to zoom out again. The manipulation is seamless, smoothly animated—and useful. Using Google Maps to get you driving directions and maps, for example, is just light-years simpler and more powerful than on any other machine, thanks to this “rubber Web page” stretching technology.If this thing is what it seems to be, I will happily leave the laptop at home and go about carrying next to nothing, stopping in cafés and restaurants, not giving a thought to whether there is WiFi.
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If this thing is what it seems to be, I will happily leave the laptop at home and go about carrying next to nothing, stopping in cafés and restaurants, not giving a thought to whether there is WiFi.
Which seems (to me at least) to be the whole point of this: miniaturization and simplification. Carry one object instead of three.
Add the cost of an i-Pod and a high-end cell phone together and i-phone pricing is well within range. Then consider that it could drastically cut down on perceived need to take that laptop with you and it becomes a veritable bargain, and a major convenience item.
It's a pretty sweet phone, but iPoor, so iCan't.
I'm a Mac nut (getting a new MacBookPro soon! Well, refurbished, but it's new to me), and I have Cingular, so I'm pretty excited about this. I'm not even all that concerned about the cost of the phone, since that's about how much the RAZR cost when it first came out, and my brother and I picked up ours on a two-for-one deal a year or so later. I am a bit worried about the Cingular multimedia service rates for that, though. Their web-use rates are pretty high already, so I'm hoping iPhone users won't wind up paying through the nose twice over.
Uh... Wow!
Sorry, I just don't know what else to say after reading others' and my comments on the first thread.
My enthusiasm would be tempered with increasing joy if I thought I would be buying it one day soon.
And since I'm not, being the proud owner of a new Nokialicious mobile, set to last me at least 2 years, I can only sigh from afar.
Which Althousiana regular is thinking of buying it?
Raise your hand so I can lob spitballs at you.
Cheers,
Victoria
I've always managed to resist the siren call of the cult of Apple, but seeing these images -- and feature list! -- has made my resolve waver.
My only hope is the $600 price point. I can't imagine spending that much for a cell phone, no matter how fancy. I point to my 20 dollar .5 GB Mp3 player for proof. I will wait for the cheaper clones to come out in a year.
I will! *Sigh* Gonna be a long year.
Are they paying you to gush like this over the phone? Have they promised you a free phone? It reminds me of something they did on the Apprentice show a few seasons back, when they were hired to create "buzz" about a new product.
Hopefully iterations 2, 3, and 4 will be much better, since this is looking about as good as iPod v1, aka BAD but with an innovative interface that leads to great things.
The major problems are that it doesn't have a removable battery, as opposed to most cellphones but like all iPods; it's 2/2.5G, so very slow for wireless data; they talk about a long-term exclusive deal with Cingular/AT&T Wireless; it appears to have issues with typing, since there is no tactile response; it's of the same design and build that produces the scratched and smudged mp3 players, which is even more horrendous for an all screen multi-fundtion device; the camera seems underpowered (SE has had a 3.2 megapixel cameraphone/musicplayer... out since the summer that is high-speed).
I love the innovations with this, and hope to see the ideas spread, but it won't be moving 10M units as fast as Steve predicted (by 2008, when it's released to the US Q2-3 07 and Q4 for the rest of the world?). Phones that are announced 6 months ahead of time have a long track record of disappointing furiously, and a single carrier lock-in for more than 3 months usually leads to very bad things. Finally, WiFi eats batteries for breakfast, and that will be the only way to get good response out of the device (reading basic webpages on my EDGE BlackBerry is regarded by the ACLU as cruel and unusual punishment).
The phone itself is beautiful, especially the screen. I love the approach to the interface, and it is great to see Apple force a carrier to come on side for new ways of doing things (the visual voicemail technology has been around for a long time, but not adopted widely even by companies for their internal wireline voicemail, never mind at wireless carriers) which will hopefully by leveraged by other manufacturers to reduce carrier control over phones, features, and interfaces. Carrier control (and attempts to make money off of all sorts of "features") has been a major cause of slow innovation in some aspects of cell phones. Certain carriers are notorious for "crippling" the phones they sell to protect their internal pricing plans or high cost media "services".
Me for one, Victoria. (He says while ducking behind the red settee.)
Maybe. Says a lot, perhaps as I've never bought anything made by Apple for myself because of their monopolist mentality.
Dick: Pogue writes " the sound quality was loud and clear."
Call me conservative. Call me a Luddite. Call me a jerk... whatever.
I absolutely see no need to try to wrap all of life's conveniences into a single gadget so miniaturized that you need to zoom in to see what you're doing or to type with one or two fingers.
I carry a 3-oz. phone. It has a camera which I rarely use and web functions which I never use.
I also carry a 2.2-lb. sub-laptop (Panasonic R5) that has a keyboard big enough for my average-large fingers to touch-type at around 60 wpm. (Slower than on a full-size keyboard, but hey, some sacrifice is okay, I guess.)
I can put my video viewing pleasures on hold for an hour or two if I happen to be out of pocket when something breaks. I don't need to squint at a 3- or 4-inch screen.
Iphone is certainly 'convergence', but it's convergence without utility.
Any anyway, Apple lost me at "Lisa"
Ricardo said..."Are they paying you to gush like this over the phone? Have they promised you a free phone? It reminds me of something they did on the Apprentice show a few seasons back, when they were hired to create "buzz" about a new product."
I would disclose any information like that. If I'm writing about something and there's some kind of freebie or paid ad involved, I would say so. I don't think there is anything wrong with accepting a review copy of something, though I have rejected offers of things that were conditioned on a promise to review. Well, it was something I didn't especially want. (A beanbag chair.) If Apple offered me the iPhone on condition that I write about it, I'd say yes. And I'd disclose.
The fact is, I just love Apple. I've been using Apple products since 1985, and I'm a big devotee. You should factor that in. This product is the sort of thing that I knew I needed, but resisted buying until Apple made one!
You might have to wait until Cisco offers you an iPhone, since they own the name.
SteveR - Cisco Sues Apple Over Use of IPhone Name
That didn't take long...
Thanks, Liam! A great run-down of the shortcomings. Looks like I probably won't have to hide from Victoria's spitballs after all ;-)
Design is important. Too few companies realize that and produce crap. Jobs is a genius. genius.
Well, the "form over function" vs "function over form" debate has been raging for thousands of years. Apple has definitely staked out a dominant position among those who value the former, which is a testament to Job's genius as a marketer.
But personally, I'm a "function over form" guy. I bought an MP3 player for half the cost of an iPod that doesn't have all the DRM crap associated with it. It isn't as pretty, but... um... I bought it to listen to it, not stare at it.
Looks like I probably won't have to hide from Victoria's spitballs after all ;-)
iLoog. ;)
Cheers,
Victoria
in_the_middle: Crackberry mishaps? Seriously, if I can turn a mishap into a $25B company, I'll endeavour to produce mishap after mishap.
RIMM got where they are by amazing UI, form factor, ergonomics, software, and incredible innovation. They came up with the thumb-board concept to get near real-keyboard speeds out of a mobile device's input method.
There's a difference between elegance and beauty. RIMM has kept a laser focus on elegance while trying to improve on the beauty and expand into consumer markets that aren't as text heavy. Apple has always been about beauty, but not always elegant. They've got their hits and misses, and for a long time they completely ignored utility (hence their 2% share of PCs).
iPhone is beautiful, and combines a number of things in new ways. I doubt it's elegance, especially for serious text input at lawyer/banker/consultant levels, and it's utility in v1 is sorely lacking.
Let's not disparage the competition, especially those that have been working on very different problems for very different customers. I'd especially discourage these ad hominems when you know and understand so little about the subject at hand.
I don't get Jobs' claim that it is difficult to make calls from a normal cellphone. I haven't even bothered setting any any of my speed-dial or voice-dial numbers because it takes me all of a second and a half to hit the menu button, first letter of the person's name, and pick it from the menu. I can do the whole thing with one hand using my thumb.
That's hard? I expend more effort putting on my shoes in the morning. That doesn't make me wish I had an iShoe.
As for people crying about DRM and that somehow Apple should allow you to load all your own software onto it, I don't recall this functionality being available in ANY other smart phone and pretty much not ANY other computer OS.
If you "don't recall" that functionality being available on other smartphones then you're simply ignorant of the market. The Treo and pretty much everything that uses Windows Mobile lets you use your own applications. And, of course, most Mp3 players let you use your own files instead of renting the music from Apple.
I'm simply skeptical of relying on Apple for everything, since the company has been a miserable failure at everything outside of multimedia applications.
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