The iPhone Weekend
No, I didn’t get an iPod this weekend. But reportedly a lot of people did. Did any of you? Personally, I’m glad I waited. There are reports of folks with odd AT&T plans having problems and being put on indefinite hold to get their iPhones activated. I have a family plan so… However the general consensus from what I’ve been reading is that, if anything, the phone actually surpassed the hype. Quite the feat given what seems like to biggest hype machine ever. (So big that even Apple was trying to downplay things after a while)
Will I get one? Probably eventually. But not just yet. I really don’t need a full featured power-phone just yet. I will though. Plus I just don’t need (yet) to browse the web from odd locations.
Here are the caveats I’ve seen from the initial reactions. And my feelings on their importance.
1. No clipboard. No cut, copy and paste. At first this seemed like an “eh” since I couldn’t see needing this on a phone. After a second thought though this did seem important. Consider cutting text from one email to reply to an other. Or some text from your browser. Reportedly Apple will do things like open up an empty email with the current URL. But that’s really insufficient. Plus when you reply to an email it quotes the whole thing which you have to delete with single backspaces. (Since they didn’t include “selections” when there’s no cut) I’m really hoping they fix this in an update since if you’re going to use the phone for semi-serious email cut, copy and paste really is important.
2. No custom ring tones. Not a big deal to me. I hate all the cutsey ring tones people have on their phones. However given how many people pay ridiculous fees for ring tones I’m sure they’ll be available from the iTunes store soon.
3. No integrated rss reader in Safari. Not a huge issue since there is a simple external rss on the phone. But it isn’t quite as nice. Not a big deal since you can still use one of the dozens of web based aggregators.
4. The keyboard only works in rotated mode with Safari. This is annoying - especially for notes and mail. I bet they fix this soon though. It seems like a very odd thing to have. And lots of people are complaining since big fingered folks have a much easier time with the wide keyboard.
5. The earplug hole is slightly recessed. I can’t figure out why they did this. Seems an engineering oversight. It means many earphones won’t work.
6. Calendar and contacts don’t sync with Exchange. I don’t use Exchange so this isn’t a big deal for me. But it is for many business users. I’ve heard the Calendar is quite nice.
7. No to-do or to-do syncing. This is very weird to me. Yes you can keep a to-do list in a note. But a separate to-do list and syncing seems like such a no-brainer. Very bad.
8. Notes use a very ugly typeface. The rest of the system uses Helvetica and reportedly look fantastic. This really, really bugs me. Why oh why would they do this? It’s not quite comic sans. But it’s pretty close.
9. Google’s Spreadsheet and Word Processor don’t work. A big hit since while Apple allows viewing of Excel and Word documents it doesn’t allow editing or copying. Which is a huge issue.
10. No spam filter on email. So you either better use Yahoo’s or Google’s email or have very, very good server side protection. Or simply have a second account and route only selected emails to the iPhone. (Which is what I’d probably do since I get about 2000 spam messages a day now and a lot of stuff I wouldn’t want on my phone.)
So would I get it? I’ve used the WinCE and Blackberry stuff. They are kind of a pain to use. But I really need spreadsheets. Which frankly is the main reason I’ve been holding off buying one. (I can write it off as a business expense - so it’d effectively be free for me) The cutting and pasting is also a big issue. Since I’d really like it to be able to handle important business emails this is a real hassle.
So I think I’ll hold off since at this stage it’s not critical. I’d rather haul my MBP around anyways rather than the iPhone.
we got them here, yeehaw! i’m still getting used to the keyboard, but it’s pretty slick. no complaints yet, but give me time! my sidekick died a nasty death last week, our contracts were up, and my husband got some backpay, so we went for it. we use our phones exclusively for internet and pda capabilities and were looking at similar devices. at&t screwed up initially, but the fix was fast enough. it’s a fun toy, though. i need to play with it more.
changed my mind while typing this… the sidekick keyboard was waaaay better than this one.
Comment by makakona — July 1, 2007 @ 12:07 am
Supposedly the trick to the keyboard is to slide your fingers until you see the big letter you mean to type. Then release. This improves speed and accuracy a lot. (I’ve not tried it, not having an iPhone yet - I’m waiting until spreadsheets are handled better)
Comment by clark — July 1, 2007 @ 8:13 am
Supposedly the Notes/To Do List stuff will get better when Leopard is released. I’m waiting to see what other complaints people have before getting one and I need to negotiate permission from my wife. We’re on a family plan right now and her entire family is on Verizon in order to call one another for “free”.
Also, I’ve had AT&T Wireless (pre-Cingular merger) before and frankly, I hated it. Call quality was terrible and the plans were confusing. I had a national plan but was always paying roaming charges because I didn’t have the very best national plan. Their rate structure was geared towards ripping you off one way or another.
Allow me to say that I hate all the carriers. I hate AT&T for bogus roaming charges, Sprint for random $700 bills that take months to resolve, and Verizon for not sucking up to Apple and carrying the iPhone. Ok, so that leaves T-Mobile. I have never had them, but I hate them for their weird Catherine Zeta Jones ads in which she says, “Get more!” as if it is some sort of double entendre.
Comment by a random John — July 1, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Alex King and Matt Mullenweg provided two different takes on the iPhone that interested me.
There are a lot of interesting comments on the Mullenweg post. Seems a lot of people are having a hard time getting their iPhones activated.
Comment by danithew — July 1, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
Huh. I’ve had AT&T since I got my first phone (~1995) and have been very happy with it. It always seemed to have the best coverage. The only problem was when I moved to my current house. At that time I was cell only (no landline) but I got lousy coverage here so I had to do the Qwest thing. But there’s great coverage here now.
It does seem like despite pretty overwhelming planning there were still too many people hitting the activation network at the same time. An other reason not to get it the first week.
Comment by clark — July 1, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
Out of curiosity for those who actually have an iPhone, how do you view the above critiques.
Comment by clark — July 1, 2007 @ 3:35 pm
Alex King makes a point that he is deliberately choosing to use the iPhone capabilities minus the AT&T signup. He says the wifi and iPod still work fine even though he canceled the AT&T subscription.
This leads me to wonder how hackable this iPhone will be and what alternative means people might find to communicate with it.
Comment by danithew — July 2, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
danithew,
I would guess that the main problem with hacking the iPhone will be developer tools. The appleTV is very hackable because it runs OS X on an x86 processor. The iPhone is using a different processor architecture and its own version of OS X. I’d be really surprised if official tools aren’t released at least to select developers within six months. I would guess that such tools have already quietly been given to a select few shops.
Comment by a random John — July 3, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
Clark,
No, I didn’t get an iPod this weekend.
Well I should hope you didn’t buy an iPod. All the cool kids are buying iPhones now.
Comment by a random John — July 3, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
i’ve typed out three lengthy comments and each time, something goofs and i lose it. grrr.
we got our iphones on a spur-of-the-moment thing. like i said previously, my phone had just died, our contract was expired, and my husband had just received a big check unexpectedly. also, his ipod was dead and needed a minimum of a battery replacement (about $100.00 there, not guaranteed to work) and he was looking for a new pda.
we got in line at about 5:15 and were out of the store within three hours, two iphones in hand. we had originally planned on just one for me, but they couldn’t tell us whether or not we’d be able to have a family plan with one iphone and a different phone, so we just bit the bullet. having two individual plans would almost pay for an iphone after a few months.
we were transferring numbers and were told it could take up to six hours, but that once we completed the initial activation, we would be able to use the other features of the phone. not so. it was totally useless for about 20 hours, i guess? it only became fully functional sunday afternoon.
there is total disconnect between apple and at&t. neither knows anything about the other. at our store, at&t employees received their first iphone briefing at 10:00 p.m. the night before launch. they only received their phones about a half hour before launch and until then, they didn’t even know how many they were going to have on hand.
i’ll start by saying my iphone is dead in the water. there is a hardware error and after over five hours on the phone, they are unable to fix it. i now have to trek to an apple store, which is not conveniently nearby, and exchange it in-store. they will not exchange it by mail. and those five hours spent on the phone? at&t will not credit the minutes. they all came out of our monthly plan. we’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get the phones up and running and i’m kind of bitter about that. it’s total buzzkill.
but, dang. they’re cool. i guess a list is most concise:
- random: at&t employees are (so i’ve been told by two employees at two different stores) not allowed to get an iphone for two months. if they are caught with one in someone else’s name, they are in trouble
- the expected crummy at&t service doesn’t bother me. t-mobile was horrendous for us
- it’s almost TOO thin for a phone, for my liking, though it is surprisingly heavy
- i hate that i can’t categorize contacts (work, church, businesses, family)
- i can’t send contacts to other people, nor can i share calendar items, notes, or anything else. with my sidekick, i could text or email these to my husband, which saved a lot of time
- you can’t plug it into your computer and leach the internet
- you can’t use the landscape keyboard for all functions and features, but when you do, you lose most of your screen
- the keyboard is a pain. i could type 150 kabillion words a minute with my sidekick. i’m down to about three with my iphone. i also can’t use hotkeys. with my sidekick, i had most common words shortened to one or two letter hotkeys
- the battery life is scary. i run it down once a day. the expected 300 to 400 charges frightens me and each day, i count down how many charges i have left. “296 charges till my phone is useless…”
- i worry that i’m going to wear out the home button on the front of it
- the volume controls on the side rip out my hair when i take the phone away from my ear. seriously
- webpages won’t load if you try to use other functions. with my sidekick, i could start loading a page, switch to check my email, and come back to a loaded page. iphone won’t do this
- the camera isn’t too hot. my mom and sister have the verizon lg/env’s and they take great pictures, so i expected something similar. my sidekick pics were a bit grainier, but at least the sidekick had a built-in flash
- i don’t like some of the formatting like how names are displayed when you receive or make calls. minor stuff, but annoying for someone like me. in the same vein, i wish i could turn off all caps when i type. i’m too lazy to capitalize properly, but i’m too anal to let the occasional capitalization of “i” slip by
- i could access my sidekick via the web and can’t do that now. i miss that availability
- the speakers are low-quality. the regular ear speaker (can’t think of better words) needs a boost and is too quiet for me
- the calculator is too basic. my sidekick had scientific options and all sorts of exchanges available
- my husband misses having games on his phone, but i don’t miss them
- you can’t delete individual calls from your call log. this came in handy for me during gift-giving times because we frequently end up using the other person’s phone
- they’re difficult to use in public right now because they create commotion. a man snatched it out of my hand yesterday and ran to show it to his wife and friends. a non-iphone at&t store employee said, “i should beat the (stuffing) out of you and take it!” (he also followed up with three uses of a very vulgar word directed towards apple for making a recessed phone jack, so he was a loose cannon as it was.)
good stuff:
- i like carrying around pictures with me. with my sidekick, i could only keep pictures that i had taken with the sidekick. it’s fun being able to assign any photo i have to someone’s contact info or to carry around vacation pics
- the maps are really cool. i love having satellite on my phone and the traffic info is awesome
- youtube is unnecessary, but fun. i have the “snl” iphone intro saved to my phone
- i like that i can keep the weather for many different cities right at my fingertips. we travel a lot and this is handy. i also like having world clocks. our best friends have lived in china for over two years now and i STILL can’t remember when i can and can’t call over there
- visual voicemail is REALLY cool
- i like how the text messages display as a conversation
- i love having all of my emails from different accounts sent straight to my phone
- it’s neat being able to separately open new webpages, even if they still only load one at a time
- the flicking and pinching really IS cool
- they just LOOK sexy
judging from this, i guess i appear to have a negative rating, but it’s really not. the negatives are things i can live with and i know i was spoiled with my sidekick. the potential for the iphone is huge and i think we’ve somewhat focused on that. once we get my hardware issues ironed out and once we adjust to a completely new system, i think we’ll be head over heel in love with the iphone. for now, we just have puppy love.
Comment by makakona — July 3, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
From what I’ve heard the Apple Stores not the AT&T stores are the place to buy. Better help and better supply.
From everything I’ve heard I’m glad I held off. (Still catching up on news) There will probably be at least one major update this summer. I’ll be curious to see what gets fixed.
Comment by clark — July 8, 2007 @ 2:21 pm