Is the iPhone for you? (part I)

It's pretty awesome but a little low on storage space and a bit pricey for me (although the cost is probably reasonable).

How about, "Yes; a year from now when they've worked out some of the likely problems and have released the 2Gen iPhone." I have to vote "No" for now. But it looks spectacular! A real game-changer!

I had hoped Apple would have bought airtime from the major carriers so we could just buy it from them and not be harrassed with all of the restrictions (like Verizon) or bad service (like Cingular). That might have been pushing it to say the least...

Thanks for including the Cingular option in the poll.

There's no perfect carrier and no perfect phone, but I had expected greater vision coming from Apple.

So many negative choices.


Steve couold have said they were available tomorrow, for free, for the entire population and somebody would complain.

Jeeze, can't we see what this device means for innovation? This thing means more goodies are on the way. Apple has also upped the ante big time for every manufacturer on the planet.

SanDisk just offered their first iPod killer and it was usurped in two days. Zune...well, it started with Z anyway.

I love this thing but life in Japan and can't get one for over a year, so I guess I just gotta drink lots of water to make up for what I lose drooling.

Great things are coming from Apple, Inc, real soon.

Not perfect but an incredible first gen product from what I've seen.

What Bergermeister said, and what Mr. H is saying.

It's almost irrelevant if we particularly like this particular deployment of this tech.

The important thing is that this tech is flat-out jaw dropping, game-changing, so-far-ahead-of-the-competition-it's-not-even-funny awesome.

I know that sounds hopelessly fan-boyish, and I very rarely get all charged up like this, but day-um!.

According to some rumors, Seteve's family was there... no doubt. It isn't every day that the world is turned upside down for the nth time by the same company.

I live in Japan where gadgets flourish like crazy. Have had a 3G phone for a while now, mailing video left right and center, includes a radio, voice recorder, you name it, it has it. The new model has a TV built in. What it doesn't have is whhat we saw today: ease of use, stunning graphics, dead simple syncing, Mail, and everything else Jobs said he had waited two and a half years to show us.

Japan now has a great system where you can change carriers at will (most phones support this) and thus you are not tied to one company for that long (I think there is a short period; my current phone is covered by my company so I havee no idea8) ). If Apple were to release this thing (it cannot be called a phone) in Japan today, it would sell a couple million units in the first month or two. Sadly, we have to wait until next year.

This is the first model; the next one will be better, yet, and the next better still. In its current form, it is leaps and bounds beyond the best phones down at our local shop, and they are selling like doughnuts at a policeman's party. Every other manufacturer is probably holding emergency meetings right now to figure out how to combat this new foe, because they suddenly have to do something they aren't very good at: innovate on a major scale or get lost in the dust. For a first entry into a huge, until now "very competitive" market (competition between balh and blah), this device is a major player.

Apple has jump-started a revolution here, and it will trickle down into every nook and cranny of tech in the very near future, including notebook computers (they now have to really come out with a killer MBP) and even desktops.

Go Apple, Inc. Welcome to 2007.

+++

A lot of people don't seem to be getting what a balls out paradigm shifter this looks to be. I hear a lot about how it's too expensive for a smart phone, or the Cingular lock-in is a deal breaker, or how it doesn't really do anything new, any or all of which may be true, but it doesn't matter.

Go look at the videos on the Apple site and think about how tap zooming, finger scrolling, coverflow browsing, contextual control surfaces, animated graphics that actually give you feed back about what's happening (like the widgets that flip over for more info) and seamless integration across apps totally changes how one interacts with a small device.

Notice how all of that mitigates screen size by making navigation across graphic information just a touch away. Like "pulling" a web site screen to the left to get at what you want and then zooming in on it, just by stroking and tapping the screen. Like moving between hierarchies of control by in effect "pointing" at what you want, and having the interface move between those hierarchies in a way that make their relationship clear, like in the case of "flipping over" an album cover to see the song list, or how touching a contact name slides a new screen over with your info.

You never have to drill down through menus or hunt for a dedicated button. The contextual screen controls mean plenty of room for big, clear icons at every stage.

I think the iPhone, or rather the paradigm it embodies, may be the biggest thing Apple has done since the original Mac. All of sudden all those devices with their crowded rows of buttons and endless menu structures look a hundred years old.

Come June I'll let you all know how good or bad it is.

Anybody remember what the reaction to the first mouse was? People lose sight of the big picture staring them in the face because it is not already common fact.

I want a sub notebook from Apple so bad now I am about to go mad!!!

i am waiting for the 3G version. i will not switch carriers, because i believe the service is more important than the device.

i am very happy with my current service carrier, so i can wait.

The iPhone has the following:
-The Killer App is making Calls
-It integrates with my Mac
-It has Bluetooth, WiFi, and Quadband
-It has Mac OS X which means it will likely have an SDK and some Development Tools
-It can be an iPod and a Phone at the same time (which is good for me because I was waiting for the 6G iPod)
-It supports SMS (no mention of MMS?) Messaging and it even improves it
-Email is a huge feature in it
-I can easily access anything on the Web
-it has a large screen perfect for viewing Video
-It has this Visual Voicemail, and I could really use that because the current system of holding a phone to my ear and hitting Digits isn't fun
-There is no QWERTY Keypad
-It uses 3 sensors to make it even easier to use (I like the one located near the Ear...)
-The Photo App looks nice, and it has a 2 MP camera. Perfect for the next time I go shooting pictures of Greenpeace down at the Apple Store (see horrendous pictures in the discussion of yesterdays article)
-It doesn't use T-Mobile OR Verizon (unfortunately Apple isn't an MVNO either )

I can safely assume the iPhone is Perfect for me. It's everything I could've asked for (almost, mysteriously iChat is Missing ? ) and I'm sure I'll be very happy with it.

Sebastian

I voted "For some other reason" because it's not perfect since I need to wait until 2008 to get one!

I need a new phone now.

I will get one when they come to the UK

Would have liked more memory, but can't have everything.

I wonder how often it will get upgraded - phones tend to be less often than iPods & being tied in for 2 years is a long time if you want the next version - shall see what the deal is in the UK but am really excited & does soo much of what i wanted - fantastic work apple!!

come q4 (end of december?) assuming it makes it to switzerland ... i will do the same.

i soared like a bird upon the initial news, but came down like a bad case of manic depression after i found out the release date.

I've already got one of these:



...an i-Mate SmartFlip. While I've been pretty pleased with this phone, as far as I can tell so far the iPhone outclasses it in almost every way.

I like the form factor of the SmartFlip -- a very thin flip phone -- over the "candy bar" form factor of the iPhone.

The base feature set is very similar: both are quad-band GSM with EDGE, Bluetooth, play audio and video, can handle e-mail and browse the internet. Neither can really replace my 80GB iPod (although the 8GB iPhone comes a lot closer than my SmartFlip with 1GB). Both sync with my Mac, although I had to buy third-party software to get the SmartFlip to sync, the way it handles some of that syncing isn't ideal, and I can only sync via USB cable -- Bluetooth sync doesn't work. (Also, by weird contrast, I can use the SmartFlip as a wireless modem for my laptop via Bluetooth, but not via USB. \ )

Compared to an iPod, and therefore to an iPhone as well, the Windows Media Player in the SmartFlip sucks, however. I've never bothered to use the media player for much of anything. Safari on the iPhone looks much, much better than IE on the SmartFlip, and the iPhone's e-mail software looks much nicer too. I'm a little skeptical about text entry on the iPhone touchscreen, but I think it's a safe bet that it's got to be better than standard multi-tap or T9 text entry on the SmartFlip. The iPhone adds WiFi. At least by pixel count, the iPhone's camera is much better (it would be hard for it to be worse -- the SmartFlip's camera is, to be generous, "utilitarian" in quality). The iPhone's 480x320 display is an obvious improvement over my SmartFlip's 320x240 display.

I'm already a Cingular customer, and pleased with Cingular's service for the most part -- they don't have quite as good coverage in my area as I used to get with Verizon, but that was a trade-off I was willing to make for having a GSM "world phone".

Chances are I'll get the iPhone as soon as it's available. Which isn't to say there aren't a few features I wish it had:

• 3G capability -- which should be dual band to work anywhere in the world
• If stereo Bluetooth is missing, adding that would be a plus.
• A second front-facing camera for video chat.
• Enough storage to totally replace my need for a separate iPod. I realize that's a tough problem to solve, however, because the bulk, weight, and power consumption of a hard drive are going to be big drawbacks for the foreseeable future.

Yes. It's not perfect, but far better than anything else currently available/on horizon but I would still prefer to wait for the second generation. Not that I have a choice anyway, because I live in India (the country Apple utterly neglects ).

But it has this SUPER HUGE drawback that it does not support third party applications. C'mon Apple, that's a bummer!

hmm ya no..your going to be waiting for about 2-3 years for that 2gen phone believe me, you actually think apple is going to screw themselves over

think about it, if they release a new phone before the mass amounts of people that purchased 1st gen iphone's contract is over, they will lose million or billions of dollars, those people are not going to pay the $800-1000 retail price for a new phone after they just spent $600 for the 1gen, i guarantee it will be after the 2 years from the day it is launched....that way EVERYONE can get the new one and make cingular happy with fresh 2 year contracts...lol

People seem to have this conception that they can't switch phones midway through their 2-year contract? Where did that come from?

Apple wouldn't be screwing themselves over. They would be doing what any phone manufacturer would be doing and simply updating their phone.

Sebastian

It's all marketing imho. If you get a new contract accompanied with a new phone
people (not too tech savvy people at least) get the impression that this new phone
is strictly bound to the contract. They don't even think about changing the phone.
Also buying a phone without contract is a pricey thing, at least in most european
countries.

I would consider one but only because I can't afford, nor do I need, a laptop right now. I know Apple says it's not a "computer" but it does many computer tasks. The problem is I don't really need the iPod features, since I only use my current iPod in my car, and only when I remember to plug it in. I wouldn't watch movies on it nor use the camera. The only features I'm sure I'd use would be the phone and internet. The visual voice mail is great, but I normally answer my phone if I can and I don't get many calls anyway. Do I lust for it? Yes but I think I'm like many none cell phone powerusers. I can't find a need for it. Plus my wife would kill me if I bought it.

As great as the iPhone is, keep in mind that it's still primarily a cell phone. The internet on it is really, really slow... like literally a couple seconds to render a portion of a website. This has nothing to do with connection speed—even when "zooming" in and out, it takes a a long time for it to refresh.

It's a phenomenal device, but it's not a replacement computer (at least not at this point in time). If you can't afford a laptop, go for a mini, or even (it pains me to say this) a cheapo Dell.

True. Like you said, it might be a computer replacement at some point. As far as the laptop, your advice is well taken but I just got a new 20" iMac and my wife said I can't get a new computer for at least 10 years. Anyway I don't need one. Still, the thought of getting a iPhone is cool. Such a neat product. Lusful as they say.