Early Experiences

I may have bought the iPhone because I hate Motorola phones that much (and their atrocious excuse for a UI). But I also wanted to give way to my inner nerd, and thought it could be convenient to have my music with me, without having to drag an iPod around. I so under-estimated this small bundle of electronic love.

There’s a lot of glowing reviews. But it boils down to this; it feels right. I use Mac OS’s Mail, Calendar, iTunes, iPhoto and Safari. It went something like this; hook it up, activate it, holy crap it just synced everything and works! I don’t know if Apple was able to lower the pain-threshold to non-existent on the PC side, but on the Mac side — assuming you’re already using those Apps, it is sheer bliss.

It immediately inspired me to clean up my addresses, again. I got all the cover art for my MP3’s, just because coverflow is so sexy on a phone, and I love seeing the album-art when the music is playing. So be prepared to spend time when you get one, on little clean-up projects. But I can’t blame any of that on the iPhone. (iTunes not having better/more cover art I can only lightly blame on Apple. I ripped my own music of my own CD’s years before iTunes, so there may be naming issues, etc. It works great on music you’ve bought or ripped through iTunes).

Some of it is the pure beauty factor. It looks sexy. Every button is cool. Having a nice picture as my wallpaper is great. But what really matters is that things are where I expect them to be, and easy to get to. There’s some learning, but not that much. I was using more of the iPhone’s function in 15 minutes than I had used after two years of continued torture with my RAZR. It took me about 1 week to figure out why they named their phone after a sharp device of torture and pain. The iPhone is the anti-RAZR. Where would I put that — hey, and there it is. There’s still a little learning — like “where is the stop”. You don’t, just pause your music and do something else. You use home button a lot. But it is about as intuitive as it gets. iPhone remembers everything you did last. So you go back to phone mode, and if you were in address sub-mode, it shows you that. This is the right behavior.

Having my address book, entirely, was joy. Here’s all those people I never called, because frankly, I hated syncing my RAZR that much, and kept my list paired way down so I could scroll to them in a reasonable amount of time. Now, I have a much richer list, that is more compact — because it has people, then you pick which of their 1/2 dozen lines to use. For some people that extra step of choosing person, then line, is annoying. But as everyone I know has at least 2 lines, this is joy, as I don’t have separate entries for John Doe Cell, John Doe Work, John Doe Home.

Those whiners complaining about the keyboard should use it a while. It is better than the rimm keyboard to me. I hated the little keys and trying to hit the right buttons. I tried one at AppleStore, and just started thumb typing — no problem. One-finger peck? Even faster. Neither is hard at all, and the auto-correction and other stuff seems to work right. After 24 hours, I wrote large emails, without any problem. (Not just TLA-laden abbreviated slango-crap, real emails). I type probably 10 WPM, as compared to 80+ on a real keyboard. But it is every bit as usable as going cross-eyed trying to use that rimm thing.

No device is perfect. There are a few issues I have with iPhone, and I would have changed. Of course, I haven’t read the manual, so some of this may require a little user training.

1) The headset microphone is not noise canceling. I can hear other people great. Much better than other phones as I have BOTH ears involved. The caveat is the mic picks up background really well, so they can’t always hear me. In a moderately quiet place, it is better than other phone solutions. In a loud place, it is worse.
2) The headset / earbuds should have a next song button. The only button works OK for answer. But I want to skip songs as much as I get calls. Steve’s over minimalism is sometimes annoying. They also hurt my tender ear-holes. And the headset should have some sort of auto-winder/retraction capability. Apple will call all these a 3rd party opportunity.
3) The speaker phone is soft; both on mic and speaker. My old phone was better (and not that good). iPhone works OK in quiet offices. You better have a really quiet car and office — anywhere else and you might have to forget about it.
4) Some websites are slower than others. Not sure why — they fly up on my PowerBook. But across 802.11, the iPhone can be much slower. Other sites, pop right up. If you’re using the tools they give you like weather, it is quick and easy to use. And that’s across edge. Mail, isn’t too bad either.

So far, the battery life has been great. The web browsing makes it warm, which means sucking up the joy-juice. But Music and Phone features have been great for me.

So I really think this was a bargain for the price. The phone is great at having my music and videos. I love the artwork and address book. The mail is much better than on other phones. IM’ing, completely usable; but rather than SMS, I’d rather have iChat — I use iChat at work, and SMS, not at all. The web tools (Dashboard widgets), are great. The web itself? Not so great — network is still slow, and some sites are worse. Even under 802.11, I’m not that tickled. Plus, despite Steve’s hype about “this isn’t the baby Internet, this is the full Internet”, my response is that greater than 1/4th the sites I go to have Flash. So until it has Flash Support, it is a watered down version of the Internet for me, that I don’t want to use very often if I have access to a real computer handy because of Edge and iPhone performance. Still, if I need it and don’t have a computer handy, it is there. And it does work better than other phones lame-ass versions of the Internet., even with the speed difference. So that is a mixed bag. My wife is a flight attendant, and if we can get it working with her booking system, it would be a must-have device for her, even with slow. So your milage may vary.

There are also missing features. Games comes leaping to mind. I’d like to see more dashboard widgets — like weights and measures, movies, flight booking, and so on. Which means I’ll have to have configurable buttons as not everyone cares about the same ones that I do. But it is a great start, and I think Steve will add them over time. Every month, as the hype is dying down, we’ll get a new that says, “iPhone, NOW with movies and fandango mixed in”, or some such.

I’ll leave it to each person to decide. Certainly for me, it was the right choice. If you’re focused on Browser usage (and speed), speaker phone, or headset, don’t use music/videos, need games, and can’t wait for the 3rd party headsets, and if you don’t have good contacts lists, photos, etc., already setup, then it is a lot more work, and you’re not as likely to be as thrilled as I am.

P.S. I still need to test the bluetooth stuff with my regular headset.