iPhone has arrived

[Digital Nomad]

I also bought an iPhone last night. I called the nearest store at 11pm and they said they still had them and that there was no line. You can check to see if you local Apple store still has them in stock at this page

All the stores in Colorado, California and New York still had them (those are the only states I checked).

I could see the eBay thing for people overseas who can't currently purchase one.

I'm ammused by the people camping out at the apple store when nobody was camping in front of an AT&T store, even though you could get one there are the same time.

The interface on the phone is beyond elegant and simple... compared to any other phone, it's like importing something from the next decade. I've had crackberry, windows mobile, nokia, etc, etc. and they all feel like a crappy technical device. The iPhone feels 100% natural (other than getting used to the keyboard... which is fine, but takes practice before you master it)... you don't have to think when using the iPhone, which is nice. I especially like how nice it is for showing photos since I often walk up to people and ask if I can take their photo and now I can easily show them what to expect for a result.

Anyway... head on out to an Apple store and check it out... they will most likely have some in stock since I think they made a ba-zillion of them.

 

[jeffryscott]

played with one my neighbor bought - it is a truly remarkable little device. Typical Apple: functional, aesthetically pleasing and elegant. Will I buy one, no. I would love to, but I don't need, nor would I use, much of what it has to offer.

 

[Digital Nomad]

I think it was PCWorld that put the iPhone through a stress test... they put it in a zip lock bag with a bunch of car keys and jingled it around, then mashed the keys into it (since the earlier test left if looking brand new). they also tried to manually "key" the screen by scratching back and forth directly with a key and it didn't scratch. They then dropped it onto carpet, linoleum and then concrete and it just kept going... the concrete did leave a few scuff marks on the chrome-like surface that surrounds the screen, but left the screen unscratched and it worked just fine.

 

[Grim Reaper]

As a at&t Mobility Employee I'm happy to hear it lives up to the hype. I just can't understand why they didn't put UMTS into it. That would cure the off WiFi complaints in major urban areas and only improve as they increase UMTS foot print.

I may get one when the UMTS model comes out.

 

[adventureduo]

Looks like people aren't super happy. I guess they're not activating properly at the AT &T stores. People are opening them up too and breaking them lol

 

[Pskhaat]

Let me have a pre-pay account on it and I may consider.

 

[Digital Nomad]

Grim... what is UMTS?

SOCALFJ... sell 500K+ of an item in a weekend and you're bound to have some problems. AT&T said they are making adjustments to the activation process. Mine activated on the first try and was the easiest sync I've ever done to get my contacts, calendar, photos, tunes, movies, etc. transferred. "Looks like people aren't super happy"... where have you been living, Mars? maybe .001% of people are having problems, but I read of very few people who "aren't super happy", most reviews/comments sound as if people are generally pleased (the main complaints have to do with AT&T's Edge service).

One site: "USA Today felt it necessary to poll 350 newly minted iPhone owners to see if they actually liked their iPhone. To our un-surprise, they found that almost all respondents were “immensely satisfied.”"

Anyone who is complaining about the keyboard has not used it very much... sure the first few times you use it, you're adjusting to the experience... but I've only owned it for something like two days and have only sent maybe 15 emails, but I can already type with two thumbs. (see this video to see what I mean)

Also many "reviewers" haven't really used it much and have not read the manual, which provides some insights. For instance, once person mentioned that it doesn't know proper names or company names. That is somewhat true, but not in a way that matters... it knows all the names/company names from your address book and anytime you correct its suggestions for the same word twice, it adds the word to its dictionary. So, yes, it doesn't have some words in it's dictionary to begin with, but you will quickly end up adding the words that you actually use so it stops suggesting alternatives.

Overall, I really like the device. It's a little heavier than you might imagine (for its size), so holding it by hand to watch a whole movie could become tiring.

The interface is amazing simple and elegant. I have it setup to check e-mail on my corporate account, gmail, yahoo and mac.com and that took less than five minutes to do (other than having to change a gmail preference to allow for POP access).

The web browsing is actually useful instead of being limited to sites that are designed specifically for mobile devices... and reading e-mails is nice with the high resolution screen allows me to read more than one paragraph at a time, so it doens't feel as cryptic as it can be on some phones.

I've already used it to gain access to a few places I wanted to photograph... I just show them some examples of the type of stuff I shoot and mention that I'll send them copies and they let me in (via the photos app, which I have synced to a folder on my mac which I have an export script setup in Lightroom to easily deposit scaled down photos into).

The headphones look just like the ones for an iPod except there is a tiny (really tiny) bar on it that you squeeze once to pause/play music, or squeeze twice to advance to the next song. When a call comes it, you can squeeze it to answer or hang up or squeeze and hold to reject a call. I wish it would work on a normal iPod since it's very convenient, but I tried it and it acts just like the normal ones (it ignores squeezes on a normal ipod).

There's a lot more they can do to add functionality, but it's a nice start for a 1.0 product. I'm sure they will come up with a major software update by October, which is when the next major update is planned for their desktop system (OSX).

There is a bunch of stuff that it doesn't have including:

1) it has WiFi, but you have to dock it to sync info with your computer
2) It doesn't have voice-dial capability yet
3) I wish the notes application would allow you to record voice notes
4) You can't record movies using the built-in camera

There are also a few things you might not expect it to have that they included:

1) the equivalent to tabbed browsing where I can have multiple web pages open and easily switch between them
2) can get directions to anyone in your contacts (or anywhere else) with a few taps and it supplies turn by turn directions including traffic status and satellite view. It's also overly easy to find stuff near any location and make calls based on those searches (like finding a restaurant).
3) dozens of web-based applications designed for the phone from day one (granted the first ones are simple, but nice to see them coming out so quickly).

This phone is definitely not for everyone, but if you hate your current phone (I hated my blackberry and windows mobile phones) and want something more elegantly designed that has a user-friendly interface, then go take a look at it. If you don't like it, then at least there is a wake-up call that should cause all the other phone makers to work at improving their offerings in the future.

 

[Desertdude]

Nice real world review Ben, Thanks

I look forward to picking one up.






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[Digital Nomad]

Scott, this post claims to have a method to use an iPhone on a prepaid setup.

Here's the text:

How to use prepaid service with the iPhone: Getting functionality without a contract
TUAW has instructions for using prepaid service with the iPhone. Essentially, connect a just-purchased iPhone (or one with an inactivated SIM card) to your computer and begin the iTunes activation process, then enter 99-99-9999 as your social security number. Your credit will (obviously) be denied, and you will be presented with options to go to an AT&T store and put down a deposit, or choose an AT&T prepaid plan, allowing you to “auto pay in advance each month for service using a credit or debit card.”

The prepaid plans appear to be unique to the iPhone, not allowing you to buy a certain number of minutes that can be used over the course of a year. Instead, you pay up-front for the coming month only. However, minute rollover is included with each plan. Prices are as follows:

$50 for 200 anytime minutes, unlimited data and no night/weekend minutes
$60 for 300 anytime minutes, unlimited data and 1000 night/weekend minutes
$70 for 400 anytime minutes, unlimited data and unlimited night/weekend minutes
$90 for 650 anytime minutes, unlimited data and unlimited night/weekend minutes and unlmited mobile to mobile minutes
Choosing this option also allows you to unlock the iPod and Wi-Fi browsing capabilities of the iPhone without a 2-year contract. There could be a mechanism that disables this functionality if no active service is present, but we haven’t heard supporting reports.

 

[adventureduo]

Ben, i was just reporting what the news said this AM. People weren't happy because they couldn't even get it activated properly and AT&T was having problems. That's all.

 

[Digital Nomad]

If anyone is thinking of an iPhone, here are a few things you might want to read before you run out and get one:

10 things to know before you buy

And here's a list of reviews from major sources.

(be sure to read PCmag's review because it is the most in-depth and makes some good points about the phone functionality of the device, but ignore what they say about the keyboard... it takes a few days to get the hang of and then it's fine or better than anything else... the reason big letters pop-up as you type is so you can reposition your finger before letting go, which is useful with passwords, etc, but seems to be lost on 101% of reviewers, I'm guessing from lack of experience and being in a hurry to rush out a review, and as usual has some misinformation about things he claims the device cannot do, but it can (like using a 3rd party dock and that it would force you to turn on airplane mode... no! it offers you the choice to do so in case the device creates interference like most cell phones do, but it's not required)... if you're uncertain of the keyboard, just search for iPhone on youtube.com and you'll see how fast you and peck out text).

 

[Grim Reaper]

Grim... what is UMTS?

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System 3G Wideband CDMA.

SOCALFJ... sell 500K+ of an item in a weekend and you're bound to have some problems. AT&T said they are making adjustments to the activation process. Mine activated on the first try and was the easiest sync I've ever done to get my contacts, calendar, photos, tunes, movies, etc. transferred. "Looks like people aren't super happy"... where have you been living, Mars? maybe .001% of people are having problems, but I read of very few people who "aren't super happy", most reviews/comments sound as if people are generally pleased (the main complaints have to do with AT&T's Edge service).

.

I Handle network gear. I am the guy that all the broken tower gear comes to for the state of Georgia. I then get it off for repair.

I also do inventory for the switches and network. All new Switch gear for the east coast comes through my warehouse.

You would not believe the amount of servers coming through right now to support the iphone and more products like it. I have been having about 40-60 300-1200lb Server racks from Cisco, HP and Juniper a WEEK for the last month since we took over the distribution and inventory duties. The cheap ones are about $30k. We have some HP that are 7ft tall worth over a Million. My last pay check has 18.5 hours of OT on it just trying to keep up. They generally don't like us going over 5 hours. LOL




As far as the activations issues. I use to Run a repair shop and did a lot of Tech support type trouble shooting and use to have access to all the back end systems. It just the system running beyond capacity so it sits in a Que till it can catch up.

Normally you just don't see this sort of activation load. The system can only handle so many at a time and they are exceeding it and it has to catch up. It doesn't happen often. 99.9% of the time the equipment activates within 2-3 minutes even at X-Mas when we make are largest sales for the year. Just the news looking to make something out of a small problem.

 

[Pskhaat]

That's fantastic news about prepaid plans. I'm definetely investigating more now.

 

[Digital Nomad]

Here's the only review I've found that really describes what it's like to use an iPhone... all the others don't really get to the point of having you know what the device is really like (other than compared to existing devices). If you're on the fence about the iPhone, then this might help you decide if it's for you or not.

Grim Reaper: I don't see how a company can prepare for a launch this big without adding capacity that they will never need in the future... I mean, how often will you have 500K users trying to activate a product on the same day? If you have all that's needed to handle it, then it will only be using 5-15% of its capacity for the rest of the hardware's life. Not being able to activate a phone always sucks, but I wasn't surprised over a few early problems.

I hope that hardware keeps coming through your place and that it's used to make the EDGE network more robust... that is something where the user load will only increase, so unlike the activation system, it needs constant capacity increases.

 

[jeffryscott]

My Treo has been a royal PIA ever since I got it....freezes for 3-10 minutes at a times, sometimes requiring a reset virtually every day.

But to get an iPhone, it will have to run a program called, ePocrates, which I use every day at work.

It's a must-have....and not likely in the near future...

http://www.unboundmedicine.com/

would that work for you?