Well,
After thinking long and hard, I decided to be an early adopter of the iPhone. My Razr was getting old in the tooth and needed replacement. Micky saw the gleam in my eye whenever an iPhone commercial came on. She turned to me and said, "It's obvious you're going to get one of these." She knew it before I did.
The iPhone is a collaboration between Apple and AT&T Wireless. The influences of these two companies are obvious in the product. Much as grieving has several phases, iPhone buying has two - the AT&T phase and the Apple phase.
Stage one - the AT&T Phase. My characterizing phrase: "KHAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!"
Since the nearest Apple store is in Nashville and lines that were several days long, I decided to try my local AT&T store. I stopped in a day before and they told me that they indeed were getting iPhones. They would close at 4:30 on Friday and re-open at 6:00 to begin selling them. I got in line around 5PM and was the 12th person in line. Small towns have their advantages! It took around 40 minutes for the people in front of me to process through, then an account rep sat me down, looked at my existing account, and made sure it was "ready" for iPhone activation. They then sold me an 8GB model, a case and a car adapter.
For those of you not aware of what is being attempted in the iPhone, Apple is trying to change the Cell Phone buying experience from waiting around in a cell store for an hour while they activate your phone to buying a package and taking it home, with the activation happening there. This makes the iPhone more like an iPod. The theory is, you plug it in and it just works - like any other Apple product. This may have been how it happened in Apple stores, but of course, AT&T couldn't make it this simple. I spent 20 minutes doing "pre-activation" stuff at the AT&T store, then went home to plug in the iPhone and go through the activation process. I entered my cell number and my iTunes id. I then got to this screen:
Without activation, the iPhone is a brick. You can't use any functionality. What's even more fun (and they don't tell you this) - the second you begin iPhone activation, the sim chip in your old phone is deactivated and your old phone becomes a nice paperweight. This wouldn't be a problem if "additional time" meant a few minutes or even an hour. "Additional Time" in my case meant 29 hours. Thousands were in the same boat as me. Online forums were filled with people like realtors and lawyers upset that they were being put out of contact for a day or longer without warning.
Obviously, despite their aggressive advertising and plenty of time to prepare, they were not ready for the hundreds of thousands of activations that came through on Friday night. It was the expected sub-par service from AT&T with little information or care for the inconvenience of their customers. Finally, my iPhone activation came through. It still has to be seen if AT&T will get my billing options right.
Phase two - the Apple phase. Characterizing phrase from Micky, "OK, That IS cool!"
When it's on, it works as well as the commercials show, and more so! The interface is slick and works like you would expect from an Apple device. The screen is gorgeous, and plays downloaded and ripped movies well. The Safari Web browser is the first real browser on a cell phone that I have seen that is really useful. The Photo application blows everyone away who sees it with its page turning and zooming. SMS is nicely executed, as are the Google Maps feature and Yahoo Weather. Mail is easy to use with my .mac account.
What needs to be changed? After all, this is 1.0 of a new product. I generally agree with Rob Griffiths on Macworld on his top ten needed iPhone apps. I would like to see sytemwide cut and paste implemented. I would also like to see a password wallet included, as that is one function I miss from my Palm.
I would also like to see it work with Google Docs. I suspect Google is working on that.
In total, I LOVE by iPhone. It really is a new paradigm on what a handheld communications device should be like. Thanks for liberating the cell phone, Apple!
David+
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