The iPhone : Week 1

Yes, I was one of those less-than-sane individuals who acquired her iPhone the day it was released. Now that a week has passed, I felt the desire to document my experience.

Acquisition: Before I talk about the phone, here was my purchase experience. I woke up at 5:15am, showered, coiffed, dressed and headed right over to Peet's Coffee, which resides directly across the street from the AT&T Wireless store in Elk Grove, CA. It was about 6:50am at that point, and the line appeared to have 100 people in already. After buying my coffee, I was still weighing my choice to wait in line. Should I? Shouldn't I? Isn't this a tad obsessive?

Heck yeah, it's obsessive. I parked my ride and got in line.

The line was abuzz with like-minded iPhone Compulsive Disorder sufferers like myself. AT&T employees were quite excited and beginning to enter the back entrance. How did I know? By this time the line had wound around from the AT&T main entrance, around Well's Fargo Bank,a nd around the back where all the rear entrances were. More people were filing in behind me, too.

As the 8am hour approached, employees handed out bottles of water, checklists, and began to give us an idea of the likelihood of whether or not you would get a phone depending on your placement in line. I was towards the end, but I could just barely make it in. So I stayed in line.

As time progressed, we were given updates about supplies. As I waited it was becoming less and less likely that a 16GB unit would be available to me. The gent in front of me had friends in Boston, and at the Sacramento Apple store texting him reports about the situations there. Lines were huge and there were activation issues.

We inched closer. I could see the entrance. I had maybe 30 more minutes to wait. There were only about 3 16 gb units left, we were told.

With two people in front of me, it was announced that all 16 gb units were sold out, and there were 8 8gb units left. Damn. At least I'd be able to place an order. But damn!

By the time I got in, I asked the salesman about a 16gb unit, hoping the announcement had been wrong. Sure enough, there was one more left! 15 minutes later I was done. I could not yet finish the activiation, but no worries. I had to get to work!
Total wait: 3.5 hours.

The iPhone Itself

First impressions: When I fired up the iPhone, I knew I was going to be pleased. It was gorgeous. The touch screen was fantastic. Before I could truly enjoy all it's wonders, I had to activate it.

Activation: It took a few hours for everything to roll over. Sure, not fast, but who cares!?

The Interface: Speaking as a user of Blackberries, Smartphones, and regular cell phones, the iPhone is a dream. Everything works better. Sure, there's still a learning curve with the virtual keyboard and the predictive text feature. But once you get used to it, it works much better than any hard-buttoned device I have used. Pay attention to the tutorials and you'll get up and running in no time. Within one day I was already used to finger placement to touch the right letters on the keyboard.

3G: It really is much faster. Having tried to surf youtube via Edge networks, streaming happens much faster. Sure, it's not a cable modem, but it's much better than edge. The wait is acceptable. There are some issues with signal strength, I see. Especially near the core of my office, but that's to be expected. Still at 1 bar of 3g, it's much better than full bars of edge in my opinion.

The App Store: This is a very convenient service. It's very easy to use and maitain updates. It knows what you've already downloaded. It knows when apps you have are ready for an update. The update is very easy to administer. Here's a list of what I've acquired so far:

1. Ebay: Very easy to use. I haven't been bidding on anything yet, though, so I haven't run it through the entire process.
   
2. AIM: It is functional. It could be better, and it is much better than the AIM client on my old smartphone. On the iphone, navigation is much easier between various IMs and buddy lists.
   
3. Box Office: Great for finding movie times near you. This takes advantage of the GPS on the iPhone, or you can hard code the zip code. It would be better if you could then go buy tickets from this interface. Oh wait. You can. I love this. If only I wanted to see movies more often.
   
4. Currency: Very fun if you're into currency exchanges. It was free, and I was talking with someone about the Euro one day. Comes in handy. You can change your master currency, and the rest is easy-peasy.
   
5. Google: This makes it easier to get to your google apps. I use it predominantly for searching google or for accessing reader. It's really like a front-end kiosk that will then launch your Safari browser.
   
6. Pandora: Good fun for streaming music based on what you like. Works great on 3g. Not so much on Edge. But then we knew that. That's why we waited until iPhone came out with a 3g model. Right?
   
7. Shopping List: fun for creating your shopping lists. The downside? It doesn't have all the products you might buy. You'll have to build up the list history yourself. Still, it looks like once you do, your items are in there.
   
8. Light: Kinda funny. But it turns your screen white so that it broadcasts a bit of light for times when you need it. Like last night when I didn't turn on the garage light and couldn't see my keyhole to insert my key. It does the trick nicely.
   
9. Drummer: Fun little novely item that I paid 3 bucks for. It has a drum kit on it. As well as about 6 other types of percussion. Fun for meetings when they need more Cowbell, or if a rimshot is required. If you're about to announce something clever, you might fancy using the gong.
   
10. Remote: Nifty idea. I haven't had a chance to get this working yet.
    
11. Twitterlator: Very useful. I haven't utilized the picture capabilities of this yet.
    
12. Paypal: I haven'thad a chance to use this yet. Looks easy enough. Reviews say most users want more. What do you expect for the first week?
    
13. Dobot Tools: Great free todo list application. If you want something more high powered, you'll have to pay for it. It would be nice if you could set up recurring tasks. This doesn't yet. Maybe future versions shall. I think you have an opportunity to sign up on a mailing list to qualify for free updates in the future. Those that sign up after September may have to pay.
    
14. Urbanspoon: very neat application in theory. It uses your GPS system to find restaurants nearby. Reviews are even included. Could be handy when you're out in a place you're not familiar with. I haven't had a chance to test this out properly. I could have used it last Sunday, though. 'Tis a pity I didn't find out about it until Tuesday.
    
15. Pageonce: This is a nice app that centralizes some of your favorite sites and can capture account information for you automatically. You will have to provide it with your account credentials. But so far, so good. You can add your bank, Amazon.com, Netflix, and much much more. It allows for a quick way to see balance information, shipments from Amazon, etc. Very convenient.
    
16. Evernote: This initially was buggy. It wasn't uploading notes. Two days later, an automatic update occurred.
    
17. Shazam: Neat application. I hear this is available on other non-iphone products as well. You hold your phone up to a radio, or some sort of audio broadcast, and it will tell you what song is playing. I've only tested it twice so far, and it's two-for-two.
    
18. D20 Dice: I'm a gamer geek. I had to buy it. There's 1 buck out the door. It's cute, though.
    
19. Tap Tap: This is like Guitar Hero for the iPhone. it's alright, but I'm not a fan of it. Guitar Hero is more gratifying.
    
20. Bloomberg: great interface for financial news.
    
21. Writingpad: This is a neat concept. Instead of typing, you drag your finger from letter to letter and it will figure out the word. They had to send out an update because it was crashing initially. The update is much more robust.
22. Yelp: Like Urbanspoon, also with reviews. Very handy.

Existing Applications already provided on the iPhone:

1. Youtube: Very fun. I don't use it a lot yet. I'm still having too much fun with other apps.
2. Calendar: I use Gcal, so I haven't put this to good use yet.
3. Photos. Easy to use.
   
4. Stocks. Very simple and quick. You can add your own stocks of course.
   
5. Maps: This is rather cool. However, it was out of date on some information when I tried to use it to locate nearby restaurants in San Jose last Sunday. Sadly, I hadn't had a working version of Yelp or Urbanspoon at that time. Still, the GPS is awesome.
   
6. Weather. I like it. Very easy to add various locations to see the weather.
7. Clock: I use this a lot. It's got four features. The World Clock, for times around the world. I've added various locations that I'm interested for purposes of work and personal use. The Alarm Clock allows you to add all sorts of Alarm profiles. I have it set up for when I need to get up at 5:15am or 7:15am on the weekdays, as well as any other specialized alarm needs. You can activate these alarms at will by tapping "On" or "Off". There is also a timer feature and a stopwatch feature. I've used them all for various purposes.
   
8. Mail: works rather well with Gmail.
   
9. Contacts: syncs great with my Macbook. No complaints.
10. Voicemail. It's very cool. I just need to stop answering phone calls so I can have more voice mails to take advantage of its features.
11. SMS: Pretty nice. Easy to use. It's a crying shame MMS isn't yet available.
12. Photos: very easy to use.
    
13. Videos: Again, very easy to use. I've also converted some of my Tivo recordings for the Iphone. That works out quite well, too.
14. Ring tones. I like iTunes' Ringtones feature. Granted, you have to buy their songs from them. This kinda blows. But you get to determine how you want your ring tone to be. I've purchased 3 for now.
    
15. Web surfing: really, compared to other phones, this is fantastic. On 3G access times are great. I can access so many more sites that were impossible on my smartphone. Navigation is a snap with the touch screen. Adding bookmarks are great, as well. And if you are a Macbook (or similar not-as-mobile computing user), you can easily import your safari shortcuts over. This becomes handy for applications like Deli.cio.us.
    

So, what would I like to see the iPhone do? Cut and paste, as others desire, and MMS. Other needs may flare up as time goes on. But those are the big ones that were obvious. Then again, I don't recall my smart phone being very savvy in that regard, either.

In short, I love the iPhone. The information above was acquired on the go. I haven't had a chance to really sit down and work with the iPhone. It is just that easy to assimilate on the run. The other phones I have and have had were great, but this takes it to a whole new level. The multi touch makes reading web pages very easy. No need to squint! Yes, there are a few bugs that need to be worked out. My iPhone has spontaneously rebooted twice. This is a known issue. But this hasn't been a show-stopper. I do not regret my purchase one bit.

Yes, there are non-iPhone owners that look upon us iPhone consumers with chagrin. Others were gloating at all the problems Apple had during the release weekend. Yes, there were definite bumps in the road for those who updated their firmware, or those who tried to use the Mobile Me. Sure, the outcome was not perfect. However, 1 million phones were moved around the world in 3 days. I don't recall any other mobile device having such a high opening weekend. If you expected perfection for such a release you need to report for urinalysis testing and prepare your alibi claiming you ate a case of poppy seed muffins. Given the amount of people who wanted the device right away, the roll out was very well done.