Archie's 1 BIG "Dislike" of the iPhone and 15 "Likes"

[surur]

Its not that the Treo is so great, but the IPhone is a really really poor smartphone, in fact there is even a debate if it qualifies as such, which tells us a lot already.

Surur

 

[Pearl_Diva]

This is funny.

Your in a place called "Treocentral" where what, 98% of us actually own a Treo and you act surprised (claim victim?) when 63+ threads appear for a non-Treo device that is not out yet and a handful of people here are skeptical of it's supposed "amazingness".

You have to admit, many people are kind of Treo fan boys and girls around here, first and foremost. So anything that might be an improvement seems to get dismissed as not living up to Treo standards. But I see this on HoFo too, every phone maker has devoted fans who slam other makers. Looks like a fact of life.

Let's just have fun with ALL our tech devices and be happy. And that is my sugar-coated post for the day.

 

[oalvarez]

that's actually subjective since it is your opinion.

plus, you did buy a Palm 750. so what does that say about you?

what it says is that i try to be as smart as a consumer that i can. i believe in testing a device that i have interest in or that might also meet my needs. concurrently, i own a Pearl. the 750 can be returned as i am still well within the 30 day return period. my choice in phones don't say anything about me as my friends, wife, and children do. your anarchistic way does say something about you.

enjoy your life and whatever device you choose.

 

[MacUser]

Its not that the Treo is so great, but the IPhone is a really really poor smartphone, in fact there is even a debate if it qualifies as such, which tells us a lot already.

Surur

Wow, put that cart before the horse...

I believe the hardware is set. However, Steve can supplement the software we saw on the presentation model with widgets, apps or even make the code available to developers. We MAY want to wait till release before we call it a "really really poor smartphone".

 

[stroths]

Wow, put that cart before the horse...

I believe the hardware is set. However, Steve can supplement the software we saw on the presentation model with widgets, apps or even make the code available to developers. We MAY want to wait till release before we call it a "really really poor smartphone".

Or even if its a really great smartphone

 

[surur]

Or even if its a really great smartphone

Exactly! My assessment is based on actual statements made, while the IPhone lovers seem to base it on 'faith in Jobs'.

From what Jobs said, its a closed system, he showed the vast majority of the software on the system, and he told us it does not sync with exchange etc etc.

Even worse are the people who say they will buy IPhone 1.0 because IPhone 2.0 will be better. Where's the sense in that, unless its about just supporting Apple, because they are so great.

It will be real funny if IPhone 2.0 comes with call and hang-up keys, due to consumer demand. Jobs however will probably remain stubborn and have people answer the phone by shaking it, and everybody will eat it it up because its 'new and innovative', whereas its just different to be different.

Surur

 

[Malatesta]

your anarchistic way does say something about you.

(OT) I'll bite. What does it say about me Mr. Freud?

 

[surur]

(OT) I'll bite. What does it say about me Mr. Freud?

That you are not a happy consumer who will always buy the latest shiny shiny, just because its new?

Surur

 

[Malatesta]

That you are not a happy consumer who will always buy the latest shiny shiny, just because its new?

Surur

lol, that works. Or I "don't have irrational company allegiances, but do believe in questioning orthodoxy?"

 

[oalvarez]

so very deep and well thought out, and with empirical evidence at that.

yes, a consumer who can afford to purchase new technology with the option of returning it to the vendor.

"lol"

 

[Malatesta]

so very deep and well thought out, and with empirical evidence at that.

that's a very fair description of me, thank you.

 

[specimen38]

This was a good re-read!

One BIG dislike.

1. No OTA syncing. What are they thinking?

The only thing I can imagine that may happen here is that once .Mac is updated and announced, they will allow for cellular based syncing to .Mac services. Still; If this is the case, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!



Now for my many likey-likes.

1. Mac friendly. (Eat it Palm)

2. Context sensitive keyboard that pops up when needed. This is extremely useful and really well done.

3. Bizarre and unheard of concepts like "touching your music" and "Visual Voicemail" actually make sense in using the iPhone.

4. The iPhone screen fa?ade can actually be quickly and simply wiped clean with its unique edgeless design. This is to say nothing of the specially selected screen material chosen for use with grimy, greasy fingers.

5. 5 hours of battery life for talk/video/bwrowsing; 16 hours for audio playback. Note that this is with wi-fi and bluetooth going at the same time. This is unbelievable performance.

6. Two-finger zooming gesture

7. Two-finger pinching gesture

8. One-finger scrolling gesture

9. One-finger swiping gesture

10. THE BEST mobile browsing experience. Period. . . . I... I mean period

11. Push-IMAP support, not that IDLE stuff or the fake pushing either.

12. Coolest implementation of Google Maps I have ever seen.

13. Easiest Conference call-management I have ever seen.

14. The keyboard - I know a little bit about what they are doing to make this unique keyboard a success. Every little space on that screen is tracking and measuring and relating to every other little space. There is a great deal of processing power required JUST for the simple act of typing. And reading how your finger hits the screen and what part of your finger hits first and the total amount of space that it hits ? all in an effort to account for inaccuracies. There is a lot of research that has been done here. They even take into account a person's inability to accurately predict what part of their finger actually hits the screen. You see, it seems that we fail to take into account the curve of our finger and how it actually hits the screen based on the overhead view we have in watching the screen as we type. To this end, they also enlarge the keys as our finger approaches the screen (not yet touching) so that our brain can have some verification. Then of course there is the software based auto-correcting type of feature that analyzes which keys you MIGHT have meant to hit and figures out the word you wanted.

15. With all this, this phone device still holds an incredible amount of "potential". By this, I mean to say it can bring yet even more to the table.

This is evidenced by even just looking at the initial screen shots (probably purposefully done for marketing reasons). You can see that there is so much more room for other widgets to be loaded. As if to say, "This phone will take us into the future." For example; it seems logical they will convert FileMaker Mobile, which I bought for the Palm OS about 5 years ago, so that it will run on the iPhone.

And then there is the obvious move to implement interfacing with the iPod. I mean they have to keep the sales of these going too, right? How else but to allow each device to cover for the others shortcomings. In the future we may be able to plug in high capacity (30, 40, 60, 80, even 100 GB) iPods to transfer content to and from an iPhone. I doing so, Apple will be enhancing the usefulness of each of these separate products and pushing sales when considering a "Halo" type of affect.

 

[archie]

This was a good re-read!

Thanks.
I was just reading over it again inside of your reply and wanted to clarify one thing. I note that the 5 hour battery life rating is with wi-fi and bluetooth going at the same time. That is true but only in the sense that it is actively checking to see if these wireless technologies need to hook up to any available signals that the phone detects. This polling of sorts obviously doesn't take as much power as actively using an established connection to say, maybe stream a song over the net or viewing webpages.

 

[archie]

Also; in thinking about my one big "Dislike", I can now understand why Apple chose to not enable wireless syncing. After having some time to absorb some of the facts, a person has to realize that to sync the stuff to the iPhone over a Bluetooth connection could take a lonnnnggg time. You could conceivably have 8 GB of stuff (contacts, calendar events, songs, movies, etc.) to send to it over a Bluetooth connection at like 500kbps.

That would take longer than the battery life would cover. This would be unreliable. This is probably the reason Apple chose not to enable over-the-air syncing.

Hopefully, Apple will eventually find it beneficial to possibly enable a subset of syncing services that they could enable for over-the-air syncing. Like maybe just contacts, calendar events and to-do lists.

 

[bruckwine]

Also; in thinking about my one big "Dislike", I can now understand why Apple chose to not enable wireless syncing. After having some time to absorb some of the facts, a person has to realize that to sync the stuff to the iPhone over a Bluetooth connection could take a lonnnnggg time. You could conceivably have 8 GB of stuff (contacts, calendar events, songs, movies, etc.) to send to it over a Bluetooth connection at like 500kbps.

That would take longer than the battery life would cover. This would be unreliable. This is probably the reason Apple chose not to enable over-the-air syncing.

Hopefully, Apple will eventually find it beneficial to possibly enable a subset of syncing services that they could enable for over-the-air syncing. Like maybe just contacts, calendar events and to-do lists.

actually wouldn't that be the sensible thing from the start? I can't say for sure, but can't the Palm Desktop not do selective syncing? And I assume WM phones can (my nokia 6101 can with the nokia software) Correct me if I'm wrong as I've only had my phone fro a month...

 

[archie]

actually wouldn't that be the sensible thing from the start? I can't say for sure, but can't the Palm Desktop not do selective syncing? And I assume WM phones can (my nokia 6101 can with the nokia software) Correct me if I'm wrong as I've only had my phone fro a month...

They will probably do it but it will only be availble to .Mac users ($69 - $99 a year additional subscription fee). I don't know this for sure, just speculation.

 

[archie]

This was a good re-read!

Here's an updated list of Likes:

1. It's Mac friendly.

2. Two-finger stretching gesture

3. Two-finger pinching gesture

4. One-finger scrolling gesture

5. One-finger swiping gesture

6. One-finger flicking gesture

7. Implied stability and reliability

8. That incredible scrolling with rubber band effects

9. THE BEST mobile browsing experience... period.

10. Easiest conference call management I have ever seen.

11. Coolest implementation of Google Maps I have ever seen.

12. Push-IMAP support like a Blackberry, not that fake pushing either.

13. Continual surveying of wi-fi availability with automatic switching.

14. Appropriate and usable visual cues within the slickest user interface I have ever seen.

15. It doesn't have service provider logos plastered all over it.

16. Context sensitive keyboard that pops up when needed. This is extremely useful and really well done.

17. Cool little active badges that adhere to icons quickly revealing neccessary information like how many new emails came in or how many voice mail messages you have, how many pending calendar alarms you have or how many SMS text messages you have.

18. Bizarre and unheard of concepts like "touching your music" and "Visual Voicemail" (random access) actually make sense in using the iPhone.

19. Voice mail scrubbing. Lets you scrub through the voice mail timeline to quickly get to where you want.

20. Coverflow browsing of music and media. Plus, you can flick an album and it spins around to reveal the song list to choose from on the back... just like physical albums.

21. The iPhone screen fa?ade can actually be quickly and simply wiped clean with its unique edgeless, no-bezel design. This is to say nothing of the specially selected screen material chosen for use with grimy, greasy fingers.

22. An external speaker (for speakerphone functionality AND iPod use) that doesn't get covered up when you lay it down like every other phone on the market. Thank you.

23. 5 hours of battery life for talk/video/bwrowsing; 16 hours for audio playback. This is unbelievable performance.

24. Context sensitive, smoothly transforming control surfaces provide an intuitive user interface.

25. Big bubble editing lets you touch and hold the screen to get a zoomed in area of text for precise cursor placement with your finger.

26. The keyboard - I know a little bit about what they are doing to make this unique keyboard a success. Every little space on that screen is tracking and measuring and relating to every other little space. There is a great deal of processing power required JUST for the simple act of typing. And reading how your finger hits the screen and what part of your finger hits first and the total amount of space that it hits — all in an effort to account for inaccuracies. There is a lot of research that has been done here. They even take into account a person's inability to accurately predict what part of their finger actually hits the screen. You see, it seems that we fail to take into account the curve of our finger and how it actually hits the screen based on the overhead view we have in watching the screen as we type. To this end, they also enlarge the keys as our finger approaches the screen (not yet touching) so that our brain can have some verification. Then of course there is the software based auto-correcting type of feature that analyzes which keys you MIGHT have meant to hit and figures out the word you wanted.

With all this, this phone device still holds an incredible amount of "potential". By this, I mean to say it can bring yet even more to the table. This is evidenced by even just looking at the initial screen shots (probably purposefully done for marketing reasons). You can see that there is so much more room for other widgets to be loaded. As if to say, "This phone will take us into the future." For example; it seems logical they will convert FileMaker Mobile, which I bought for the Palm OS about 5 years ago, so that it will run on the iPhone.

And then there is the obvious move to implement interfacing with the iPod. I mean they have to keep the sales of these going too, right? How else but to allow each device to cover for the others shortcomings. Upon the phone's release, we may be able to plug in high capacity (30, 40, 60, 80, even 100 GB) iPods to transfer content like documents, music and videos to and from an iPhone. In enabling this sort of capability, Apple will be enhancing the usefulness of each of these separate products, consequently pushing sales when considering a "Halo" type of affect.

 

[archie]

My new list of dislikes include no Flash support. This is disturbing because a lot of the stuff I do is Flash based, so it hits me particularly hard.

There will probably be more once the phone is released and I recognize what it is that is missing. I'll think about more in the mean time.

 

[specimen38]

Archie,

I read your revised likes and dislikes. Again, very good info. I think we'll all have a lot to feast on come June. I'm guessing Apple will have a June surprise. Another phone scaled for a different market segment. I think we're in good hands. I am not gushing about Apple - as I know Nokia, HTC and other companies have introduced innovations to the cell phone market. But known have done it so elegantly and with so many enhancements integrated.

Here's an updated list of Likes:

 

[copernicus]

Forever iTunes?

I could not be more impressed at what I have seen of the iPhone so far, BUT, among the FEW things that make me feel uncomfortable is that it will have to do everything through iTunes. iTunes takes quite a long time to load on my 512 meg XP machine and it consumes quite a bit of resources. Having to load it everytime one wants to connect seems like it's going to become tedious after a while, no? I hope someone (Apple or some "approved" third party) comes up with a leaner program for basic jobs.