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iPhone Release Date Is June 29
willith writes "Apple has placed three iPhone commercials on their Web site today, and each ends with a tag: 'Coming June 29.' This puts to rest the question of when the thing will hit the streets, but there are still worries about allocation — AppleInsider is reporting that the supplies at Cingular/AT&T stores may be relatively tight." And some fanatic sites are already parsing the ads for such enigmas as the "mystery app."
Please, please, please Slashdot editors, can you have mercy and only post eight or ten fan boy raves about how amazingly wonderful their shiny new phones are, and how the iPhone is going to Change The Face of Communications in Our Lifetime?
I mean, it's a phone for God's sake, not a cure for cancer.
Three Squirrels
Okay... but does it run Linux?
Don't call me a cowboy, and don't tell me to slow down!
They know how to deliver, the pipeline to the stores will be full.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Has anyone seen the iPhone commercial where someone is looking for a seafood restaurant, does a search, clicks on the restaurant on the map, sees the info, and clicks the phone number to call the restaurant? How is that innovative? I've been able to do that on my blackberry for over 3 years now.
Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I'm not happy with my cellphone. I have a Treo 700w and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of resetting it at least once per day. I'm tired of a browser that won't actually show a properly rendered page. I'll be glad to get a cell phone with a well designed interface.
The two potentially big problems with it I see are:
1. Lack of tactile feedback in the UI. I.e. you have to look at it and concentrate on the UI to use it.
2. The fragility of the touch screen.
As one /.'er said about the Microsoft Surface "if only it fitted in my shirt pocket.."
I think you're being naive to think that it's hype alone which is fuelling this product launch. There is an actual demand for this kind of tech. Even Microsoft who gets hammered constantly on here, received huge praise for embracing touch interfaces. People want these devices, if you don't that's fine.. but you're going to be considered ignorant for thinking this is redundant technology. I for one have a specific hate for mobile phones today, they come across as utterly clueless to what is ease of use. I have no problem sitting there to learn their silly interfaces, I do have a problem for why they are evidently programmed lazily, excessively complicated to do simple actions, sluggish and with a status quo attitude. There has been minimal advancement in the mobile phone field. Even giant like nokia and sony just rehash their exact same interface across mobile phones. Crude evolutions from their decade old black and white devices. We have the tech now, it's about time a big player started making it widely available. (Unlike the LG Prada phone which, despite having a touch screen, seems to think that finger tips are 3px wide.)
I think the assumption is that if your browser, in the year 2007, is too broken to view embedded object tags, you probably don't have the money to spend.
And if you're a dirty GNU/FSF type, Apple certainly doesn't want its stuff to be seen in public with you. Guilt by association and all that.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
From TFA:
However, there is an odd shot in the newly released "How- To" iPhone ad, where the screen goes from the traditional 11 icon view, to a new 12 icon view. (See below).
It's a pet peeve of mine that people use the word "traditional" for things which were invented very very recently. Traditional things are generational things, handed down from one generation to another. You can't make it artificially, and you can't make it quickly.
Reminds me of this brand new Irish Pub that just opened up down the road from me. As I am an alcoholic, I was right there belly to the bar on the SECOND day they were open. I was amazed to see that all the walls of the brand new bar were full of photographs of customers having good times with their friends, in this friendly neighborhood establishment. Amusingly, for a neighborhood bar, it was surprisingly inaccessible. You couldn't really walk to it, as there were no sidewalks, just rows and rows of parking spots. I wouldn't want to walk there anyway, because the traffic from the Bed Bath and Beyond next door is crazy.
So, these photos were all over the walls of this pub, showing hundreds of people having an amazingly good time. I was really jealous of those people who showed up at this brand new bar, on the first day it was open. They were the lucky ones, having had the opportunity to both create tradition, and have a good time doing it too. But still, it was a good feeling to see that my neighborhood bar had created in just one day what some pubs in Ireland are apparently still working on after 300 years or more.
I think that the new Irish bar next door really captured the tradition which my neighborhood strip mall holds in such high regard. I'm not sure that these little icons on a phone can measure up to that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
as other things like the xbox 360 and ps3 as you need to do paper work / sign up for cell phone service and that takes a lot longer then selling other things.
also that will make selling them on ebay a lot harder. The I-phone may even have a forced data plan.
Are you afraid congress might change June to have only 28 days?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Jobs has never over hyped a product just like Gates has never over hyped a product. Remember those four pillars of Longhorn? Turns out that the Vista house only needed one pillar to stay up...both are sales people. Sales people hype. They can't do much else so let them hype.
I always wondered where this setting was...
I disagree about the fragility of the touch screen. If children's devices (Nintendo DS) can have a touch screen, I don't see why adult devices should be concerned about the fragility of such a thing.
.... hold on. I need to go write a business plan.
As for the tactile feedback, I think you're underestimating the UI mechanisms used to use the device. The most pressing activity on a phone is dialing. If you can solve the ease of dialing issue, you can make everything much easier. If you look at the demo of the Google map, you'll see what I'm talking about. It makes dialing easy. No current phone does this right now. None.
About the only way this could get easier is if they start scanning your voice mail for phone numbers to associate with the visual voice mail
Woo hoo! It is so sweet to see my old favorite local restaurant from SF (Pacific Catch) in one of the commercials!
Man, I used to eat there twice a day sometimes.
Mmmmm Hawiian Poke Tuna. Mmmmmmm. Sweet potato fries. Mmmmmmmm.
MMMm.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
And the lack of a platform that people can develop for freely. And the inability to swap cards so you can use whatever provider you want.
I don't think lack of a platform that people can develop for freely ever made a difference. The Motorola RAZR, a completely terrible phone, did not sell amazingly well because consumers looked at it and said, "Wow, this phone is amazing. It presents a platform that people can develop for freely."
It sold really well because it was marketed well.
You're a brave poster, sir or madam.
:)
Never in the history of slashdot has one relatively ordinary product received so much publicity based on so little actual information. Honestly, it was better when this site wrote off the iPod as a doomed device
Meanwhile, here is a guide to pro-Apple moderator psychology to help you cope through the savage moderation clusterf*ck your post will currently be experiencing:
The Mind of the iMod:
1. I love Apple blindly
2. I will flame anyone who criticises Apple
3. I will flame anyone who criticises anyone who praises Apple
4. Because of 2 and 3 above, I can legitimately say that any post critical of Apple or Apple fan-boy-ism is "flame bait", as I myself will flame them
5. Therefore, all posts critical of Apple will be moderated flame bait
Read Pynchon.
Whoa, wait and minute. I thought that Apple made a big fuss about not allowing the Cell companies to lock users in to long term contracts with subsidized phones and that was why were were going to pay 500+ for the iPhone. The end of the commercial indicated we have to sign a 2 year minimum plan with AT&T. I certainly don't want to pay out the ass for this phone and still get locked into a company.
True about laptop prices, but then I don't wanna have to lug around a 7 pound laptop while traveling through Europe for a few weeks when most of what I need to do can be accomplished on a phone (iPhone or whatever) or similar device (basic email, international sms and phone calls, access my contacts, pictures, internet, music, videos, etc.). (Although if the iPhone can't be unlocked, that'll be a major bill. Just got back from 2 weeks across the Mediterranean and my phone bill came out to $200 for data and phone calls!)
Plus most people who are gonna buy this don't even know what putty, ssh or even linux is. It does what normal people need it to do, and it makes it easy to access those functions. This is not a device for the linux loving slashdot community. None of my "normal" friends care that they can install Java (or Brew) apps on their phones, they can barely get most of the functions working properly like syncing a contact list to a computer. Why do you think phone stores offer to copy your contacts to your new phone when you upgrade it?
Clearly you aren't appreciating the vast amount of innovation that went into this device.
File Deletion is Murder.
My xv6700 can already play mp3s, browse Google maps, take notes, record videos, etc
Sure. But this is going to be just like the iPod and the "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." response. You can point to devices that functionally do most of the things that the iPhone will do, or maybe even more things (like run Putty and all that). What you won't find is a device that triangulates so well between features people want, high quality user-experience, and excellent industrial design.
I've been thinking about this, and I really can't see anything to be concerned about. Several things come to mind:
I'll wait until I actually see one in action to pass judgment, but I'm a lot more skeptical of the "no tactile feedback" argument than I used to be...
Was the iPod revolutionary when it came out? AFAIK the Dell Jukebox was also around at that time when the iPod came out. The difference? Not much when you compare the features. They both had similar battery life, they both played both played music for your ears. Where is the difference then? The Dell Jukebox would make your ears bleed! What I mean is, you don't have to be revolutionary to beat the competition. Just take what others are doing wrong, and do it right, or in a way that you think people will enjoy. The iPod wasn't/isn't successful because of marketing only. It does a great job at being an mp3 player and not a piece of shit that you battle with just to get it working.
What about the iPhone? It's the same concept if you ask me. There are pocket pc's and blackberries that have many features that the iPhone promiss to offer its customers and whatnot. The difference is more in the interface and how you'll use it rather than discovering new features.
I say this cause I see a lot of people commenting on the iphone and saying that "X" and "Y" devices do what the iphone does.
AFAIK, a Geo Metro and a Lexus IS350 can both go from point A to point B and reach the maximum allowed speed limits on (almost) any road you'll be travelling on. The difference is the experience you get out of driving those cars.
Why are people so obsessed with dialing?... How often do you actually do that?
You got pretty much everyone you know whom you're likely to call already in your address book, and the few times you actually need to enter a phone number will be when you didn't look it up on through google.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Honestly though, with laptops at $500 nowadays, there isn't much reason for these kinds of devices.
1) I'm 100% sure I would never want to ski with a 5lb laptop.
2) I'm pretty sure I will never be in good enough shape to not mind carrying a 5lb laptop when I'm hiking above 12,000 feet.
Granted, not everybody lives in a state (CO) where they can take off a day in the middle of the week and do such things, but I can. And the iPhone will just make it a little bit easier... (I sure hope it runs an SSH client. Please, please, please.)
Thanks, that was classic! (And even though I grudgingly like the design of the IPod. Which I am yet to buy.)
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
If you're some sort of tragic square who needs to run Windows
Yeah man, it's like, can ya dig it... these freaky cats at Microsoft they, like, want you to believe they are innovative and shit, but, it's like, they just take ideas man. And ideas want to be free, like beer man, ideas can't be packaged and sold, they need to run free in the wild, man! Hay brother, keep fightin' fascism from those unhip squares at redmond, man... use the tools of the people, spoken word, rhythm and buying apple products, man!
OTOH, my Palm and some of my phones with exposed glass have gotten broken. Now, these broke with significant force, never just by dropping, and they still worked for quite a while. My iPods, which are carried abound thrown in a bag of in a pocket, albeit in a case, have never broke.
The first item is the lesser of the issue. I have not been able to use a phone by touch for years. To make a call on my phone, I have to look at it. OTOH, like many people, the phone is just the boosting station for the ear piece. With voice dial one does not ever have to take out the phone. Ir just needs to be nearby.
Really, this phone is almost exactly what I hoped apple would create, except I would have been happy with a mini form factor, but I understand why the did this. As I have mentioned, the killer app for a phone is break away from anachronistic "dialing" the phone. There is no reason why making a call should not be as simple as stating someone's name. The lack of tactile feedback for music is a problem, though. I wonder if they have included voice commands to move through the tracks.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I don't think the Treo would be a terribly popular phone if either of these was a serious issue.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No thanks Apple, unlike portable music players, people actually are happy with their cellphones.
Guess again, Mr. Ballmer. Apple's done the research, and found that you are mistaken. They don't jump into a crowded market unless they know that it's very poorly-served.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Tactile feedback is a non-issue.
I was concerned about the lack of tactile feedback on my CarPC 8'' monitor when I build the machine about a year and a half ago.
After you get used to it, you don't miss it. It's just fine without.
-
You mean my Windows mobile crappy re-boot a couple times a day PDA phone. Oh, to be sure, I love what it should do. Getting it to do it and do it logically is about as easy as getting a suntan at the south pole.
I mean, having even a basic logical way to close an application would seem a no brainer. I'm nigh of the opinion all present PDA phone manufacturers CEOs should be dragged out of bed and beaten. NO ONE I KNOW is HAPPY with their cell phone PDAs. We just need what they offer and we endure.
I for one and over-joyed for the iPhone. Why? Cause at the very least it will get Microsoft to move it's but. And other phone vendors to try new things. Nokia, HTC, LG, you name it. They know if they do nothing and the iPhone works as displayed and is a success then they are looking at a market 5 yrs from now where iPhone is synonymous cell phone as iPod is to MP3 player.
I think the "How To" commercial does a pretty good job of showing why I expect the iPhone is going to do well.
/.ers obsess over having in their phones. But if they can see how an iPhone can be used for all their calls/mail/web/music&movies in 30sec of watching TV, *that* they'll like.
They visually explained how to use every major feature of the thing in a 30sec TV spot.
Most people neither know or care about UMTS, or HSDPA, or AGPS, or any of the other high tech acronyms that certain
Technology has progressed to the point where a well thought out interface matters more than having the latest and greatest bullet points on a spec sheet some months before the other guy. The bottleneck that needs to be addressed these days isn't generally in the machine, it's often between the user and the machine.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
No, but few of us use our computers while driving, walking, cooking, or involved on another task.
And voice recognition while decent is not perfect. And I find it often more dangerous fuss with a hands free kit or sit there repeatedly having to tell voice-recognition. No, "try again" not that, no, "try again"...no..."try again"
Where as my phones that had large tactile surfaces I could have the most common number programmed and simply press and hold "1", or "2" and easily dial the corresponding person with little trouble. And I found such to be the safest methods of dialing while occupied.
Right from the beginning, at the speech made by Jobs at MacWorld, he mentioned that the iPhone was going to be sold for $499/$599 with a two-year contract with Cingular (now AT&T). This is on par with other high-end devices on all carriers. They never said that the price was going to be for the unemcumbered unit.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Oh iPhone, THE new shiny toy. So sexy, flexy, and coy. If only i knew all you could do, will your unix core make your flexible? more Will you have enough ram, and a fast CPU? I expect so much, will my wishes come true? for now good-bye, i'll see you on the 29th.
The only thing we had ever heard fro certain was a two year plan - anything else was speculation. You didn't treat speculation as gospel, did you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And then there is the question of what plans are going to available for the phone. The standard data plan is not going be nearly enough bandwidth for reading a newspaper and Yahoo, especially considering how bloated the NYT is getting lately.
I will admit the phone has some potential, although I think it is too big for casual daily use. If they are going to sell it like a phone, that will be great. If they are going to get into the games that cingular liked to play in the past, then I will give it a miss until it becomes less hot.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Of course, all that has been said of Apple products many, many times before:
1977: The Apple II: one of many personal computers.
1984: Macintosh - just another GUI, hard to upgrade.
1998: iMac - just another all-in-one PC, hard to upgrade.
1999-2001: OS X - just another Unix (or proprietary OS, depending on your POV)
2001: iPod - just another MP3 player.
Honestly, is it really a surprise when people are excited that Apple is coming out with a phone?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
What makes you assume that children have a monopoly on dropping phones, squeezing by tight spaces (warehouse in my case), and friend's hazings? Not to mention bumpy four-wheelers, bouncing horses, oopses while repelling, crowds that jostle, and yes, kids that swipe the phone to see how cool it is?
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I have the cingular 8525 phone. It has a touch screen.
When do I look at the buttons while I'm using it? Whenever I'm going through one of those phone based menus: "Press 1 for english". Older phones, I'd keep the phone by my ear and press the buttons. I could generally be doing something else, and not pay much attention to it. Now, I have to either put it on speakerphone (bad at work), or be ready to pull the phone away from my ear, hit the button, then get the phone back into position.
I want to see what the Iphone looks like after it's been thrown in a bag with some car keys, loose change, and sand... then shaken hard for a few hours.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Consider that a mere 24 years ago the Motorola DynaTAC would be the equivalent of your great-great grandparent, were we to equate it in human years (4 "generations" - and even then, some might argue that we're beyond 4th generation cellphone technology).
Your mouse doesn't provide tactile feedback when you move the cursor over a button, indeed. but it does indeed provide some feedback in the form of the 'click' sound that gives mouse clicking its name. Granted, trackpads that support tapping don't provide much in the way of feedback either, and I like them plenty (provided they're big and mounted shallow, like my iBook's).
Honestly, average number of pockets in a suit and dress pants or cargo pants: 7. Include a vest with the cargo pants and I can roll that up to about 14 pockets. Assuming you carry your keys and wallet, that leaves room for your napkin, i-pod, cell phone, a random 3 ft chord (lets just say ethernet), blackberry and deck of Magic: The Gathering.
/.
So what pocket do you carry the condom in?
oh wait, this is
Technology isn't about sitting on your ass and stopping innovation because everyone's "happy". That might be the game for the cell phone companies, who have spent years cramming more and more functionality into an interface designed solely for dialing telephone numbers. Sorry, but that's just stupid. Cell phones have been overloading the touch-tone phone interface for years, and no real innovation has gone on in the cell phone UI. It's about time someone came up with an interface that wasn't just "Let's put more buttons on it! On both sides!"
It's too bad you will probably get modded down for having an opinion that runs against the tide of apple love, because it is a totally valid one to have.
You ask what the point is? Apple doesn't create devices with the most features or best specs out there. Apple makes devices that makes those features and specs accessible to swaths of humanity who wouldn't otherwise have time or inclination to figure it out.
To play MP3's on my phone, I have to unplug it from the charger, take out the battery, take out the MicroSD card (sold separately), pick some MP3's, copy them over manually, re-assemble it all, powercycle the phone, press the dedicated "Play MP3" button on the outside of the phone, then scroll through a flat list of every MP3 file on the device. I suspect the moment you drop in the iPhone phone to charge, iTunes will kick in and sync your music selection automatically. 7 steps reduced to 0. There is no way in heck I could get my mother to play music on my phone, but an iPod is totally within her reach.
And that's pretty much what all of Apple's stuff is like. They cut out the dumb stuff so that you can get on with the business of doing whatever it is that you were going to do. For the iPod, it was giving the user a scrollable wheel and a Database backend, so that instead of a million up / down button presses the user could quickly scroll around an intelligent (and automatically created) heiarchy. iChat is great because you literally don't need to set anything up to have a household chat network, and setting up AV chatting was far, far easier than in any other client of the time.
Apple thinks about their designs so that you don't have to. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to pick up a device the first time and be able to use it as if you've been using it for years. Even to an inquisitive technophile like myself, I love that I don't have to know what's going on behind the scenes if I don't want to... it just all works the way I expect.
Phone UI's are horrible. To send a video message on my phone, I need to press a little button with a horizontal line (not the button in the middle with the big cingular guy), go to camera, record video, Press the other little horizontal line again, Flip Vertically, Press the little horizontal line again, record, Save it as a file with a hideously random name, go back out to the main menu, go into the SMS application, write out an appropriate SMS, attach the file, find the appropriate e-mail recipient, send the file, get a message back saying that the message couldn't be sent but we deleted the draft anyway, go back in and recreate the message with the file again, send it out again, and get a message back from the recipient in an hour asking what weird format the video file was in.
Oh, and a phone is not a laptop. You can stick a phone in your pocket and carry it with you to a resturant. You can pull out your phone on the road and google maps just where the heck Vacaville is and how to get back to Santa Cruz. Your xv6700 should have shown you that a 2" phone in your pocket is a lot more practical than a 15" laptop in your bag.
The ______ Agenda
I guess history is bound to repeat itself, eh? At least now it's just a comment, instead of the summary.
Of course, the phone market is very different from the audio players market, but how about and old pearl of wisdom called "Wait and see what happens"? I know I will.
Yes, well who do you think the target audience is for this phone? If Apple was going after tech savvy users, they would have made something like existing smart phones. Most people praise the Blackberry or some palm device. A few people like the MS products. Apple is trying to repeat the success of the iPod where they got ordinary users to buy an MP3/AAC player. This is a logical upgrade for them. People don't like carrying phones and iPods around with them. They want one device. Apple now has to compete against various phones with MP3 or WMA support. This is their answer.
You can put Apple down for a lot of things, but making this device isn't one of them. Perhaps it was fatally stupid to make it exclusive to Cingular/AT there are a lot of cell phone subscribers on other networks why might want an integrated iPod/phone. Apple will eventually lose the number one spot in portable music just as Sony lost it previously. Apple fans will be sad and "PC" fans will be happy.
Apple did not innovate with the iPod either but that was a big success. They have massive marketshare... almost windows like. Apple used the Microsoft business model of duplicating existing ideas but changing that one little thing that makes all the difference. Steve used the Bill Gates play-book.
Personally, I won't be purchasing an iPhone. I hate cingular and I don't want to spend $500 on a phone. Apple does not get pricing for the midwest. $500 isn't that much money in New York City or San Fransisco. Its a lot of money in Michigan, or Iowa.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
At least prior to getting a smart phone. don't have much trouble remembering phone numbers, and you need to use them when using a normal land line. Well, with a regular cellphone where I could feel the buttons I could blind dial with no problem. Thus I found it easier to just punch in the number real fast. Now that I have a smart phone I use a phone book, simply because the lack of tactile feedback makes dialing harder. Certainly something I miss though.
I, however, am completely interested in hearing that you are not interested in hearing that he is not interested. I find it interesting that you complain that his interest is a non interest, and that this interesting topic only be used for non interesting points of interest, such as yours.
Interesting.
"I think you're underestimating the UI mechanisms used to use the device."
.... hold on. I need to go write a business plan."
No, we're not.
"If you look at the demo of the Google map, you'll see what I'm talking about. It makes dialing easy. No current phone does this right now. None."
Of course they do. Handmark Pocket Express has existed for years and Google maps runs on cell phones already. If you're going to be ignorant, try not to be so arrogant about it.
Of course, none of that matters because you don't usually place calls be searching through maps. Ordinarily you use the keypad or the contacts database and Apple hasn't improved that at all.
"About the only way this could get easier is if they start scanning your voice mail for phone numbers to associate with the visual voice mail
You do that, fanboy.
I disagree about the fragility of the touch screen. If children's devices (Nintendo DS) can have a touch screen, I don't see why adult devices should be concerned about the fragility of such a thing.
Because a Nintendo DS is ca. US$100 and an iPhone will ba ca. US$500.
I also suspect that since you'll have to do everything to the iPhone through the touch UI, and because it's not going to use a stylus, the iPhone's screen will see more "use".
As for the tactile feedback, I think you're underestimating the UI mechanisms used to use the device. The most pressing activity on a phone is dialing.
Text messages are another that springs instantly to mind. Realisticaly, though, it's basically everything that involves using the phone. You've probably never thought much about the tactile feedback and hence don't realise how much you use it, even if only unconsciously.
For example: you know that to get to a certain UI element you have to do a certain number of button pushes. Say, two down arrow presses, across one and "enter". With real buttons, you get feedback when a button is pushed and your muscle memory can make getting to UI elements you are familiar with an automatic, practically instant procedure (because you don't need to watch it to make sure each action was successful, that you didn't "overshoot", etc). Further, you know where your thumb is relative to the next button you have to push, because you can feel it. With the iPhone, you will have to actively watch the UI as it changes to navigate through it, to know which intermediate step it is at during each phase and to know where your thumb needs to be.
So, you never send any messages? I know SMS isn't that popular in the US, but it is in the rest of the world. Tactile feedback is definitely very important. I remember moving to a Nokia 3250 from a SE t68i and noticing how difficult the 3250's joy stick was to use since it didn't have a sharp enough edge on it causing my thumb to slip off.
Max.
Unless you plan to find your contacts exclusively through scrolling, you're still in need of a keypad. Too bad the iPhone's one sucks balls.
Apple can pretend that the user doesn't actually need to enter data all they want. Watching their demos you'd think that all you do on a cellphone is browse preloaded content. That and dance in multicolored silhouette, of course.
I don't think the iPhone is about bringing anything completely revolutionary and unseen onto the table. Rather, it fills a very real ache in the market that nobody has so far been able to fill: true internet on mobiles. I've used browsers on cell phones, they are a pain in the ass. I've also used a Blackberry, and while they're a bit better off, the internet is still far from useful on them.
Looking back, the iPod didn't bring in anything horribly new either. MP3 players have already existed for some time since then, but Apple rolled in a slick user interface, and an end-to-end music management service (iTunes). Apple has always built their products on being end-to-end integrated, with software working in tandem with hardware, as opposed to being two disparate parts of the same process. The success of the iPod wasn't that Apple had some absolutely revolutionary technology, it was that they took technology and brought it down to the average man.
The iPhone is in for some tougher competition - the mobile market is a lot more mature than the music player market was at the launch of the iPod. But having used a lot of cell phones (both internet enabled and otherwise), I can say for sure that the market has a LOT of room for a phone (even one without the iPod!) that has as slick a UI as the iPhone seems to have. Goodbye convoluted two-button interfaces! Goodbye crappy browsers! Goodbye the infamous Motorola UI lag!
We got Smartphones at work, UTStarcom (Audiovox) PPC6700s. They are latest, greatest tech type of deals with all the features. They were about $200 with a 2 year contract. $500 was more like the no contract price (I can't remember what it was precisely, but around $500-600). Looks like currently the offer is $150 with a 2 year contract form Alltel.
So Apple is asking a price that is equal or higher than the no-contract price for phones for a phone with a contract. Yes I realise the Apple phone has a lot of flash storage, that's not expensive. I added 2GB to my phone for $20, that isn't why they cost so much more.
So, yes, I do text a lot (it's asynchronous IM on your phone - can't beat that) and I can touch type quite easily on a cellphone that provides tactile feedback but I would really hate typing it on something like the iPhone.
Worse yet, I usually text when I am in meetings (or rarely, when I am driving). So, while I may occasionally glimpse at the screen, texting is something that happens in the background for me. So, in these scenarios, it would be a little hard for me to pay full attention to what I am typing, which is what the iPhone seems to need, from what I've seen. Or if I am checking my calendar or seeing if I have mail (or even replying to them), it would be impossible to do so while you are doing other things (like, nodding to whatever is going on in one of those particularly boring meetings and replying to mails in the background).
Can't speak for the rest of the world, but I would imagine that there are more than enough folks here at Slashdot who do use cellphones and PDAs for sending text messages, replying to emails and organizing their calendar, and doing so with a system that doesn't provide tactile feedback would be very, very hard.
Now, if they had generic buttons whose keys could come up with varying kind of texts - that would be neat. Sort of like the Optimus Keyboard for cellphones.
No, but few of us use our computers while driving...
And you don't use either you computer or phone while driving, RIGHT?
Perhaps the new tagline for the iPhone should be "For people who don't want to die and take others with them in the process".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"I've been thinking about this, and I really can't see anything to be concerned about."
There's no need to think about it. It's not like Apple invented the touchscreen cellphone keyboard after all. It's not even substantially different than previous models.
The one thing different about the iPhone is that it *cannot* use a stylus and that means your big, fat finger is covering up those little, fake chicklet keys. So much for your eyesight providing all that glorious tactile feedback substitute you've been "thinking" about.
"I can't think of many, if any, that do, and that doesn't seem to have hindered them."
Of course, all of those have key differences too.
"How often do you actually use a phone without looking at it?"
Frequently.
"Unless you've got a screen reader in there, don't you kind of have to look at it to use those features?"
Yes, I do but, unlike the iPhone, my fingers aren't covering up the screen because my keyboard is seperate.
"I'll wait until I actually see one in action to pass judgment, but I'm a lot more skeptical of the "no tactile feedback" argument than I used to be..."
Of course you will. The speculated advantages you can pass judgement on now; the speculated disadvantages you should wait to pass judgement on. That's what it means to be open-minded regarding Apple, right?
Tactile feedback isn't just an issue when you're not looking at the screen. Consider your keyboard, for instance. You judge where to place your fingers by the physical shape of the keys.
How sure are you? I'd say relative distance from a fixed location has a lot to do with how you type. When your finger is over the keyboard, then goes down to press a key how often are you feeling the other keys around it, vs. just hitting the kay you want? I find as I type this message I make little use of the keys around the key I am pressing, and simply type directly based on position.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unless you plan to find your contacts exclusively through scrolling, you're still in need of a keypad.
A phone number requires minimally ten digits to be pressed exactly right in order to get the result you want.
A lookup in a contact sheet requres one to three keypresses, and keypresses can be judged contextually to have multiple possibilities, while still keeping the result set usably low.
What Apple is trying to do is to make contacts actually usable to well, contact people with. Just because you've not had that experience in the past on a phone does not mean it cannot be done.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thanks for filling the niche of people who are interested in people who are interested in people who aren't interested in people who aren't interested in a subject. You can't imagine how long I've been reading slashdot and hoping to find someone with an interest such as yours!
Interesting, INTERESTING
Does the mouse on your computer provide tactile feedback when you move the cursor over a button? Trackpads or pointers on laptops?
I'd argue that's a meaningfully different form of UI interaction.
Do any other touchscreens (e.g., in grocery store checkout lines) do so? Do any PDAs with touchscreens provide tactile feedback? I can't think of many, if any, that do, and that doesn't seem to have hindered them.
That's actually a relatively interesting point and I'd be interested to see any studies of error rates and input speeds for traditional numberpads vs touch-screen numberpads. I'd expect the touchscreens to lose, however, *especially* in the context of any sort of multitasking.
How often do you actually use a phone without looking at it? Even when I'm just hitting speed dial buttons I'm usually looking at the phone to double-check that it's calling the right person. Especially relevant: how often do you use advanced features like web surfing or text messaging/email without looking at the phone? Unless you've got a screen reader in there, don't you kind of have to look at it to use those features? Ditto for watching video on a handheld device.
It's not just about using it without looking at it, it's about using it while looking at it, but not really having to concentrate.
The tactile feedback you get from real buttons tell you both where you are in the UI relative to other elements (ie: where your thumb is on the buttons) and when you have successfully complete an action (ie: the "click" when the button connects). This helps you both move your thumb quickly to the right spot by feel (even if you're also looking) and know that you've done something without having to actively concentrate on it. The iPhone will lack both these features and, hence, you'll have to actively watch the UI not only for the feedback that you'd normally respond to with muscle memory, but also correct positioning within the UI you'd normally do from muscle memory. Basically, you'll have to concentrate harder to use it.
Yeah, every other post makes that ipod>MP3 player analogy.
The main difference is mobile music players have been around since even before the walkman. Being able to "listen" to something other than your surroundings while walking is easy. The problem is, what do you do when your walking and want to surf the internet? Can you keep walking while actively engaging in a web surfing environment?
I for one, cannot. >_>
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
No I care... I care because I want to know what to laugh at when I see idiots carrying them. Like the Nokia phones. Motorola, flips open flips close, dials numbers. Ipod next to Nokia phone plays music. Phone breaks? Listen to music. Ipod breaks, use phone to get it repaired.
But yeah you're right, this is just Apple's grass roots hype machine (get a few Diggs, get a few slashdotted stories. Sell billions no matter the price).
As I have mentioned, the killer app for a phone is break away from anachronistic "dialing" the phone. There is no reason why making a call should not be as simple as stating someone's name.
It already is, from that perspective. Heck, my Nokia 6310i has voice recognition for dialling and it's 5+ years old. However, the problems with the system aren't trivial:
* You need the contact in your phone.
* You either have to tag them with a voice-dial -or- the phone needs a good voice recognition system and you have to remember what you called the contact
* Duplicates (in the case of a voice recognition system) require manual intervention anyway.
If you have a small number of frequently-dialled contacts, the whole "voice dialling" thing works ok. If you don't, it doesn't and going via the "phonebook" is easier.
The lack of tactile input is, IMHO, going to be a major usability problem - but I'm reserving my final judgement until I can actually use one.
It isn't so much the fragility of the 'touch' part as it is the 'screen part. Notice the nintendo DS folds up. Every PSP I have seen has been scratched to hell.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Overpriced.
Underfeatured.
Like the iPod?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
How is the iPhone required for use while walking? Personally I don't imagine the iPhone being used much while walking (except while listening or chatting) at all. The big selling point is both email and Google Maps. There have been *so* many occasions when I've gathered with friends, and wondered "where's the nearest burger joint?" or "when's the movie showing tonight so we know when to leave the bar?". Things of that sort - none of us know the cinema's hotline (there is one) by heart, so Google and GMaps is crucial for us.
None of that requires use while walking. But it does require use while a laptop or other source of internet is not easily accessible!
I think you mean you are going to rape his macbook with a vista install, my dear friend
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Yes. And no.
While your fingers are covering up the screen because the keyboard isn't separate, the front portion of the phone that your fingers occupy on your phone with the separate keyboard is about the same percentile of the front the keyboard that isn't separate occupies on the iPhone. Unless you're using some special phone with a detachable keyboard
As a college student living on campus in California without a car, I find myself walking almost everywhere, which is why I brought that up. Of course I also have wifi everywhere. As well as free public computers within 500 feet of me almost wherever I am, or else a friend's residence where I can borrow one.
That's why I either:
1.) Plan ahead.
2.) Use 411.
3.) Call another friend who will be by a computer.
4.) Use a computer (keep in mind "hanging out with my friends" will mean "LAN Party", "DnD" or "Break from Architecture Work", all of which means, for me at least, I will be at a computer either during or less than an hour before we leave).
And I never have trouble finding wireless when I really need it. Starbucks every 3rd shopping center. Walmart or Mc Donalds every other shopping center. All I need is my DS and a memory card and I can do anything, save for make calls, the iPhone can.
But in the end I am not the normal consumer. The last thing I've purchased that doesn't come from a store owned by an Otaku or from a company that can be spelled out without misrepresentation in complete Kanji would be some Linen from Micheals I used to represent canvas in my study model.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Of course, if he was speaking on the information he gained while working at Apple, I'm sure they'd be really impressed to hear about steering into NDA-breaching discussion...
Well, up and until Apple woke up and realised that the G5 was more of an expensive radiator compared to what the PC land had been using for a couple of years already. Now that you're here, you can take those silly rose-tinted glasses off. And please have some taste, the black turtleneck and cheap wine thing is such a cliché.
I have a Handmark Pocket Express, and you can't dial from within a google map.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Like you, I am also a college student living on campus, except in Canada, though WiFi is also ubiquitous here. It is clear we have vastly different experiences. I believe the iPhone targets people like me:
A - I don't have my laptop with me when I go out with friends. Why would I lug that thing around, especially if I'm out drinking? Recipe for disaster.
B - Free public computers only exist on campus. Honestly, is campus really that exciting that you spend the vast majority of your off hours there?
1 - Plans change. This sounds like one of the initial arguments against cell phones. "I always plan ahead, so there's no need for a barrage of phone calls on the go!". Well, invariably someone screws up, or something unforeseen happens (bar closes, buddy gets run over, movie theater's closed, etc etc). Since getting my phone I've had an infinitely easier time socializing with my friends than before, and I suspect this will up the ante for that even further.
2 - 411 is $1 a call. Around here, it means dialing it, waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Describing what you're trying to find. Waiting. Waiting. Getting your answer (texted to your phone, nice), and then turning around and calling THAT number to find the actual information you need... Oh, and you might have to hold there too. With the internet at your fingertips, it's "free" (save data costs... but considering how much I plan to use the service, it's more than worth it compared to 411).
3 - Yes, because my friends are my bitches who should look up movie schedules on-call. Not that I wouldn't if I were in a real pinch, but this allows me to find the information I need independently. It also allows me to skim a page for the info I need, instead of forcing my dear friend here to recite it to me.
4 - I suppose this is where we differ. When I "hang out with friends", we hit pubs, bars, movies, restaurants, pool joints, concerts, and any other number of events and weird places. We like to explore a lot, and we bus ourselves to nearby strange cities to take in their sights and sounds. An iPhone-like device would be extremely helpful for us.
Allow me to point out a very recent example. I just returned from Toronto (Canada), where my girlfriend and I went to see the grand re-opening of the Royal Ontario Museum (highly recommended visit for anyone in the area, seriously). After taking a look at the brand spankin' new museum, we decided to take in a movie, but wanted to check the movie schedule, as well as if we'd miss the last bus out of the city. Well, unfortunately that meant:
A - Trudging down the street to the movie theatre. It's only a few blocks, but still 10 minutes wasted if I had access to their site at my fingertips.
B - Trudging to the nearest subway terminal, which has a kiosk where you can look up inter-city bus schedules.
Not rocket science by any measure, but you can start to see how an iPhone would have been useful here. A half hour information trek could've been reduced to 30 seconds. Heck, while perusing the museum we wondered about certain things, and if I had Wikipedia at my fingertips...
now you know someone who likes theirs! I am the proud owner of an hp ipaq 6300. A few years old but still works great. It was apparently horrible when it came out, but they released a service pack and that was before I bought it. All in all, i am a happy man. You are right about the 'exit program' or lack there of...wtf were they thinking.
-those people who tell you not to take chances, they are all missing what lifes' all about-
LOL, Firefox on a DS. That's funny. Opera, sure, but not Firefox.
If any of this software you claim to run on your DS actually exists, please do provide some links.
YHBT. HAND.
I'll second that. The mobile phone market's wide open to someone who can introduce a coherent and sensible interface that doesn't behave like the bastard child of a mediocre desktop OS. Palm had their chance and blew it. Psion/Symbian had momentum for a while, but have been stagnant for half a decade.
I've been provided with an iMate JasJam, but I'd bin it in a heartbeat and pay good money for a replacement if there was a choice that meant I didn't have to navigate through weird menus and tolerate frequent crashes and lockups.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
I think the iPhone is a poor response to the problems you have pointed out. I don't think its meant to replace the current trend, but rather redesign the ridiculous-who-would-spend-that-much-on-a-phone market. Until they start showing up with phones regular people can afford, mobile phones are going to be just as shitty tomorrow as they are today.
Personally, I like to keep my phone ability to the minimum, call people, text people, tell time and possibly have an alarm. Games, maybe, but might be unnecessary.
The iPhone just seems like a pocket PC with phone capabilities.. maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't seem all that revolutionary.. but hopefully you're right, and it will affect the market, and we'll see some higher quality phones. Nothing wrong with hoping.
But that couldn't be construed as "missing a deadline", could it? That might paint Apple in a negative light. Can't be having that. They didn't miss their deadline, they're "ensuring the user experience is optimal".
Or some such deranged Apple-rose-colored-glasses bullshit.
I'm a bit mystified about what planet you live on.
I know -nobody-, not a single person, that is happy with their mobile phone. Happy being defined as they find it having every feature they need and want and have it implemented in a logical, easy to use way. I've used a good portion of PDA phones out there and I've never had one more than 2 months, I've relegated myself to a slider phone instead of dealing with the pure hell that is most PDA phones.
I'm not saying you should like the iPhone, I personally prefer you don't until I get one. Even if only a small fraction Mac zealots get an iPhone, it will still be hugely successful for Apple.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Has anyone eaten at Pacific Catch, the seafood restaurant 'found' in the "Calimari" ad? Also, can anyone explain how such an establishment got such a placement? Regards
There is a big difference between the Nintendo DS and iPhone touch screens though; The Nintendo DS has in enclosed screen (like a flip phone), while the iPhone is open faced. I really hope Apple uses a resilient plastic...I don't doubt the GUI and tactile feedback will be generally good/great, but I am concerned about the iPhone's potentially fragile nature.
If you're not in a position to at least glance at the screen every now and then while you're giving it input, you probably shouldn't be using it at that moment anyway!
Yes, I'm talking about when you're driving.
Yes, I'm also talking about when you're calling your boss a prick under the table in meetings.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
While there is the capability to manually enter numbers into your phone book, I wonder what proportion of the typical user's book will get in it that way. I can safely tell you that the typical at&t customer utterly balks at the notion of having to manually enter even a fraction of their phone book. With sim cards and data transfer devices, the initial batch is generally already there before the user gets home with the device- though I doubt that, out of the box, this will be compatible with most (cellebrite) number copiers.
Not unlike a typical smartphone, this one will be able to seamlessly sync your contacts (well, the typical users contacts) from whatever PIM they are likely to use. Don't be shocked if they tack in an "import phone book from Razr" option in the bundled version of iTunes, if for no other reason than to save time in customer service at Apple stores.
I still fail to grasp the general anti-apple sentiment I sense here. It's just a product. If you don't like it, don't buy it. And especially, don't bitch about its "horrible keyboard" or other elements that you have yet to actually lay your bare eyes or hands on. I'm pretty sure a lot of us said that about the Mouse back in 1985.
Much more often than not. If you have the number in your head already, it's faster to just punch it in than to search for it.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I think if you want to get on some santimonious high horse, then you definitely need to read up and understand why you don't like the product that you dissent so passionately on. (What's with dissenters anyway?)
As for right now, you just sound like a raving lunatic who has some preconceived hate because someone you don't like admires an apple product.
It might be time for you to be a reasonable person, to try and extract your personal bias from your critique, to realise what a "target market" is. (A device that does everything is often more complex than useful.) Perhaps begin to enjoy technology when it excites you, and just keep quiet when it's not your cup of tea. As for now, there are lots of people liking this new device, irrespective of who makes it. P.S. my portable TV has been "streaming" me live television since the 80s.
You might notice I'm speaking generally, and not just about Apple. It's because you're truly a nutcase.
cause apple are known mostly for their badly made shoddy products. /sarcasm
Your "sarcasm tag" is misplaced, because Apple *is* known for badly-made shoddy products. Ipod screens, laptop and Ipod batteries, laptop LCDs, Cube casings, Macbook plastic, Macbook fans, the list goes on and on and on.
Apple is known for well-DESIGNED products that then get returned under warranty by the thousands.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I assume you mean that the user can't get to the SIM card. Of course, you're wrong. The SIM card is accessible.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
4. Because of 2 and 3 above, I can legitimately say that any post critical of Apple or Apple fan-boy-ism is "flame bait", as I myself will flame them,
:-)
Because of this line, any moderation done as "Flamebait" would be undone by the flame post mentioned at the end!
Just like an anti-Apple user to not think through the details of what might have otherwise been a well-crafted product (or post)...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even in that long commercial, they describe features that the device has - but never show the devic itself being used, just shots of the features on the phone, amost static. To me in that commercial there is no connection between the people and the device. And the "phraseology" of the people seems too scripted, and less real.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How sure are you? I'd say relative distance from a fixed location has a lot to do with how you type. When your finger is over the keyboard, then goes down to press a key how often are you feeling the other keys around it, vs. just hitting the kay you want? I find as I type this message I make little use of the keys around the key I am pressing, and simply type directly based on position.
Ah, but you know instantly when you've duffed it and missed a key or hit between two keys, don't you, even without looking at the screen ?
Tactile feedback isn't just about knowing when you get it right, it's (probably more importantly) knowing about when you've gotten it *wrong*.
The commercials make me think that if the iPhone is as cool as it looks in the commercial, I want one.
The iPhone will be good for all of us, just like Mac OS X has been good for all of us. It will bring some much-needed competition into the UI area of cell phone design. Let's face it, cell phone UIs are crap. My P990i is probably the worst piece of pure interface idiocy I have ever used. Cell phone manufacturers care about how the device looks, how many features it has, and how much it costs. This is obvious when looking at their ads. Check out Apple's new iPhone ads and you'll immediately see the difference.
The iPhone is not sold as a pretty, feature-rich cell phone. It is sold as a beautiful, intuitive user interface with a matching hardware shell.
The revolutionary thing about the iPhone is not that it uses a multitouch screen (although that is pretty new, too - if you know of any other cell phones that do that, I'd love to hear about it). The revolutionary thing is how it uses the touch screen. Have you ever seen a cell phone ad that focused on usability? That's pretty damn revolutionary if you ask me. Which you don't, of course... but... it still is! HA!
Yeah, because if you do that, the iPhone will look so much worse than any other phone on the planet. I mean, my P990i was made for bags filled with keys and sand! It's the ultimate sandbagphone!
There will probably be about a gazillion different socks and bags and thingies to choose from into which you can put your iPhone before you throw it into your bag filled with nickels, knives, scissors and other sharp objects. Maybe the iPhone will even come with some kind of protective case. Have fun with the hour-long shaking, though, if you're into that kind of thing.
Thousands is probably about right, and a pretty small number if you sell millions. So, your iPod player has a battery that never dies? Where did you buy that? I want one too.
Showing the actual UI - and nothing but the UI - in an ad, that's pretty new for a cell phone.
And this is the difference. This is why the iPhone will change the cell phone market for the better - not necessarly because everyone will get an iPhone, but simply because other manufacturers will be forced to give the UI more thought.
Dialing from the top of your head is the quickest way to call someone. It will stay that way.
Speed dial sucks, it can only hold a few values.
Adress book dial sucks, you don't do any less keypresses than with number dialing. It's a matter of entropy.
Meanwhile, the Nokia N95......has been shipping for months, and is proving extremely popular...
Max.
So would their squareness make it more difficult to round them up?
Ah, but you know instantly when you've duffed it and missed a key or hit between two keys, don't you, even without looking at the screen ?
No, actually I type and know I missed it by observing the screen - that's the reason to touch-type, right? So you can observe the screen as you work? On the iPhone the screen and your typing are as one.
The iPhone keyboard is supposed to be correctional and make adjustments as you type, accounting for slightly missed keys - so it should even out and reduce the number of times I have to go back to hit a key.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or use an ear piece. Also, sound can be a surprisingly good replacement for tactile feedback. If it's giving you an indication of where you're touching you could easily learn to use it without looking at it. (I have no idea if they actually do this.)
Yeah, pretty much exactly like the iPod.
Now, go look up the 1G and 2G iPod sales in the 2 years before they introduced the much cheaper iPod Mini.
What you're saying is, you can't text while driving (!!), and read emails while pretending to pay attention to someone (I don't see how you actually *read* an email without looking at your current phone, but I digress).
In other words, the iPhone makes it harder for you to be an asshole. You've utterly failed to convince me that this is a bad thing.
Again delayed Leopard? As far as I can tell, there has only been one delay to Leopard, from June to October.
Dude, I believe you are in a college to study!
Anyone got any insight into when it'll launch in Europe?
;-)
Cingular isn't exactly a large provider over here.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I've had 4 phones that I've been totally happy with.
Nokia N73 - huge array of features, reasonable battery life, a camera that is actually usable (apart from in low light conditions). A web browser that could correctly view most web pages.
SE W550 - perfect for running, excellent battery life, and good for gaming
Moto V3 - perfect for nights out and basic call/texting.
My current phone, an SEW810 is close on perfection overall. The camera has an excellent colour balance, and with the little MXE-60 flash add on, its a true digicam replacement. Call quality is excellent, 4+ days battery life is useable.
So here's the deal, sure it's a phone being produced by Apple- which has had a VERY good track record of innovation in terms of ease of use & fun/wow factors. But seriously, though, it's a f'ing phone. Like Bobby Brown said, if you wanna dish out $600 (i'm sure it'll be more due to limited supply) for something that you can pretty much already freaking do, "it's your perrogative." But when you're 60 years old & you realize Social Security is no longer there for you (even though you put into the system just as much as the next person), I bet you will regret the purchase & wish you'd dropped that kinda cash on the stock market, your 401k or, heck, even a CD or money market acct.
Seriously, all the fanbois need to get their hands out of their pockets!
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Ghandi
I'm using a 7130 Blackberry because I wanted to merge PDA and Phone (works well btw.), wanted to me MS free and wanted a good sync to my Mac. SureType works fair enough. And the "Missing Sync" for Blackberry costs 39$ and works perfect - better than the crappy Palm conduit I had to use before. I costed 5$ and a 2 year contract - which I renewed anyway. I don't watch movies and my maxfield mp3 player is fine too.
Then again, the Blackberry in some places has such a crappy interface and usability I seriously question the designers sanity. This is why the iPhone will be able to compete. The people building the Blackberries and other devices are often just to f*cking dumb to get it right. With Apple you have the Boss himself using the device and cross-checking if the engineers have lost it on the way or still are on track. Which is exactly how I would do it too.
I whish apple the very best for this launch. They deserve it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Why do you people even respond? Seriously.
Yay for you, you found a phone you like. Let's have a party. All you sound like is someone bitter that they didn't wait long enough and now can't get the new shiny gadget they wanted. And if you aren't bitter, why do you give enough of a crap to post a laundry list of how your phone stacks up? Are you selling vx6700s? Do you have a link so you can get commission?
And a laptop? Did you ACTUALLY just suggest a LAPTOP as a reason not to have a certain PHONE? Do *I* have to make a laundry list with how utterly STUPID of a comparison that is, or can we just assume you weren't sober at the time? And PLEASE, for the love of GOD, don't respond with some argument about free WiFi, fast startup times if you use hibernate, or any of that shit. When I can carry the laptop without needing a bag or killing my arm, and I can walk around without doing a balancing act of touchpad usage / holding the LAPTOP in one HAND / not running into anything, THEN we can make that comparison.
No, it simply means I haven't come to a conclusion and likely won't until/unless there's solid evidence of actual use of the iPhone to back it up. In the meantime, I'm willing to grant some charity based on the lack of available evidence and the arguments I'm able to come up with on each side.
As for your actual points:
So. Do you want to have a constructive debate based on what we already know about the iPhone and about similar touch-screen technologies, or do you want to take back-handed swipes at someone? I can do either, but I'd like to know up-front where we're going with this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Every time I've seen it demo'ed pressing "home" brings up the standard 4 options at the bottom of the screen. "Phone" is always lower left. After that Favorites is two over.... and so on.
As long long as the interface is responsive, "muscle memory" wouldn't seem to be an issue.
And while I'm at it, I have a MBP that supports two-finger scrolling gestures on the trackpad... and I have to tell you that brushing up or down is now so natural it makes click and scroll wheels seem "quaint" and archaic. And "tactile" pg-up/dn buttons? Please. Watch the demos and notice the "flicking" gestures used to scroll and navigate. Watch how the "scroll" speed matches the velocity at which your fingers move. Gestures are intuitive as hell.
And texting? Watch someone text sometime. Very few people (even on Treos) are "touch-text'ists", and most are starting intently at the phone while they're doing it. And if you're moving to the iPhone from a RAZR or some other phone that has a standard 12-key-pad, having separate letter "keys" (even virtual ones) would be a godsend over having to hit "7" four times to get an "S", or waiting for the last letter to "enter" up so you can get a "A" after you've entered a "B". Thanks, but no thanks.
I think you're dramtically over-estimating the benefits of tatile feedback, and ignoring how interface action, responsives, and audible feedback can compensate, or even improve on the experience.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"The tactile feedback you get from real buttons tell you both where you are in the UI relative to other elements..."
Yeah, I'm really going to know on a Treo that I'm on C and not V. Lots of tactile feedback in dozens of identical little buttons.
"Basically, you'll have to concentrate harder to use it."
Assumption. And probably totally ignores all of the other things one does on a "normal" phone like handling voicemail, or diving down in the menu tree to change a setting, or things like multiway conference calls that no one does on their existing phone because they never read the manual and memorized the procedure.
But hey. You've convinced yourself you're not going to like it. Fine. Horses for courses. And one less person ahead of me in line...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
random 3 ft chord (lets just say ethernet), ... and deck of Magic: The Gathering.
!!!!! You just fell for the trap. Jisatsu datta. You totally pWn3d urself, G.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
Apple *is* known for badly-made shoddy products.
Only among an extremely shrill minority. Most of us have realized by now that problems with Apple products just get a lot more press than problems with any other brand, whether or not it's a serious or widespread issue. The recent "6-bit screens" fiasco is a good example, wherein every PC manufacturer uses 6-bit panels for high-density displays, but Apple gets all of the bad press for it.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
"The UI has had an awful lot of work put into it, I doubt it's going to be difficult to use."
Myxiplx, I'd like to introduce you to the iMac round "puck" mouse... proof that sometimes Apple do something just to be different even if it proves to be difficult to use. Remember the after-market that developed to return those mice to a traditional shape?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
$500 amortized over 24 months of the contract comes out to just under $21 a month. Considering typical monthly service plan fees, that is not so bad. I started off with a Treo 650 a few years ago for which I paid around $350 ($15 a month). Not so huge a difference.
Care to share the original design with us?
My advice then would be not to get one.
Oh, well yes. Assuming, of course, that the iPhone is uncomfortable, gets poor reception, has bad battery life, and is built for gentle handling. But wait, how can you know that assumption is true?
I would suspect that, considering the built-in phone and software for managing contacts, making calls, and browsing voice mail, the device is meant for making calls.
Maybe because they want to emphasize that it does more than make calls? Notice how car commercials focus on leather seats, powerful stereos, and sexy design? (Oh, and you can even drive with this!) So what if you could also call it a PDA. That is, very obviously, the whole point and the iPhone is entering the market of smartphones by improving on and building upon features already available in other products.
Okay, you are absolutely right. Apple better close-up shop.
Where is your evidence for this? You must be in some position of privilege to have used the iPhone so much ahead the rest of us.
I might agree for the lower-end market where the phones are all but free and considered disposable. For smartphones, changes come much more slowly. My Treo 650 is pushing nearly four years now, yet there is little to distinguish it from cutting-edge models.
And there is a good chance Apple will do just that: sell millions of units. We have no sales data yet. Can you guess why? And of all the most successful phones in the United States, how many can be used outside globally?
Mobile phones themselves usually have no profit. Most phones are subsidized by the carriers because the huge profit comes in offering over-priced service plans using an existing infrastructure at little to no extra cost.
Are you crazy or am
Why bother.
This and other posts are hilarious. You can almost smell the fear.
/. is not the place for such musings. People here seem to like tech that requires a PhD in order to use. Being able to use some hideously complicated piece of equipment to perform a simple task is a source of distinction on this site. In the real world (fairly or no) it is regarded as a symptom of a mental disease. This is not a phone designed for geeks. It is a phone designed to sell in large numbers and make money.
Apple is going to sell shiploads of these things, and all the fud and whining in the world will not stop it. It has nothing to do with Apple fans. There simply aren't enough Apple fanboys around to account for the success of the iPod. The truth is that it was a success because it was about the easiest and simplest player to use and it was marketed reasonably well. I know a lot of older non-techie people who hate gadgets, but love their iPod, for the simple reason that it takes about 30 seconds to learn how to use it.
The same goes for the iPhone. If you've watched the keynote, you pretty much know how to use everything that's on the phone. If you've watched the commercials, you know enough to use it. I've had a Samsung smartphone with Windows Mobile on it for five months and I still don't know how to use all the stuff on it (the manual is so arcane that you just end up forgetting stuff).
But
The fact that some people in this thread have an irrational hatred for Apple doesn't change the fact that this will be the hottest tech item in recent memory. I'm wondering if the Cabbage Patch doll wars will be upon us once more (Jobs has basically said he hopes so, which makes him look a bit of an ass). Still, it is highly likely there is much link fodder in this thread for future gloaters.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Here I am. As long as it plays music decently and lets me make phone calls, I'm happy.
Dialing from the top of your head is obsolete.
speed dial doesn't suck; I call the same four numbers more often than any other: v-mail, wife's mobile, home, office. That's probably half my outgoing calls from my cell right there.
saying "Call John Doe" is the quickest way to call someone in my address book, faster and easier than dialing.
saying "Dial 123-456-7890" is only slightly slower, and works for people not in your contacts. Its not quite as fast as blind dialing, but it doesn't tie up a hand or require tactile feedback either.
My phone does all this very well NOW. Its only going to get BETTER in the future.
Two years from now I'm going to say call the pizza hutt on main street, and the device will do a search, and make the call intelligently determining that I want to call the most *local* pizza hut on main street...
Ten years from now I'll be saying 'call my sisters friend, what's his name, the one with the sports car' and it will probably be able to figure it out...
If contacts have worked well for you before, then they will work just as well for the iPhone right?
Can't say. Haven't used it. My response based on the mockups on Apple's website is "maybe".
The point at hand was how having a contact list is no replacement for simply typing in numbers, which I argue is untrue and you would seem to also assert.
A contact list is great if it's populated. Not having a way to directly type in number is a pretty major PITA if need to, however. You need both to be well done for a phone to be good.
Personally I have found use of contacts on the phones I've owned to be annoying, and so I don't use them all the time even if I have them loaded. That would thus be the counterargument for why use of contacts in an iPhone would not be of use, which is what I was refuting.
I just don't see what the fuss about the iPhone's contact list is about. Certainly from looking at the mockups, it doesn't seem to offer any opportunity for significant improvement over existing methods.
Yeah, I'm really going to know on a Treo that I'm on C and not V. Lots of tactile feedback in dozens of identical little buttons.
I was actually thinking of a regular numberpad, however, you'll still get more from "dozens of identical little buttons" than you will from a smooth piece of plastic with "dozens of little buttons" drawn on it.
Assumption.
No. Deduction.
And probably totally ignores all of the other things one does on a "normal" phone like handling voicemail, or diving down in the menu tree to change a setting, or things like multiway conference calls that no one does on their existing phone because they never read the manual and memorized the procedure.
No, it doesn't. Quite the contrary, in fact.
But hey. You've convinced yourself you're not going to like it. Fine. Horses for courses. And one less person ahead of me in line...
Ah, you must be an Apple zealot, someone for whom "maybe it won't be perfect because of these reasonable arguments" translates to "it sucks horribly and will never work" when referring to any Apple product.
Which part of the I'll-wait-and-see position I advocated is leading you to believe I've "convinced myself" ?
So, which phone do you use?
Translation: "I can't touch-dial my phone while driving anymore." PULL OVER TO USE A PHONE STUPID.
Aaah, crap. You mean I actually have to *look* at a device I'm using. Good god, how will I cope?
Dunno. Can you touch type ?
And incidentally, I find I'm pretty good at noticing the feedback when my finger hits a screen. I don't waft it in front of the screen, or push it through any more.
I've no doubt. But how do you know which part of the screen you've hit, what was under it at the time and whether or not the UI has responded correctly ?
Do me a favour and save your arguments about how the lack of feedback will kill this device until you've actually tried one.
You must have me confused with someone else, because I made no such argument.
The UI has had an awful lot of work put into it, I doubt it's going to be difficult to use.
I doubt it is either, however, that doesn't mean it will be *efficient* to use, or as easy as it could be using real buttons. Added to which, a) a lot of Apple's recent UI efforts haven't exactly been confidence-inspiring and b) they don't have any experience in this market yet, so even it "being good" is not a given.
And to be honest, even in the worst case scenario where you're right and it is slower to use, I think that's a small price to pay for all the benefits.
I've yet to see a lot of significant benefits over the alternatives.
The larger screen, and much larger buttons for dialing numbers are two features I'd sacrifice an awful lot for.
Your phone must really suck if you feel that the standard number pad is so awkward to use that you think one on a phone-sized touchscreen would be easier.
Every time I've seen it demo'ed pressing "home" brings up the standard 4 options at the bottom of the screen. "Phone" is always lower left. After that Favorites is two over.... and so on.
How do you know how far without any physical feedback ?
As long long as the interface is responsive, "muscle memory" wouldn't seem to be an issue.
You seem to be missing the point I'm trying to make, which is that with decent physical feedback how responsive the UI isn't doesn't matter, because you can confidently be a couple of steps ahead of it.
Please. Watch the demos and notice the "flicking" gestures used to scroll and navigate. Watch how the "scroll" speed matches the velocity at which your fingers move. Gestures are intuitive as hell.
I've watched the demos. It reminds me of the first OS X demos and how "cool" they were. Then we got the UI train wreck that was the Dock.
And texting? Watch someone text sometime. Very few people (even on Treos) are "touch-text'ists", and most are starting intently at the phone while they're doing it. And if you're moving to the iPhone from a RAZR or some other phone that has a standard 12-key-pad, having separate letter "keys" (even virtual ones) would be a godsend over having to hit "7" four times to get an "S", or waiting for the last letter to "enter" up so you can get a "A" after you've entered a "B". Thanks, but no thanks.
I think you need to spend more time watching people under the age of 30 texting, and less time watching technophile, 50-year-old CEOs. Predictive text input systems have been around for 7 - 10 years, "learning" ones for at least 5 years, and anyone remotely familiar with doesn't write SMSes the way you describe. Indeed, I can't think of anyone I know who regularly texts that gives the screen more than a casual glance every 5-10 keypresses.
I wouldn't be surprised in the least if regular texters used to a traditional keypad and predictive input will be at least as fast as people using an on-screen keyboard.
I think you're dramtically over-estimating the benefits of tatile feedback, and ignoring how interface action, responsives, and audible feedback can compensate, or even improve on the experience.
I don't. However, I'm willing to be convinced, which is why I'm waiting before passing judgement.
Indeed, I can't think of anyone I know who regularly texts that gives the screen more than a casual glance every 5-10 keypresses.
I should amend this to say "except for the poor sods using "smartphones" with QWERTY-style keyboards". Those things are a PITA.
I don't understand. I have been perfectly happy with every cell phone I have had. I was less than happy with my service provider when I had cingular. I have a cell PHONE. I use it to make TELEPHONE calls, it works very well for that. I don't listen to music except when I am in my car...I don't need or want music on my cell phone. There is a market for multifunction devices, I just don't think it is a mass market.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I would like a phone that doesn't beep in silent mode.. or have buttons on the side of the flip phone which get pressed in your pocket which change the phone from vibrate to loud mode or take a picture of the inside of your pocket. I would like a phone that actually shows the date and times of missed calls. I would like a phone that adds new numbers to it easier. I would like a phone that has a time zone setting so that my sync'd calendar shows up correctly when I roam. Most if not all other phones really suck.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
The mobile phone market's wide open to someone who can introduce a coherent and sensible interface that doesn't behave like the bastard child of a mediocre desktop OS
I agree entirely. I bought my SE P900 shortly after they were released and have been pretty disappointed from day 1. Symbian UIQ seems to be less stable than Windows 3.1 was - even the built in software crashes the whole phone quite frequently, and the built in software is just plain rubbish to begin with. 3rd party software is expensive (no, I have no intention of paying 30 quid for an email reader that actually _works_ - that sort of thing is supposed to be part of the base installation).
So I've decided that I'm not going to buy a new phone until I can get some decent hardware running OpenMoko or similar. I want a device that I can treat like any of my other computer - that includes writing software for it without needing propriatory tools, being able to write bash scripts to do simple jobs, etc., being able to use the device without it crashing on a regular basis, and having a large collection of Free software available. And that last point is important in both meanings of the word "free" - under Symbian and PalmOS every little tool seems to be shareware and adding up the cost of all the tools I'd want would be a fortune, whereas under Linux I get all the tools for free.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I live just outside of Philadelphia, and I think $500 is a lot of money. In fact that's the only thing that keeps my from upgrading to one of these when they are released. I'm all about a nicely designed phone + iPod + touch screen interface, but $500 is a lot of cash to drop.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
It will be nice to see what the competitors will come with now ny copying the iPhone features, like what was done with iPod back in 01 and some time after it's release.
Oh, btw, I didn't see any good point about how this is going to be a flop. I don't own a Mac and I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I have to admit that Steve Jobs isn't messing with product flops since the Cube. I guess they learned the lesson - although no company is safe from making a bad business decision.
You're saying that people will buy it because they're not tech savvy enough to know that there are many phones already in existance that can do everything the iPhone can do (touch screen excepted) and are likely to be a fraction of the price?
I mean, my free (with 30 dollar a month subscription) LG U830 plays music just fine. And my old phone (Nokia N70) which I've had since 2005 and got free wit a 60 dollar a month contract did everything the iPhone will do PLUS it allowed me to run whatever apps I wanted on Symbian OS without them having to be signed by Apple or Cingular.
The iPhone is another apple trick - take existing tech, repackage and advertise to people who like form over substance and like to feel smug about it. They'll claim innovation, style, reliability (all things that Nokia have been doing really well for a long time) when actually delivering a shiny box that can do less than older devices.
Please consider submitting your request for Polish language support in Mac OS X to Apple via the Apple Developer Connection. It's free, as in T-Shirt (e.g. you need to fill out a little form with a bit of contact information including an email address). Obviously you're interested in the platform. If there's a store selling Macinsoth computers in Poland, then other people are, too, and you would be doing yourself a favor to point this out in your request. Include a URL to the store's contact information, if possible. Mac OS X provides pretty nice localization support for quite a few languges already.
By the way, the original post was a reference to a troll that showed up, if I recall correctly, early on, in every Apple related thread and a few unrelated threads for a while. I recall some speculation that it might even have been an automated troll bot. The AC poster this time was clearly trying to make people laugh by converting the troll to an iPhone troll with a trivial substitution Macintosh -> iPhone. The tip-off for people who didn't recognize the post is that nobody will be copying a 17MB file from a device (the Motorola RAZR) which only has, if memory serves, about 5MB of RAM (newer versions of this phone might have more RAM, but the most popular early model was RAM starved). It was really a bit of an inside joke, as grokiing it requires familiarity with too many things that nobody should bother to remember.
Apple doesn't seem to have described the localization features of the iPhone, although their plans to relase an iPhone in Europe later this year suggest that they are planning at least some support for other languages. The U.S. version of the phone could be limited to English and Spanish, or even merely English without hurting sales too much. As the hardware platform matures (mainly as solid state storage becomes cheaper at larger capacities) it's reasonable to expect that future versions of the iPhone will support multiple languages as a general feature, as does Mac OS X. But then, it's also reasonable to expect the European version of the iPhone to support 3G data networks, and we all know that won't stop people from whining about the presumed lack of 3G and how the iPhone won't sell in Europe without it, as though Apple doesn't know that. (Don't these people think Steve Jobs wants 3G on his iPhone? I'm sure he's personally lobbying AT&T to get their poop in a group and roll out 3G before they get crushed by Verizon's EVDO stuff here. )
Oh, and that store isn't an Apple Store, by the way. Apple doesn't have any Apple Stores in Poland.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
You forgot also "Less space than a Nomad" and "Lame"
I completely agree. This has flop written all over it. Just like the iPod, the Mac Pro and all those other useless and unpopular Apple products. When will Apple ever learn?
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
AppleInsider is reporting that the supplies at Cingular/AT&T stores may be relatively tight.
I suppose we should be clambering over each other trying to secure one. We can queue up for the chance to spend our money! These jerks have us by the gonads if we constantly fear we might not get one.
For most of us, this is an expensive toy. Can it really be $500 worth of fun?
I don't know if anyone else watched all of the comercials, but the 2nd one (How-To) states in fine print that the phone is only available with a new 2 year user agreement.
Kyle
See, this is where the argument falls apart. The "in" crowd, aka "too cool for school" aka "hipster" crowd isn't even aware that the iPhone is a computer. They don't care about that. They may like the fact that the device is "sexy", but they want it to work well, too. The iPod took off with this crowd because it worked. There were many dozens of MP3 players trying directly to capture this market. They failed ultimately because their devices suck. Apple solved that problem. Honestly, the iPod doesn't suck. You know that, if you have any clue at all. You don't even need to have ever owned one to know that. In the same way, using the fantastic pattern recognition engine that is your brain, you can anticipate that, come June 29, their will be a cell phone on the market that doesn't suck, for the first time giving ordinary non-computer-geek people something that a lot of them already know they want: the internet in their pocket. There is no reason why Apple should have had to make a phone to please Steve Jobs. In fact, they resisted the temptation for a long, long time. Finaly, almost three years ago now, they gave up and decided to fix the problem themselves.
I for one welcome our new suck-free cell phone overlords.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
There are not even enough apple fanboys to account for the sales of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The XServe, maybe.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
lol, touche. Those things were bloody stupid. Took about 30 seconds of me using my first iMac to spot that not knowing which way was 'up' was a bad idea.
First impressions of the iphone UI though makes it look like a very polished application.
Palm will be the first victim of the iPhone. They so completely failed to grok their product and market that they were nearly crushed by WinCE. Imagine that. *shudder*
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Funny thing is that I remember using a round mouse with some Unix workstation (X11?) years and years ago and realising instantly that it was a pain in the arse!
The UI looks great, don't get me wrong, but I think you're underestimating the value of tactile feedback. Never been annoyed shitless by a touchscreen kiosk because you didn't know if the click had registered? I've seen some microwaves that have the same issue. The power button on my Xbox 360 is similar - not always easy to tell whether the hit's been registered.
The music part of the iPhone looks excellent. Dialling and answering seems fine. Texting looks like it will be a bit annoying. And I couldn't see myself using the map search at all. Who searches for "seafood" on Google to choose a restaurant? I eat out very frequently here in Australia and always go to my favourites and highly-recommended places. I have never searched for a generic keyword to pick a restaurant. If anything, I search a name to find opening hours, phone number, etc and whenever I'm in that phase, I'm at or near a computer.
For me though, as someone who really needs to upgrade their phone, the issue is going to be who they choose to partner with in Australia. I really dislike Telstra and Three, but I have a feeling they'd choose one of those!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Regarding the two things the iPod can't do... I haven't tried it myself, but an inexpensive 3rd party product which can waterproof your iPod will enable it to perform one of the two tasks on your list of things the iPod can't do, leaving you with taxes.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
to die, due faults not its own.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I'd agree with that, except they seem to be taking forever to get to market. I don't thing the JasJam's going to survive that long, especially if the annoying little sucker keeps crashing on me.....
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
From Wikipedia (which is accurate from my recollection of events):
If your definition of early 2007 includes Spring 2007, which it might, then it has not been delayed twice. And since they were intentionally vague on the first release date, you could give them the benefit of the doubt I suppose.
It's at least debatable, not cut and dried.
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
Here in New York City, the PSP is by far the most popular portable device. There isn't a day that goes by I don't see someone playing one on the subway. I rarely if ever see a DS. I also have a PSP and play it quite frequently. You know what? The screen is in perfect condition. Every one I have seen is in perfect condition. I have a hard time believing anyone would let a fairly expensive device get "scratched to hell".
So far, the DS is the only device of any significant with a clamshell design. The original gameboy was in use for over 12 years without anyone freaking out about scratched screens. People still play Gameboy Advances without any trouble with screen scratches. The Nokia candybar cellphone design is still amazingly popular. This entire thread is about the iPhone which carries the same design motif as the iPod, which also has an exposed screen. Between the gameboy, candybar style phones, and ipods, we are talking about hundreds of millions of electronic devices with which people are relatively happy.
So, this begs the question: with so many devices out there with exposed screens, why is the PSP unique or unusual in this regard? In regards to my personal experience, is it so bizarre that people in NYC have protective cases for their PSPs?
I don't read or respond to AC posts
What part of Siberia do you live in?
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
First, I want a sensible interface for Internet access on the go. At my last job, I got tethered with a Treo. I didn't like being on call 24/7, but I loved being able to jump on Google Maps or whatever to look things up, that would affect my plans for while I was out. I've been using the Internet since I was a kid (since before all the pretty pictures) and the way I think now is tied to net access. Having it in my pocket would make my life a lot more convenient and connected.
Second, my current phone is a piece of crap. I paid $200 for a (non-contractually bound) SLVR L7, one of the "best" phones out there, and it's an unstable nightmare. Within a week of buying it, the audio output on the iPod/iTunes feature died on me.
Third, my current iPod is getting a little long in the tooth. As a photographer, I regret not having the photo features on the recent models. As a commuter, I wish I could watch TV shows and movies on the subway. I have about 9 GB of music on my 40 GB iPod, including zero-star and one-star stuff I don't need on there. It turns out I didn't need that much space, so the obviously upcoming 100 GB touch-screen wide-screen iPod is more than I will need.
Finally, I've taken a look at the demos, and I am confident that Apple got the interface right. It just looks slick and intuitive. It doesn't look like I will have to struggle through the limitations of the device to do what I want. It looks like it will just work, in a way so clever that once you use it, you can't even see how it's an innovation.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Does Cupertino have any sort of contact with reality to begin with? The only saving grace of Apple is that once in a while Steve's reality distortion field comes up with a product that people will actually buy and that makes money for the company.
People want to praise him for his wonderful sucesses (Mac, iPod, OS X), but quickly forget the failures (NEXT, Newton, The Cube) I remember seeing the introduction of The Cube on a closed circuit TV at MacWord in 2000 (2001?). I thought it would be the future and savior of all things electronic. Well that didn't happen, but somehow Jobs and Apple have been able to pull out of the dive bombs and keep on flying. What will happen with the iPhone is anyone's guess, for now I am keeping my money in a sock under my bed and wating on that Apple stock purchase.
So would their squareness make it more difficult to round them up?
[Insert Pentium joke here]New punctuation update "~" (no quotes) at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. ~
MS products always exhibit a rounding error.
They DID make the worl'd first Comp-u-Table! pre-installed with the same GUI as Apple's iPhone! now all they need is to let you sit on it so it can scan your butt and it'll be perfect for home use.
They exact same thing was said about the iPod. The iPhone won't have that kind of success because it's tied to a single wireless provider, but it will be successful. I've been waiting forever for a cellphone / mp3 player combination that works as well as my iPod for and I've yet to find one that comes close. I'd buy the iPhone for that alone, the other features are just icing on the cake. Oh and much like the iPod, if you think the first generation iPhone is all Apple will ever offer your crazy. More features will be introduced as new generations are released and there will be less expensive models in the future.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
You've just explained why Ginger hasn't been the society revolutionizing technology that it was, uh, hyped to be. When cities started banning the thing from their sidewalks to prevent pedestrian injury, it became quite clear that cities would need to be litteraly re-engineered to achieve the large scale society improving benefits that were predicted for it, and that cities in fact would not be re-engineered.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Slashdot's really gone down the tubes: corporate shills every-bloody-where.
I'm bewildered by the number of Slashdot people who seriously believe that virtually everyone is "unhappy" with their cellphones. It gets even more laughable when you consider the common thread amongst those who criticise cellphones on Slashdot tends to be that they're too functional, a constituency that isn't going to be in any way satisfied by an expensive multifunctional touch-screen controlled cellphone.
FWIW, I love my Motorola V635. My wife loves her RIZR. My "friend I talk about phones to alot" loves his Nokia 3220. My wife's sister's MiL loves her Samsung something-or-other she was showing us this weekend.
Right now, amongst the flesh and blood people I talk to about such things, I don't know anyone who doesn't like their phone. And I can think of many reasons why they wouldn't like the iPhone.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The worst part is that those 15 problems could have been fixed by the vendor but the industry is distorted so that doesn't happen. Before the iPhone, the maker of the handset was under the impression that the telephone company was their customer, and they really don't care one iota about you, the person who must use the device. This little love-fest between the telcos and handset makers results in the consumer being left with no place to turn. It costs the telco money to fix problems on your handset, because they "signed off" on the "final design" months ago and the handset maker has moved on to work on new models. They would rather sell you a different phone altogether than fix the crap software on the handset that you already paid for.
A few weeks after the iPhone ships, Apple will release a software update for it. That will be the day the cell phone industry really changes. When people realize what a difference a vendor that treats them like a customer will make in their satisfaction of the handset, the industry will never be the same. All the pundits are focused on the magical multi-touch UI, and all the vendors are racing to catch up to the sleek hardware design and clean user interface. The software updates are the secret weapon.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
"Business Plan" -- Don't you mean "Patent Application" ?
Matt
I'm glad your friends like their phones, but I'm afraid you're not part of the majority on this one.
the owners of Microfiber Screen Wipes INC were seen drinking champagne whilst ordering a LearJet.
Joking aside, kudos to Apple for rethinking the phone UI but touch only?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Every time I heard people say, "it's just a phone", I laugh. I think that's a really dumb statement because it's obviously much more than a phone. I think the name iPhone is the problem, but clearly this device is the coolest iPod/iPod video I've ever seen. So is it really just a phone, no. It's also a really cool hand held web device with wifi. Is it just a phone, no. The google maps feature alone is pretty sweet the way you can call the location on the map. Is it really just a phone, no.
Too many people compare it to a Razr. I have a Razr and it's not an iPhone. Compare the iPhone to a Blackberry or another SmartPhone, but stop calling it "just a phone," unless, you're that blind to the technology that goes in it and if that's the case then why are you reading slashdot?
Palm just announced that they hired Jon Rubenstein and sold a chunk of the company to raise cash for CPR. If their next step is to fire their entire managment team, they might have a chance.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Yes a Seafood place is going to pay some geek to astroturf on a nerd website like this.
Is the only good Slashdotter in your mind someone who hates all corporations?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
800-GOOG-411 - it's free.
What do you not like about the Dock? I personally find it very intuitive, more so than Window's task bar or the KDE / Gnome equivalents. The fact that it is application based, instead of window based, is a big plus to me and my personal workflow.
The biggest problem I have with it is the lack of easy program launching, although I think that this is more of a Finder issue than the Dock. Even that is not critical; I use Quicksilver (which I love, BTW), and all is well.
This is not a fan-boi trolling post; speaking as a UI designer for a few OSS projects, I am seriously curious about what you find so wrong with the Dock. I understand that people's workflows are different, and that what fits me may not fit you, but please share your concerns with me.
Cheers
Thank you for this post. Well said.
Limina.Log
Call the county health department and have them test your water. Tell them to look for high levels of lithium, anti-depressants or other mind altering substances.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Oh, I'm not really sure how much to make of the Leopard delay anyway. It seems likely that the iPhone will be the first Apple product to ship on a Leopard version of OS X.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I'm not as concerned about tactile feedback, but I feel your concern is legitimate. I believe I have greater faith in Apple's design team. This isn't a product they rushed out the door, so I'm certain my faith is well-placed.
However, I completely disagree with your anecdotal statement about young people only looking at their typing in a casual glance. My 14-year-old step-daughter seemingly text messages constantly. In the morning, in the evening, late at night. She is completely focused on the message she's typing out and never removes her eyes from the screen until she's done typing. But then that's just my anecdotal evidence. We're probably both correct within our small sub-sets of humanity.
Do you have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time?
Seriously, how hard is it to glance at something and push a button...
I had an 8525 and I returned it within a week. Between the sluggish response, terrible UI, third-party apps that just hosed the thing and the price which was actually more than an iPhone, I decided to hedge my bets and wait out the next 6 months for the iPhone.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Maybe it is just me, but everything you described all relies on the fact that you will be using the internet. The internet is not unique to the iPhone. Of course, knowing Apple, they will "stylize" and "mainstream" its use further (good thing). However, I still don't understand why Apple did not make it 3G in the 1st version.
I have to admit that I was not able to parse the first two paragraphs of your reply (the name of the product tells you that it is shit? huh?), thus I have to ignore those. I don't think it matters, because this seems to be the meat of what you're trying to say:
But whatever, people think pretty=good...Actually, this is precisely what they hopefully don't think. Please note that the iPhone ads don't actually show the iPhone. They show a person using the iPhone's interface. When was the last time you saw a phone ad that did not concentrate on design and lifestyle? I bet this is the first.
I don't really know what you have against Apple or the people who buy Apple's products, but it seems to be clouding your judgement. Apple is the only cell phone manufacturer which is not selling its phone based on "prettiness."
And that ammendment makes a big difference, as my original reply to you was based on my step-daughter's Sidekick III which has a QWERTY keyboard.
Well about the only thing I understand from the parent post is that people who play Magic: the Gathering spend too much money on chase rares, and can't afford $500 phones? Seriously, uh, what? Pockets?
Now, go look up the 1G and 2G iPod sales in the 2 years before they introduced the much cheaper iPod Mini. Do you mean the numbers before Windows compatibility or after? What about the fact that the Mini came out 8 months after the 3rd Generation iPod? Or that the first time they sold over a million a quarter was after the 4th Gen came out, long after the mini?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I suspect you missed the [sarc] tag in my original reply.
Because the United States doesn't have many 3G networks yet, and they wanted to sell to a broader market. A 3G iPhone is in the works, however.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Insofar as "pretty" things, I was referring to apple products as a whole, not the iPhone. I'm sorry, but Apples products as a whole have (in the past 10 years anyway) become the similar to the Razr....everyone has to have one, and yet they are completely ignorant of the fact that they are overpaying for what they are getting.
IN MY OPINION, remember, this is just my opinion, people that buy things like an iPod or an iPhone or an iWhatever, are doing so because of two reasons:
It's a name they recognize, and because they are attracted to shiny plastic. The very fact that in advertising they say "This can hold 30,000 songs!" is enough proof of that, as we all know that since song lengths are variable there is no way they could determine how MANY things I could fit on there. It feeds off the ignorance of the general consumer, much like Intel's "more MHz = better!" approach that they had for so long.
Living With a Nerd
Unfortunately for your logic, most of the items you list are parts from other companies; Sony batteries are now Apple's manufacturing problem? Perhaps you should check your biases too, and see that Apple has been at the top or near the top in quality for computer products for longer than I can remember now.
Seriously. When was the last time the actual product was demoed AS the commercial?
Hell, when was the last commercial you saw so clear and simple so as to be produced at nearly zero cost? The have a dude holding the phone, and showing you how it works. Then there's a graphic at the end with the date.
Compare to the blackjack commercial with the magic hands. WTF? The whole commercial pimps its card-like design by the hands? is there any indication of how useable it is? You barely even see the *actual* product for a few moments.
My mom owns an iPod now that i've given her one - she fscking loves it. She uses it everywhere. I didn't get her a sansa or something else 1. because she's got a mac and every other music player is pretty much fsck-all useless if you have a mac 2. she understood how to use it in 15 seconds.
She has called me exactly one time because she forgot how to make a new playlist in iTunes. Once sorted out, she's been using it - with 100% no techincal support from me.
Compare to her sprint whatever the fsck it is phone. She's got no way to sync up her phone's phone book with her mac, and its impossible for her to DO anything with the pictures it takes - they're all stuck inside the phone.
Just looking at the iPhone commerical - its obvious that my mom could use 100% of the functions on the phone. Its simple and it works seamlessly on Mac and Windows.
When it comes to technology for day to day use - i want technology designed well enough that my mom can use it because i no longer live in her basement. I don't have the time nor the inclination to figure things out that just simply shouldn't be so complicated. I have stuff to do, and figureing out the minutae of some damn sycning issue is not one of the things i need to do.
It amazes me how many don't get it. Well designed things may cost more - the cheapest thing you can buy is not always really the best answer. My life is considerably less stressful by following this one rule.
Buy the best, or be content with what you have.
(btw: i drove a beater early 90's accord until i could afford a Impreza WRX STi - and now, i enjoy it immensely, as opposed to having a long list of shitty half-baked cars)
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I've also got a lot of friends who can't wait to ditch their PDA's, 'smart' phones, and music players and replace them with one device that works just as seamlessly.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
The phone has no sound feedback to tell you where your finger is in 2d space. I'm not exactly sure how you'd use that to tell you what number your finger is hovering over...
As for the ear piece, yeah, that's just one more piece of techno-crap to lug along.
I got mine for $140 (amazon has nice deals), and I figure that if I'm not thrilled with it enough to pay the $$$ for an iPhone, I can just transfer the plan to an iPhone (since they are both Cingular/AT&T)
I needed a cel right away, but I can see why you would want to wait - I was trying really hard to wait, but after dropping my phone in a puddle, it was a choice between going without a phone (not going to happen) and getting *something* approximately useful.
Every time I've seen it demo'ed pressing "home" brings up the standard 4 options at the bottom of the screen. "Phone" is always lower left. After that Favorites is two over.... and so on.
How do you know how far without any physical feedback ?
You mean apart from the width of the iPhone? Or are you claiming that it grows and shrinks?Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
They pushed it alright.
IIRC, Jobs originally said it would be available in Spring of 2007, but June 29th is no longer Spring. So they've missed their original date by 8 or 9 (too lazy to look up the actual date of the solstice) days.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Look, I've had this discussion about a dozen times before. Either you claim that the iPhone is just like the iPod, in which case it'll sell approximately 1/20th of what Jobs claimed it will in its first year, or the iPhone isn't just like the iPod, in which case extrapolating the iPod's success for the iPhone makes no sense. Since the latter option still allows for your belief that the iPhone will be a big success, why don't we agree on that one and be done with it?
Even Apple doesn't believe that. For years, zealots haven't been able to produce big profits for the computer line. In recent history, only the iPod was able to do that by appealing to a far wider group. And it has been Apple's hope ever since that iPod sales would have spillover effect, something that seems to be coming true at least in the laptop line.
To be successful, the iPhone has to be popular with Wal-Mart America. That's Apple's market now. Apple wants to sell to Joe Sixpack, not merely to fussy refined aesthetes (that tiny segment's delivered already and not going anywhere). The hipsters and smugsters shown in the Switcher ads? Highly colorful pilot fish meant to bring along the carp. When the lady in the lime green stretch pants shifts her Big Mac to the other paw and whips out her iPhone, wiping clean the screen on her thigh, hearts will light up in Cupertino.
You are somewhat excitable. Off your meds?
The fact that Apple does their homework before introducing a product is public information.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, I'm sorry that your ignorance and prejudice keep you from objectively evaluating why people choose Apple products. The point you bring up about the number of songs is laughable, by the way. It's an example of Apple turning tech specs into something people actually understand. They're using average song length and bitrate to determine how many songs a typical user can store on the iPod. Nothing nefarious about it. Anyway, obviously, discussion is pointless since you've made up your mind about Apple and its customers. If you can't see a reason to buy a computer running Mac OS X, I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you.
jcr worked at Apple until recently.
It's coming up on two years since I left, actually.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The only thing I don't like about my phone is how hard it was to find a phone that is simply a phone.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
'' The point you bring up about the number of songs is laughable, by the way. It's an example of Apple turning tech specs into something people actually understand. They're using average song length and bitrate to determine how many songs a typical user can store on the iPod. Nothing nefarious about it. ''
I have the impression that everyone else (Creative, Microsoft etc. ) uses the same method nowadays. The only sad, sad exception was Sony who claimed 13,000 songs in the same storage where everyone else claimed 5,000 because they based their measurements on 48KBit/sec compression.
What I was more referring to was the results of such research, not that such research had taken place. Of course, based on the decision to go forward, many reasonable assumptions could be made re said results ...
Hey, I'm sorry, I was being facetious about the state of Slash. I'd tagged the post with [sarc] to indicate that I wasn't being serious. I know what it's like to have little-known but excellent restaurants, and know it'd be cool to see them noted.
You must be affluent or have a really bad sense of math/economics. With your argument you could probably convince yourself that anything amortized enough is cheap. Example: let's say the iphone2 costs $1000, well amortized across 4 years that's only $21 a month, that's not so bad. But Apple/Cingular/Att aren't going to give you a free no-interest loan for that sum of money, either you pay it up front or you will get charged some kind of interest (your total monthly payments will be higher than the upfront cost). If every loan could be amortized at zero interest, people would just put everything on loan and invest their money elsewhere.
I paid zero dollars for my phone along with my contract. With the iphone they want you to pay $499 along with a contract. My phone meets 100% of my requirements for the device (I need to make calls), everything else is extra. My phone can't play mp3s, movies, or lookup google maps, but that's ok, because I don't need that. Maybe you do, but for many other people, they only buy a phone to make calls.
I think the big problem with dialing the iPhone while driving is that it takes two hands to dial.
That means that I'll have to put my beer down just to make a call.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
OK, what were Job's predictions of iPod sales for the first year? Or did you make that up like all the other facts from your post?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I mean come on. We all saw this coming...when the iPod came out and took over the world. We had a iPod, a cell phone, one if not two other pagers and a Palm...all clipped to our belts along with our shoulder slung notebook. That is the neo-pocket protector. A bunch of techno-gadgets.
The marriage of all these devices was going to happen sooner or later. So here it is and the "folding table in the mall computer club" morons are saying how it is a just a pop culture fad and cannot possibly be as amazing as the Amiga.
Like the Macintosh and iPod that ushered in radcial change so too will the iPhone change the way we work, play, live and communicate. I for one will probably buy one. I held off on buying an iPod because I already carry a pager and a cell phone and wish to limit number amount of "crap that beeps". I stopped lugging a notebook around. And now I will glad the day comes I can say fuggit to a pager, and cellphone, dropping everything I am doing to find a computer that I can access work with to fix junk.
The iPhone will be "Lord of the bling."
I disagree - I have used a combination of many smart phones, and other higher end phones like the RAZR. They all suck as far as UI, especially so if you want to browse the internet - the iPhone should get some credit as being the first to try a really no-compromise browser with a good UI for traversing a larger page on a smaller screen.
All of what they have done is derivative. That's mostly what they've done in the past. But the difference is, Apple is able to take the pieces and make them work in ways others have not managed before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, I'd be quite willing to bet your subconscious recognised that you've made an error long before (relatively speaking) your conscious mind sees the error on screen, but I doubt you'll agree since you seem to have made your mind up.
I simply examined what happens when I type. Yes you get some input from your fingers that you may be off, but you only get confirmation from your eyes because your fingers may also simply brush other keys on the way down without pressing them.
My mind is made up, because that is how my mind works! I do not know how general this is, but to me it makes a lot of sense because as I said you look at the screen while you are touch typing and register mistakes there before your finger even leaves the offending key.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the iPhone Ad called "Calamari," the user has the area around Moscone Recreation Area up on the phone, and does a search for "Seafood." One of the hits, the closest one, is "Pacific Catch," around the corner of Fillmore St and Lombard St.
Here's the thing though; it you go to Google Maps and search for"Seafood" right in that area where it found Pacific Catch, it doesn't find Pacific Catch. It does find a bunch of other hits for "Seafood" that are much closer than the other ones the iPhone found, but doesn't find Pacific Catch. If you search Google Maps in a browser for "Pacific Catch," it finds it right there where the iPhone found it and gives you all the same info the iPhone did.
So why does the iPhone's version of Google Maps find Pacific Catch by searching for "Seafood," when the browser version doesn't. In fact, the whole results list has very little overlap when you put the same map area shown on the iPhone up in Google Maps in a browser and perform the same search.
In his interview with Bill Gates and Walt Mossberg last week at D5, Jobs said that the iPhone Maps software was written by Apple and Google was very impressed with it, but that it just interface with the usual Google Maps API's. So I'm surprised it gives such different results, especially categorizing a restaurant under "Seafood" that the browser version of Google Maps doesn't. How does it know?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
A contact list is great if it's populated. Not having a way to directly type in number is a pretty major PITA if need to, however. You need both to be well done for a phone to be good.
The number keypad on the iPhone is pretty large and looks easy to type.
Since the iPhone is undoubtedly built to sync rather well with a computer (unlike other phones where that ability seems like an afterthought) contact lists should be populated pretty well.
I just don't see what the fuss about the iPhone's contact list is about. Certainly from looking at the mockups, it doesn't seem to offer any opportunity for significant improvement over existing methods.
I think the iPhone is trying to treat it more seriously, and also attempt to better solve the loading issue, than other phones have. Apple does synching very well so I expect that part of the phone to work well.
I don't think that's the centerpiece of the phone by any means, but if it works well it takes a lot of wind out of the argumnet that you must have a number pad to have the phone be generally quick to operate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I concur with your statement...for the year we've had our DS, our two kids (5 & 2) have banged on it (the 2yo broke a stylus on it in that the stylus itself snapped in half) and the screen is still registers every movement. I put a plastic film on the screen figuring that abuse would happen and I still havent' had to replace it.
Apple's done the research, and found that you are mistaken. They don't jump into a crowded market unless they know that it's very poorly-served.
Lately, sure, Apple has made some smart moves.
But they do have a history of taking chances, jumping into markets quickly with new products or variants, and occasionally ending up with a commercial failure. I think people respect them for taking these kinds of chances. But they're not immune to bad judgement.
* Apple III
* Apple Lisa
* Apple Newton
* Macintosh Portable
* Apple Pippin
* Apple Interactive Television Box
Yeah. Sony claimed that their ATRAC compression was so much better than everything else that their 48kbps songs sounded as great as other people's 128 kbps AAC files. It's not true, of course, but what do you expect of Sony.
3. Cheek Greese.
The clientele for this phone, however, is more of the Treo/Pocket PC crowd. The lack of a tactile keyboard is the biggest problem, and for me the lack of an internal GPS receiver and not being able to run a bunch of cool apps (Agile Messenger) on the network of my choice.
I didn't say that it did, but rather that it could. I'm sure it's non-trivial, but I've no doubt that sound feedback could be developed that would give you a very good sense of where your finger is. I don't know how sensitive to force the pad is, but if it can tell the difference between a light touch and a press then that's all you'd need.
People want to praise him for his wonderful sucesses (Mac, iPod, OS X), but quickly forget the failures (NEXT, Newton, The Cube)
Newton was not his. NeXT contributed a ton of technical advances and became the basis for OSX, which most credit as the largest part of Apple's recent desktop successes, as it pulled them out of their OS funk. (NeXT by itself had some development gems going on, but indeed couldn't find a place in the market to survive on--which has basically been every other commercial OS that didn't pre-date Windows. It's not the easist of markets in which to find succor.) On the Cube, I can't really blame him for YOUR weird-ass opinions ("I thought it would be the future and savior of all things electronic."), but in the meanwhile it was simply a PC design that was not widely adopted and was quickly phased out. It's not like they sank tens of millions into it; to my knowledge it still brought in profit--it just wasn't popular enough to have them continue the production and line complications (and potential consumer confusion.) Shuttle and other mini form factor computers came out later on, and they were adopted but not widely so, so it's not until recently that we're seeing a stronger push for it. (Driven also by media center desires, which weren't there at the time.) The Cube was not on target, but it was not a huge failure to bemoan.
In fact, if you want to go back to the Newton (which was Sculley's pet project, and which Jobs canned upon his return) and assume Jobs were a part of it from its' inception, we may have seen much less "failure" and much more "not seeing Palm exist," as Jobs pushes the same kind of values that Palm used to really take off to begin with. While the Newton was cool in many ways, it was also too complex and priced to a point where its' potential market was very limited, and not poised to expand that market. Maybe they could have kept up the technological advancements and pushing things with a higher model, but had Jobs been in charge we'd have likely seen something much like the Palm Pilot in existence much sooner. And if that were the case, the market would have started growing sooner, the room taken up by Palm likely co-opted by their already established name... Heck, Apple would probably still have held onto ARM and sunk more money into development, too.
Jobs has certainly had failures in his time, but I find people tend to fixate on the sillier ones and "ones that really aren't," rather than what was going on before his ousting.
No, I had no views one way or the other about the iPod.
Actually, they can easily get away with charging you no interest. Apple knows you're much more likely to purchase media from them and purchase a new iPhone later when the time comes, and at&t will have you locked in a contract for years, and much more likely to STAY with them if you love the iPhone, etc; not to mention the possibility of pulling you from another carrier simply BECAUSE of the iPhone, which is a rather amazing revenue swing for them. Any barriers if entry they lower will make for that many future advantages. At&t has already shown some interest in changing "how things are done" with the iPhone, so they may not be averse to experimenting with a few more. (The situation may change somewhat after they lose exclusivity, tho.)
Also, can people PLEASE stop using "I don't care about these features on my phone?" rationales? Obviously the iPhone is not aimed at you. But to people who are not averse to the idea, paying $499 along with a contract is less objectionable when they are also not going to have to pay $200-250 for an iPod on the side, get real Wi-Fi connectivity, and excellent, easy-to-use, full features on the side.
The iPhone certainly has points to prove, and--yes--it still has a price hurdle in the beginning (the same price point the RAZR started at, amusingly. It seems to have done well by itself.) but I wish people comparing prices would actually consider all the prices they SHOULD be. (And heck, we don't even HAVE all of them to compare yet.)
You're seeing things, BTW. I can't have made up any facts because I never presented anything as fact.
How about we mod you down for saying nothing of use and being a general tool, as opposed to our being fanboys?
I feel there is a strong cross over between people who own high end ipods and people who have expensive phones. Apple is really trying to convert their cashed up video ipod audience into a new market. I think this market would appreciate the space saving of getting rid of their mobile phone, for a slightly taller ipod.
You're seeing things, BTW. I can't have made up any facts because I never presented anything as fact. Listen, you Schmock. First you make up "facts" about iPod sales being driven by the iPod Mini, that you make up facts about Jobs making sales predictions for the iPod, and now you completely act like you never did. You say you had this argument 20 times before? And after losing 20 times, you still make up stuff and pretend you won?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Ahh, sorry bro. I shoulda been paying attention to your subject!
Heh. Oops.
Cheers,
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
This is not a fan-boi trolling post; speaking as a UI designer for a few OSS projects, I am seriously curious about what you find so wrong with the Dock. I understand that people's workflows are different, and that what fits me may not fit you, but please share your concerns with me.
Many (including me) have covered this before, however, some highlights:
* The indication as to what is a running program (vs a launch icon) and what is not is too subtle .... the Trash). The Dock should have at least 3 - maybe even 4 - different "zones".
* Similar objects look identical (eg: a bunch of minimised terminals or word docs, or a bunch of folder shortcuts) unless you either turn the zoom right up (which produces other problems), keep it big all the time (which wastes screen space), or constantly wipe the mouse across it to get captions.
* It's centre-oriented (I realise this is changeable with appropriate tools, but the point is that's how it arrives out of the box). Additionally, it doesn't extend to the bottom of the screen. That makes it (relatively) hard to hit.
* Further, it means everything on it moves constantly, destroying any hope of leveraging muscle memory.
* The intermingling of icons with distinctly different functions (more apparent in the right side of the Dock where you get minimised windows hanging around with file and folder aliases and
* Icons on the Dock behave inconstently (and, worse, _destructively_) with "similar" icons in most other parts of the UI (eg: drag something off and it disappears, rather than copies/moves). Icons on the Dock *should* be aliases that can be manipulated like other aliases.
* The icons on the Dock don't tie back to anything (ie: they're not physical files that can be manipulated).
* You can't drag-and-drop via the Dock to an arbitrary window.
* Context menus are infuriatingly slow, especially for folder aliases.
* Related to this, moving from an arbitrary window in one application to an arbitrary window in another application is tedious (I know Expose has disguised this problem, but I'm talking in the context of the original release).
* Following on, I really don't like the application-centric paradigm (this is more a personal preference thing, I'll grant).
Basically, it's difficult to find anything the Dock does _right_ (other than look cool in demos). The Windows Taskbar is superior in pretty much every functional way[0], as were the Application and Apple Menus it replaced from Classic MacOS (my only adjustment to them would have been to make the Application Menu cascade out a window list for each application on it and to improve drag & drop capabilities).
The Dock is a very confused piece of UI. It tried to be a program launcher, [filesystem] shortcut bar, task switcher and window manager, and consequently ends up sucking at all of them. If you really are a UI designer, steer well clear of the Dock for inspiration. According to pretty much all well understood UI guidelines, it's a disaster. It was quite clearly made primarily to look cool and with usability (and good UI principles) as a distant secondary priority.
[0] Even that annoying collapse-a-bunch-of-windows-into-a-button feature only serves to make that aspect (task switching) of the Taskbar *as bad* as the Dock when it triggers - and like the Dock's centre-orientation, it's "fixable" with tweaking utils (to bump up the threshold).
And that ammendment makes a big difference, as my original reply to you was based on my step-daughter's Sidekick III which has a QWERTY keyboard.
Well, not really, because a QWERTY keyboard on a similarly small phone-sized touch screen is going to be worse or, at best, equivalent.
You mean apart from the width of the iPhone? Or are you claiming that it grows and shrinks?
No, I'm saying that without looking at it, it will be difficult to tell if you're over one of those buttons or between two of them.
"Two over" means nothing when there's no way of counting how many you've already gone past.
If the tactile feedback really worked, though, they'd be looking at the screen constantly, rather than letting their eyes off the buttons only every 5-10 keypresses, no?
Er, no ? Why would they ? When I know I can write, for example, "friend" by just hitting 374363, and being able to feel exactly where those buttons are is trivial, why would I be looking at it constantly ?
I don't even send a lot of texts - maybe 2-3 a day - and I can write SMSes with only a casual glance. People who do send a lot (some younger colleagues at work) can quite literally write messages dozens of words long without even looking at (or, apparently, concentrating on) the phone. I sincerely doubt they'll be able to do that with an iPhone.
Maybe then I'd also receive fewer SMSes with completely mistaken words that just happened to be on the same keys, as well. I can't quote any examples in English, but I think everyone knows what I mean...
I can think of one - "he" and "if". On my Nokias, you toggle between the alternatives using the '*' key and it's basically an automatic reaction after a while (ie: writing "if" becomes "41*").
Your comparison is misleading because you linked to the two-disc special edition. The regular edition DVD is only $14.99 -- it's marked down quite a bit from an inflated "list price", but Best Buy always does that.
That's the same price as on the iTunes store, but you still get extra features (outtakes, commentary, other languages) as well as the ability to play it on any DVD player, rip it to your favorite compressed format, etc.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
What I don't get is all these posts gushing about how great the iPhone is, when the thing hasn't even been released yet and 99% of the people talking about how great they are have never even held one in their hands, and have only seen a highly polished demo by Steve Jobs himself. It's not like Apple hasn't had their share of duds too - including their last attempt at a PDA-like device, so don't please mistake a little skepticism as FUD.
Thanks for this. I guess I must have subconciously modified my workflow to avoid some of these issues. For instance, I almost never minimize windows, instead preferring to hide them; I don't include any programs in the dock that are not essentially always running (Web browser, Mail, Terminal, etc). All the other applications I launch as needed via Quicksilver.
Anyways, thanks again for the reply.
Cheers
I agree with you completely.
:)
My problem is the non-informed SlashDot crowd that tries to paint the iPhone as revolutionary or 'technically' advanced, when it is not.
It is just simple convergence with an Apple Logo, plain and simple.
This doesn't make it horrible or bad either. My original post was a bit over the top trying to make my point of how average the iPhone is compared to other technologies, but I wanted to get some people to think about it realistically.
If someone has tons of iTunes content and needs a new phone, this is fine choice for them. The iPhone isn't evil nor does it seem to be a bad design, however I am personally disappointed Apple is skipping several technologies like 3G level online performance.
Also for people that are wanting multi-media in their pocket, there are some really good products already out there, and you can use WMP and either buy tracks online or even do a subscription and have access to 3 million songs for $15 a month. The iPhone level of convergence already exists in many other phones; it just doesn't have the Apple marketing machine.
PS Thanks for responding and bring me back out of orbit.
Wow, typical Apple bashing. I think people like you get upset when people are engaged by technology
I admit my post was a bit emotional or over the top, but I wasn't trying to Apple bash, but instead try to give people a wake up call.
The iPhone isn't evil or bad, but also isn't a major technology advance and I wanted to get this across to people. (Although I did go a bit into orbit.)
I have been around phones for literally years that offer solid applications, and a full multimedia (aka iPod) experience in addition to being a good phone and PDA.
iPhone is kind of cool, but is driven more by marketing than actual features. With the exception of the paradigm moving to a multi-touch screen, it offers nothing new, and disappoints by not offering true high speed cellular performance.
I have had 3G speeds for over 3yrs, and am used to using my phone alone or with my laptop on the beach with DSL like speeds. I am also use to using my phone as my second media device with 8gb of storage that I can change in and out and even Sync over Bluetooth or WiFi.
Apple's marketing is awesome, they could sell ice to penguins, but that doesn't mean their ice is revolutionary.
PS I apologize for going Postal on Apple in my original post, it was more emotional than what I intended when all I wanted to do is shake some reality back into the conversation.
Take Care...
The revolutionary thing about the iPhone is not that it uses a multitouch screen (although that is pretty new, too - if you know of any other cell phones that do that, I'd love to hear about it). The revolutionary thing is how it uses the touch screen. Have you ever seen a cell phone ad that focused on usability? That's pretty damn revolutionary if you ask me. Which you don't, of course... but... it still is! HA!
:)
Yes I agree the usability is the key Apple is banking on.
However this doesn't mean other phones haven't addressed usability. Some motorola interfaces aren't bad, and then there is Windows Mobile 5 and 6 that offer a comfortable level of usability. Phones with advanced features are not horrible to use like they were 5 years ago.
I hope Apple's usability is beyond everyone else, as it is elevate the expectation of users.
I still do wish that Apple would not have dismissed some of the technical features people like myself have come to expect in phones, like 3G speeds.
I apologize for my original post, it was an emotional OMG type of post, rather than just laying out facts.
Thanks for responding, and yes I would have asked you what you thought if I knew you.
You do seem to have some incredible problems with your vision and your temper. Your rage blinds you to the quote from Jobs sitting in your face and prompts you to invent claims that I've never made. Hell, you can't even mock my hyperbole correctly: I said a dozen times, not 20.
I'd ask you to calm down, but I don't think I have the patience to wait that long.
Where do you keep your towel?
Being crazy doesn't make me wrong.
You offer the insufferable Motorola UI and Windows Mobile 5 and 6 as examples of good cell phone UI? I think you just made my point :-)
Now, I will agree that there are cell phones with better UI than others. I like the Nokia phones. Nokia put a lot of thought into what the user needs at any given time, and it shows. The important options are always there.
Palm is one of the few companies that gets smartphone stuff like the Calendar quite right.
But none of these companies are competing on UI. And people have resigned. A friend of mine recently bought a new cell phone, a SonyEricsson. He told me that while he didn't like it too much, at least it wasn't a Samsung or an LG. I asked what was wrong with Samsung and LG - both make pretty cell phones and seem to have a rather good reputation quality-wise. He told me that the LG and Samsung UI sucks. He then proceeded to explain that he thought the SonyEricsson UI sucked, as well, but since he had had a SonyEricsson phone before, he at least already knew how it worked.
Another example: I own a P990i. Entering a new entry into the calendar takes over 14 taps with the stylus (provided that you don't need any of the "advanced" features like a reminder or a timespan not equal to an hour). SonyEricsson recognized that this was an issue, so they created a shortcut for creating new entries, which is unintuitive to use and also takes about 10 stylus taps.
In fact, the P990i is much more complicated and less usable than the P800, an earlier Symbian based SonyEricsson smartphone.
The simple fact is that SonyEricsson does not care about the UI on its cell phones. They care about making it look good and making it cheap, and cramming as many features into it as possible, because that's what everyone is doing, and that's what seems to be selling.
As you can see, I'm deeply unhappy with the current state of the cell phone industry :-)
I'm really hoping Apple changes this trend.
I still do wish that Apple would not have dismissed some of the technical features people like myself have come to expect in phones, like 3G speeds.I have no doubt that this is coming shortly. Otherwise, the iPhone won't stand a chance in Europe.
I'd ask you to calm down, but I don't think I have the patience to wait that long. Maybe the reason is because nothing you have said made sense? Nah, that can't be it. Your claims were not based on realöity, but that is obviously my fault. Your made up claim that I said "the iPhone is just like the iPod" made you fantasize that "in which case it'll sell approximately 1/20th of what Jobs claimed it will in its first year" - now what could that mean? That the iPod didn't sell as well as Jobs said it would? So I asked you for Job's predictions of iPod sales - and you give me that for the iPhone.
There sure as hell is someone with a reading problem - and he probably thinks I'm talking about banana cream pie by now.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"for now I am keeping my money in a sock under my bed and wating on that Apple stock purchase."
Since the day before they announced the iPhone (Jan 8, 2007), Apple stock is up 43.7%. How has the money in your sock performed?
The biggest problem with mobile-phones today is that everything is proprietary.
Damn it! Use a standard headphone-port, a standard usb-port and give me some decent documentation and I'd be a great device.
But noooo.
Want to connect headphones? Then use our worthless adapter.
Want to connect to the computer? Then use our worthless proprietary cable.
Want to change the media-player application? You can't *argh*
Want to build a [insert purpose]-device to interface with our phone? Then go back-engineer the interface, cause we won't tell you how it works!
Current mobile-tech companies suck, along with their hardware.
I do hope Apple will use standard ports, have an open software architecture and open control-protocols, but looking at their history, it seems unlikely that they'll manage to not suck like the rest.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I never made any claims about Jobs' predictions for the iPod. You mis-read my comments and asked for something unrelated to what I was talking about. To explain for the umpteenth time:
If the iPhone is just like the iPod -- and note here that I am not claiming that you said this, though TheRealMindChild did -- then the iPhone's sales will follow the basic trend of the iPod's sales. The known sales record of the iPod in its first two years is a tiny fraction of Jobs' stated goal for iPhone sales in 2008. By the standards set by Jobs himself, that would be a failure.
If it isn't true that the iPhone is just like the iPod (the only other option), then it makes no sense to say the iPhone will be a success just because the iPod was (eventually). Since that doesn't mean that the iPhone won't be a success, I find it amazing that this is such a controversial proposition, especially one that could anger you so.
If the iPhone is just like the iPod -- and note here that I am not claiming that you said this, though TheRealMindChild did "you claim that the iPhone is just like the iPod, in which case"
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Wow, that was retarded. You've just run out of stuff to make up, haven't you?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
See? You have run out of stuff to make up. Now you're just recycling.
You started with the making up of stuff. Before I even replied to you.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"You started it!"
We've really reached a new low now haven't we?
We've really reached a new low now haven't we? I still haven't sunk nearly as low as you, ohh inventor of "facts".
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck