iPhone: First impressions

By John McDaid | Sunday, 1 July 2007

iPhoneCould it possibly live up to the hype? So far, yes.

Most cell phones have what someone once described as an "inverse learning curve," that is, you know as much about using them as you ever will in the first ten minutes when you look through the manual and figure out how to do everything, and after that, it's all downhill. Six months later, you can't figure out how to change your ring tone. And that is the real genius of the iPhone: not only do you not need to look at the manual (my 7-year-old intuitively double-tapped on a map to make it bigger) but it all just works.

One of the most amazing things about OSX on a Mac has been the setup wizard that copies all your settings from an old machine to a new one. Applications, mail settings, bookmarks, you just fire it up and the new computer works like a clone. That's exactly how simple the iPhone was to set up. It synched for a few minutes, and then it hopped on my WiFi network and got my mail. All my contacts were there. My browser bookmarks. It just, well, worked, in that magical way we have come to expect from Apple.

Deft user interface touches like, say, setting an alarm. You set the time and preview an alarm sound, and if you happen to be listening to an mp3, it fades and pauses until you're done. It just surprises and delights.

And the device itself is stunning. It looks and feels like a solid piece of technology. The screen is razor sharp; even zoomed out, the text on web pages is crisp. Video is sharp — and big, much bigger than the video iPods. The phone features are intuitive, and the address book scrolls like a high-end power window. Call quality, in just a couple of tests in challenging two-bar spots, was perfectly fine.

Now I'm not going to sugar-coat the issues with AT&T over the weekend. I was one of the reported 2% of existing Cingular customers who had trouble activating the phone, and it took a couple of hours with tech support getting it to work. If you were a long-time customer, back from the pre-Cingular ATT Wireless days, your account was still old school, and they had to upgrade you manually before the phone started working. Could they have done better? Yeah. Am I surprised that even with a six-month lead time that their system slowed WAAAAAY down under the crunch of 100K+ activations on one weekend? Nope.

Did I forget all about that once the device twinkled to life? Yep.

Disclaimer: I am an Apple shareholder and, some have said, a nerd.

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Comments

English

Mon, 07/02/2007 - 8:49am

jmcdaid wrote: Disclaimer: I am an Apple shareholder and, some have said, a nerd.

Say it loud, say it proud, "I am a nerd!"

I am married (31 years) to a tech nerd. He uses his nerd-ness only for good, never for evil. For example, I am not a tech nerd and I would have had to throw my computer away countless times, but tech-nerd is able to quickly troubleshoot and fix the problem (even when it requires reloading the whole shebang - don't ask me to explain, to me it's ALL "FM", that's apparently a technical term that the rest of you tech-nerds will understand). Tech-nerd also reminds me to back up my data in at least two other places. And tech-nerd scours the internet for great deals on techno gadgets, including a package of jump drives that was affordable enough that I could loan them out to students who didn't have printers at home.

Like most nerds, he has other and varied interests. He's also a gardening nerd and a hiking nerd, with some kayaking nerd thrown in during the warm months. Most importantly, he's my nerd. Nerds rule.

Tech-nerd has taught me not to be afraid of my computer and has also taught me enough tech-nerd jargon that my friends and colleagues think I'm a tech-nerd, too. Not really; although I can talk the talk, I certainly can't walk the walk. But that doesn't mean I'm not a nerd. I share his gardening and kayaking nerdness. I am learning to be an eono-nerd with a focus on reds. But mostly I'm a word-nerd. I can't get enough of words, their etymologies, and especially long strings of them posted on blogs or emails, or bound into books. And quotes are a particular passion. I have a notebook of great quotes and there is a quote board in my classroom.

Tech-nerd and I are parents to a gaming nerd and an art nerd, among their other interests.

You become a nerd anytime you find an interest about which you are passionate and that gives meaning and purpose to your life. Or an interest that helps make what you have to do to pay the bills more palatable - that becomes the spice and zest to living, the salt on the rim of life's glass. Nerds are far more interesting than non-nerds. Thank a nerd, then give him/her a hug.

English

P.S. Here's a question outside my nerds-pertise. When I log in to this blog to post a reply, it first tells me I am not authorized to post. Then I log in a second time, and everything is fine. Except at that point, I show up as being logged in twice. And although my nerd-ness is pretty amazing, there is only one of me. Am I doing something wrong or it this a torvex glitch that the nerd didn't catch?

John McDaid

Mon, 07/02/2007 - 10:07am

Hi, English...
I agree completely -- for me, being a nerd is all about exploring and connecting at depth and trying to share your learnings. I love your description. While I agree there is a potential for evil (what hackers would call "black hats," or the DRM sellouts that Cory Doctorow describes as "Vichy nerds") the vast majority of nerds use their powers for good. As does your partner, and I thank you for your eloquent post about the richness of life a nerd family can enjoy; our son Jack just started a week-long camp at POW Science this morning, and, yeah, I guess that makes us a family of nerds too. :)

I will apologize for the double-login issue. It's related to a security feature on the site. I'm running a security module which allows people who are *not* signed in to send feedback; it's the only thing on the site where you can enter text without logging in, and I had to add this feature because of the enormous volume of spam I was getting from robots that just hit pages randomly until they find a text entry box. The problem is that this security add-in keeps checking all the time, and it seems to be hanging up genuine logins. While this is open-source code, and I will eventually be able to figure out just where the thing needs to be tweaked, I just haven't found the time. I'm very sorry about this inconvenience.

Cheers.
-j

English

Mon, 07/02/2007 - 11:34am

It's hardly an inconvenience, in the grand scheme of things. And as long as I know it's just the way it's working, I can easily "deal".

English