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My iPhone Story

1 year, 2 months ago
in General
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Well the wait is over for me. I talked myself into buying an iPod last night after toying around with it for just a few minutes and my experience with it for 20 minutes today at the mall solidified my decision.

 Yes, the iPhone does do what many other phones do already. That’s clear but it’s the how that counts. The simplicity may be a drawback for some (or at least one I know) but like the BlackBerry OS it’s almost perfect. Just look at how the BB and the iPhone handle the filesystem: the Blackberry does let the user notice that a structure is there when digging through images (which is a must for finding images or files with the expansion card) and the iPhone doesn’t let you worry about such things, making you think it’s not there. The Treo is similar but the Windows mobile OS is heavily constructed around the computer OS mentality to find and finally display files or run programs through a tree hierarchical system. Maybe this has changed since the Pocket PC OS but from what I’ve noticed it hasn’t.  Some say this is a drawback to the simplicity of iPhone, I disagree; the Treo made it clear you didn’t need to worry about anything but launching apps and the BlackBerry proved it. iPhone is just banking on it.

And no, Apple does not tell people what to do. They know what people want and they let you do it. Basically, it just works how you want it. If it doesn’t, so be it, because in my experience Apple doesn’t tend to make Swiss Army devices that have a great spec sheets without anything more to back it.

Personally, that’a why I like iPhone (and the Apple TV). I just want a device that works. If I can’t get some clumsy 3rd party app that makes my phone (Treo, PPC, WMD) freeze or hard reset I don’t want the phone.  That’s why I believe they’re completely closing the phone to widgets (javascript and CSS) and the web, giving the OS a chance not to deconstruct and fail by bad programming.

iPhone doesn’t make you struggle, similar to the blackberry it’s a phone and an application device. It doesn’t try to be anything more through sacrificing usability.

Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of missing pieces to this puzzle. Many of which can and will be updated through software updates.  And the pieces that need hardware updates will come along on the mystery train that Apple loves to use for product releases.

Those hardware functions that lack on revision one are the reasons that I’m giving up my plot to buy an iPhone. What are they? Well, Edge although very responsive to my tests this morning could be replaced with 3g but that’s not why I’m not getting one. And, the storage size limitation of 8 gigs isn’t practical for me but that’s not the reason either, since I would need to sync the iPhone every night to charge anyways. Is it the lack of stereo bluetooth on the first bluetooth iPod? No. Is it the price of that hardware? No, it’s actually worth it as a computing device.  The simple small little detail that noone is mentioning is…

No video output.

And since I use my iPod Video daily to watch video at our lunch hour it’s not an iPod to me. And it can’t be to many others who use it to display all the iTunes purchased or other video on their TV. My guess, “why add it while we have the AppleTV?” which is just another shitty marketing cross-sell idea because they think it’s not that big of an issue.

It is a big deal to me. But who am I when millions of iPhones have been sold to very happy consumers.

So for now I’ll still be running with my BlackBerry curve that I still adore. It hasn’t failed me yet and although it may be “limiting” it does what I need it to do, except run full websites (Opera doesn’t count) like Google Reader or Google Talk or have the most highly resolution screen I’ve ever seen in a small device or have hand gestures or motion sensing or come smaller or have WIFI.

Viewing 5 Comments

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    Yes, Apple doesn't tell people what to do, they just decide how it should be done and only allow it that way. As long as you agree with them, then hey, what do you know, you get to do things how you want to!

    I'm planning to post my thoughts on the iPhone in general shortly, so I'll try to address the other points (at least the ones directed towards me) in that post.

    In a larger sense, I would agree that if you're OK with all the limitations (and most people probably will be) and OK with the huge price tag, then it's probably an OK device for you.
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    Only one portion was directed at you and I made that obvious. :) Maybe you should post because I thought I understood your point until I realized or couldn't remember any hardware or software that doesn't decide what the consumer can and can't do. Even the Linux community decides whether to support something and that's why there are so many variants. One distro might decide to go one way and another continues the original path, it's endless. Either way Fedora or Ubuntu or any OSS or MS or Apple or Nokia or Verizon or ATT or TMobile or Dell decide what you can and cannot do with the products they sell, no matter how I look at it.

    But we are talking about a phone/DAP/Video-player,
    I've tried practically every phone OS, used too many phones and read about almost every other (since that was a requirement of my past job) to know that the BlackBerrys I've had are by far the best phones, even though they've decided a lot on my behalf. I really don't see any difference between the iPhone and BlackBerry in regards to "limitations" although they are designed completely different. So do you have a problem with BlackBerries too? Or is it just over-hyped Apple products that you can't stand without even touching? ;)

    It's all about what we do, what we'd want to do and more importantly how we will be able to do it. That's primarly how I make my desicions about any product purchase and if the iPhone fit all of that criteria I would have bought it because like millions of others they think it's worth it.
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    I will post on it, but as far as the iPhone goes, just try to remember that I'm really not iPhone bashing in the sense that I think the iPhone sucks, just that I don't think it's for me. Like I said in my last comment, I think it's probably a fine (albeit very expensive) device for a lot of people.

    But I do have to strongly disagree with your latest point you tried to make in that last comment. Please tell me you are not saying that Apple doesn't try to control the user's choices MUCH more strongly than their competitors, specifically in the personal computer market.

    Last time I checked, the operating system you buy from Apple can ONLY be installed on their specific brand of hardware, AND they take measures to ensure that it stays that way. Not only do they not license any other hardware makers to build machines with it (which didn't seem to work in the market anyway), but they also deny requests from both VMWare and Parallels to allow them to support it in a virtual environment, which there would certainly be a market for. The alternatives (Windows and Linux) are polar opposites on this point: you can install their operating systems on any computer you can find that will run it.

    Free software goes even farther in allowing you choices, since at every step of the way and every technical level you have ultimate flexibility in what you can do. To drag the fact that there are many variations of Linux into the discussion serves to prove my point, not yours. If anyone in the community doesn't like the direction something is taking (or just prefers a difference), they can decide to take it in their own direction, which again is the exact opposite position of that of a consumer of Apple's (and most other proprietary) software.

    As for the phone issue, here's one point where we differ: I would never say that my phone is "by far the best phone", I would say that it's the best one according to my personal criteria. There are certainly many things (important to me) that my phone can do that neither Blackberries nor the iPhone can, and there are probably some things that those other devices can do that mine cannot (or maybe not as well), although I haven't yet heard of any such features that matter to me.

    Speaking of differences, though, if I understand correctly you can load third party apps on your Blackberry, which is miles of difference from the iPhone already, so I wouldn't hold those up as equals as far as that goes. In fact, most of the apps I've personally heard you talk about re: the BB are addons, I believe. (Opera Mini, all the Google apps, etc.)

    It really is about each person's unique requirements, and I'd say that if the iPhone meets yours, then more power to you. What I'd like not to see is FUD inserted into the discussions/arguments like references to devices (like mine) constantly crashing and/or taking 30 seconds to accomplish a particular task on devices similar to mine, etc. because it just isn't accurate. I can tell you for a fact that my phone never crashes and that there's nothing I've ever done with it that's taken 30 seconds to do, or seemed difficult in any way (to me, and probably to anyone who's got a decent familiarity with computers, although that statement is obviously relative). I grant you that you may have experienced such devices in the past, but I can only suppose that those were poorly configured and/or bad devices in a sea of choices, some of which are good and some are not.
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    Apple is a hardware company. You don't see many hardware venders license out their OS while still making hardware for it; the only two I can remember is Palm and they went south and Apple who tanked so bad they needed MS help to get out of it. It's a business decision not a personal one to be constrictive.

    The iPhone's developer tools is the web and safari. You may not agree with this path but I do, especially since most apps on any phone primarily use a net connection anyways and are rarely standalone. Apple is also opening it up to select developers like Google and Yahoo for now. From what the rumors are they'll open it up to yahoo widgets or something to do with flash but time will tell. Right now it looks as if they will allow the full library of Yahoo Widgets if most tech journalists are right, the notion comes from the weather widget is the same exact widget from Yahoo widgets and Apple is told everyone that they are partnering with them and Google. Yahoo Widgets are community developed BTW. But to answer your statement all the apps that I use on my BB are available by default or available through a web browser. And Actually google Talk is better online than it is as a BB app since that development is always first to release new features. Maps is by far better and Google Mail can be run through the browser as well. And then there's Google Reader which I can only get through the mobile pages but on the iPhone I could get the full UI, this same thing goes for a lot of other online apps that I use.
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    I just don't buy the hardware company argument. Many Mac fans claim that the operating system is one of the primary reasons they use that platform, and Apple leverages it as a selling point for its hardware by not allowing it to run on anything else, even though other companies are willing and able to do so (see the VM links in my previous comment).

    You're correct in saying that it's a business decision; but you've got to admit it's a business decision that consciously restricts what people can do with their software, in a way that is totally not similar to the other products from MS or Linux that you draw comparisons to in your previous comment. You made that association/comparison, but now you back away saying that you can't compare them because Apple is a hardware company.

    The bottom line is that you may not see that kind of move (the restrictive approach) as a bad thing; many people don't obviously, and if you don't, then it shouldn't deter you from buying their products. I do see it that way (especially on the iPhone), and that is the primary reason why I personally am not interested in ever getting one, unless they were to change their stand on that point.

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