Yup. . . Sausage fingers.

Yeah, I have relatively large hands. Large enough in fact, that if I lay the first knuckle of my thumb on the edge of the iPhone, the tip rests less than a centimeter from the opposite edge of the scree. Apologies for the wacky description, but I'm trying to give scope here. Needless to say, my fingers are big, but the iPhone does an incredible job of interpereting what I'm trying to say, and does an equally excellent job of fixing common spelling errors. The first message I typed from the phone was with no corrections whatsoever, I sent it as the phone interpereted it, I didn't check for errors. The second message, all I did differently was pause to access the punctuation menu which really becomes second nature after a few sessions. I really like everything about the iPhone so far. I'm never far enough away from an 802.11 network to want for fast internet access, and I love the way that the phone handles certain phone things like missed calls (it lists multiple call times), and voicemail. I'm no Apple shill, but to say that this is no better than current offerings is to be absolutely oblivious to the truth. Mark my words. This phone will change the way that we look at mobile devices forever.

re Must buy iPhone

"Apple are being clever, because they know that the mac fanboys will buy anything they throw at them and say "look, it's shiny!", at any price."

Nope, still don't get it Christopher: It is our duty to protect the Apple fanboys from buying things they like? We must try stop "Clever"-ness? Stamp out choice? Bring down Apple before they go make more innovative things?

What is it? Because it just reads to me like some people think they must take a personal crusade to debase Apple products? And the only people I'd imagine that want to do that are salesmen to rival companies, certainly not customers looking for choice.

(ps: I'm fairly sure I did not literally mean anybody was being forced into anything - kind of was the point actually)

You are so right

YEP, you are right. I think you should return the phone right away. Hmm, maybe a Motorola Q phone would be better for you. I hear that the only moderatily suck. :-)

After all, the iPhone is not perfect.

It does not do movies (yet). And ONLY 2 mega pixals, sheeezzze, my $400 camera has 5 megapixals.

And as for a phone, why, it only has the same range and access as my other AT&T phone, how dare they!!!!!

I tell you, if I have to actually wait an hour for a phone (oh wait, if you had of come on Saturday, there would have been no wait) then it better give me lots of free stuff just because. So there. :-(

So anyways, I suggest you guys send the phone back, and any macs that you might be using at the office. I say go strictly DELL Vista. Period.

OH, and best of luck with that.

en

Moto keypads DO have tactile feedback

"Tactile feedback may be an issue for certain users, but it certainly hasn't hurt Motorola, Sony Ericsson and other mobile makers that have adopted flat membrane-style keypads;"

Motorola, SE etc keypads DO have tactile feedback. They might be flat, but the buttons click when you press them because the button mechanism is hidden away underneath the surface.

Touchscreens have no tactile feedback at all because they contain no moving parts.

Title

"Nope, still don't get it Christopher: It is our duty to protect the Apple fanboys from buying things they like? We must try stop "Clever"-ness? Stamp out choice? Bring down Apple before they go make more innovative things?"

I fear you have misinterpreted the comment again. I was just commenting on what a great position apple are in to have people who will pay that money. I'm not trying to protect anyone from paying that amount, that is their choice, but all the apple 'big' products that have come out have been quite overpriced for what they are. But, people will pay them, so I have no problem with apple charging that - they get the people paying it, why can't they make tonnes of money from it? You wouldn't find me paying so much for these things though.

I have nothing against apple though, just bought one of their products this evening actually.

Touch keyboard

How's the touchkeys to use in the rain? Or on a freezing cold day? Or in a car before the lights change (yes I know you aren't supposed to, but).

Not a Mac maniac!?

Clay you're saying "This phone will change the way we look at mobile devices forever." and you claim not to a Mac maniac?!? IMHO there seems to be a few innovations in terms of GUI in that phone, thinking specifically about the automatically rotating display and graphical voice mail but that hardly sounds like a revolution.

Touch screens have been there for years on smartphones and most manufacturers do provide a stylus just in case you find it more convenient despite the fact that most applications are designed to be used with wide clumsy fingers.

I've even heard Apple advertising that it was the first internet phone?!? Just where were they hiding since y2k? Just how did they managed to miss all those smartphones SE, Nokia, Moto and others have been spamming the market with since y2k?

Since it's the first phone Apple ever produced I have no doubt it's lacking some essentials and is probably full of annoying little bugs/features. Even if they focus on one single device it will take them years before they have a good and mature product. That's just the nature of the beast. Smartphones are slightly more complicated than MP3 players. Fanboys bought it yesterday but will users buy it tomorrow? There is one sure thing: Apple is good at managing their brands and marketing campaigns. Read brain washing people :)

Apple 'innovation'?

My Canon digital camera automatically rotates the display depending on how you are holding it. So we can strike that 'innovation' off Apple's list too.

Apple innovation

There is no hardware innovation in many devices, simply because so many devices use off the shelf parts. Few companies these days create loads of custom hardware. The days of custom graphics and co-processors is long gone.

The innovation comes in how things are utilised and the software.

The sceptics would be well advised to check out the IPhone 25 minute video on Apple's website. It shows how simple and well thought out the software is in this phone.

Windows Mobile uses a touch screen with loads of buttons, similar to a desktop on a phone (which is a poor design paradigm for a mobile device). Apple lets you use your fingers and use gestures. Sliding your finger across an email or text to reveal a delete button. With Windows Mobile you would highlight an item and select delete from a menu or hold the stylus over the item and select delete from a popup menu.

Apple has designed the first interface for a phone which really is designed for a phone and doesn't try to reinvent the WIMP environment for a phone.

Here we go again

You can call me a fanboy whatever. I honestly don't care. I do like Apple products, but day in and day out, I am surrounded by a Wintel world. One, Apple have never claimed that it is the first internet phone, simply the first phone that displays the internet in a fairly standards compliant manner. Second, by changing the way we look at mobile devices, I'm simply saying that while it may be lacking a feature here, or a feature there, without being biased, it is hard to fault the phone at what it does do. I can bitch for days about what I hate about my blackberry, what I didn't like about my RAZR, but I can't really do that about my iPhone. My iPhone just does what I want it to without too much of a fuss. As far as touchscreens go, sure there have been touchscreens on other devices before. Have they been made out off high quality glass??? No, they have been crappy plastic. Has a phone or any other device for that matter ever had such a high resolution screen? No. The iPhone even easily logs into my exchange web access without so much as a peep, making that AJAX Exchange app I wrote useless. I have a hard time faulting the iPhone for what it does, I don't bother faulting it for what it doesn't do, because it was aimed at the center of the bell curve, not the fringes. That's all I'm trying to say.

Apple people need to try other products!!!

Sorry Clay,

But you are coming across a bit Ilove anything Apple. I've never bought anything Apple yet (come across as too propriatry to me) but maybe I'm wrong. I am however totally disloyal to big companies that make things for a profit. I'll buy what suits me, be it Windows Mobile, Symbian OS or Palm OS (Had all three).

Anyway point is :

"Apple have never claimed that it is the first internet phone, simply the first phone that displays the internet in a fairly standards compliant manner."

Sorry, but Total Rubbish !!!

I've seen devices running Palm, and Symbian and Windows Mobile over the last few years that have done an excellent job of "displaying the internet in a fairly compient manner". My current gadget a HTC Universal does a fantastic job using Opera or even the built in IE (though I am using an unofficial WM6 version). This is not even a baby step forward.

The only PLUS here, is that with all the hype, hopefully more sites will make an effort to make themselves more compatible with mobile device browsers.

"By changing the way we look at mobile devices, I'm simply saying that while it may be lacking a feature here, or a feature there, without being biased, it is hard to fault the phone at what it does do."

Not sure why it would change the way I look at my Mobile devices. It does the same things (actually a few of them. Most features are missing). But it does appear to have good UI. Perhaps it will encourage others to focus more on ease of use.

"My iPhone just does what I want it to without too much of a fuss."

Get youself a cheap basic phone without lots of clever features. You will be able to make the same claim.

"Have they been made out off high quality glass??? No, they have been crappy plastic."

As most people with touch screens will tell you. Get yourself some "Crappy plastic" (screen protector) quick and stick it on. Very useful.

and in terms of what they are made from, I don't care. As long as they provide a good durable display.

"Has a phone or any other device for that matter ever had such a high resolution screen?"

Buy the bucketload. Get out more.

To be fair, maybe this is a big deal in the US. Perhaps you don't get the range of phones the rest of the word does ?

Zuber

iPhone Marketing Fast One

I live in an area with very poor Edge reception. When I went to the local ATT store to look at the iPhone, I asked the salesman about network data speeds. He demo'd the 8 GB unit for me and the response looked very fast. After some more pointed questions he admitted that the store had installed WiFi just for this launch. I asked him if this wasn't just a bit dishonest, but he denied it saying WiFi access is pretty much everywhere. Of course, in most major metropolitan areas maybe, but this is east Tennessee.

Welcome to the smartphone world

Giles Jones says "Apple has designed the first interface for a phone which really is designed for a phone and doesn't try to reinvent the WIMP environment for a phone." I'm afraid I have to disagree with that statement. There are quite a few companies out there which have been designing phones and smartphones for years. In fact they are phone manufacturers :) In case you never noticed the smartphone market is not shared between Windows and Apple. One thing I have to agree with is that Windows smartphone are no where close from well designed.

Windows smartphones are 5.6% of the market.

Symbian smartphones are 72.8% of the market.

Just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone for instance.

the iPhone *is* magic

I've had my 8GB version for three days now. Some interesting points to answer the queries posted here...

1. battery life is good compared my old motorola slvr. i get about 8 hours of constant usage on the thing. it seems every time i pull this out a crowd gathers and everyone want to use and see it for themselves. people are usually laughing and saying things "no ---king way" or "holy s---". and many are people with blackberrys on them. i don't know what the standby time is yet cuz it's rarely been in standby mode...

2. the phone is fast, i mean really fast! you can't really appreciate it until you use it. screens snap into place with a gracious dissolve that vista or even macosx can't touch. (maybe when leopard comes out?) i loaded 2500 photos from my iphoto library and can scroll through them all in seconds. it's insane. in minutes i went through my photo library, cropped, resized and assigned photos to 50 or so contacts in my address book. a feat that's almost a ridiculous undertaking on my motorola or blackberry.

3. call quality and reception is as good or better than my motorola slvr. also the fact that the entire phone os is still available when on a call is awesome. i'm waiting for an opportunity to get 5 people on a conference call...

4. tactile response??? rubbish! buttons are so 20th century. get with the program people! you are the same ones who laughed at mac's gui in 1986 running xcopy.exe on your dos machines. you get a nice audible click when a character is entered. the typing is so fast and intuitive that i can almost type as fast as i can on a regular keyboard. the magnifying glass edit function rocks too. i would like to see up, down, left, right keys however... also cut, copy and paste are missing as are drag and drop.

5. AT&T's edge network can be slow but it can also be fast. last night i was downloading youtube videos with no problem. email and the web were quick and responsive. For what i need, this is more than adequate. bear in mind, this is real email and real web. forget that crappy wap cell providers would fool you into thinking is the "internet". from what i understand the 3g variant is much more power hungry and would probably reduce battery life significantly.

6. i do miss the flash capability. i mean, imagine homestarrunner.com in flash on the iPhone. seriously folks, that would be awesome "melonade!". i also miss my salling clicker bluetooth remote to control frontrow and itunes.

7. MMS is missing but last night i got an MMS message and it was converted into an sms message telling me to go to viewmymessage.com with an id and password to view the image. interestingly, the image was in adobe flash! which means full flash support can't be far off. the sms implementation is awesome. it resembles the chat sms features on my motorola phone. it stores sms sessions by user so you can have multiple sms sessions going without losing track of your conversations. it's done very well. i imagine a full implementation of ichat can't be far off either...

8. GPS would be nice to have on this phone and would bring iphone up to par with blackberrys, but since i rarely used it, i don't miss the feature on the iphone. Perhaps the next rev of the iphone will have a gps chipset. who knows? i mean i use google maps at my office and it works great and i don't have a gps there. why? cuz i know where i am. sheeesh.

9. did i mention it's an ipod? yeah it rocks too. coverflow is awesome and so smooth that you just have to see it. you'll see little tweeks to the interface that makes you shake your head in wonder. there is so much attention to detail. people who appreciate aesthetics will marvel at this interface.

10. visual voicemail. you will never want old crappy voicemail again. this feature alone is almost worth the price of the iphone. if you get as many calls as i do, it's not uncommon to get 20 or more voicemails a day. now i can see who's left me a voicemail and listen to it immediately without going through the other 15 prior messages.

11. the alarm clock feature i was particularly interested in since have used my cellphones as alamclocks for the last 10 years. the iphone alarm clock function is amazing. like my motorola and blackberry i can have multiple alarms, but on the iphone i can set those alarms to occur say, only on weekdays (so i don't get woken up at 8am on saturdays) or at 8pm on fridays to wake me up before i have to dj.

12. the call plan i signed up for included 900 anytime minutes, 1500 sms messages and unlimited data for about $75 a month. about $20 less than my current AT&T plan. the phone was $635 with tax for the 8GB version. you also cannot get phone insurance through AT&T and apple did not offer applecare for the phone which i thought was interesting... it took me under 5 minutes to acivate the phone, another 30 minutes to sync and load the phone to capacity. i have about 300 contacts, 2500 photos, 1500 songs on the device now...

to summarize the iphone isn't without some obvious ommissions such as third party sdk, gps, movie recorder etc., but bear in mind, this is REV1! apple not only hit a home run, they won the series with their first at-bat! the movie recorder and sdk should be coming soon and some other features i'm sure will be added including flash support and perhaps native MMS. killer apps for this will be access to the terminal, vnc (or remote desktop of some sort) i'm wondering if gotomypc will work on this... hmmmm. ms office or at least some way to edit word and excel docs would be nice too. i don't miss my stylus or buttons at all. btw, i heard apple has sold 700,000 phones already? every sceptic that's used this phone has changed their mind... cheers.

Re: the iPhone *is* magic

You seem to have missed out some words from your post. Here, I'll put them back in for you:

1. ... people are usually {pointing and} laughing {at me} and saying things "{what? you paid $635 for a 2.5G phone?} no ---king way" or "holy s--- {dude, $635 for a F-CKING PHONE?!? ARE YOU INSANE???}".

20th Century...

"rubbish! buttons are so 20th century"

"melonade!"

pierrenorman - you're not from LA perchance?

ignorant comments

mr. anonymous,

all the people i showed the phone to were my friends who are professionals (read: have money). no one ever balked at the cost of the phone or the fact that the phone is "2.5G." Why? because the typical 3G phone is cumbersome at best to do anything worthwhile online and they are at or near the iphone's price range (treo, n95, 8800 even my slvr was $300). plus $635 isn't that much to spend on a phone. i spent far more in '91 for my pioneer 3 watt car phone ($1200) not including the $300 installation and the $400-$1000 a month in service charges. cuz back then, there were no calling plans. it was $.50/min peak, $.25/min off peak.

so please don't belittle something you know nothing about. that wasn't the point of this thread. people have some good questions. however you:

a. weren't there.

b. you obviously have no experience using the product.

c. you don't place value on UI design

d. haven't noticed it's the fastest selling consumer electronics product in history.

and lastly:

e. so bravely post anonymously.

please don't just post irrelevant statements. guess what? you don't have to buy an iphone. stick with whatever you have. i promise, i won't laugh at you. go back to WoW.

peace.

btw, (20th Century poster) i'm not from LA. but i do know many people there...heh.

How could anyone buy these things.

I couldn't buy one of these. It's the price. No matter how good it is. I try not to make a habit of carrying around anything worth over £400.

How may people will be walking along the high street texting away (full focus on the screen as theres no buttons) and suddenly someone whips it out of your hands and is running off in the other direction as fast as they can.

I can't think of anything more expensive that you have to have with you all the time.

You may as well wair a shirt with "ROB ME!" in bright red letters.