Walt Mossberg Reviews the iPhone 564
WSJdpatton writes "Walt Mossberg tested the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the US. His verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is on balance a beautiful and breakthrough hand-held computer. Its software especially sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though the lack of physical buttons can be a hindrance." Digital Daily has a roundup of early iPhone reviews.
Re:Other reviews (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Other reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
You know what I would pay money for? A phone that detected when someone fails to do a simple google search and then sent a few dozen volts through the intertubes and shocked the person before they could publicly bitch irritating me and making themselves look silly in the process.
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/27248.html [mobiledia.com]
br But maybe that's just me.
No Flash? Halleluja! (Score:2, Interesting)
Because i love being modded down... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've unlocked my treo 750 phone to take full advantage of cingular's 386kbit/s g3 and occasionally get a speed of around 800kbps download.
While i suppose that the iphone was designed to color co-ordinate with a starbucks cup as you sit and browse the interweb in the coffee shop hotspot, i'll be using my treo with a clunky interface to access the mobile internet (i.e. the list of simple websites designed for gprs and below and the one that i would set the 60.0kbit/s iphone to download if i was away from a hotspot.)
Once again, apple resorts to its age old design technique: stunningly beautifuly, brilliantly intuitive, but about as useful as a 6 year old pc for what 90% of people do 90% of the time.
Re:GPS and e911 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:really clean fingers? (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, I live in Minnesota, so I wear gloves 10 months out of the year!
(On a serious note, can you use these things with gloves on? Inquiring minds want to know.)
Impetus for a linux phone... (Score:3, Interesting)
Despite it's Visual Voicemail, media, and enhanced web browsing capabilities, I won't have an iPhone for the foreseeable future as I don't do AT&T. I do hope, however, that the iPhone's new hotness casts a dark shadow on other phone makers who have neither the manpower or focus to develop such features themselves. So, listen you laggard phone makers, you. Build a linux-based CDMA*/GSM phone with a palm-style keyboard and let the community develop some free software for you.
A CDMA-capable Linux phone is something for which I might pay $500. Especially if I could dock it to my monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Oh yeah, Beryl and Synaptic might be nice too.
* I mention CDMA because Trolltech's Greenphone got me a little excited until I learned that it only does GSM so it won't work with my provider.
Re:really clean fingers? (Score:4, Interesting)
No. It uses capacitance. You'll need really thin gloves or special gloves with electronics embedded in them.
Re:really clean fingers? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, how long until the glass touchscreen stops responding to input? Won't the atom thin coating get nicked and break the circuits? Or is it better than that?
Re:Other reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
(A conversation with a passenger is not as bad because you can rely on body language and mouth movements to ge tthe gist of the conversation. You don't need to concentrate quite as much.)
Re:Not an apple hater...but looks aren't enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Other reviews (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not an apple hater...but looks aren't enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes and all MP3 players play music. Yet there are differences in operation, that have made the iPod a great success while other models languish.
But of the things you mention, very few are problems with the iPhone many people cannot realistically get 3G, but in many places they get get WiFi. I don't need to be able to record video with it (heck, I didn't even really want a camera!). And saying an SD card slot offers "essentially infinite storage" means you have to buy 8GB worth of SD storage to get the inifinte amount of storage to come close to the iPhone, much less the issue of managing cards. I'll bet your "global find" doesn't tell you which of the swapped out cards something is on...
As for the keyboard, all the doubters say they would miss it. Yet all of the reviewers say they do not, even those that started with doubts. So what are we to think might be more correct?
To go along with your admission of being a happy Apple fan, let me say that I was a rabid Palm fan. I convinced many people to buy Palm pilots. I even recently bought a Palm Zier for someone, because it was perfect for what they wanted to do - and indeed they are delighted with it.
But years ago, ater my Palm V gave up the good fight and stopped listening to the stylus, I waited for a phone/PDA from Palm and got... the treo. I don't know what forces drive men to crave tiny keyboards, but they do not find a hold of me. It is not that I have large hands, I can thread needles with great dexterity and have excellent finger accuracy. I hated the space the keyboards took, and across many devices (not just the Treo) I hated typing on said small keyboards... and so i waited for Palm, who I still consider to once have been a company of innovators as great as Apple has ever been, to deliver to me a "real" phone PDA that was worthy of the legacy.
Apple has delivered the phone I have waited for so long for Palm to build.
Over time, we will see expandability (in applications anyway), growth of features, and a browser that makes actually using AJAX based applications thinkable instead of madness. One thing common to the Apple experience is that feature sets and usability improve with time - it was true of the iPod and there's no reason to think it will be any less so for the iPhone.
How do I think it's worth the expense? Because I have used he other devices, even the Treo, and the iPhone appears to suck about $1000 less than those, never mind $600.
Re:No SIM? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple has played this well; despite the much lamented exclusivity contract, the only real-world limitation will be that you're limited to GSM providers (which admittedly, in the US, limits you to AT&T or T-Mobile). The only real question is: how will the iPhone's software react to non-AT&T networks? Visual voice mail won't work for sure. iTunes seems pretty integrated with the phone service; how will iTunes react to a non-AT&T service? More hacking might be required.
Re:Other reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Other reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see how a random snippet of music is necessarily more annoying than any other ringtone. Further, I don't know many people who actually want a full song as a ringtone (let alone an obnoxious song), but everyone I know would leap at the chance to load other sounds if it didn't mean paying a couple bucks per non-portable tone to their phone provider.
And of course that omission is good for Apple -- now users will demand a ringtone section on iTunes, and Apple will get to jump in on the over-priced ringtone market.
The lack of voice dialing is similarly obnoxious. Presuming that people will change their habits based around a feature omission would be the height of design arrogance (not like that would be a stretch for Apple).
People are going to talk on the iPhone while they drive. A lack of voice dialing just mean that they'll have to physically manipulate the device to start or end calls. All Apple is doing (if intentional) is ensuring that cell using drivers are more dangerous.