Pondering the iPhone

Reihan borrowed Peter's new iPhone to write a review of it for Slate; the gist is, it's pretty good, but after being turned away thrice, he's not going there. I suppose it's time for me to weigh in.

Since Reihan already had an iPhone, and I don't, he's choosing between the marginal upgrades--mostly the GPS and the 3G network, and his old phone. I, however didn't have one before, so I get to be all gee-whiz about features the rest of you have had for a year. Which are, as I have repeatedly been told, pretty great. The phone interface is unbelievably easy to use--so easy that my technophobe mother and luddite crank sister want to join me on an AT&T family plan with iPhones of their very own. Unlike Reihan, I've had absolutely no trouble with call quality--indeed, it seems quite a bit better than the reception on my old Razr. And the iPod sounds great.

On the new side, there are a host of new apps that take advantage of the GPS feature, and I've installed most of them. The killer app is, obviously, using Google maps to get you un-lost. But people have also coded a bunch of social networking applications that let you, for example, see where all your friends are. The ones with iPhones, anyway. And if they don't have iPhones, they should be dead to you.

Just kidding. Since I'm the early adopter on a lot of these applications, it remains to be seen how useful they will be. But things like Twitterific, AIM, and Facebook are already pretty key.

The phone does have two downsides as far as I'm concerned: short battery life, and fragility. Peter broke his less than 12 hours after we emerged from the Apple Store. Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine how you could make such an easy to use interface without making the thing fragile; touch screens are inherenty vulnerable. And while the battery life apparently suffers a bit in comparison to the old iPhone, that's the price you pay for significantly faster download speeds. I'd rather hook up my iPhone to the laptop once a day than spend fifteen minutes waiting for a YouTube video to download. And Blackberries are battery hogs too--if you want to check email, you'll pay for the privilege with frequent recharges.

Comments

owned. It's the first phone to last me more than a year, with the previous SLVR screen cracking on multiple occasions. Maybe I took better care of my preciooooouuuusssss, but then again I've dropped it a few times with no ill effect.
Also, I'd love to see you respond to Nemo's question in the previous thread. Just cause it'd be fun.

Posted by The Chad | July 15, 2008 1:12 PM

You mentioned the sounds quality - I found it much better than my razr.

The two amazing features are Pandora that I used at the gym - which is amazing. And the GPS/Google map interface. I went to a party Saturday on a lake and the GPS just blew me away. You can select the satellite view from Google Maps and the position indicator moves in real time as you drive down the highway. So, the image on your phone is as if a plane was following you and beaming down images in real-time.

To think of the technology to make that work. Vast server farms with all the satellite images, the GPS satellites, the 3G network, and the iPhone all working together flawlessly.

One other thing: the SMS function. On my RAZR if you had more than 50 txt messages you would had to purge them, even though the phone had a 512mb memory card. What really pissed me off is the alarm clock function - instead of saying "ON" or "OFF" like the iPhone - the RAZR said "ENABLE" and "DISABLE". So apparently memory is so limited I can only have 50 20-40byte txt messages but they had enough memory to store "ENABLE" and "DISABLE" rather than "ON" and "OFF". What kind of idiot software developer does something like that?

Posted by jmo | July 15, 2008 1:20 PM

I got a real kick out of your previous post, the one where you talked about your "fifteen-year-old boyfriend.".(For what it's worth, I'm pulling for you two to make it! Sure's he's underage and you're rather tall, but, damn it, I believe society can transcend its prejudices! May the two of you one day be as happy as Andrew Sullivan and his husband!)

That said, Megan, dear, I fear this latest post approaches the sickening.

The fact that evidently every DC pundit and blogger is part of a (choose your metaphor) 'St. Elmos Fire' or League of Super Friends clique of giddy, naive, privileged kids twenty minutes out of college should be a source of, at least, some embarassment, don't you think?

Please then keep the shout-outs and allusions to your buddies to a minimum. It spares us all a lot of wincing while making it easier for readers to pretend you and Matt and Reihan and Peter and Ralph and Potsie aren't in totally over your heads.

Okay, I'll now let you get back to your iPhone and tenth-grade boyfriend. (BTW, you're, no doubt, right to hold out on the sex. Make him work for it.)

Posted by one very tired grown-up | July 15, 2008 1:22 PM

You mentioned facebook. I think this means another round of us all adding you as a friend.

Posted by okapi | July 15, 2008 1:37 PM

That should have started out with "The iphone is the most durable phone I have..."

Posted by The Chad | July 15, 2008 1:48 PM

Apple is all about the interface. That's why they rule. No one, no one has ever done a better ui then Apple. That's why you got an Apple. That's why I use Apple. It's not snooty or elitist. It's being continually amazed by the simplicity, the ease.

Posted by judson | July 15, 2008 2:20 PM

"it seems quite a bit better than the reception on my old Razr."

Do you drive a Jetta? Are you a teenage girl going to an expensive Catholic school on Long Island or in New Jersey? Is your boyfriend on the lacrosse team?

Posted by Reality Man | July 15, 2008 2:34 PM

And the GPS/Google map interface. I went to a party Saturday on a lake and the GPS just blew me away. You can select the satellite view from Google Maps and the position indicator moves in real time as you drive down the highway. So, the image on your phone is as if a plane was following you and beaming down images in real-time.

I've been doing that for a while with my Nokia internet tablet. Like the iPhone, in many ways it's nowhere near as good as a dedicated GPS Unit (though, unlike the iPhone, there are basic turn-by-turn directions). BUT, the cool thing is that you can use a variety of map providers and map types -- road maps, satellite images, TOPO maps for hiking, even aviation and nautical charts. Should be possible to get the iPhone to do that, too, if somebody writes the app.

Posted by Slocum | July 15, 2008 2:37 PM

All the talk of watching your little icon drive down the freeway makes me feel like the sea captains must have felt when steamers first started undertaking ocean voyages: the death of good seamanship was at hand. Similarly, there will soon be nobody but cranky old guys like me who have anything resembling a "sense of direction" or the ability to navigate independent of computers giving them orders.

It seems natural (if not truly wise) to me to hunt in trackless woods without a map, and do it often enough that you get to know the land, but apparently traveling on well-marked streets without knowing one's precise position will soon become a quaint memory. Oh, well, the end of another era.

Now, we need to find a way for Google maps not to give you terrible directions requiring driving over Jersey barriers and going the wrong way on reversible lanes.

Posted by Rob Lyman | July 15, 2008 2:57 PM

On my RAZR if you had more than 50 txt messages you would had to purge them, even though the phone had a 512mb memory card. What really pissed me off is the alarm clock function - instead of saying "ON" or "OFF" like the iPhone - the RAZR said "ENABLE" and "DISABLE". So apparently memory is so limited I can only have 50 20-40byte txt messages but they had enough memory to store "ENABLE" and "DISABLE" rather than "ON" and "OFF". What kind of idiot software developer does something like that?

Motorola is notorious for garbage like this. The hardware is great, but a random Morse-code conversion from Grandma Wilson's knitting needles, and a lab-test phase involving an untrained chimp, could produce better UI software than what Motorola writes.

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | July 15, 2008 3:03 PM

Rob,

Your mourning the passing of "good seamanship" mirrors my mourning the inevitable passing of the manual transmission. All my cars have been manuals and I love the whole concept. I know that DSG etc. are better in every way, but I still mourn the passing of a once noble and refined technology.

However, do you think people in 1837 said to themselfes when Samuel Morse developed the telegaph - ah the good old days.... remember when we fought the Battle of New Orleans 2 weeks after the end of the War of 1812 because news of the wars end didn't reach New Orleans for 2 months....

Posted by jmo | July 15, 2008 3:45 PM

And Rob - how does your wife feel about your "sense of direction"?

:-P

Posted by Jmo | July 15, 2008 4:10 PM

It's important that technology be backward compatible; Will the new iPhone work with my acoustic coupler modem?

Posted by Njorl | July 15, 2008 4:13 PM

And Rob - how does your wife feel about your "sense of direction"?

She refers to it as my "internal GPS."

I like manuals, too; 37 mpg highway with my beloved Escort.

Posted by Rob Lyman | July 15, 2008 5:04 PM

I;m sorry, but Peter is a klutz. My iPhone has been bouncing around by computer pag, jammed in my pocket and otherwise abused for the last year, and it is working just fine. I bought a screen protector film and a rubber case, and the iPhone is just fine.

Posted by Holdfast | July 15, 2008 5:07 PM

Your mourning the passing of "good seamanship" mirrors my mourning the inevitable passing of the manual transmission. All my cars have been manuals and I love the whole concept. I know that DSG etc. are better in every way, but I still mourn the passing of a once noble and refined technology.

Don't write that obituary too hastily. Unlike many technologies that have slipped into the night when "something better" came along, it is not at a given that automatics or even manually-shifted automatics are, in fact, better. They inevitably require more parts and more expense to do the same job in a way that not everyone finds to be superior, and impose a fuel efficiency penalty for the privilege.

The manual transmission will be around for a while, even if Chyrsler is too stupifyingly dense to figure out that it should be the default drivetrain for the revived Challenger. Even Cadillac got a 6-speed stick when GM started experimenting with high performance engines in the CTS-V.

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | July 15, 2008 5:49 PM

I trink it's interesting that with all the talk of Software Programmable Radios, aka "Cell Phones", especially w/GPS apps, that noone mentions related fields like: http://www.leadatatech.com/
or,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/government/solutions/investigative/datafusion.aspx

any Technology, like Fire, can be a great thing...

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | July 15, 2008 7:41 PM

trink=think

I guess I was thinking 'trinkets'

Posted by ibid | July 15, 2008 7:42 PM