In Japan if you don’t get a new cell phone at least once a year, you are old-fashioned…
Guess it isn’t like that in America…
The use of edge networks is definitely a negative. But if the trade off is a shorter battery life and a larger device for faster but less available internet is that really better? It is a mobile device. If the page takes 30 seconds to render just walk a block further and then check your phone.
As a Mac user looking to converge my devices (phone, iPod, PDA) I’ve a href="http://www.bioneural.net/2007/06/29/mac-friendly-alternatives-to-apples-1g-iphone/"compared/a the iPhone feature-wise to potential alternatives. The only thing that keeps me locked into Palm is the fact that I need a mobile password manager that syncs with my Mac (storing website login details, PINs, account nos. etc). I know iPhone can be locked with a passcode, but I want encryption along the lines of PasswordWallet (Mac to Palm sync) or SplashID (PC to Palm/ Windows Mobile sync). Since Apple already have Keychain Access on the desktop side, I would urge them to offer a companion app on the iPhone so that confidential data can be safely stored and changes synchronised. The other areas where iPhone comes up short on my chart are much less relevant to me as a prospective iPhone customer.
I don’t care about Edge. I care about the fact that it takes 17 separate steps to enter an appointment into my P990i. If the iPhone is as efficient to use as it looks, I’m in.
If you don’t have the discretionary income to do that, then I’d argue that you can’t afford an iPhone (now or later).
Ditto. With a price tag like that, you’re either going to buy one or you’re not - ever.
Pretty much all *ware is filled with bugs, so it is very likely the iPhone will only be as good as predicted after version 2 or 3. But…
I believe that that the iPod’s success is because Apple made it better from each version instead of making new iPod’s. Yes they made the nano and the shuffle, but they are sold parallel. The usual mobile companies make new products all the time. I always forget the product name of my mobile phone, was it a nokia 6280 or a nokia 6233? And to tell you the truth, I don’t really care anymore. I have had a Nokia 3210, 3320, 8260, Simens Sx1, Samsung E370, and so on. All of them filled with bugs, tedious user interface, slow, and so on. Apple might bring back some loving for a mobile phone.
Mobile users of today, is like us PC geeks, we don’t “care” about the machine, only question is what can be done with it. I am no Apple fanboy, but I can see some of the loving in the mac owners that I was part of when I was an Amiga, C64 or Spectrum user.
Well Jeff, and maybe you will not buy an iPhone, but I am sure a lot of women will. And what women want, tend to matter quite a bit to us men. 
Oh I wouldn’t say ever. Most of my electronics purchases in recent memory have been from Craigslist/Ebay. I even bought a decent web server I’m running development stuff off the DSL line in my house recently. I have purchased iPods, universal remotes, televisions, gaming systems, etc well below the retail price.
Looks super cool… But I won’t be getting one.
No replaceable battery - bad experience with my iPod over that one
Not enough memory for my music/videos - so it’s a poor replacement for the iPod
No card slots
And perhaps most important to us developer types - Apple doesn’t allow us to develop for it like Microsoft does with Windows Mobile.
Don’t want ATT
I couldn’t agree more about free wifi, but you forgot one thing - open wi-fi is fairly unsecure, too. I was using a OpenVPN to work around the security issues, but lately that has stopped working, too (seems these wi-fi places have shut down the port or something). Blech. Now I just use the USB to cell phone solution with my Treo on the Sprint network, and I am way happier. Plus, it works in a lot more places, not just where I can find wi-fi.
Couldn’t agree more, lack of 3G is the main reason I took the iPhone off my list of possible smart phones.
I did consider the blackjack, but the new Motorola Q9 looks very tempting…all of the guys here at Telligent use the old Q and swear by it. Looking forward to how the Q9 works with Windows Mobile 6.
Uh, lemme think, iPhone has Wifi, and EDGE, EDGE is available nearly everywhere including one time I got it inside a hotel without having to find a “hotspot”, Wifi is even better than 3G, umm, oh yeah, have you noticed that when you go into the city there’s only a few million unsecured Wifi hotspots, oh well, that isn’t enough for me, I’m the pickiest person in the world and I don’t want a faster Wifi over 3G because I’m looking for movie tickets and I’m in the city and umm I don’t like faster.
TAKE THAT, iPHONE HATERS!
I’m not even on cable or fiber-optic right now, I have a home wifi with regular DSL, that’s I think 768kbps upload and 384kbps download, lets see, with you say EDGE is 10kbps not specifying upload or download (I’ll assume a synchronous connection here, to be generous), you say 3G is five times that or more, I will again be generous and says 10 times as fast, that’s a 100kpbs synchronous connection over a 768/384kpbs download/upload asynchronous connection, that seems a bit OWNED!
Great post, Jeff! I totally agree with you about how much mobile internet access spoils you! I bought a Cingular 8525 (HTC Hermes) early this year, and signed up for their unlimited PDA internet plan. I got so used to being able to check my email/rss feeds anytime (had iGoogle as my mobile browser start page), google/wikipedia/imdb immediately (instead of saying “I should look that up later”), etc. Totally spoiled. Last time I went to a video store, it was awesome being able to easily look up IMDB user ratings.
However, I have to disagree a little bit about the speed thing. My UMTS coverage, around here, is very spotty. In fact, much of the time, I’m lucky to even get EDGE. Often it drops down to basic, run-of-the-mill, slower-than-dialup GPRS. But it didn’t matter that much to me, because it was still usually better than waiting until I got home to look up whatever info I wanted/needed. It was sometimes frustrating to wait, and I did give up countless times and close my browser. But, if I really wanted to know something, and didn’t need it immediately, it was usually possible to get what I needed within a few minutes.
Last month, I bought the car I’ve been drooling over for 4+ years (infiniti g35 coupe), and I had to cut out some expenses in order to afford it. Unfortunately, the $50 unlimited internet/1500 text msg mobile phone plan was one of the first things to go. I love the car, so it’s worth it, but I’m still trying to adjust to the shock of suddenly not having, as you so eloquently put it, “the sum of the entire world’s knowledge in the palm of [my] hand”.
So, now I generally add a note in my phone if I want to look something up later, rather than looking it up right when I’m thinking about it. Or I jump through a few hoops to get on a wifi connection, when one is available. A lot of times I can’t use free public wifi hotspots, though, because they make you sign in through a web interface first, which sometimes requires more javascript (or something) than my phone can deal with. As for paying for short-term wifi use, I absolutely refuse to pay $10+ to starbucks just to check my email while I’m waiting for my coffee.
Hi Jeff,
Steve here. Just wanted to let you know that I’ve dispatched two of my best agents and their phasers are set to RDF-stun. I expect a rectification of this blog post as soon as they finish. Oh, one more thing: your iPhone is in the mail! Be well,
Steve.
Your overuse of bold text is highly annoying.
It’s a damn shame that it’s so easy to post comments on here. The mention of the iPhone has brought thousands of extra eyes out of the woodwork, and the barest hint that you may want to wait until APPLE THEMSELVES come out with a better version, has lead directly to a super-defensive retard infusion. Quick Jeff, a new post about LINQ or ASP.Net, bore the phone people and they’ll leave! 
I currently have a T-Mobile Dash. It too is limited to EDGE only, but I find that I often get sustained speeds of over 200Kbps when using with a laptop. While still slow, it is definitely usable. I really find the IE on the device to be more the problem than the connection speed.
My main reason for not being interested in the iPhone is it’s lack of use as a modem either via USB or BlueTooth.
Gabe, Jeff was confusing units, I’m fairly sure he meant 10 kBps. (10 kbps would be 1/3 the speed of your average dialup, after all…) So the correct comparisons would be 80kbps EDGE, 400-800kbps 3G, and 768kbps DSL.
I’m also surprised you can find a high availability of free wireless hotspots. Outside of San Francisco or Mountain View it can take a while to track one down, but I guess it’s okay if you spend all your time in SF.
Presumably you mean you can’t overstate how powerful access to wikipedia is. If you can’t understate it, its significance is near zero.
I still don’t get it how religious people can get over the
merits of, mmh, just another smart phone.
So could anyone tell me in five sentences why it is superior over
other devices without using the words
’cool’, ‘apple’ and ‘jobs’ ?