Salivatee thee thusly! The Apple Phone

- widescreen iPod
- flip interface for useless shit I don't want to look at on my phone anyway
- random access voicemail

Everything else is something I can already do on my Treo (including listening to MP3s). I am really not caring about this thing at all.

http://www.coolnotions.com/PDImages/PD_BillNyesRedBook_03.htm

Depends on what you want. I see this thing as more of a portable terminal that's a hell of a lot lighter than a ultralight laptop (or that MacBook Mini that people were rumoring about)

I suppose this is like when the iPod came out and everyone said "but MP3 players already do that, apart from this wheel thing"

xpost

It looks pretty nice though. The 2-year-locked-contract isn't exactly a banner thing though IMO, I wonder why they couldn't work out just for a one year.

xpost ET makes the best points, as usual, it seems to be a pretty great itty-bitty laptop!

That I would buy.
-- N.i.c.o.l.e (pl...), January 9th, 2007 7:44 PM. (Ex Leon) (link)

A: iPod Sex Accessories?!

This looks like a much better interface than any of the itty bitty keyboards I've used, and the web software looks better and the tilt function actually seems usefull here to make reading easier.

My prediction is that this thing will have more apps than every other smartphone platform except windows mobile within a year or two

Also, everyone I know who has a Treo kind of hates it.

^ pwned

Hopefully these will be available as a gray-market handset. I'd pay $800 for this if I could be sure I wasn't locked to Cingular for 2 yrs.

I wonder how ringtones will work.

I suppose everybody has their favorite carrier, just like everybody has a favorite way to get kicked in the junk.

I think my point is really more "This thing does not satisfy any needs I have that are not already satisfied by my current phone, so why should I care?" than anything else. I don't give a flying fuck about OS X. I don't give a flying fuck about having a fully-fledged web browser on my phone. I don't care about "the multi-touch" (HELLO PRIEST etc). I already have a contract with Cingular so I don't even care about that.

So, back to my original point; given that this thing does not satisfy any of my needs, why should I give a flying fuck about it?

Poor Amateurist. :(

Bu that's just a guess and my general bitterness after 3+ yrs in the mobile phone industry.

xpost

& ned's right, interesting to see if widespread mobile access to Skype will have an impact on competitive long distance pricing.

This whole thing seems to be an extended exercise in convincing people that they need to buy some bullshit.

(xpost: hahaha s1ocki)

Well, okay, then you do want this.

JAYMC: http://baixaki.ig.com.br/imagens/shots1/6900_b.gif

& ned's right, interesting to see if widespread mobile access to Skype will have an impact on competitive long distance pricing.

lol @ u guys who haven't seen phones with voip and wifi and skype is all u know!!

It's probably just a cut down kernel. Makes it easier to update than constant firmware flashing.

Actually, it has Quartz in it. I imagine it uses a large subset of the OSX libraries.

Dan, I think what Jon's trying to say is that with the collective brilliance of Apple's shareware developer legions at work, eventually there will be something this thing can do that will make us drop our jaws and want to switch. Brace yourself.

Eh, sort of. I think it'll be really easy to port applications to it as it will just need a new GUI (from Interface Builder) slapped on code targeting Xscale or whatever CPU it runs.

Ned otm, I'm waiting for a 3G version.

Paul otm too: http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/comparephones These prices seem insane now

He already has a voice-box and two hands to cup together and amplify his voice.

vs.

Entry-level phone applet development is now HTML/CSS/Javascript and some design skills

Because Cingular royally fucked over ATT customers when Cing. bought them out. Wanna complain about the service? You can't unless you signed up for a brand new Cingular contract.

Plus I hate Cingular's logo and name, but not as much as I hate Verizon's name and logo.

Not that I'll be getting one any time remotely soon.

mrs fiendish is basically on the verge of leaving me because she's just back from sheffield and all i want to do is lust over this phone. but GOD DAMN, that's everything i've ever wanted from a piece of plastic, really.

as the dust settles, it'll be interesting to see what transpires re: UK pricing, UK carriers ... and UK release date. still, i suppose i won't be buying a cheap digital camera at any point in the near future.

and i suppose i'm stuck with that FUCKBASTARD motorola L6 for another 12 months of so. piss. still, hey. with this thing on the horizon, the future's bright.

and no, it's not vital. nobody needs it. FFS, it's a real-life wank techno-wank-fantasy for moderately wealthy zeebs. but that'll do for me.

also 4 and 8gb is sorta shit.

also the combined size of my razr and ipod is probably just about the same size as this thing anyway?

i mean... pretty interface and all, yeah, but i've sorta not gotten the whole smartphone thing before now either in part b/c i never understood the palmpilot at all even?

TMobile is offering unlimited internets for like $6 month now. Its rad.

how slow it is

GPRS, not EDGE or 3G

opera mini
might as well use lynx, daaaaamn!

oh and Hurting, fuck off with gabbneb and look for one instead of bothering us important people with our Treos, Pokémans and Blackberries.

I do want to listen to music/surf web/take pictures/organise my life/make calls whever I am, and I don't see the need to carry half a dozen different devices around with me to do all those things. If you just wanna make calls then obv. it ain't for you. Yeah it's pricey, yeah the camera ain't all that, there's battery life issues, storage is a bit pokey, etc etc. But this is still the first device to do all that stuff, and it looks pretty sweet... and it's only gonna get better.

^ LUDDITES, KINDLY FUCK OFF AND GET THIS (ITS AWESOME) AND LEAVE ME AND MY RSS AGGREGATORS ALONE!!!

T-Mobile with an unlocked Nokia 6682. I bought the phone direct from Nokia (T-Mobile's phone selection suxors) and just got a T-Mobile SIM card.

Bleah. Motorola phones are turds.

also, yeah jon if it was available for a phone i'd totally use lynx (i used it all the way thru 2003 or so, and even used it a bit last year at my old job -- it made EVERY site look like it was something work-related, so uh, kudos)

The still pictures aren't really doing the iPhone justice... The scrolling, icon selection, OS operation are pretty cool.

Does look like it has a couple of problems, though -- the paint speed isn't fast enough on Mail or Safari, so you see a checkboard fill-in a lot. That's going to get old. Also, hella slow even at loading NYTimes.com over Wifi.

Don't think it's intel either -- the browser had a plugin failure icon where Flash should've been.

This of course assumes that I will NEVER EVER HAVE TO WATCH THAT SPINNING BEACHBALL ON MY PHONE.

w3m is way better for this: http://w3m.sourceforge.net/ kudos

ok how fast is gprs then?

pretty fucking slow! (it depends, ask wikipedia!)

also, I can't remember if it's been said, but going 3G on this phone would be an enormous battery drain.

That's a good point but is it that much more than EDGE?

I have decided that what I like so much about it is it looks SO simple to use, which most of the newer multi app treo/palm/whatevers are not. Too much button pushing to get to the function I want. This one is caveman simple looking and I kinda like that about it. Life is complex enough...

WHATEVER ANALOG PHONE LAWYER JERK

yes, 3G is a noticeably bigger battery drain than EDGE is. And it also requires larger chips/space hogging hardware architecture, allegedly.

When you're trying to dial a number manually and have no direct line-of-sight to the phone.

This is also a potential problem with the iPhone also. No tactile feedback.

You said it so it must be true.

T-Mobile has consistently stomped Cingular for phone reception in 90%+ of my travels.

you can also check out some anecdotal evidence here - http://www.cellreception.com/coverage/ny/new-york/page2.html (and my own experience is that my verizon device gets much better coverage than my t-mobile device)

or you can draw conclusions from the fact that verizon's customer base nationally is at least twice as large as t-mobile's, with less than half the churn rate.

2. I just dialed 5 diff numbers on my 650 with my eyes closed w/ no errors (even though 90% of the numbers I ever need to dial are in my phone book so this is not a concern for me anyway).

3. OMG TARDS (not very charitable I know)

(Neither will it have IM, VOIP, or downloads from iTunes, since the carriers want to nickel and dime everyone)

Apple and Cingular joined together two years ago on the Rokr cellphone, which Enderle described as a "train wreck." The effort was plagued, analysts said, by a number of conflicts, including Cingular's desire to charge more for music downloads.

This time, Cingular spokesman Mark Siegel said, Apple will have control over the phone features while Cingular has exclusive rights to the iPhone in the U.S. under a "multi-year" agreement.

Annoying, that last part.

I found this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774

watch at least untill they get to the google earth part.

This is true, Also no one has truly cracked hand off between 3G and EDGE/GPRS/GSM cells. In Palm OS, they choose not to even try, Windows Mobile often crashes and Symbian drops calls. It's a good thing to leave out 3G now, EDGE is good enough for now, GPRS is acceptable with images off. No EDGE in the UK sucks though. It's always a nice moment when you hit EDGE coverage in europe or the US and the mobile web suddenly becomes a much better experience.

Hopefully site owners will start using CSS to optimise for the display on the iPhone.

Verizon is CDMA, not GSM. It's worthless to compare the two.

Today, I had meetings with Steve Jobs and then Phil Schiller, Apple’s director of worldwide marketing. I basically played with the iPhone the entire hour.

Here are some of the things you can’t tell without actually handling and using the iPhone:

* It feels amazing in your hand. Not like an iPod, not like a Treo — but something new. It’s so thin, and the rounded stainless-steel edges are so smooth, you can excuse its larger-than-Treo façade. When you’re on a call, it’s so cool how the screen turns off to save power, thanks to its proximity sensor.

* You operate the iPhone with your fingertips. Apart from buttons that appear on the touch screen, the only physical buttons are volume up/down, ringer on/off, sleep/wake and a Home button.

Apple went through numerous iterations of the glass surface, trying to find one that’s not too slick or too rough, or that shows grease and fingerprints too much. You still get finger streaks, but they’re relatively subtle and a quick wipe on your sleeve takes care of them.

* During my one test call, the sound quality was loud and clear. Of course, your mileage (and your Cingular signal) will vary.

* Typing is difficult. The letter keys are just pictures on the glass screen, so of course there’s no tactile feedback.

Software helps a lot. You can afford to make a lot of typos as you muddle through a word, because the software analyzes which keys you *might* have meant and figures out the word you wanted. Its best guess appears just under what you’ve typed; if it’s correct, you tap the Space bar to accept it and continue. I typed a couple of e-mail messages with lots of typos but eventually 100 percent accuracy, thanks to this auto-correct feature. (My testing didn’t involve proper names, however.)

Bottom line: Heavy BlackBerry addicts may not want to jump ship just yet.

* The phone won’t be available until June, so some of its software isn’t finished yet. As I tapped my way into obscure corners of the phone, Mr. Jobs pointed out a couple of spots where only a placeholder graphic was available.

* Both in the onstage demo and during my hands-on hour, the Web speed was OK—not great, but OK. But all of this used the phone’s built-in Wi-Fi, not Cingular’s notoriously slow Edge network. I couldn’t help wondering how bad the speed will be when you’re connecting over the cellular airwaves. (Here again, though, I was playing with a prototype whose software will undergo a lot of fine-tuning between now and June.)

* I tried out the camera. It was really cool to frame a shot using the HUGE 3.5-inch screen; it’s rare to find that big a screen on any camera. The refresh rate felt typical of a camera-phone to me, but Mr. Jobs said that it would be much smoother by the time the phone is done.

* The Web browsing experience is incredible. You see the entire Web page on the iPhone’s screen. You double-tap any spot to zoom in. Or you use the two-fingered spread-apart gesture to “stretch” the image larger, or pinch your thumb and forefinger on the glass to zoom out again. The manipulation is seamless, smoothly animated—and useful. Using Google Maps to get you driving directions and maps, for example, is just light-years simpler and more powerful than on any other machine, thanks to this “rubber Web page” stretching technology.

can't think of any uses for... oh dear

-- roc u like a § (jo...) (webmail), January 9th, 2007 6:28 PM. (ex machina) (later) (link)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS IS THE FUNNIEST POST ON THIS THREAD INSERT DRUDGE SIRENS HERE

gabbneb, what on earth does Verizon's marketshare or your opinion of them have to do with this thread? I can link to/provide a ton of anecdotal evidence against Verizon (which, as has already been said, is a totally different type of network anyway!) too, genius.

My main thing against this phone remains 1) price (seriously, I'm NOT really going to use the extra features on it heavily enough/at all to justify a $500 phone) 2) network and I think that is going to end up hurting it slightly. It'll obviously do well but I think they are overestimating the number of people who are willing to switch networks for a pricey phone that a lot of people are just going to see as a prettier version of the blackberry et al they already have. Phones are already an entrenched, extant market, unlike MP3 players were etc, and I just don't think your average joe is going to care that much about the fact that THIS one has OSX.

I really wish they weren't exclusive to Cingular, is what I'm saying, is because they'd do a lot better if they weren't.

That's for sure.

I've been mulling this over...

This is only Apple's second major consumer electronic release, and an initial Cingular-exclusive release means that Apple has to support and monitor only one network/data plan. If Apple had just sold the phone as is, a zillion people with more money than sense would snap it up, wonder why it didn't work with Sprint/Verizon/AlfredENewmanTel and then compose two zillion web pages about how Apple's iPhone sucks it.

My gut feeling tells me that Apple will open this up to any carrier with iPhone rev. 2.

Same situation occurred with the roll-out of the iPod. At first it was Mac-only and only later rolled out to Windows.

I wish they'd gone with T-Mobile since that's who my current plan is with and I like their customer service, but oh well. Think that Apple and Cingular will make this visual voicemail thing an open standard?

"The OS: It isn't OS X proper, as you'd expect. And like an iPod, it won't be an open system that people can develop for."

Cingular couldn't officially confirm whether Apple could or couldn't make an identical device without a cell radio (i.e. the "true" video / widescreen / WiFi iPod), but they stated "Apple can build [their] devices."

Hah... Cingular is dreaming. People want the usable interface on a usuable phone and Apple is going to exploit the hell out of it.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Cisco Systems Inc. sued Apple Inc. for applying the name iPhone to its entry into the cellphone market, a term that Cisco's Linksys unit is also using on products.

http://www.macintouch.com/specialreports/sf2007/norr.html

But the closed platform turns something-in-your-pocket that can do essentially anything you can code into something-in-your-pocket that can do X, Y and Z and nothing more.

??

The more I think about it, the more amazing it is that despite intense scrutiny, and the need to involve a third party, Apple managed to keep all details of the project watertight-secret for two and a half years, give hardly any of their staff the whole picture and still project manage the whole thing to completion. That's maybe the most impressive thing of all.

No one from apple has said it is going to be closed, the blogosphere has just assumed as much.

hmm. norr says:

Apple spokespeople wouldn't say yesterday what components and features of the Mac OS will be running on the iPhone; they did say that the phone is a "closed platform" and that they are not offering Mac application developers any tools to bring their programs to it.

and i kinda trust that he did speak to them.

ed otm re macbook pro trackpad. two finger clicking and scrolling are so, so good.

As is stated in the post before the post before yours, iBooks can do it.

*stupid phone didn't want one anyway mumble mumble*

I guess anyone with spare time on their hands will be checking what i-words haven't been trademarked yet.

no. mine doesn't (12" G4).

i'm still not going to get TOO upset about the closed-platform thing. i have a gut feeling that apple's position will change :/

Have fun.

might be worth waiting a little longer, but this is maybe not a bad idea at all.

There's some speculation that the phone is closed right now because it still hasn't been approved by the FCC.

The more I think about it, the more I'm going to wait for iPhone rev. 2.

i got quite used to the macbook trackpad, scrolling and all. right clicking is actually easier now than with two buttons, cause you just put both fingers on it and click. you don't need to awkardly move your thumb around.

my only wish is that they incorporate application-specific zooming with the scrollpad, like for pictures or text within the app. right now, if you press control and scroll, it zooms in on the whole screen, but i rarely want to do that.

and for the iphone, i wont be getting one for a couple of years, due to 1) the almighty do-not-ever-buy-revision-A-apple-stuff rule 2) wait ing for it to come to canada 3) wait for my rogers contract to expire/lower their absurd data rate.

Sterling, did you look in the settings?

Yea, the iPhone is pretty much a dud to me without 3rd party apps. I hope they at least let people install safe widgets though. Oh well

doodz. new ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alSHDmv3spc&mode=related&search=

i think they're allowing 3rd party apps now?

the touching musics in the commercials = aw.

if 3rd parties develop the sort of medical software that palms have then i may have to get one.

They're talking about allowing 3rd party apps, but not fully-fledged ones at first. I think it's basically going to be dashboard widgets to begin with. I like the new ads -- they're liek the Newton ones, in that they show you what to do with the thing, instead of "lookie buy this and ppl will sexor you"

do it run ableton live

Yeah. I remember when Apple had a phone. It supposed to be cool or something.

zing?

I should hope they have a phone, as their headquarters must need one to conduct business.

I find the cellphone as life-defining accessory a somewhat depressing concept.

yeah, like i want to talk to people

perhaps people are realizing that it's just another (very nice, very expensive) phone?

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/07/is_the_iphone_a_failure_maybe.html

I am interested to hear more about this "Apple Phone".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-case/im-dumping-the-iphone-_b_57748.html

As cool-lookin as it is, I'm thinking "dude I've already got iTunes on my phone. Why do I want to pay $500 for a screen that's gonna get covered in fingerprints & scratches?"

images of a love that once burned white hot, but now are just a flicker of sadness.

groan

Lodger (See profile | I'm a fan of lodger)
1. Good idea: wait 6 months after release to purchase any computer or internet-related product.
2. Better idea: wait 12 months.
3. Best idea: wait 18 months. You'll get a better, real-world tested product at about 30-50% less cost, and you won't be paying big bux to be a guinea pig!

for real

true dat, double true!

The three people I know with them have had significant crashes (one has a touch screen dead spot which prevents him from typing 'a'??). I still plan on getting one next year though.

Next year indeed. Maybe rather late next year.

that I tried to use you while driving and almost killed myself

and/or other people, jesus christ what a douche.

Absolutely without doubt the best gadget/toy/phone/whatever I've ever bought. And yeah, it'll be better and cheaper in a while, but I'm glad I have it now. It really does piss all over any other smartphone.

you should post to ilx from it, showoff

Who says he isn't?

ned guessed right - in fact i've been using it for almost all my web access for the last week or so. It's been pretty painless, except of course in areas without at&t coverage.

the only reason I want an iPhone is because it would allow me to realistically surf the web. Yeah, you can do it on other phones but it's really limiting and, I might add, pretty slow. Don't even get me started on the icky vileness that is Verizon's VCAST.

I'm an Apple shill, but I'm not buying a phone without physical buttons on it. Or a remote. Or a computer keyboard. Or anything.

Don, have you seen the Treo 750's web browser? It's not perfect and it's not as nice as the iPhone browser but it's an order of magnitude better than traditional phone browsers.