The Second Coming 2.0

Well, I broke the news yesterday to my husband he is married to a gadget geek. He took the obvious pretty well. He asked me if I wanted an iPhone for my birthday and I scoffed and said "absolutely not" (imagine my 40 lb eye roll) I said "can you think of ANYTHING more stupid than those people standing in line to get one of those things?" Just another year past, thank goodness all the hullabaloo from the iPhone was detracting from my birthday. The legends say Woz and Steve (Apple founders) love to pull pranks, I am just thrilled they did it around the time of my birthday. OK, after watching the news and seeing folks camping for days on end I kept thinking maybe it would be cool to have one. By Saturday morning I was perusing the Internet and came across a gentleman from the suburbs that did not wait long at all after 6 PM on D-Day to get his. In fact, he was an employee of AT&T. I paid a mere "Ben Franklin" over cost and he even brought it to me!

What do I really think of it?

Well CD players and iPods both play music. But elegant design at the fundamental level of how it plays tunes is what helped it transcend the category. From what I saw, first hand, I think the iPhone is going to do this for cellies. I am not ready to part with the blackberry until I get the hang of this little guy that has come to live on my desk.

First thing I did? I called my mom. "Mom," I said. "I'm calling you from an iPhone"

Mom says, "Where? Huh? Who?"

I said, "Uh, its a gadget people have been waiting for for a long time. Never mind, I'll call you later."

Then I dug into the features.

It's easy to say how it worked -- it did just the way it's supposed to, per the Keynote. The experience is very OS X like. So, lets go through each feature. Keep in mind this isn't the final firmware or hardware. They have months to fix whatever I bitch about.

Phone calling: Sound is clearer than average. The number pad is tucked away, so they depend on you having most numbers in speed dial. That's ok. Soft buttons are never going to be as fast as hard buttons. These were good, there wasn't much delay. But without tactile feedback, its a little strange. (The faux dialtones are cool.)

Screen: Most gorgeous ever. Flawless. Dark, and contrasty. Bright colors. Photos looked natural. Touchscreen was better for multi gestures, but the screen itself had a bit of rubbery feel as I flicked through with a single finger.

Gestures: They work! Multi touch is great for zooming photos. I likey.

Video: The pirates of the Caribbean video was supposedly 640 by 480, but looked kind of blown up. I'm being picky, though. You can set the video to native res, instead of filling the screen. Maybe that was the 320 version of Pirates. I'm being picky.

Music: Um, I flipped through some songs, but without headphones, I didn't listen.

Images: I could pull up my Diva Gumbo blog pretty fast. Thumbnails, and zooming using gestures. As you'd expect.

Browser: Perfect rendering of the page (saw the apple page and Google news) Like the opera browser, it scales down images. Didn't check Flash or Java/Javascript support. Flipped to landscape when I tilted (but only one side.) Zooming in with a touch and then back out made sense. And landscape mode is awesome.

Keyboard: The soft key, on screen buttons are small. Think index finger, not thumb. Maybe I wasn't doing it right. The keys pop up when I put my finger down on the keys, but do you think the proximity sensor knows when I get close (but before I touch), and if I hover with my digit, it'll blow up the keys so they're easier to hit? (Am I making sense?)

SMS: I didn't but this feature will be imperative in my family

Email: Typed around a bit. Wish the fields for To, and CC were smaller fonts. But I guess when you go to the main message field, it scrolls down.

Google Maps: Perfect. Maps DL'd slower than I'd have liked

Widgets: Weather and Stocks are identical to the OS X Dashboard Widgets. Great

Camera: The camera didn't refresh fast in the dark meeting room. I wasn't that impressed, but it was pretty dark.

Multitasking: Have not had time to check! Too busy with an infant and a blog!

Quite frankly, I’m just glad the damn thing is now out so we can move on with our lives. As a gadget junkie, I really want to like the iPhone - I think the touchscreen is a great new approach to things, and look forward to seeing it stolen and adapted for other phones. I figure for now I will enjoy it -there’s a lot of things Apple got right, and to borrow from a conversation I had yesterday, the phrase “Do you want to see this YouTube video on my iPhone?” will undoubtedly be replacing bad pick-up lines across the country. God bless you, Steve Jobs.

(note to readers: this blog was typed on my Windows Vista PC -- damn you, Bill Gates!)