iPhone annoyances

After 12 hours, we still can’t stop playing with our iPhones but if you are trying to hold yourself back here are some annoyances. Most of these will hopefully be fixed by Apple and their partners soon:

- Not all videos on YouTube are available on the iPhone. YouTube must have to do some special processing for videos to be streamed to the iPhone. This includes videos emailed to you.

- No IMAP Gmail which means no push, no read/unread status : (

- No Hotmail unless you are a premium Hotmail subscriber.

- Camera really is terrible. It’s like the first gen camera phones. It can take a picture in sunlight and can barely focus.

- No IM. This phone feels so connected and then you realize that you have to SMS everyone.

- Special iPhone SMS pricing. I think this had something to do with the above, but AT&T is looking to rip iPhone users off with a $20 unlimited SMS plan. This is being done while unlimited text was just being offered for $5 for regular AT&T customers.

- iCal is completely disconnected! I kept looking for a place to put in an iCal feed, but it doesn’t exist.

- No Bluetooth Sync! You can pair the iPhone with OSX, but iSync does not support it. The only way to sync is via the tether and iTunes. I can’t imagine this staying like this for long.

- No Voice dialing. If you are a Bluetooth headset user who likes to voice dial contacts, you won’t be able to do that.

- Weather icon doesn’t change to reflect the current temperature. I guess it just is being optimistic when it tells you 24/7 that it’s sunny and 73 degrees outside.

- Notes seem to go nowhere. Do they sync to something on my Mac? I don’t know…

- Unable to set ringtones to anything other than the pre-bundled tones. It looks like Apple will start selling ringtones soon. It’s the only thing that would explain this limitation. Sadly all your music is on your phone and you can’t select any of it to use as a ringtone.

- Safari is practically unusable when the iPod is playing music.

Some delights that I did not know about:

- If you get links to Google Maps or Youtube videos, it does what it should and opens the native app on the phone. Seamless experience. It was also a surprise that the mail opened a MS Word doc.

- Flash runs! I was able to log into Meebo.

- Elegant tabbed browsing, wasn’t expecting that.

- Video is beautiful and fast! This includes YouTube. The iPhone is the best place to watch YouTube now.

changed my mind about iPhone

So after I played with the iPhone, I’ve changed my mind about it. It really is that good that I’d want to use it without 3G and GPS. So far the only issue I have with it is that typing in Safari is horribly slow when listening to music at the same time.

Now about that launch, what an incredible job done by Apple! They had tents set up outside so no one would be in the sun. They brought out cases of Smart Water and had Starbucks setup iced coffee stations. Periodically, store employees would wander by and whisper words of encouragement like: “You’re going to love your new iPhone” or “You should be confident that you’ll be getting one”. We were a little worried at first because we had arrived so late and I counted around 160 people in front of us. As 6pm rolled around we heard that it was crazy inside. Woz was apparently the first person in line so it only added to the buzz. Apple employees would ferry us in groups of 20 to a short line outside the store where a large crowd of spectators stood taking pictures and watching.

Once we were let into the store we were immediately greeted on both sides by Apple employees cheering and clapping. Right after that, they would guide us into a fast moving line that moved in a cirle through the store. Best of all Apple employees would latch onto every group of 2 people and immediately put a fully operational iPhone into our hands and start running through features. It was then that I got to try out the typing for myself, and I can confirm that Walt is absolutely correct, typing without buttons is a non-issue.

Leonard’s decision for us to go the Valley Fair Apple store was a good one. They were really hush about how many they had, but they said they should have enough for tonight. The store is open till midnight, and I’d encourage anyone who wants one to get over there.

As for the rest, activation was a cinch and it is a joy to use and I’m happily GMail’ing, YouTube’ing and Pownce’ing at you from my phone.

No iPhone for me

Saw Jason’s tweet that he was getting an iPhone based on Walt Mossberg’s video review. I watched it and while I had thought the touch keyboard would be a deal killer, it turns out that it’s the lack of 3G that makes it not work $500 for me. Walt does confirm that he’s now able to type as fast as he does on his Treo, but that the EDGE network is really slow for the device. Having used EDGE for the past 2 years, I know that it’s incredibly slow on a regular phone, and I can imagine how painful it will be for a phone that has a full browser built in. So for now, it’ll have to wait. I’m guessing January for the 3G announcement.

My neighbor Scott’s on Valleywag

So I just found Scott Gatz’s blog via Valleywag which is served to me via Google Reader. While that in itself is not unusual, it is kinda funny to me because Scott sits on the other side of a cube wall from me. We work in the same department but on different teams.

Scott isn’t the loudest guy at work, and I like that he’s not afraid to share interesting observations on his blog. It gives me a whole new perspective on the guy. I on the other hand am very loud, yet I tend to write nothing of substance on my blog.

As it turns out, I’m one of those yahoos he describes here that does read Valleywag daily. My personal hobby is identifying the sources of leaked information from the mother ship.

iPhone API

Update (3-7-08): of course the iPhone SDK is now out.

Oh Boy, I can’t wait to see some more details on the API for iPhone. Nothing yet on ADC, but I made a Pipe which is going to alert me by email and IM when they add an article with iPhone. Now I just have to prevent myself from buying the first version.

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