iPhone First Impressions / Reviews

[keirnna]

If anything the second rate browser is IE because it doesn't render correct HTMl 4.01 code yet. But then 90%+ use it so is generally accepted.

No disagreement here about IE being a steaming turd! I just wish all of my business applications were not dependent on crappy IE and ActiveX. I always go for Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE compatibility with all of my sites.

 

[nacengineer]

You dunno what to do with your PB G4? Send it to me I'm looking for a PPC Mac!!! I don't care if it's dead lol.

Also, anyone think that the European iPhone will have 3G/HSDPA courtesy of Vodafone as rumours suggest? If so, I can't help but feel smug lol and feel that little bit less bitter about the US release.

You can send the PB my way too!

Also I chuckle at the statements a lot of expats and non Americans are making that they'll get the 3G phone while we're still using EDGE. AT&T has 3G networks here... Just EDGE is more available.

I see this future iPhone supporting both standards. HOWEVER this will require some miniaturization on the component side. There is more to no 3G than just the political aspects. This iPhone is tiny. The darn components need to fit in there before they can be used!

EDGE is fast enough for now. It's slow granted but then Wireless access is so prevalent here in the US that it's not a big deal.

Plus there is an optional addition no one is mentioning that ATT now offers to add hotspot access to your phone which would mean you could connect at most McDonalds (fairly prevalent in the US if memory serves me), and some other fine eating establishments (kidding of course about the fine). Remember people EDGE serves MOST communities... 3G right now only serves a portion. Apple is thinking big picture for now.

 

[garrettcode]

iPhone footage

I went to the Apple Store as part of a camera crew. I didn't have to wait in line at all, but was admitted immediately and got to play with the phone before a lot of other people. It was all for the sake of getting the shot. ;-) The thing is truly amazing. I'm quite impressed and want to buy one.

The one issue I saw was that one phone wasn't getting any signal from at&t, and also that there was enough of a bandwidth drain that pages loaded slowly in safari, even on wifi.

You can see what we shot (with some lame garageband loops) on youtube. Search iPhone Launch- Salt Lake City

or use this url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8W11VKqhC0

 

[Manic Mouse]

You can send the PB my way too!

Also I chuckle at the statements a lot of expats and non Americans are making that they'll get the 3G phone while we're still using EDGE. AT&T has 3G networks here... Just EDGE is more available.

I see this future iPhone supporting both standards. HOWEVER this will require some miniaturization on the component side. There is more to no 3G than just the political aspects. This iPhone is tiny. The darn components need to fit in there before they can be used!

EDGE is fast enough for now. It's slow granted but then Wireless access is so prevalent here in the US that it's not a big deal.

Plus there is an optional addition no one is mentioning that ATT now offers to add hotspot access to your phone which would mean you could connect at most McDonalds (fairly prevalent in the US if memory serves me), and some other fine eating establishments (kidding of course about the fine). Remember people EDGE serves MOST communities... 3G right now only serves a portion. Apple is thinking big picture for now.

But there is no EDGE in Europe. Only 3G or 2G. So if Apple want the internet to be usable at all the iPhone needs 3G in Europe. Which is why I would nearly put money on the EU iPhone having 3G, it's pretty certain.

 

[rob@robburns.co]

Because the content then fills up the screen, making the best use of available screen space. Look at the iPhone, you either have the option of seeing it zoomed (cutting off the edges of the movie) or unzoomed which means bars on the top and bottom with a smaller viewing area (which is BAD on a small screen). Both options are unacceptable in my eyes and much worse than "distorting" the image to fill the screen properly. The iPhone has a very nice screen, movies should make use of it.

To each his own I guess. For me its one of my biggest pet peeves. To me the first step in visual fidelity fidelity is to get the vertical and horizontal proportions right (followed by color, frame etc.). I find it odd when consumers spend thousands of dollars on a television (presumably to get the best audio/visual fidelity) and then keep the picture in a distorted aspect ratio all of the time. HD TVs are better about adjusting this automatically, but I still see this distorted image even in high-end stores selling these things.

 

[keirnna]

Dude are you serious! Full CSS standard? I couldn't let this go... they all render full CSS. You're thinking of HTML 4.01 and Safari and Konqueror (its Linux cousin) do render the full standard. The Acid2 test. They were the first to do so. The test is here. If you don't use Safari (and as I infer from your statement never have) don't bash it. Its on par with Firefox IMHO.

http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html

OPERA! Opera! While I love some of its features (mobil view anyone) it doesn't come close to rendering fully. And I design web sites... sorry but even as a mac fan you design for IE and if your CSS is good the rest fall in line. It sucks but its the result when IE has 90+% market share.

No I meant what I said: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/22/2239218

 

[nacengineer]

In VLC go to the "video" drop down menu and chose "aspect ratio". If you're on a laptop you have a 16:10 screen, and from this menu you can change any video to match this aspect ratio so it fills the screen (by selecting 16:10). On a device with a small screen wasting video space is not ideal, and neither is chopping off the edges to do a crude zoom. Filling the available screen with video just seems like a no-brainer to me, why do you guys "hate" this?

thanks for the info. I'll reserve judgement until I try it. Hate is a strong word apologies if I implied this... just merely prefer. Although maybe this would make me look skinnier in my videos...

My guess is this was a design decision on Apples part.

 

[nacengineer]

Cloth

did anyone else *not* get a cleaning cloth or am i just crazy?

it either fell out of the box in my car and i can't find it or i didn't get one...i'm going for the latter since i'm usually careful about these things.

It was inside a black cardboard folder so I highly doubt it fell out of the box. It was down with the documentation. Write Apple and I'm sure they'll send you a few. Its just a velvet cloth though... I think I'll switch to an optical cloth like the one I use for my glasses. They seem to work better.

 

[Manic Mouse]

To each his own I guess. For me its one of my biggest pet peeves. To me the first step in visual fidelity fidelity is to get the vertical and horizontal proportions right (followed by color, frame etc.). I find it odd when consumers spend thousands of dollars on a television (presumably to get the best audio/visual fidelity) and then keep the picture in a distorted aspect ratio all of the time. HD TVs are better about adjusting this automatically, but I still see this distorted image even in high-end stores selling these things.

I see where you're coming from, but the iPhone's screen is going to be of a lower resolution than any videos you'll be playing on them so any stretching wont result in a loss of detail at the expense of more screen real estate. There is more data than available pixels. Anyway, on such a small screen I would say that maximising the video size is more important than maintaining the original aspect ratio and you're dealing with poor quality compressed media to begin with so visual fidelity isn't the most important thing.

My point is, there's no reason why VLC style aspect ratio altering isn't an option rather than the crude zoom. It's better than cutting off the edges to fill the screen. I'm not suggesting that they remove the default aspect ratio option.

 

[rickster2k]

At the Palo Alto California store the folks from systm.org purchased an iPhone and then tested it to destruction. The screen broke when it was dropped from a "reasonable" height. The attached picture shows what happens when you jam a screwdriver into a battery.

The complete video should be available tomorrow on systm.org.

What is the point in of the above photos? Sure test it to see if it breaks but that just seems such a waste of an iphone. I mean what do you really think would happen if you jam a screwdriver in the battery - that's not a real life test.

I would be more interested in seeing how easily the screen scratches.

 

[SixSlinger]

the cleaning cloth is in the instruction booklet!

 

[RodThePlod]

Disk Usage

Confirmed. Think about it... if you could do this you could modify the phone. I think this will be opened up when Apple settles on an SDK for the iPhone... for now though... you'll need that flash drive or External HDD

OK - thanks for checking, guys. Bit of a bummer - but hey... I can see why Apple would restrict access.

Cheers!

Rod.

 

[rob@robburns.co]

But there is no EDGE in Europe. Only 3G or 2G. So if Apple want the internet to be usable at all the iPhone needs 3G in Europe. Which is why I would nearly put money on the EU iPhone having 3G, it's pretty certain.

Well 2G and 3G are mostly buzzwords. Unless you mean that Europe only has GPRS and then goes straight to HDSPA. If that's the case then I would imagine getting a suitable 3G chipset would be crucial to bring the iPhone to Europe (GPRS just won't cut it). With Apple driving the supplier markets, it wouldn't surprise me if they go the chipset smaller, cooler and lower-powered by the scheduled European release.

It also would not be inconceivable for Apple to release 3G phones in Europe before the US. After all 3G coverage is much better in Europe than in the US. So it would make sense to lose some battery life in the European phone to take advantage of 3G. Whereas in the US, AT&T would need to get their 3G coverage way above the 10% mark to make the loss in battery life tolerable. Again this would depend on how much 3G chipset progress is made in the next 6 to 12 moths.

 

[nacengineer]

No I meant what I said: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/22/2239218

Thanks for the info but since we're off topic and on verge of trolldom I'll acquiesce on the CSS issue.

 

[pilotError]

did anyone else *not* get a cleaning cloth or am i just crazy?

The cleaning cloth is in the little box with the user guides. Its underneath them, and pretty easy to miss as its black.

I haven't had any of the issues with activation. I am a current Cingular / AT&T customer though.

I went to the store at 9PM, took all of 5 minutes to purchase 2 phones and some accessories. Brought them home, downloaded the new iTunes and had both phones activated in less than 2 minutes each. Got the confirmation on my iPhones and checked my old phone, sure enough, they deactivated them at the same time (probably because I kept the same number).

iTunes correctly synched my home mail, still haven't tried Google or Yahoo mail yet, but regular mail is working.

Connected to my home wireless network without issue, web is MUCH faster, but really not that bad on Edge.

Went out and paired the phones to my Mercedes/Bluetooth, no issue there.

So far, the thing is a pleasure. Then again, I came from a regular phone and not a smartphone.

My wife is actually pretty anti-tech and she picked it up very quickly.

I have built numerous touch applications on various devices over the years. This is probably the best touch experience I've ever had. Typing is a breeze, and input is pretty accurate for by big fingers.

For all intent purposes, this is a little iMac!

There's lots of little nuance and some things I have to learn, but I can use almost all of the functionality without reading the manuals or watching the online videos.

The wife complained about the lack of Ringtones, hopefully they'll address that at some point.

I'm pretty happy with it.

 

[i0Nic]

I see where you're coming from, but the iPhone's screen is going to be of a lower resolution than any videos you'll be playing on them so any stretching wont result in a loss of detail at the expense of more screen real estate. There is more data than available pixels. Anyway, on such a small screen I would say that maximising the video size is more important than maintaining the original aspect ratio and you're dealing with poor quality compressed media to begin with so visual fidelity isn't the most important thing.

My point is, there's no reason why VLC style aspect ratio altering isn't an option rather than the crude zoom. It's better than cutting off the edges to fill the screen. I'm not suggesting that they remove the default aspect ratio option.

Are you actually saying that you want the video to be stretched out to fill the screen? You don't mind looking at distorted/stretched out objects?

Surely the way the iPhone works with cropping or playing at correct aspect ratio is much preferred than having a distorted video playback I would've thought.

 

[DonSqueak]

Because it is distorted, and some people don't like that. Quite frankly, I can't understand how people (including my girlfriend) don't seem to bother or even realise it...

Anyway, Apple will never happily advocate distorted video image size, and I for one am happy with that.

Cheers, M.

 

[nacengineer]

Well 2G and 3G are mostly buzzwords. Unless you mean that Europe only has GPRS and then goes straight to HDSPA. If that's the case then I would imagine getting a suitable 3G chipset would be crucial to bring the iPhone to Europe (GPRS just won't cut it). With Apple driving the supplier markets, it wouldn't surprise me if they go the chipset smaller, cooler and lower-powered by the scheduled European release.

It also would not be inconceivable for Apple to release 3G phones in Europe before the US. After all 3G coverage is much better in Europe than in the US. So it would make sense to lose some battery life in the European phone to take advantage of 3G. Whereas in the US, AT&T would need to get their 3G coverage way above the 10% mark to make the loss in battery life tolerable. Again this would depend on how much 3G chipset progress is made in the next 6 to 12 moths.

actually 2g and 3g while being buzzwords do actually classify the technology. Edge is a 2g technology.

I personally feel that Apple has 3G in the works but needed to get this thing to market. I hate to admit it but I think us Yanks will be buying new phones in a few months if we want 3g. However there is no reason the EDGE can't be pushed harder. It's top end is 230kb and it's not there yet. There is room to grow.

And I didn't mean to be ignorant to the plight of the non americans... but keep in mind EDGE is used in Europe same as in rural America... perhaps you are speaking from a big 5 perspective. (Spain, France, Italy, Germany, England (yes I know thats not Europe)) or from a specific carriers service. Not trolling just theorizing. Although I am somewhat shamed by my source being wikipedia, but my European friends aren't technical enough to answer this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Data_Rates_for_GSM_Evolution

But since we're off topic I'll stop replying to this one...

 

[addicted44]

Plus I think the real point is that the iPhone is missing out on choice!

Choice is overrated. And not just from a consumer gadget standpoint.

 

[rob@robburns.co]

I see where you're coming from, but the iPhone's screen is going to be of a lower resolution than any videos you'll be playing on them so any stretching wont result in a loss of detail at the expense of more screen real estate. There is more data than available pixels. Anyway, on such a small screen I would say that maximising the video size is more important than maintaining the original aspect ratio and you're dealing with poor quality compressed media to begin with so visual fidelity isn't the most important thing.

Again, I understand you wanting the option. (though its the type of option I don't think Apple likes to provide). But I'm not talking about loss of pixel data in terms of fidelity. I'm saying that the first thing video has to get right to a faithful representation is the right proportions in horizontal and vertical dimensions. After that (in my opinion) I would rank things such as 2) the right color; 3) the pixel resolution; 4) the pixel depth; 5) the frame (in other words slicing off the sides).

My point is, there's no reason why VLC style aspect ratio altering isn't an option rather than the crude zoom. It's better than cutting off the edges to fill the screen. I'm not suggesting that they remove the default aspect ratio option.

Again, I would support you in having that choice, but my feeling (based on my ranking above) is that I'd rather lop off the left and right sides.

 

[DonSqueak]

Keep in mind that this only holds true to the US. Major parts of Europe have VERY good 3G coverage, and EDGE doesn't even exist in most countries I know of (in fact I don't know ANY).

Cheers, M.

 

[nacengineer]

BTW Delete somthing

The Genie animation to the trash can on deleting something is priceless eye candy.

 

[nacengineer]

BTW Alaska

Someone posted about Alaska earlier... Macrumors Front Page is announcing ATT is buying Dobson (i.e. Cellular One)... so all is well if this is true.

It even helps me here when I'm in the boondocks! Yay!

 

[DonSqueak]

AT&T sounds and splash screens?

Does it have any of those at start up? Does anything intrude the experience on the device?

 

[blackcrayon]

Are you actually saying that you want the video to be stretched out to fill the screen? You don't mind looking at distorted/stretched out objects?

Surely the way the iPhone works with cropping or playing at correct aspect ratio is much preferred than having a distorted video playback I would've thought.

I'd have to agree. I'd rather have black bars but the proper aspect ratio, than have something stretched just because i wan't all of the screen to be used. (Or just as bad, zoomed so that it's "bigger" but then i'm not seeing the entire scene). But i guess there could be some kind of option for people that don't care about seeing the movie image the way its author intended (but it's not usually Apple's style to give you the ability to "mess things up" in their eyes)...