It has been 18 days since the release of the long hailed, hyped, and over marketed iPhone 3G. Has it lived up to the hype?
I have heard it said that “if you don’t have a love hate relationship with Apple, then you are just a fanboy.” This is a very true statement. I am an apple believer. I see Steve Jobs as a visionary who, barring health problems, will be pivotal in taking consumer electronics into the future. However, I also know enough to avoid the fanboy filled lines for newly released apple products. Why? Because straight out of the gate, Apple generally FAILS. They get it right fairly quick after the release, but the initial release is not usually a pleasant experience.
So, was it different for the iPhone? NO. We all remember the abysmmal launch that saw outages both in the at&t activation servers, and also the iTunes activation process. Lines that should have taken an hour took most of the day because the purchase time wasn’t a swift 5 minute process, like the previous iPhone, but an excruciating 30 minutes to an hour. Even after all that time spent, many were walking out with unactivated iPhones.
After nearly 3 weeks, if you want an iPhone you still get to stand in line.
What about the lucky ones who got their phones and were able to activate them? A friend of mine is on his fifth iPhone 3G and is convinced that the black iPhones are cursed and has switched to the white iPhone. I am sure there is no difference, but he has had battery problems, overheating problems, antenna problems, and apparently one of the iPhone’s got ghetto and cut him…
What about the app store? This, I believe, has been the saving grace for the iPhone. The app store is awesome. Providing needed functions and add-ons to a phone that, unfortunately, should have had them in the first place. Personally, I have downloaded about 30 different apps, and all of them are pretty cool. Even apps that serve no purpose at all just have a flair of awesome that is hard to escape. The best example of that is the iPhone saber app. It literally does nothing except show you a light saber and let you swing your phone around to make the light saber cracking noises, and yet it is so much fun. Another fun time killing app is the iPint. Using the accleramator on the iPhone you slide a brew down to the waiting hands of your customer avoiding all the obstacles on the bar. As a reward the phone pours you a pint you can “drink” and it looks pretty realistic.
Other apps do provide much need productivity and functionality to the phone. For instance, the Wordpress blogging app is a fantastic tool to allow bloggers to report on events, or edit mistakes on the go. Another great app would be the Speed Dial app. Yep, I know you have speed dial on your phone already. This app though creates a block of nine square images of your friends that you can touch to dial, it just looks cool, and it is easily my most used app on the phone.
Also heavily used is Pandora. Pandora is an internet radio application, you create your account and plug in a few of your favorite artists and songs and it creates custom radio stations that you can listen too on the go. The selections can sometimes be a little out there, for example it paired up Journey on my RUSH station, but overall it makes pretty selections.
Lastly I will talk about the “remote” app. This one allows you to control your iTunes from anywhere on your network with your iPhone. While that is a great feature, this app really shines if you are also an Apple TV owner. I love my Apple TV, but one major issue I have with it is that the remote that comes with SUCKS.
It looks cool, but it can be a pain in the rear to use. Enter Remote on the iPhone. Now instead of having to navigate back and forth with the menu button, I can go directly the movie, or song, or picture that I want on the screen. Plus it drives my wife crazy when she has the small remote and “thinks” she is control of the TV. Muwahahahah . sorry .
As an first gen iPhone user, I am extremely happy with the App Store, and it has satiated my desire for an upgrade for the time being, so while an iPhone 3G is in my future, I am content to avoid the lines and the fully expected initial Apple FAIL for now.
So, in the end, no, the iPhone is not living up to the hype. It will, in the end, but as with all things Apple there is a painful early adopter process. In the coming weeks with the release of MagicPad giving us copy/paste ability and continuing upgrade of at&t’s 3G network, the iPhone will be the dominant phone on the market, but if you are currently in a contract with another provider, don’t break it for this phone.
Superman is faster then a speeding bullet, can leap tall buildings in a single bound and is the man of steel, but give him some kryptonite and he gets a little whiny and all the bad guys take over.
Today is the long awaited day that we finally get the iPhone 3G in hand, and currently it has been available for a total of 3 .5 hours on the east coast, and not even an hour on the west coast, and what has at&t done. They have killed the buzz. They have handed the iPhone a big block of kryptonite in the form of activation servers that can not handle the load… SHOCKING.
Remember this post [ Buy your iPhone3G online? Apple and at&t say no way! ]. In that post I reminisced back to last year when the at&t activation servers went down, because they couldn’t handle the load. I don’t want to say I told you so, especially since everyone told you so. No one should be surprised that at&t is too inept to have learned its lesson last year. No one should be shocked that iPhone sales will ONCE AGAIN be halted due to a carrier that can’t seem to pull its activation servers out of their corporates asses.
What we should be shocked by is that Steve Jobs allowed this to happen… again. Do you think that Superman would continue to partner up with Lex Luther after he had given him a big block of kryptonite? NO! So, Steve, what the hell are you doing?
You have created a worldwide race of lemmings willing to stand in line for days for a PHONE… that in itself is a masterpiece of marketing. You have proven that your company is the leader in creating fan boys. Yet, for some reason (money) you insist on forcing us to use a carrier that is so useless and so inept that it may single-handedly be the death of the iPhone.
The next big dissapointment for the lucky few that did get the 3G iPhone activated, will be the limited and frustratingly bad 3G network that at&t has, that will likely crumble under the weight of the new iPhone users.
In what is most likely an effort to stifle the purchasing and unlocking of iPhones for use on other networks, Apple and at&t have announced that you will not be able to buy your iPhone online, nor will you be able to buy the phone and activate it later. Purchase and activation will take place at the same time.
While I completely understand at&t’s desire to prevent the iPhone usage on other networks, since I am sure they paid a pretty penny for the exclusivity, I have to imagine that there is a better way to go about this. Forcing a 10 - 12 minute process onto people in the store is going to make the initial buying day (July 11) a complete mad house.
I remember back to the original launch day, and even though I wasn’t buying one I went with my brother to get his and the store was mad crazy. In that particular episode, he yelled (yes, yelled) at the guy behind the counter, over the top of all the apple fan boys, that he wanted an iPhone, and then half-handed half threw his credit card to the guy who ran it and came out with the phone and the receipt. The whole process took maybe 2 minutes, and it was still crazy in that store.
Now, factor in that NO ONE will be able to buy online, and the phone is now priced so that my 14 year-old nephew can afford one, and that the purchase time has gone from 2 minutes to 15- 20 minutes, and that is assuming that at&t’s activation servers don’t take a massive dump (remember the last time … they did. ).
So, how much pandamonium can we expect when the activation server go down, and the people who have been sitting in line for as long a week or so, can’t even buy the phone since at&t can’t activate it..
I will be there just to watch the show.
People are taking pics on their phones, and posting them to social networks like [ plurk ] and [ twitter ].. As I get them I will update this post.. so keep checking back ..
Thanks to [ LiveCrunch ] on Plurk for these :
Lines forming ..
Banner covered, likely until after the keynote … my guess is that it has 3 iPhones (red, white, and black)
Lots of new apps being being demoes….
Great images of them all at [ EnGadget ]
Australian resellers began receiving mysterious packages from Apple on Friday with a warning across the top that breaching the boxes ahead of June 10th would be a violation of their non-disclosure agreements with the company.
June 10th in Australia is actually around the same time of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs’s June 9th WWDC keynote in the US. The boxes likely contain a single demonstration 3G iPhone to be displayed by the resellers immediately following the company’s announcements.
Earlier this year, reports began appearing on Apple rumor sites in Australia that said local resellers had started to receive guidance from the Cupertino-based company regarding a local 3G iPhone launch during the final week of June.
Good Web design, as subjective as it might be, is still just that, good. For this post, let’s forgo the intricate discussion about how Flash changed the world of web sites, or how Dreamweaver and GoLive made everyone with a pulse and a Mac an over-night web designer. Yeah, I said it, you know who you are. What does need to be addressed is what makes a web site not so much stand out from other sites, but what makes it stand out to you, the user.
Over the past 14 years as a designer I’ve joined (and survived) three start-ups, moved five times, and, hold on to your mouse, held over 35 different jobs. Most of those were in fact freelance or contract jobs. I spent the first six years of my career as a print designer, then in early 2000, I moved blissfully — spelunking’ly’ — into the world of web design. I can safely say that that seemingly eon ago metamorphosis changed my idea and opinion of what design was and can be.
Don’t worry my dear readers, this is not meant to be an online therapy session, far from it. I am not here to discuss what I ate for breakfast this morning, but more importantly, what font I used as a header this afternoon, or maybe what color I chose for a rollover at 2 AM.
Dive, but ask questions
Arguably, one of the most disruptive aspects of bad site design is clutter. This pertains to the not only the navigation, but also the body copy, header and any graphical elements on the page. First and foremost, the designer needs to firmly grasp the idea of hierarchy, then and only then will their site become whole, and with any luck, persuade Google to shine their heavenly beacon in your direction. Of course, most of us are bound to the real “end-user”, the client. The one who signs the checks, pays for rent, and allows us to purchase that shiny new 3G iPhone next week. If he or she wants blinking pink ants dancing around each of their navigation buttons, and wants to see every imaginable area of white space plastered with a Yahoo or Google ad, well sir, thy wish shall be done.
However, designers, don’t be fooled by your vast talents and knowledge of all things design. Never dismiss what should be your most loyal friend, the User Interface developer. The UI design for your site can make or break every aspect of your intensely toiled over design. You may have created the single most beautiful combination of color and font choice, but without a proper UI, you risk the user, with her credit card in hand, to dismiss your site, flicking her proverbial cyber-middle finger at you — closing your window.
To that end, those designers who think they can move the world without the most rudimentary knowledge of code and how it works — not to mention how it will impact your design — pack your up your laptops. Being a well-rounded designer does not consist solely of you mastering photo selection and grids, being able to discuss your design with a coder and how they both interact is paramount. Whether you are working with HTML, PHP, XML or a MySQL database, being able to talk intelligently with a front or back end developer about limitations and potential roadblocks, will not only save you time in the long run, but help you produce that much more robust and error free site. OK, no site is completely error free, but am man can dream.
The best sites, I humbly contest, are those that indeed, keep it simple. That idea was true in design school back in the early 90’s, and it still rings true today. From minimalistic sites like [ Craiglist ] and [ Apple ] to the robust [ CNN ] and [ Adobe ], they all have one thing in common: clean, simple, and best of all, legible content and a user-friendly layout. From soccer moms and CEO to teens and ex white house press secretaries, beyond all other needs and wants a site has to offer, they want to be able to find what they are looking for and get on with their double-clicking afternoons.
As reference, please visit: [ webdesignfromscratch ] It offers a wealth of knowledge about, albeit, mostly Web 2.0 remarks, it gives an informed direction of site design, both what can go right, and what can go very wrong.
Happy Spelunking!
It appears that the next version of Mac OS X is code-named “Snow Leopard,” and will indeed be Intel-only.
Following the rumors from TUAW’s original scoop about Mac OS X 10.6 being readied for shipment as soon as Macworld 2009 and being Intel-only.
Ars Technica is saying that it has been confirmed to them that TUAW’s details are true. Snow Leopard is currently on track to come out during next January’s MacWorld, and it will not contain major OS changes.
The release is heavily focused on performance and nailing down speed and stability. With Apple’s current (and future) focus on smaller, thinner, and more mobile devices, this move makes perfect sense.
Things like the MacBook Air, iPhone, iPod touch, and other mysterious devices that have yet to be announced need better performance for better battery life, and that’s definitely something Apple wants to excel at in the years to come.
Something else that may happen is that Apple may eventually wrap everything in Cocoa, meaning that things that are currently only Carbon accessible will not be usable.
[ TUAW ] is reporting that they’ve gotten some insider information that Apple will unveil OS 10.6 next Monday at the WWDC keynote. There is no reason to believe that this will be the leap that leopard took, but it will leave PPC behind in a sad, but long time in coming farewell.
According to the report, Apple’s upcoming OS will focus solely on “stability and security”, and it will be the first Apple OS that is not PowerPC compatible. The new OS is supposedly slated for a Jan 2009 release, and some rumors are calling it “Lynx” based on trademarks going back as far as 2003, so while Apple may be dropping PPC, they seem to be sticking to the cat naming thing.
Apple has also trademarked “Cougar”, but given the recent popularity of calling older, sexually agressive women cougars, one would hope they would stay from that name…
Personally, I would go with [ Liger ], except it seems that Jobs wants to wait for 10.8 for that one…
Many will likely mourn the passing of Power PCs, but given that many smaller developers are ignoring the intel-based platform, this will likely be the kick in the pants needed to get them moving in the proper directions.
Will you miss the PowerPC, or have you already moved on?
Today at&t announced a 20 percent increase to the typical download speeds across its 3G wireless network and a 50 percent increase to typical upload speeds.
The mobile operator and exclusive provider for Apple’s iPhone in the US said the upgrades are results of recent network enhancements, including the deployment of High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) technology across all existing 3G markets that is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
Customers on the network should now achieved download speeds between 700 Kbps (kilobits per second) and 1.7 Mbps (megabits per second), up from 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps. Meanwhile, upload speeds should jump to the 500 Kbps - 1.2 Mbps range, up from 500 to 800 Kbps.
The announcement comes just days before Apple is expected to take the wraps off its version 2 iPhone which will use this 3G network.
at&t says its 3G mobile network is available in more than 275 major U.S. metropolitan areas, adding that later this month it will become the first U.S. carrier to have fully deployed High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology across its entire 3G network.
By year-end, the company plans to offer 3G service in nearly 350 major metropolitan U.S. areas.
In a move that makes very little sense to this particular mac fanboy, Apple will be re-branding their very cool .mac service and begin calling it “mobile me”.
This is, of course, all rumor and conjecture, but given a lot of the buzz going on in the interwebs it seems likely.
Apple has bought a slew of .me domains, the soon-to-be-launched domain suffix for Montenegro that’s scheduled to go live on July 17th. Macworld UK spoke to Predrag Lesic, in charge of the Montenegro’s .me registry, and he thinks the domain will be an international hit.
Speculation around the web says Apple may be planning to re-brand its web service, .Mac, as Mobile Me. Daring Fireball points out that there is a new string inside one of iCal’s resource files hinting that .Mac will indeed be getting a new name, although it remains unknown what it will be.
These two facts go nicely together and it points to a whole new service coming through the .Mac gateway, hopefully it will integrate into the iPhone as well. I just wish they would leave the name alone, or at least pick something that is not so “windowish”.