Apple iPhone: Unboxed

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• William123 - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link

  I was really looking forward to info on iphone, I got it here. Thank you for your Post.
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• Zak - Tuesday, July 3, 2007 - link

  Most of the iPhone shortcomings will be eventually addressed with software updates, except one: AT&T. Even if they were giving free iPhones away with each account I'm not going to switch to AT&T. And it is really slow, REALLY slow, I've seen a few today it really does take a minute sometimes open a simple webpage, dialup-like speeds, seriosuly. WTF were they thinking?

• Googer - Friday, June 29, 2007 - link

  
  
  

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  This has been the week from hell as far as iPhone hype goes. Over and over and over, we've all been subjected to more and more iPhone blather. Enough already! It's time to cut this stupid phone down to size, once and for all! And mark my words, that's all it is...a stupid phone! It is not a cure for cancer, it will not bring peace to the world, it will not feed the hungry or provide homes to the homeless. It's a freaking phone and it's high time somebody drew a line in the sand and said: Thus far and no farther with the iBlather!
  So here are ten reasons why you should NOT buy an iPhone. No doubt the Apple Cultists will flame me for saying it like it is but it's about time somebody did. So here is why you should avoid this vile piece of over-hyped crap:
  
  10. Too Expensive
  Is Apple kidding us? $599 for a freaking phone? Wow...just wow. No phone is worth that much money even if it has a few "gee whiz" and "it's neat" type features. Apple has gone way, way off the deep end this time with the price of this behemoth phone. Why would anybody be foolish enough to pay that much for a cell phone? Are people that addicted to blabbing on the phone that they must pay $600 to do so? Sheesh, get a life people. Do you really want to waste your money lining the pockets of Steve Jobs and his minions at Apple? Take the $599 and do something productive with it instead of wasting it on yet another over-hyped, over-priced Apple product.
  
  
  9. Tiny Storage
  Well just as with the iPod, we can always count on Apple screwing us over with tiny amounts of storage space. The $499 iPhone has 4GB and the $599 has 8GB. What on earth does Apple expect people to do with that tiny bit of storage space? Think about it. The vaunted iPhone is supposed to be able to play movies as well as play songs. Well how many movies are you going to be able to store with just 4GB of storage space? And how many songs can you carry? To say nothing of your other data that you might need to tote around with you.
  
  Apple appears to have rushed headlong into the release of the iPhone with no thought whatsoever about how starved for storage space iPhone users will soon be. And what does Jobs think is going to happen? That people will carry around a terabyte external hard disk with them to desperately try to carry their needed data? Come off it, Steve. The minimum data storage for the $499 iPhone should have been 500GB at the very least with the top of the line model having at least 800GB or preferably 1 terabyte.
  
  8. Stylish and Stupid
  There's no doubt about it that the iPhone look "stylish" when you first see it. But isn't that really the problem with all of Apple's products? They look pretty but provide very low value for the price? Do you really want to be a loser that overpays for the iPhone just to look cool for a little while? Don't forget that no matter how "stylish" you look, sooner or later other people will have an iPhone and then you'll just look stupid.
  
  Is that what you're really after? To look stupid trying to be cooler than everybody else? Hey, you can do that without spending $600. In fact, you may have already achieved that goal just by reading this column but I'll leave that to each reader to decide for themselves.
  
  7. Stuck With AT&T
  One of the worst things that Apple ever did was to sign a five year exclusive agreement with AT&T to be the wireless provider for the iPhone. Five years! So if you use Verizon, Tmobile, or some other provider, you can't get an iPhone unless you switch to AT&T.
  
  To date AT&T doesn't seem to have all that great of a reputation as a mobile service provider. I can't speak from experience because I've never used them but isn't it odd how a fossil from telephone service days gone by (AT&T) ended up in bed with Apple, a company that likes to pride itself on being "cutting edge." It's the telecom marriage made in hell!
  
  What exactly was Apple thinking here? Did it deliberately decide to screw over customers on other services? We'll never know what on earth was going through Steve Jobs' head when he made this wacky decision (was his turtleneck too tight and it cut off the blood supply to his head?) but anybody on a different wireless carrier will have to live with it unless they want to switch to AT&T.
  
  6. Edge and Not 3G
  Apple's decision to go with AT&T is also costly for another reason. The iPhone apparently will be using AT&T's super-slow and crappy Edge data service instead of 3G. Wow. Another major screw-up by Apple. Are you willing to pay for a slow data connection on your "cool" iPhone? Stop and think about that for a minute. You're going to be paying for a data service that might take a few minutes to load this web page, depending on how it performs that day you use it.
  
  Given that the iPhone is supposed to be "cutting edge", I can't imagine what Apple was thinking to release it on a service that doesn't offer 3G data transfer speeds. It's like Apple released a corvette that can only go up to 35mph. What the heck is the point?
  
  5. No Flash or Java Support
  Flash and Java are both pretty basic parts of the web experience. And yet Steve Jobs and his lackeys have arbitrarily decided to exclude them from the iPhone web experience. So much for "the internet in your pocket" blather that Jobs was spewing earlier on. It's more like the "crippled, crappy, lame version of the Internet in your pocket" instead.
  
  No doubt though that Apple's marketing department will probably put their usual spin on this and start touting the iPhone as being "Flash-free" or "Java-free" as though both things were positives instead of negatives. And you know what? The Apple Faithful will eat it up! They'll storm out onto the Web and begin filling discussion forums and newsgroups with inane comments about how the iPhone "protects" users from evil things like Flash and Java.
  
  I guess when you're the head of a cult, you can make people believe anything.
  
  4. Two Year Contract and $175 Termination Fee
  When you buy an iPhone you better get ready to pay out even more! You'll have to agree to a 2 year contract, whether you like it or not. And what happens if you decide to switch to another wireless provider? Get ready because you'll have to cough up another $175 to regain your freedom from the tyranny of AT&T and Apple. Talk about a ripoff!
  
  3. No Keyboard
  I'm sorry but I'm not buying the "multitouch is great" line of thinking. I don't want to be dependent on a stupid touch screen, I want a keyboard! Who knows how accurate the iPhone's touch screen keyboard will be? Early rumors suggest that it might be a disaster in the making. Do you really want to pay $599 or even $499 to find out that it's a total pain in the rear end just to text somebody and that you have no option whatsoever for a built-in keyboard? What was Apple thinking here? No hardware keyboard and a dubious, iffy software based keyboard that could be completely unusable for most people? No thanks! Put a hardware-based keyboard in the next version, Apple, and maybe it will be worth considering.
  
  2. Crapfari Instead of Firefox
  One of the most disappointing and shocking things about the iPhone is that it ships with the second (or is it third or fourth rate?) browser known as Safari. I prefer to call it Crapfari as there are just far too many sites that don't work properly with it for me to consider it a real browser. Instead of shipping with a real browser like Firefox, Apple chooses its bastard step-child of a browser. And then it has the temerity, the impudence to release the same bug-ridden piece of junk on Windows right before the launch! Could Apple be more arrogant? How many people are aware of just how bad the Crapfari browser really is and that they will have no alternative on the iPhone? I bet there will be a lot of shocked and angry iPhone users once they start trying to use the web and find that the Crapfari browser won't display their favorite sites properly. Well what did they expect from a fourth rate browser anyway?
  
  And here's the number one reason why you shouldn't even consider buying an iPhone:
  
  1. I'll Get to the Apple Store Ahead of You
  If you've read this far then you've finally discovered the *real* reason I wrote this column.
  
  You see, I'm out to dissuade as many people as possible from buying an iPhone so that I have less competition on Friday when I go to get mine. Yep, this entire column is nothing more than a self-serving ruse at giving myself the best chance possible to snag an iPhone on opening day.
  
  The fewer people that are interested in the iPhone, the better my chances at getting one! So in this column I've just regurgitated all the usual FUD about the iPhone, Apple, and AT&T in a blatant attempt to discourage you from being remotely interested in buying one.
  
  And I want one...make no mistake about it...I want an iPhone...bad! It's all I've been able to think about for the last few days...I've been dreaming of ditching my crappy Verizon phone and holding the sleek, sexy iPhone in the palm of my hand.
  
  Yes...I must have one...and I will have one! No matter who or what gets in my way! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssss....the precioooooooous will be ouuuuuuursssssssssss!
  
  So don't even bother to leave your house on launch day to get an iPhone. If you do, you'll find that I got there ahead of you and bought the last one. Muhuhahahahha! Suckers!
  
  Did my ruse work? Have you been dissuaded from buying an iPhone?
  http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2151961...">http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2151961...

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• sprockkets - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link

  10. Agree
  9. Not really Tiny, and I'm happy with the 1GB microSD card in my phone as to how many songs I need on my PHONE.
  8. That's opinion.
  7. Because going with the only very few CDMA people on the planet sucks, and the other GSM provider does not have as good as coverage.
  6. UMTS + HSPDA works great, it's the iphone that can't take advantage of it.
  5. Well, if it can play YouTube, it has to have flash, right? Can't say anything about Java support. Do you mean Java script or Java? Because you can live without Java.
  4. Yep that royally sucks. Once sales are poor, perhaps Apple and ATT can lift that restriction, but they probably did this so as to be the sole provider.
  3. Will let others speak for me on that.
  2. Konqueror works fine, but it's Apple, so yeah, we had to use OSX on something that clearly shouldn't be running it.
  1. Whatever.
  
  The whole catch 22 with the exclusive agreement and having to use some bizarre activation scheme is utterly ridiculous and goes against the simplicity of using SIM cards, so it is stupid that they would use ATT. That kind of activation fits more into Verizon's way of doing things for sure.

• aliasfox - Sunday, July 1, 2007 - link

  Actually, the iPhone currently doesn't have support for flash - all of YouTube is being re-encoded into h.264 in the next couple of months.

• Griswold - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link

  Funny enough, even though it was meant as a joke, he is dead on with most of the (albeit often exaggerated) points.
  
  But in the end, all the effort was in vain, considering that it wasnt a sell-out show so many expected and the queues rather quickly disappeared too at many apple stores and AT&T spots.
  
  Looks like this time around, the hype exceeded the (still somewhat high) demand.
  
  I will probably wait for the next incarnation of the iphone without all the shortcomings and above all, hopefully without a gag&bag contract attached to it.

• AlexWade - Friday, June 29, 2007 - link

  iPhone, iDon'tCare. This article and author is right, it is too big. I tried out a Treo 650 for a month. Other than the fact that it had a critical flaw Palm never bothered to fix, I didn't like it because it was too big. And this thing is just as big.
  
  And it does cost too much. I paid $250 total for Sony Ericsson W810i. I get 4GB of music, get to do most of what the iPhone does without the fancy interface, and at a small size and price. I did get a $100 rebate, but not a rebate check (which really burns my hide), so I don't count that into the price. Half-price, half-size, all music. Where is the downside?
  
  Finally, Cingular, er AT&T Wireless, isn't universally bad. No cell carrier is good everywhere and no cell carrier is bad everywhere. Be sure to take advantage of the 30 day trials. I've had AT&T since before they were Cingular. In NC, they are very good, never had any problems. My brother in Florida does have problems with AT&T.

• JAS - Friday, June 29, 2007 - link

  Wow, Anand ... That was fast!
  
  About 5:30 this afternoon, I went to a local mall that has both an AT&T outlet and an Apple Store. There was an incredible frenzy of activity going on. Crowds of onlookers applauded as each happy new iPhone owner emerged from the store. It was an amazing, memorable scene.
  
  I'll be interested to read of your experiences with the Apple iPhone -- but I'm inclined to wait for the next model before jumping in. I would not be surprised if Apple does a rev for the holiday buying season.

• gospastic - Friday, June 29, 2007 - link

  Is it just me or are the pics really blurry?

• sprockkets - Friday, June 29, 2007 - link

  So I guess those that are current ATT customers under contract need not apply? Have you tried putting in a valid SIM from ATT?
  
  Just that alone sounds like too much DRM for me, but it seems some do not care. Kinda like if you want all the advanced features of Vista, you have to take the advances in DRM as well.