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W00t! my iPhone’s wonking wow factor …

Posted by Tim on Saturday, March 21st, 2009
CATEGORIES: Feature, Gadgets, Tech, iPhone

Who needs an iPhone, right? I mean it’s just a phone after all ?!? Not!

After a couple weeks of talking to my twitter peeps I finally just decided to take the plunge and get an iPhone. And actually I’ve given it thought off and on for about a year. There are a couple people I know who own them and I was curious why they went into a trance every time I asked about it. “Ooooh you have to get one!” “If you do you’ll never go back!”

Back from where??

my-iphone

Maybe the rants and raves of apple fans made me move more slowly towards becoming an owner of an Apple product. More slowly because I had a secret fear that maybe they were just high. Now I know that I was right and wrong … at the same time.

Here’s why …

I went online to the At&t store and made the purchase, deciding to go with the 8GB since my music collection is pretty minimal and I don’t imagine I’ll have a huge stock of videos that I can’t leave home without. And 8GB because–hey– I’m not that huge of an Apple fan yet and maybe I should just put my toe in the water first. I mean 16GB? What’s that going to hold, like a million songs or something analogous to that? No, I’ll go with the 8GB please. And then maybe I will upgrade later … IF this whole thing works out of course.

And did it ever …

My phone finally arrived after 3 days shipping that left me checking the order status online over and over. Curiosity was strong and the general urge to test out the new gadget. It could have been a coffee grinder for all I cared, it was a gadget to be used and explored and tested. How good can an iPhone be?

Good. Very good. No, amazingly good!

After a brief time charging, the phone was ready to turn on and get rolling. So I hooked up to iTunes as instructed and got the phone activated.

Wow … just wow!

Two words for you: user experience.

The user experience of an iPhone is over the top amazing. It’s fun to scroll from app to app, and there is no sinking “i just can’t do what I want to do with this”. In fact, I’m continually incredulous at the things I CAN do.

Stuff like being able to be logged into all my gmail accounts at once. You have just one? Well good for you but I have at least 5 that I log into just about every day and what a pain to log in and log out in order to log in to the next account. I can just download them into a mail application you say? Yeah and lump them all together in one inbox, which I don’t want. But no, the iPhone allows me to check all of them and they are separate for me so I know what each one is about. Love that!

Then there’s the problem of having two Twitter accounts.

OK so your life isn’t interesting enough to share your daily thoughts with others? Fine, but let the rest of us meet on Twitter and converse …

It was not hard to find a Twitter app that lets me stay logged into both and switch back and forth.

Can’t do that on my laptop …

Plus, I hate logging into Facebook. Don’t really know why it just seems to be too long and complicated. But my iPhone allows me to quickly check and respond to messages and chat just like my laptop, without the hassle.

That’s 3 things I love …

And how about the whole “superfast internet anywhere anytime” thing? That’s sort of taken for granted but it adds a lot to the experience.

But there is a certain overall feel to the iPhone as well as the way you scroll and move from place to place. It’s just acts like it should, almost like it knows what I want. OK I do have to use my fingers but it reacts exactly like it should.

That’s what adds the wow factor. The entire experience is what it should be.

Next … Macbook Pro?? Overpriced?

Now I’m not so sure.

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TRACKBACK | COMMENT FEED
  • Hey Tim!

    Hehe nice to see you're enjoying it. That's exactly how I felt when I got mine.

    I'm a bit of a phone/gadgets freak and before I bought the iPhone I wanted to know that that was the phone for me. I wanted to know that I wasn't falling into the hype or whatever. So before buying it, first thing I did was try to talk myself out of it and compare it to everything else that did the things I wanted.

    A couple of things that the iPhone has just wouldn't allow me to look past it. The user interface (BIG part of the user experience) and the huge potential with the broad set of apps. If there's something it didn't do, it could probably do with a 3rd party app. Awesome.

    I even tried to tell myself, "But it doesn't do MMS..." well, that's a software issue, and those can be written. Well, TA-DA! Now it will be able to do that too lol

    To talk myself out of the apps thing I told myself that other phones allow you to install Java apps written by 3rd parties and it wasn't all that different from that. Well, it kinda is, because the hype and the ease of use of the SDK for the app store has intrigued and fueled all these developers to start programming for the iPhone platform. So I may be able to find things for the iPhone easier than for other phones. And they are all central to the app store, so easy to find. Okay, so that was hard to talk myself out of, but I managed :P

    The user interface just sold it to me though. There was no other phone on the market that gave me the user experience that the iPhone interface did. Infact, I bought a HTC Touch as a work phone AFTER I got the iPhone (they wouldn't let me have an iPhone :( ) and I HATE it! Sure it DOES all the things I need it to do (SMS, MMS, email, photos, music, office, etc...) But try to get around the damn thing! It's like going from something that works WITH you to something where you have to GUESS every step. lol Going to and from each phone is a hastle. So much so I think I'll just bite the bullet and just use my personal phone for work and deal with the bills.

    I also use my iPhone for Twitter, Facebook, File storage (yes there are apps for that), Email (and I'm a HUGE fan of having ALL my gmail accounts checked at once too ;), calculator, WordPress blogging, Maps and directions, music, movies, podcasts... OMG the list is huge... Business tools like VNC, RDP, Parallels (for my virtual machines), voice memos and meeting recordings, language translation and chat...

    That's all without using the browser which I use SO much lol I love being able to be connected anywhere at anytime. But above all, I love it that I can do all that in a easy to use, friendly interface that just makes my life easier without taking up my time :)

    So again Tim, tweet me a Direct msg anytime you need any help or tips! Oh, and I AM in Australia ;)

    Cheers!

    Deja
  • Tim
    Thanks for the comment Deja, nice to see you here :) I totally agree the user interface is a huge part of it, maybe the biggest part. It’s so darn intuitive and you can do everything in one place as opposed to having to start something in one place and finish it somewhere else.

    Thanks again for the comment!
  • Alex
    I think you are confusing apps with the iPhone. There is a difference. All these apps are made by 3rd parties, and in general could easily be ported to any platform. As it will.

    Now, to me, the limitations overshadowed the advantages. Try storing a document on your iPhone. Try using one of your legally purchased MP3's as a ring tone...well you can, but it takes a lot of effort. Try download something or use a flash app? Try to download and listen to a podcast a podcast over 10 mb. You'd better plan that one out, and use your laptop to download it.

    My point is that there are just too many limitations. The crippleware on the iPhone and control mania of Jobs has mad this device into less than it could be.
  • Tim
    Alex I can see how those are limitations but my opinion is they are not huge ones (they might be for you in the things you need to do) and nothing is perfect and made for everyone. Basically there is a market for these, it’s a big market, but it does not include everyone.

    I feel that the strengths far outweigh the limits, and a lot of what I’m talking about isn’t apps (email isn’t an app) but the intangible factors, the way the tactile interaction works, to me it’s just really cool. Granted I’m a new owner and I’m sure I will end up with my frustrations too. But just like in my own products I don’t try to appeal to everyone I don’t think the iPhone should either.
  • Buying an iPhone was the single best thing i did at its release. I was in Miami taking an English course, and i went there to their Miami beach store. Waited outside for 3 hours to pickup the single most expensive phone i've ever bought! Only to find out 15min later at my hotel, that i needed AT&T, being danish that would be expensive. I have yet to try the iPhone w/o doing it the "illigal" way, but im seriously considering changing my danish provider (been with Sonofon for maybe 6 years) to another company, just for the full iPhone benefit..

    Good purchase, and remember to download LOADS of fun applications to play with ;)

    Peace out.
  • Tim
    Very cool :) I’m not the super-early adopter type I like to see how things play out and get it late, saves some money that way too.

    Thanks for your thoughts!

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