neilios

I am now officially a technology WHORE and here is the proof:

So I’ve been needing, yes ma’am, needing a new iPod for a while and I’ve been toying with the idea of getting an iPhone. For the past few months I’ve been saving a TON of money on rent by living with a friend in a place which is fairly *cough* cheap *cough* (witness bare window shade behind head). What’s not visible in the photo is even worse. But I’m moving in two months, so cut me some slack, k?

Anyway, back to the issue at hand: the iPhone.

I didn’t want to spend $400 on an iPhone. It’s a lot of coin. But somehow when you wrestle with that idea and then figure out that you can get a refub (good as new and warrantied) for $250, somehow the $250 seems cheap. So I went for it.

First impressions: as an iPod, it’s amazing. It is a really, truly beautiful piece of work and it works so well synchronizing to my Macbook Pro, that it’s really hard to stop saying “wow.” As a phone, it’s great. Same awesome user interface and design details in every aspect. When a phone call comes in, the music fades out gracefully and the ringing fades in. After the call is complete, the music fades back in reminding you where you were when the interruption began. It’s hard to describe, but I think that Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, may have been the one to use the phrase “lickable” to describe over-the-top beautiful design and this is it. Slurp.

As an e-mail and web surfing device, however, I say “meh.” I’m amazed that the technology pundits will write about the iPhone and speculate about the death of the Blackberry, because it’s clear that these people have never used both for any period of time. The iPhone is awesome and I’ll live with it for e-mail, but it is not a Blackberry. There’s a reason why the Blackberry is addictive — it’s really freakin’ good at what it does. If typing on the Blackberry wasn’t a “holy cow, this works REALLY well” experience dating back to the original models circa 2000 or so (yes, I had one before they were even phones), I don’t think that the Blackberry would have taken off. The iPhone presents a beautiful user interface, but typing with normal adult male finger tips on a glass plate with key targets mashed together just really doesn’t work well for me. I’ll bore you, or not, in a week and see if it’s better, but I can’t imagine ever being able to type as fast as I can on a Blackberry.

One major complaint that should be solved in the next gen iPhones due out in the next couple of months is the network speed. Again, the pundits complain that “EDGE” is sooooo slooooow. Yet I’ve been using EDGE on T-mobile for two or three years and never thought it was *that* slow. Until I met the iPhone. Part of the problem is that the iPhone’s browser really is trying to load and decode fully adorned web pages, but that’s really only a part of the issue. Even on mobile versions of web sites, the iPhone on AT&T is slow. Really slow. And I don’t think it’s because of EDGE. I’d love to hear from someone who has used the iPhone on both AT&T and T-mobile to hear if maybe AT&T just sucks. One thing I’m wondering about is whether AT&T’s DNS servers are just dog slow (maybe they’re getting advice from Verizon) because what is really slow is the initial contact.

Anyway, enough geek talk. Don’t hate me because my iPhone is beautiful.