June 24, 2007

Thoughts before watching Apple’s iPhone Guided Tour:

The iPhone is available exclusively with AT&T/Cingular service. I’m distinctly unfond of Cingular, so I’m greatly unlikely to get an iPhone in the next couple of years.

Plus, I’ve been thinking about this lately: Despite all the hype about the iPhone, nobody has actually used and reviewed it. I have no doubt it’s an utter masterpiece of industrial and software design, but it is a cell phone, and if it’s not a good cell phone—by which I mean one that (a) lets you hear the other person well, (b) lets the other person hear you well, and (c) does a very-good-to-excellent job of maintaining the connection—then it is a failure. Nobody knows.

If it had all the features except the cell phone, had a good-capacity hard drive, and cost a couple hundred bucks less, then I’d be dying for one, because that’s the iPod I want. That’s the iPod everyone wants. I dearly hope that’s the iPod that comes out next.

Thoughts after watching Apple’s iPhone Guided Tour:

It looks scrumptious, but one thing stands out that I’ve heard mentioned before: They may say it’s “the best iPod ever,” but it has no tactile interface. You can’t reach in your pocket (or next to you while you’re driving) and feel where the Next or Previous or Pause button is. You have to use your eyes. Yes, it has the earphone thingy with the clicker that does Pause/Play and Next, but if you want to use that control, you’re stuck with the Apple earbuds instead of your headphones of choice (or your car stereo).

I dunno. It does look great. But I’m with Verizon, soooooo I’ll be looking at different phones when I’m up for a replacement in a week.

Addendum:

Got a comment from a previously-unknown reader, Will Mon:

I was waiting for Verizon to come out with a decent Windows Mobile 6 Professional (phone edition) device [...]

Windows? Hiss!

No, I was actually considering a Treo 700p, and somewhat still am, because goshdarnit, I miss having a Palm Pilot! At Dow Jones, I had a Palm III, replaced by a Palm V, and I later got an M500 for myself. Loved having them; kept my schedule and address book and tons of lists on them. The one thing I wished they all had was a thumb keyboard, so I’ve been drooling over the Treo line from the beginning.

I am “somewhat” considering a Treo because Allen’s Treo 650 crashes all the time, and I’ve seen plenty of user reviews (of the 650 and 700) to the same effect. Says he: “I know that the 650 is the most unstable phone I’ve ever had. If it didn’t crash and lock up and not show voicemail and stuff all the time, it would be a not bad phone.”

I’d try to resurrect my M500—it’s still lying around somewhere here—but then I’d just have another gadget to carry around. My camera, iPod, and phone are clutter enough. Replacing the phone (of which I’ve grown weary) with a combination phone/Palm would be great…if it worked.

For that matter, replacing the phone and iPod with an iPhone would be great, but the damned thing has only 8 GB of storage. I already can’t fit enough music—just music!—in my 10 GB iPod. Okay, THERE. There’s my biggest hardware-oriented reason not to get an iPhone.

One more thing: How much is the monthly AT&T iPhone service going to cost, anyway? Will they require a data plan? That’s expensive.

June 24, 2007 / 12:17 am