the first (sober) iphone review

so of all the things i've wanted to rant about, i can't believe my first one is about the iphone. but, some things have got to be said that aren't being said elsewhere. bear in mind, most professional writers who wrote the early reviews for the iphone received free iphones with which to test. so you can't really trust their opinions. chief among those untrustable sources is wired magazine. if apple's dick was any further down wired's throat, it would be digesting. (but that's another blog...)

in the interest of being fair, i'll disclose that i have never been a fan of apple, and the iphone is the first product of theirs i have ever owned. a future post may fully detail my many qualms with the cupertino-commies, but i thought i'd point that out now so you can better understand some of the issues i've had with the iphone. now, on to the review!

so you may be wondering - if i'm an apple-antagonist, why do i own an iphone? short answer (with longer to follow) - i got the phone for free, and already had an at&t account. why activate it? because, like most people, i found the phone i was previously using to be one of the stupidest, most frustrating pieces of technology i've ever owned, perhaps excepting my previous two cell-phones. this leads to -

Point Number One - The Interface
the interface was about the only thing that remotely interested me about the iphone. i have a personal drive to customize everything i own to the nth-degree. and, like most people discover, almost every other phone on the market is uncustomizable in the extreme. almost everyone knows this, so i fail to understand how steve jobs is a "genius" in creating the iphone's UI. i suppose he's at least slightly intelligent, for being the first ceo to listen to what millions upon millions of people have been asking for for years, but really it's a testament to the utter stupidity of every other cell-phone ceo. now imagine my frustration to discover the customizable interface was only "mostly" customizable. certain icons simply cannot be removed. they can be "hidden" on a final page of icons, but not removed. harumph. (though, to be fair again, i should have known that apple wouldn't let me customize things all that much, since they don't allow for much customization in any other product.)

ok, so jobs is also a genius for introducing the multi-touch and tilt abilities. hey, i'll give him kudos for this. they're neat features. but, i fail to see how they're much more than neat features. especially when they fail in some of the most important ways.

the most important way these two features fail is in regards to the keyboard. i have been cursed with fat thumbs and not the thinnest of fingers, though my girlfriend may say it's a blessing. because of this, text messaging is a highly frustrating experience, so much so that i haven't even considered writing a single email on the iphone. with T9 turned off, i can still compose text messages faster on older phones than on the iphone. i can also text the old-fashioned way without looking at the screen, impossible on the iphone. maybe i'm crazy for using my cell phone as a cell phone, and i should just stop text messaging altogether, but i kinda like texting, though i'm enjoying it less the longer i own this phone. (more on texting later...)

this problem may be alleviated if there were the option to tilt-rotate text and email views by 90 degrees, allowing for a keyboard with wider buttons. but for some inexplicable reason, this function doesn't exist.

and since the tilt-screen function doesn't work in this most important of ways, it's really pretty much useless in any other way except for games, most of which are so crap that there's really little reason for this feature to exist at all.

so jobs is a genius for the touch screen, but, again, this fails in a very key area; cutting and pasting text. a feature that's been in common usage for decades isn't available on the iphone? seriously...lame.

so jobs isn't really a genius, he's just kinda smart for being the first ceo to actually listen to what people want, and he's more than a bit of a moron for failing to implement the main features in some of the most useful ways.

all this talk of touch-screens and tilting brings us to -

Point Number Two - The Apps
the apps, and the app store in particular, are what inspired me to finally write this post. after a few weeks of usage, and browsing through the store, i thought i had come up with an app idea that no one has created yet. i went over to download the sdk and...surprise! the sdk can only be installed on computers with the latest mac operating system. ok, not really a surprise, because apple is run by facsists. but, the sdk brings up a good point.

by closing the sdk to linux and windows users, apple has shut the doors to those same people who are most serious about coding. i know there are some serious coders who use mac; most do not. with a frightfully closed source, apple seems to be taking the stance of, "we'll have 10,000 apps, but most will be cute, useless crap that will fail to interest you after the initial five minutes."

after downloading around 50 apps, across the spectrum of games, utilities, entertainent and all, both paid and free, i can safely say that is the case. the only app that i still use on a routine basis isn't even really an app - the "maps" feature, which comes already installed on the phone. the rest of the apps are (much like apple itself) gimmicky crap.

some of the games are kind of interesting, or, would be if they were released 10 years ago. but this is one area that the touch-screen UI hinders, not helps. without buttons, games can only do so much. some games make areas of the screen into buttons, but that doesn't work particularly well. almost every game relies upon tilting the phone or touching a part of the screen. tilting can only provide a small amount of functionality, and though the screen is multi-touch, it's hard to multi-touch parts of the screen hidden from view by the fingers already touching the screen. any games that require hitting lots of buttons quickly (like, say, mortal kombat, star wars battlefront, warcraft 3, essentially all of the most popular games of the last 20 years) will never work on the iphone. on the iphone you're mostly watching the game play itself, with only occasional interaction required on your part.

moving away from games and towards utilities and whatnot, i will admit there are some kinda neat apps in this respect. but maybe i should stress that kinda. many of the apps (not just the free ones) seem like demo versions of demo versions. they're quite basic, and the functionality they add is typically useful only once per year, if that. the only apps that really count are those that you'd use when out on the town, far from any computer, because otherwise you can probably find a website at home that can do the same things as any given app, for free, with fewer UI issues. (and there are a few billion flash-based games for free on the web which are umpteen times better than any game for the iphone.)

so what you're left with are a lot of vaguely interesting time-wasters. which isn't so bad, people get bored while waiting for other things to happen, except, it is pretty bad when considering the battery life. if you were to use any of these time-wasters on a regular basis, as well as the ipod function, and while still making and receiving calls, you will probably need to recharge your phone twice in a single day. which is fairly ludicrous. so you're left in a conundrum - get the most out of your phone by regularly using some of the 10,000+ (cr)apps and have your battery die halfway through the day, or, conserve your battery by using your phone primarily as a phone, in which case the apps are useless.

as a final note - apple will not allow an adobe/macromedia flash app. when 90% of the most interesting sites on the web use flash, well...let's just leave it at apple's long-term successes look severely diminished.

all those apps require some sort of management, which moves us on to...

Point Three - Phone/File Management
and i wish i could leave it simply as "the file management is a JOKE," but i suppose i'll elucidate.

to better explain my views, the file management is a JOKE. for instance - after a month, i had 67 photos on my iphone. i copied them to my hard drive and then went about trying to remove them from my phone. and the troubles began.

trying to delete them on the phone itself - there is no way to delete more than one file at a time. again, a feature common to computing for over 20 years, and it's not an option on the iphone.

so, let's try deleting the files through itunes, which is required if you want to copy any files of any type to the phone, and another reason itunes is such a bloated piece of crap. (but that's another blog...) there is no way to browse the files on the phone through itunes, one may only sync. so i tried to sync to a folder with zero pictures in it. i received a warning that doing this would delete all photos currently on my phone, and i gleefully accepted. only...it didn't delete the photos on my phone. (i had to discover this same work-around for removing a few hundred contacts, and it worked by syncing to a gmail account with zero contacts. doesn't work with photos, apparently.) i tried to delete the photos directly out of windows explorer, but this just gave my phone the white apple of death, and similarly failed to remove any photos. so, delete the photos one by one was my only option. and, again, the lack of traditional buttons and reliance on a touch-screen makes this a daunting task. i'm just glad i discovered this before i had 300 photos.

and while i'm on the subject, i don't feel itunes warrants its very own "(that's another blog...)," so i'll squeeze in some short notes now. technically, i lied to you, earlier in this blog. i had previously "owned" itunes, and after about one year, i uninstalled it. i was somewhat dumbfounded to discover the iphone required itunes for management. isn't itunes supposed to be an mp3 player?

well, first, as an mp3 player, it's woefully inadequate. 99% of the time, i have shuffle mode turned on on any audio device, and itunes has the most woeful shuffle of any mp3 player in decades. after all of the hype, i was expecting a little better. after installing the fifth update for itunes, and finding the update failed to improve music playback in any way whatsoever, i deleted itunes.

all of those updates simply introduced layer upon layer of bloat, and the iphone management is the latest and biggest layer. when it reached a point that itunes was taking almost as long to load as my OS (windows, no less!), i had to say, "no more!" itunes has tried to integrate so many seperate applications (browser, phone management, and all of the other management features) that when you run itunes, you're essentially running a second OS on top of the one already running. what's the point?

(side note : most of my mac-owning friends, who will valiantly defend the slightest besmirching of apple's name, will readily admit itunes is a failure, or sub-standard at least.)

i guess there's only one topic left unaddressed...

Point Four - The Service
and this is a point that hardly needs to be belabored. everyone knows at&t is piss-weak. "edge" sucks, 3g is woeful, the the phone service is spotty. so i'll include just one small example that many people may not have yet discovered -

one cannot attach pictures to text messages, as they've been able to do with almost every other phone in the last five years. you can attach pictures to emails, but only one at a time. i should have mentioned this short-coming earlier, but i bring it up now for the following reason.

the iphone also cannot receive text messages with pictures attached. when my verizon-wielding girlfriend sent to me my first text with a picture, i instead received a notice from at&t saying that to view the message, i would have to visit a website, enter a login/password, and then i'd be able to view the message.

so, i clicked the link on the phone, opening up the browser on the phone. i logged in and discovered...at&t uses flash to display pictures! meaning, i could not view the picture on my phone.

now, at&t knows the iphone can't view texts with pictures attached, and at&t knows the iphone can't use flash. yet, this is the only possible way to view the picture. so, if you own an iphone, don't expect to ever send or receive another photo through your phone. have a laptop nearby, and render the iphone that much more useless.

The End
so what are we left with?

a phone that's worse than any other phone - it's harder to simply call someone, you can't send/receive pictures, text messaging is incredibly difficult, and sub-par service.

a device that's utterly useless - 10,000 apps that aren't worth their price (even the free ones), and even should you find one that's useful, expect your battery to die soon after.

and an utterly bleak future - a closed sdk, a lack of availability on other carriers, a lack of flash, and apple's over-inflated ego, these will all lead to the iphone's eventual demise.

when the third generation iphone and second generation android are released, expect the same outcome as that of the apple lisa computer versus windows. android addresses all of these issues, and apple's ego means they never will.

i thank the iphone for changing the game. but just as in the '80s, apple will fall once again when they fail to realize others can play the same game, but better. and with steve jobs soon to be gone, there won't be another second chance.