So, that iPhone thing. Not really as popular as Apple would have you believe.
My experience with the hype machine has been limited, but began in earnest this morning when I rang up the local O2 mob and they started playing riddles with me; apparently they had more than five, but less than ten, and in any case were unable to put one by for me anyway, just in case there was a stampede of between six and nine people clamouring for some touch screen goodness. There obviously wasn't as the minute I got there and flashed my magical debit card of wonder at them they were falling over each other to sell me something shiny and Apple-eu, sold to me by their most sexually attractive member of staff.
Anyway, within ten minutes I had my shiny bit of kit and was on my merry way, and five minutes sodding about with iTunes when I got in was sufficient to have it all up and running, and I immediately did what any self-respecting man would do when presented with a tarriff offerring unlimited free internet, and tried to get some porn on it. For those of you for whom this is a pressing concern, rest easy, as you can indeed get your filthy spaff-fix on the move thanks to the miracle of 3G, and at the rate I'm going through it (3G, you perverts, not all porn - though mostly...), I think O2 are going to live to regret making that offer based on my usage alone - I've got through about two thirds of the entire Internet in the few hours I've had the thing.
Anyway, the most pressing issue before you part with your £100-plus is, does the sodding thing work? Well, if you can read this post and it isn't lost somewhere in the ether, it works, as I'm painstakingly typing this post out on the dinky little touch-screen keyboard in the iPhone's web browser. The keys are a little hit and miss for a while, but it's only taken a couple of hours for me to get to the point where most of my errors are coherent enough for the phone to work out what I'm trying to say and correct for me - it certainly isn't the digital Satan that some quarters were making it out to be on release, and each keypress produces a satisfying little clickwheel-esque, well, click, which isn't particularly relevent but satisfying all the same. The presentation is, as with all Apple products, very good, and the whole thing is gorgeous to look at, but the main screen could do with some additional customization options other than being able to shift the odd little widget about, and there is no intuitive method of deleting downloaded applications once they are on there - you have to hold your finger on the block for a couple of seconds until they all start to wobble, then click the little red 'x' that appears, and at no point is this made obvious in the interface or in the Quick Start guide, and in the end I had to resort to Google.
The applications are all very useful, however, although the eMail and SMS apps seem to suffer from the same style-over-substance syndrome as the main screen - individual messages, hell-bent on being shiny and part of the 'Apple experience', take up far too much space with bells, whistles and speech bubbles where a more simplistic interface would be a boon. I honestly can't fault the other apps, though, as the Photo, Maps and Camera apps are all brilliantly put together, and while I normally loathe cameras on phones, the one on the iPhone seems high enough in resolution to appease those of you that like to spend all day taking pictures of your fringe.
That just leaves the web browser, which cleverly rotates from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone on it's side, by way of some sort of gyroscopic magic, and enables you to do things like read this post. It does have issues - sometimes the gyroscope will get confused and take a few seconds to update your screen position, but that's no real pressing issue, and it does have a tendency to crash when using Facebook, but then Facebook does a good line in crashing Firefox too, and frankly you have no business being on Facebook unless it's to chat up impressionable emo girls, so perhaps it's just saving me from myself.
Conclusions? It's good. I'm not sure it would be worth it without the fantastic internet plan as most of the apps rely on the Internet to function, and without them or with them being expensive to use, the iPhone would lack so many of it's good points - the phone app being a good app, but certainly not the core of the iPhone appeal, which is much more of a mobile Internet device that also makes phone calls rather than a mobile phone which happens to have a web browser.
It is, essentially, a hip PDA with good PR, but a very very good one, and the worst part of the whole experience was Apple, or O2, whoever it was, trying to artificially drive up the hype by playing phone riddles with me before they'd let me have one. After that , for its price point, you're probably not going to find anywhere near as useful a gadget as this for quite a while.
Plus, it being an Apple product, it can also heal wounds, cure cancer and make attractive women lust after you. Probably.
Goodnight.
My experience with the hype machine has been limited, but began in earnest this morning when I rang up the local O2 mob and they started playing riddles with me; apparently they had more than five, but less than ten, and in any case were unable to put one by for me anyway, just in case there was a stampede of between six and nine people clamouring for some touch screen goodness. There obviously wasn't as the minute I got there and flashed my magical debit card of wonder at them they were falling over each other to sell me something shiny and Apple-eu, sold to me by their most sexually attractive member of staff.
Anyway, within ten minutes I had my shiny bit of kit and was on my merry way, and five minutes sodding about with iTunes when I got in was sufficient to have it all up and running, and I immediately did what any self-respecting man would do when presented with a tarriff offerring unlimited free internet, and tried to get some porn on it. For those of you for whom this is a pressing concern, rest easy, as you can indeed get your filthy spaff-fix on the move thanks to the miracle of 3G, and at the rate I'm going through it (3G, you perverts, not all porn - though mostly...), I think O2 are going to live to regret making that offer based on my usage alone - I've got through about two thirds of the entire Internet in the few hours I've had the thing.
Anyway, the most pressing issue before you part with your £100-plus is, does the sodding thing work? Well, if you can read this post and it isn't lost somewhere in the ether, it works, as I'm painstakingly typing this post out on the dinky little touch-screen keyboard in the iPhone's web browser. The keys are a little hit and miss for a while, but it's only taken a couple of hours for me to get to the point where most of my errors are coherent enough for the phone to work out what I'm trying to say and correct for me - it certainly isn't the digital Satan that some quarters were making it out to be on release, and each keypress produces a satisfying little clickwheel-esque, well, click, which isn't particularly relevent but satisfying all the same. The presentation is, as with all Apple products, very good, and the whole thing is gorgeous to look at, but the main screen could do with some additional customization options other than being able to shift the odd little widget about, and there is no intuitive method of deleting downloaded applications once they are on there - you have to hold your finger on the block for a couple of seconds until they all start to wobble, then click the little red 'x' that appears, and at no point is this made obvious in the interface or in the Quick Start guide, and in the end I had to resort to Google.
The applications are all very useful, however, although the eMail and SMS apps seem to suffer from the same style-over-substance syndrome as the main screen - individual messages, hell-bent on being shiny and part of the 'Apple experience', take up far too much space with bells, whistles and speech bubbles where a more simplistic interface would be a boon. I honestly can't fault the other apps, though, as the Photo, Maps and Camera apps are all brilliantly put together, and while I normally loathe cameras on phones, the one on the iPhone seems high enough in resolution to appease those of you that like to spend all day taking pictures of your fringe.
That just leaves the web browser, which cleverly rotates from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone on it's side, by way of some sort of gyroscopic magic, and enables you to do things like read this post. It does have issues - sometimes the gyroscope will get confused and take a few seconds to update your screen position, but that's no real pressing issue, and it does have a tendency to crash when using Facebook, but then Facebook does a good line in crashing Firefox too, and frankly you have no business being on Facebook unless it's to chat up impressionable emo girls, so perhaps it's just saving me from myself.
Conclusions? It's good. I'm not sure it would be worth it without the fantastic internet plan as most of the apps rely on the Internet to function, and without them or with them being expensive to use, the iPhone would lack so many of it's good points - the phone app being a good app, but certainly not the core of the iPhone appeal, which is much more of a mobile Internet device that also makes phone calls rather than a mobile phone which happens to have a web browser.
It is, essentially, a hip PDA with good PR, but a very very good one, and the worst part of the whole experience was Apple, or O2, whoever it was, trying to artificially drive up the hype by playing phone riddles with me before they'd let me have one. After that , for its price point, you're probably not going to find anywhere near as useful a gadget as this for quite a while.
Plus, it being an Apple product, it can also heal wounds, cure cancer and make attractive women lust after you. Probably.
Goodnight.
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