Mine uses a stylus too but I operate it with my finger. I get the impression you haven't used one of these before, or seen one of those UV screen protectors. You can't even tell it's on.

 

I've owned two iPaqs, an XDA, and am currently using a Dell Axim, so I certainly have used one of these before, (in fact I've been using them for a few years).

Looking at the design of the iPone, it's a smooth surface right across the front, (no recess for the screen), and so a stick on screen protector will just keep catching at the edges, (unless you get one that encloses the whole device).

 

Fair enough. I know what you mean, I thought that too, I presume there will be protectors designed to cover it entirely, but having the cover on doesn't change the feel - may make it 1mm thicker though.

 

we'll just let the yanks be the guinea pigs for a few months

 

Well, they've got to be useful for something

 

I thought the iphone looks really nice. The scrolling with the finger was pure sex.

However, $499/$599 and a 2 year contract?

F that.

 

It includes the two year contract doesn't it? Since no carriers over here have been mentioned I would ignore anything related to that until it's arrived anyway.

 

That's the point, you buy one from AT&T for $499 and are tied into a two year contract. States only obviously, but of course a similar deal will occur here.

 

You must have a crystal ball or something then. Most people are on 12/18 month contracts as it is, it really makes no difference unless you need to keep chopping and changing. I'm on an 18 month contract myself, and it makes zero difference to me.

 

Well that was the price and condition stated in the iPhone presentation. How it translates over here reamins to be seen - Phone companys would rather like the idea of tying some in for 24 months if they could.

Personally I wouldn't touch any contract that was over 12 months - With the speed at which the mobile market moves, new technology, new tarriffs etc, I don't want to be locked in and not be able to take advantage of new deals.

The iPhone looks like a fantastic bit of kit - But in a market where phones are heavily subsidised by contract rates, meaning they are often "free" I can;t see a phone, which will in all likelyhood cost £299 & £359 over here having the same success as iPod does.

 

Oh well, shall i just give up waiting for the 100GB touch screen iPod and get an 80gb then!?

 

Horses for courses really. One would think I would like to upgrade my phone a lot being a technology lover, but I've only upgraded once in six years. As long as it makes and takes calls and SMS messages I'm happy. I could probably get a cheaper tariff if I spent time looking around, but in the time it'd take me to hunt I'd have lost more.

If the iPhone works as well as it looks to, then I won't need to upgrade a lot anyway. Of course if they brought out a new version, and I couldn't upgrade to that, then I'd be annoyed. Don't know what they will do about that, hopefully an upgrade path.

It wouldn't replace an iPod for me though. Of course, I only listen to 10% of what I have on it like most people, but I'd like to choose which 10% I listen to out of 100%

 

Of course all my protestations about price and tarriffs and costs are just really me making a feeble effort to talk myself out of getting one the second it arrives.

I want to sit and hold one and scroll up and down for hours on end. And of course the technical snob in me couldn't possibly be satisfied with a meagre 4GB version, oh no, it would have to be 8GB all the way.

 

Can't say I'm overly impressed with the Iphone tbh. Innovative technology though.

Been looking at the Apple website, and mmmmm. It just doesn't make sense. The only thing that would be of interest would be the phone, and that aspect doesn't look overly impressive.
The small hd is useless to me as an Ipod replacement too.

As for the price, well, I would be interested to see if it can run OSX native packages (similar to the Ipaq etc).....

Not convinced.

Dan

 

Dan,
I too am not impressed with the capacity. Just been talking to a co-worker who said that it does not bother him, he reckons I'm **** as I want my complete music collection on the device, and how often do I listen to every item on there. There is truth in that comment, then again, I like to be able to choose from my entire collection and not think "I'd love to listen to X, oh, it's not on here as I can only put a partial library on my device".

We're waiting to see if there is going to be a dev kit for it, a "no comment" is the only thing that's been said on that, which makes some sense as the iPod is a closed environment, but then it's not a three in one deivce whereas the phone is.

If they are going after blackberry's market and I'd say that's certainly on the agenda, then they will need some office like applications, at the least a word processor and spreadsheet. Whether this will come from Apple, or third parties remains to be seen. If there is a dev kit we'll certainly get hold of it and have a look and see if there's anything we might like to do for it.

My thought is that they'll see what the uptake on the phone is as it stands, when people start using it and commenting on what they'd like to see, we'll then see an update to it bringing in the office type apps and perhaps other things people have talked about.

 

Yep, it's proven (as in many surverys) that you tend to listen to the same set of songs pretty much - about 10% of your collection. My entire library is sub 4gb though so I'm ok.

It has more capacity than my current iPaq and SE K750 combined - so as a PDA and phone it's fine for me.

It will be 3G over here in the UK and Europe I'm sure.

Apparantly Apple spent a long time trying different glass for it - not too rough, smooth or anything that shows grease too much. This has been in development for 2 years.

As for Leopard, yes I know its coming.....but I want it NOW!! Looking for a new Mac Mini as a front end for my new house....won't buy though until they have C2D and Leopard.

 

I must be different to most people. My 60gb iPod is full, (I'm thinking of getting one of the new 80gb one for the extra space) and I listen to pretty much all of it. I play something different on it every day. I couldn't stand listening to the same stuff over and over again without a decent break in between. That'd get mindnumbingly boring after a while...

 

tend to agree - got a 30gig one and I use it an awful lot. Plus I use it to transfer files to and from work.

When you've only ot 8 gig to play with, it aint much. Granted more than is available now. on most pdas and phones

I'm more intrigued to see how the phone works, as they've got to compete with PPC, Symbian 7 etc and Palm......

These are interfaces that have been established for a VERY long time......
Apple a the new boys in this respect. regardless of how good we all think OSX is (and it is ), it will be interesting to see how this OS translates itself to a simple and quick phone OS.

Dan

 

And they are lazy, useless and have all the aspects of poor design. 20 years of cellphones/PDAs and not once has one of them got it right. At the very least Apple will shake the market up and make the other manufacturers up their game. (Quick? - Have you actually used Symbian or PPCs?)

The Apple brand is cool and the phone looks good - unless it's a complete lemon to use it will sell truckloads of them. Look at Motorola and the RAZR - an inferior phone inmany respects but it boosted Motorolas market share by a huge amount becuse it looked good and that's the important thing - not some ugly brick that can read PDFs or lets you edit Word docs.

 

True it could be a good thing, (the current crop of pdas / phones etc are a pain to use). On the other hand, I'm holding off forming an opinion until I see this thing running in the flesh. For all we know it could be just as annoying to use and just add yet another platform into an already overly fragmented market.

 

I'm sure there is a bit torrent of the latest 10.5 seed (9A321 is the latest ADC version) out there if you must have 10.5 now I know you want the final version, so just messing with you.

I'm hoping for another dev seed to appear shortly, as it's been a while, though 10.4.9 has been seeded so I'm guessing they will get that out the door, then we'll see another seed of 10.5.

 

What I was disappointed not to see was if it could act as a Skype phone when in WiFi range and whether I could use it to do iChat voice or quickmessenging.
Obviously the location of the camera means you wont do video iChatting...

8gb is lame too. Surely in 6+ months time this flash/nand or whatever it's called will be bigger/smaller/cheaper so they could get more in it.

How big would the Pirate movie actually be in terms of disk space?

Rich (never had an iPod and needs a new phone that does internet so is very excited) B

 

No doubt giving it some Skype abilities wont have gone un-noticed by Apple, and if they dont give it the ability from the off, I'm sure a 3rd party util will appear for it pretty soon.

I'd say Apple simply ran through the most common uses for it during the keynote, just imagine what wierd and wonderful things it'll be getting used for when its been out 12 months.

I've already read somewhere the Yanks are looking forward to the European release so they can get one thats unlocked...

 

Still unconvinced. The comments about the phone OSs are that whilst they may have their faults, they're the dominant market leaders. By a long shot.

(And nothing annoys me more than my slow N70 symbian-based phone!)
I must be in the minority who thought that despite the looks of the RAZR, it's usability and sh1te keypad were horrendous. The S/E P900 range - not too hot either, but better. My PDA (Ipaq 6515) isn't bad, but it's one of the few PDAs with a proper keyboard (I hate using the touchpad)

Perhaps it's just me that wants function over form.
The sad fact is that the mobile phone is now a fashion accessory first and a useful communication device second.

Put this into context with how many people are used to an established style of texting for example ( Nokia must be the predominant choice here) - I would be HIGHLY impressed if that touchpad could text type as quick as a mechanical-based keypad.

I'm open to holding back my final judgement until I see/use one, but my initial thoughts are a techno toy for die-hard gadget fans (it'll be a hit on Scoobynet!).....

I love MacOS - I've got 4 Macs running it. But to run on a phone, hmmmm, still not convinced.

IMHO, the first ground-breaking device in a product range is usually rubbish anyway.

These are obviously just my initial doubts - please Apple, prove me wrong, but there seem to be more negatives than positives with the albeit very limited information provided.

Dan

 

Shut up Dan, you want one, we know you want one and no doubt you'll be one of the first to get one (you wont beat Marcus though )

 

Love that comment, dan is resisting, but we all know you will get one. If you feel bad about getting one, buy an iPhone cover in the shape of a Blackberry

 

How long before the name gets changed

BBC NEWS | Business | Cisco to sue Apple on iPhone name

 

bollix to you all

Dan

 

I think Dan possibly will have one before me as I'm still not convinced, plus I've not seen anything indicating when we are getting it either, could well be the same time frame as Europe.

I was wondering how long it'd be before Cisco sued. It would not surprise me if they have another name for the device already as they really cannot be so stupid as to think that Cisco would not protect the name. From what I know it's only in the US where it's a problem, so they could call it the iPhone elsewhere, but what's the point in having different names for different locales? It'll end up being the Apple Phone or iDevice.

 

Well, an answer from Steve on third-party apps and the iPhone can partially be found here (that page has a link to the NYT which I think requires registration and surrender of your first born to read it!).

Bottom line, the answer is NO. He said there will be apps for purchase later, so I'd guess we might well see office type apps at that point.