My iPhone impressions

[Pastor Gary]

I went to the nearby ATT Store at 6:00 AM Friday to stand in line with 2 of my daughter's college classmates. We were about 25th in line. The ATT staff was very organized and nice. They came out at 7:00 AM and carefully explained the process, made sure everyone understood what paperwork and documentation was required, etc. At 7:30 they wheeled out a cooler iced down and passed out bottled water. A guy with a clipboard was working his way down the line with paperwork. He asked each person a series of questions like...
• Existing ATT customer, or new account?
• Which model/color purchasing?
• Which voice plan? Text plan, etc.
• Did we want to purchase accessories bundle?

They had seven stations in the small store to process transactions, so at 8:00 AM they let the first seven people in... took 22 minutes for the first guy to exit iPhone in hand. As one would leave, they would allow one more in. It moved smoothly and reasonably fast. I entered at 9:00, my transaction went great, and I walked out with a working phone in about 18 minutes. Because I was porting a number over from T-Mobile, they warned me it could be as long as 24 hours before incoming calls would be routed to the new iPhone, but it switched over before noon.

I cam home, synced with iTunes to complete the activation process, and was done.

My impressions so far:
It is a great gadget, and will make my life and work much easier. I won't be giving up any features I loved on my Blackberry, and have gained a lot more.

Sound quality is great. 3G is FAST, and I love the instant switch to WiFi when I am at the office/home to get even better speeds. I will have a learning curve on the virtual keyboard, as I was pretty quick on the BB real keys, but I figure a week tops to be back up to speed.

The Apps store is loaded with nice freebies and cheap software - a limitation of the BB. I grabbed a few to play with... some of the 3rd party apps are buggy as can be, and will need work, but others are pretty wonderful.

The GPS is pretty accurate... far more than I thought. Google Maps, however have lots of places mis-marked. When I searched for the nearby Macy's store, it has it marked on a golf course 5 miles from where it is... the Kahala Mall Apple Store is also located wrong! When I search for CHURCHES near me (I live in a parsonage BEHIND my church) it shows several, but not mine! However, if I change the search to WORSHIP it has a pin marking my church... must just use keywords within the name, and my church name doesn't contain the word "church."

I am still learning to use all the features, but I think I it has met and exceeded my expectations for a multi-functional device.

My biggest issue, so far, has been the switch-over from dot-Mac to "ME.COM" -- that has been a disaster IMHO, and heads should roll in Cupertino over how badly that has been handled.

I went to Ala Moana Center later Friday on unrelated business, and the line at the APPLE store was wrapped down the Mall and around Macy's, and they had 30 stations for transactions in that store. The mall closed at 9, and the Apple Store was still selling phones at 11:00 PM when they just had to shut down, cut off the line, and send people home.

[Paully_44]

Great story. After reading all the bad releases of the activation horror stories, it is good to hear something went right. It was a big week for us at work, and our numbers were huge yesterday on some of our systems. I was sweating that my stuff wouldnt break and thank God it didnt.

When they finnally add them to our employee rate plan, I just may have to consider one.

[Who new]

Good reporting. I'm not switching from t-mobile or would be on board and writing my own apps. I may do an ipod touch, but I'm also interested in Android...

[Pastor Gary]

Now that I have had some time to plat with the iPhone features, I have further impressions:

• Biggest negative? Battery life is not so great, but -- in fairness -- the first days with a new device is not typical, as it gets a lot of experimental play that uses battery more than a "normal" day.

• GPS if far more accurate and useful than I thought. Had to meet with a family this afternoon to plan a funeral, and didn't know the way to their new house. I searched on the iPhone by address, and got very clear routing that was spot on, and the locator dot tracked me within about 20 feet. Nice.

• The OTA (over the air) Apps Store has LOADS of useful freebie apps for instant "purchase/acquisition/download" from the phone (SEE: battery stink) and there are some very nice ones. One of them solved a church tech problem; we end the services with the band doing a reprise of one of the songs from the opening worship set, sort of singing the service to a close, and the band has requested that we signal the end by IMMEDIATELY firing off some prerecorded music upon the final chord of their song -- but just because of the sequence of programming, the way our setup is configured, it was a few keystrokes away leaving an awkward silence gap. The "REMOTE" iPhone app controls your laptop iTunes, allowing you to select an artist/song/playlist etc. and push play/pause and control volume from a distance with the phone. Nice. Have iTunes cued up in the background, wait for the final chord of the live band and hit play.

• Did a little test today between my 3G phone and a 1st generation iPhone, and mine loaded the same site way faster. WAY faster.

• Mac users who have Garage Band can import songs from iTunes, create a custom ringtone from a segment of the tune, and send it to the iPhone... then assign that ringtone to an individual in your contacts list. Very nice.

• One app I was really wanting to play with was called "LOOPT" -- you can opt in, have a friend or family member using a smart phone also opt in, and it sort of social network style tracks where each of you are using the GPS... so, for example, DeWayne could follow me on my mainland trip by using Loopt to see where I was at any given moment in real time, and could suggest a restaurant or attraction near my location. Nice idea, but they are having trouble keeping up with the bajillion new iPhone users trying to sign up. Good idea, bad start-up system.

Love the iPhone so far, and think I will not miss the Blackberry much.

[jinjer]

The battery life on my iPod touch stinks as well. However, I turned off the wifi setting and just turn it on when I know that is a function I am going to be using. It has helped a great deal. My husband actually told me this, because every time you turn the iPod on it searches and keeps searching for a wifi network, therfore running the battery down.

Jinjer

[MacUser]

Excellent reporting and follow ups. Bravo.
I have followed all this very closely and it's good to hear solid feedback.

The sad truth for me is that I live/work in a cellular dead zone. Yep, right where I have my studio and work 95% of the time - so I just can't justify a pretty paperweight. I would enjoy just a cellular connection much less a 3G.