Lurgen
17-01-2008, 05:30 PM
Well, now I know what they mean when they say "a slippery slope". A few years ago I bought my wife an Apple laptop. Nothing fancy. I've had an iPod for years too, but only the old black & white one. In fact, I've been a staunch Microsoft lackey for years!
Then things started to slip. The Intel-based MacBooks started to get my attention. Then I saw the Mac Pro, in its multi-core glory. The new iPod started to appeal to me. But this didn't matter too much. Not until I saw the iPod Touch. My kid sister got one for Christmas, and from the minute I saw it, I wanted one.
Sometimes a product is great, but fails because of the user interface. Other times, a great user interface isn't enough, and the crappiness of the product makes it fail. The iPod Touch though, has a UI brilliant enough to save it from failure from pretty much any level of shit functionality.
Anyhow, I liked the iPod Touch enough to start asking myself some hard questions. Could I live with only 16GB of space. Could I live with the size (it isn't small). Then I started thinking about the iPhone. After all, the Touch is gimped by Apple, with a whole lot of functionality cut out on purpose. So I started researching the iPhone. I should have known at that point that I was lost.
A week later I had an iPhone. Such is the power of the Apple product and user interface.
Owning an iPhone in Australia is not a trivial achievement. Sure, you can buy one off eBay but that costs a bundle. I've gone the other way, getting one through a personal contact and dealing with the unlocking process myself (with a lot of help from a friend).
Bear in mind that Apple don't want us Aussie's owning their phone just yet, so a lot of things won't work initially. Fortunately, the hacks are good enough now to get all but visual voice-mail working (which doesn't interest me). I have mine running on the Telstra network, with iTunes sync working fine. Youtube works perfectly, Google Maps is brilliant on it, and data acccess is fine. It now recognises Aussie phone number formats properly, supports Australian English, and I can install third-party applications on it. Heaven.
To put this into perspective, last September I bought a Nokia N95. Outright. Cash purchase. Over $1k at the time. Seriously, this device is good enough to justify wasting that much money on a phone.
There are bad points of course...
The screen gets filthy, so a screen protector is mandatory. Accessories are hard to come by, so get used to the eBay lottery (half the stuff on there is rubbish). Third-party apps are pretty limited right now, but the in-built stuff is more than adequate. The camera is pretty crap compared to my N95.
If I'm not paying attention, I might accidentally upgrade the firmware to 1.1.3 (I run 1.1.1) and brick the thing. Nobody has had time to crack the new firmware, as it is only a day old.
There were some surprises too...
The GPS on my N95 was so shit that Google Maps is actually better! The phone book application is a million times easier to use than any of my previous phones, I really figured Apple would botch that one.
People come up to me in public places wanting to see it. This both worries and amuses me. I imagine amusement will vanish when some bastard mugs me for the device.
And as an iPod, this thing is better than an iPod. How wierd is that? Sound quality is better, by a long shot, than either of my "normal" iPods (a third gen B&W piece of junk, and a latest-and-greated 160GB Classic).
The auto-rotate and multitouch stuff is more than just a gimmick. It actually beats any other phone interface. Even for typing - the claims of 40wpm typing are not a joke, you really can use this thing for serious text input.
And there is one really annoying thing...
In the US, iPhones come with an "unlimited" data plan. This means they built it assuming you don't pay Aussie rates for data access. I'm a Telstra corporate customer, so data for me costs roughly the same amount per kB as a kilo of cocaine. Every time I woke the damned thing up for a while there it was pinging the network with a small data packet. Flagfall fees every time I checked the time. Or showed somebody the thing.
Using it under Windows doesn't seem to take away any functionality
I'm not going into detail on all the features though. I just wanted to capture the overall feeling of the transition.
All things considered, I cannot believe how good this device is. As a phone, it is brilliant. Great battery life (3-4 days, and I'm a heavy user), convenient interface, etc. I even make use of it for serious web browsing at home, something I have been able to do on my last 3 phones but never did because the interface was shit.
So here I am. An iPhone convert. Playing around on the Apple online store, configuring my next slip down the slippery slope... an 8 core Mac Pro. And maybe an Apple TV... Where will it end...
Then things started to slip. The Intel-based MacBooks started to get my attention. Then I saw the Mac Pro, in its multi-core glory. The new iPod started to appeal to me. But this didn't matter too much. Not until I saw the iPod Touch. My kid sister got one for Christmas, and from the minute I saw it, I wanted one.
Sometimes a product is great, but fails because of the user interface. Other times, a great user interface isn't enough, and the crappiness of the product makes it fail. The iPod Touch though, has a UI brilliant enough to save it from failure from pretty much any level of shit functionality.
Anyhow, I liked the iPod Touch enough to start asking myself some hard questions. Could I live with only 16GB of space. Could I live with the size (it isn't small). Then I started thinking about the iPhone. After all, the Touch is gimped by Apple, with a whole lot of functionality cut out on purpose. So I started researching the iPhone. I should have known at that point that I was lost.
A week later I had an iPhone. Such is the power of the Apple product and user interface.
Owning an iPhone in Australia is not a trivial achievement. Sure, you can buy one off eBay but that costs a bundle. I've gone the other way, getting one through a personal contact and dealing with the unlocking process myself (with a lot of help from a friend).
Bear in mind that Apple don't want us Aussie's owning their phone just yet, so a lot of things won't work initially. Fortunately, the hacks are good enough now to get all but visual voice-mail working (which doesn't interest me). I have mine running on the Telstra network, with iTunes sync working fine. Youtube works perfectly, Google Maps is brilliant on it, and data acccess is fine. It now recognises Aussie phone number formats properly, supports Australian English, and I can install third-party applications on it. Heaven.
To put this into perspective, last September I bought a Nokia N95. Outright. Cash purchase. Over $1k at the time. Seriously, this device is good enough to justify wasting that much money on a phone.
There are bad points of course...
The screen gets filthy, so a screen protector is mandatory. Accessories are hard to come by, so get used to the eBay lottery (half the stuff on there is rubbish). Third-party apps are pretty limited right now, but the in-built stuff is more than adequate. The camera is pretty crap compared to my N95.
If I'm not paying attention, I might accidentally upgrade the firmware to 1.1.3 (I run 1.1.1) and brick the thing. Nobody has had time to crack the new firmware, as it is only a day old.
There were some surprises too...
The GPS on my N95 was so shit that Google Maps is actually better! The phone book application is a million times easier to use than any of my previous phones, I really figured Apple would botch that one.
People come up to me in public places wanting to see it. This both worries and amuses me. I imagine amusement will vanish when some bastard mugs me for the device.
And as an iPod, this thing is better than an iPod. How wierd is that? Sound quality is better, by a long shot, than either of my "normal" iPods (a third gen B&W piece of junk, and a latest-and-greated 160GB Classic).
The auto-rotate and multitouch stuff is more than just a gimmick. It actually beats any other phone interface. Even for typing - the claims of 40wpm typing are not a joke, you really can use this thing for serious text input.
And there is one really annoying thing...
In the US, iPhones come with an "unlimited" data plan. This means they built it assuming you don't pay Aussie rates for data access. I'm a Telstra corporate customer, so data for me costs roughly the same amount per kB as a kilo of cocaine. Every time I woke the damned thing up for a while there it was pinging the network with a small data packet. Flagfall fees every time I checked the time. Or showed somebody the thing.
Using it under Windows doesn't seem to take away any functionality
I'm not going into detail on all the features though. I just wanted to capture the overall feeling of the transition.
All things considered, I cannot believe how good this device is. As a phone, it is brilliant. Great battery life (3-4 days, and I'm a heavy user), convenient interface, etc. I even make use of it for serious web browsing at home, something I have been able to do on my last 3 phones but never did because the interface was shit.
So here I am. An iPhone convert. Playing around on the Apple online store, configuring my next slip down the slippery slope... an 8 core Mac Pro. And maybe an Apple TV... Where will it end...