On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:03:59 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <[email protected]> wrote:
"Nick Sabalausky" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
"Steven Schveighoffer" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Love my iPhone. Love it. My last two phones were a Palm Treo and a
Samsung touch-screen (w/stylus) smartphone with Windows mobile 6. They
are absolute garbage compared to this. Granted, I started with the
3gs,
and upgraded to iOS4 about a month after I got it, so my phone is the
result of 3 years of polish, but I feel apple has the right focus for
it.
iPhone is hands down the best phone I've ever used. I thought when I
got
it, I would have a hard time accessing small things like the on-screen
keyboard keys, but I'm surprised at how accurate I am with it, even
after
only having it for a few months. I regularly go to webnews on
digitalmars and can click the minuscule links pretty accurately.
You can not like them if you want, you are entitled to your opinion,
but
it seems like you have a very negative view of almost everything :) I
bet your glass is half empty, huh...
I'm a "technical-ist": The glass is half-empty and half-full at the same
time. Problem is, most glasses I've seen are only a quarter full and
with
overly-sweetened content (or three-quarters empty if you prefer ;) ).
I just have standards.
A. Search "you're holding it wrong".
Not a problem on my 3gs, and no longer a problem on 4 (free case). Though
I understand the issue people have with the statement, Jobs is as arrogant
as they come...
B. Closed platforms are evil (not to be confused with closed source).
s/evil/stable. It's one of the reasons my previous company was in
business. They built server appliances. When you control everything on
the platform, there's less things to test, less things that can go wrong,
and any bugs you fix for one customer automatically translate to all other
customers.
C. Gatekeeping is evil. See also http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
This I agree with. It should be enough that the developers follow the
technical requirements. Still, the apps that are available are pretty
cool. My new favorite is netflix. When I'm waiting for something
somewhere and I can continue watching a movie I was streaming at home,
that's just awesome...
D. Service provider lock-in is evil. My phone works with *any* service
provider (and didn't become uselessly obsolete after a year or two):
http://www.uniden.com/products/productdetail.cfm?product=EXAI398 And I
really do like this phone a lot.
Then I guess 99% of phones are evil? I also have co-workers and friends
who use jailbroken iphones on other GSM networks. I could never do that
with most of my verizon phones. Besides, who switches phone service
providers within the life of a phone? Not to mention that the two biggest
service providers are incompatible with eachother, so you couldn't switch
between them even if you wanted to.
E. A die-hard Apple fan I know recently showed me his beloved iPad.
Accurately setting the text-cursor was nearly impossible. But that would
have been an incredibly simple fix: Use a screen that worked with a
stylus
or fingernail. There's millions of them out there. Even if that would
have
prevented multi-touch (and I don't know that it would or would not
have),
after using the multi-touch, I felt it added no real value other than a
"gee-whiz" gimmick factor. Stylus/fingernail support would have added at
least some real value.
Your friend is doing it wrong. I can accurately set the cursor whenever I
want using the magnifying glass.
See an example here:
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781430231295/typing_numbers_and_symbols
F. Like all Apple software, the software on the iPad/iPhone are
appallingly slim on settings/options.
*shrug* Most of the settings suit me well. What options do you miss?
G. A *phone* without tactile dial buttons is just plain wrong. What is
it
with Apple's long-standing war against tactile feedback? It detracts
from
usability and the only thing it adds is high-tech-gee-whiz-gimmick.
What do you need tactile feedback for? You get audible feedback, and the
phone number buttons are extremely responsive. Plus, if you want to dial
without looking at the phone, you can use voice-activation.
Blackberry tried a touch-screen with tactile feedback, it sucked.
H. What's there to protect the highly-prominent screen?
The screen is made of pretty durable glass. Like all touch-screen phones,
it's highly advisable to get a screen protector for it. I don't get what
your problem is here, do you want a screen or not? If you do, then what
possible way could a manufacturer design a destruction-proof screen? Put
little airbags around it in case you drop it?
I. I don't give a crap how thin they can make it. But Apple seems to
think
I should care. Heck, I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on
something that I'll constantly feel I'm about to accidentally snap in
half. But that's exactly how I felt with the iPad.
This is petty :) I can't speak for the ipad, but the iphone feels more
durable than any phone I've had. Maybe you'd prefer this phone:
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100829/BIZ/708299922/1005/biz
Note that the ipad directly competes with e-Reader devices, so they need
to appeal to those people too.
J. What happens when the battery gets old and won't hold a charge?
When I was looking at getting a palm pre as a verizon customer, and I
discovered that palm pre doesn't support voice dialing, I mentioned I'd
just be switching to AT&T for the iPhone. The Verizon guy identified the
battery issue as a reason not to get one. So I looked up the details. I
think apple provides a $100 service to change your battery. I don't know
the details, but I think they just swap out your entire phone. If they
don't swap out your phone, that's crappy, but I can't complain yet because
it hasn't happened to me ;)
$100 is pretty steep, but most phone batteries cost $40-60, so it's not
unreasonable. I think by making the battery internal they can make it
more powerful and make the device smaller (sorry, some of us like the
small size ;).
I also have read if you don't care about your warranty or your warranty is
expired, you can buy an actual iphone battery online for about $20 and a
kit for $10 more so you can change it yourself.
That's a lot of issues for something that's supposedly well-polished.
Wait, most of these aren't actual problems, but just design decisions you
disagree with. In fact, only one is a bug (the iphone 4 antenna problem),
which has already been addressed. "I hate how they think they're so cool
because their devices are thin" isn't even a problem, its just a form of
name calling.
Note that for all these "problems" you mentioned, the iphone's good
features are *really* good. Even the tiny details have thought put into
them. One example: I listen to music at work with the enclosed headphones
(w/ mic and volume control inline on the wire), and I listen to it low, so
I can hear when other people want to talk to me. When I get in the car, I
have to turn the volume on the iphone all the way up to normalize the
input to the stereo.
I noticed that once I set the respective volumes, I didn't have to change
them -- the iphone knows the difference between the two headphone types
and auto-adjusts the volume to the last setting. It's one of those
features that is trivial, but just make the iphone a pleasant experience.
I'll tell you a few things that I've found annoying:
1. I disabled downloading graphics in emails (as everyone should), but in
emails I know are not spam, I want to download the images. There is no
button for that...
2. A couple times, the phone had a hard time connecting to a wireless
network that it previously had no problem with. It mistakes a bad signal
with a bad password, so it asks you for the password. If you don't hit
"cancel" and just hit "ok", it forgets the password that it used to have.
I then have to go look up the password as it's some hex string.
3. The calendar app doesn't allow you to jump ahead quickly by months or
years. This is annoying when setting a future appointment. You can
quickly scroll via the day, they should give you wheels to do the month
and year also.
-Steve
