So it’s no secret that I was obsessed with the iPhone from the minute I saw it in the keynote. Not like, “That’s kinda cool, if I had money to burn I might buy one” obsessed, but like, “I’ll pay the $600, pay the early termination fee with Verizon, and sign up for a 2-year contract with no credit history [read: get raped, from what I’ve heard] the day it comes out” obsessed. Over time it faded, and I was won over the by “Wait a few months and see how it goes over” theory.
Today, my mom and I were coming home from the Cape and stopped by the South Shore Mall. After buying a few things, I persuaded her that we should take a couple minutes to drop by the Apple store there.
After about 30 seconds playing with the models in the store, she and I were both ready to buy them. For one thing, they’re way smaller than they look. At one point I pulled out my Treo, and realized that it was bigger than the iPhone. And heavier. I’d always thought that it was impractically large. And some of the photos make it look that way. But don’t knock it on size until you see it in person.
You see all the features in the commercials, and it’s really impressive. But play with it for a minute and you’ll be floored. From pictures, the keyboard must be pretty hard to use. I pulled up Safari and typed in “blogs.n1zyy.com/main” which is probably not the easiest thing to type. I screwed up and typed “/maim” (which is somewhat of an awesome typo), but otherwise, typing on it was far easier than I’d have thought.
The blogs loaded in a really small size. I turned it sideways, and so did the blogs. I hit some random button and bookmarked the blogs. (Woot!) Much unlike the fake browser on the Treo, it was the real deal. About this time, my mom was watching a hilarious video on YouTube on ‘her’ iPhone. I could hear it fine, and the store was really loud. I then noticed a new comment on one of my posts, so I went to that, and wanted to scroll down. I couldn’t find the scroll bar, and was confused for a second. But then I remembered, and dragged my finger across the screen.
From the commercials, I always worried you’d scroll past where you were trying to go, since it ‘glides’ a bit after you stop. That’s not the case at all. It’s incredibly intuitive, and works incredibly well.
I went to configure a GMail account, but realized that I really didn’t want my login details on a phone in a public place where 200 people would probably play with it that day. But I bet it would be easier than setting it up on my Treo. I’m still trying to figure that out. It barfs up an error along the lines of “Relaying denied,” but with lots of gibberish included. I think I just need to use Verizon’s SMTP server, but I can’t find the details anywhere. I wonder if the iPhone is that complicated. Something tells me it’s not.
Seriously, though, the iPhone is like Obama. (Another analogy Mr. T might not like?) It seems really neat. But when you see it in person, it far exceeds your (lofty) expectations.