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iJibber iJabber

The more I read about the iPhone the more excited I am to actually see it and lay my hands on one.

Thanks to my wonderful readers, I've found out that Apple has extended the battery life and upgraded the surface to make it more durable. It also uses Flash memory so it won't be so susceptible to drops and jostling.

And I've mentioned before how beautiful it is.

My Verizon contract doesn't expire until January and I will probably force myself to wait that long to get it because I will want to buy the fanciest iPhone they have.

But, of course, I'm interested in the doomsayers, too. I did a little googley search and found the following remarks:

Six Problems with the iPhone:

1) It's not rugged enough. (Addressed with rugged glass surface.)
2) Fixed battery. (Addressed with longer battery life.)
3) It's not a phone. (I fail to see how this is actually a problem. The commenter talks about it as a marketing strategy only, which isn't related to the phone itself.)
4) Expensive (Again, this seems like a marketing issue to me AND there are other very expensive smart phones out there)
5) DataSpeed is insufficient. (I dunno about this one. But I've seen rumors that there is a 3G iPhone in the works.)
6) Expectations are too high. (How are expectations both too low -- 'it's a phone!' -- and too high? -- 'It's the iPhone!' ?)

To his credit, this article was written in the early days of the iPhone rumor machine and many design improvements hadn't been announced or incorporated.

So, more recently that skeptic wrote a follow-up post on the same. He added several things to it, but I find his remarks largely unconvincing. Of course, I also can't tell what his purpose is.

Is he discussing this from the context of whether or not to invest in Apple stock? If so, market and marketing considerations are valid.

Is he discussing this from the perspective of a prospective buyer? If so, shouldn't he stick to technology, design, and usability considerations?

In reading the second article, the slant does seem to be toward the former consideration, the business landscape of the iPhone. I don't think his concerns on that front are unwarranted. It IS a very high-end phone-gadget with a price tag to match. That it is being mass marketed isn't a hideous error, though, I think, because it's a highly covetable product. That everyone will want one is part of its sex appeal. It might be more accurate to refer to it as its elitism appeal -- people who buy one will want everyone to know that they have the hottest gadget on the market.

He does bring up some technical and usability to concerns though.

Ruggedness - I understand this concern and I do think the iPhone will be less durable than my Nokia phone (with flashlight) which, I think, could stop bullets. But I am far less convinced by this argument than I was before reading more about the phone; I think it will be durable enough to withstand moderate wear and tear.

Battery life - Again, this article was written before yesterday's announcement. We now know that you can watch 7 hours of video on the iPhone. Yeah, so you can't watch movies on it all the way to Europe, but guess what. I can't do that on my laptop either.

Multi-touch - This is a reference to the input method, meaning you can touch the screen with more than one finger at a time. I *think* the writer thinks it will be difficult to handle the phone in this way.

No physical keys - This one does concern me. I hate touch screen ATMs. They don't seem to read my touches. Will the iPhone be able to handle my gigantic fingers? I did read in another review somewhere that it is somewhat slow-going while trying to type on the iPhone.

The last item, the crowded cell phone market, returns to the business considerations of the product. I agree that confidence in the iPhone is high right now, which means some people are undoubtedly overshooting the mark with their projections on sales and Apple stock.

I don't suggest that iPhone will flop, although I am skeptical about its long-term prospects compared to the current inflated expectations. But I do mean to throw a little cold water on the Kool-Aid drinkers and wake them up from their dream state.

But, I'll be honest. I started my cursory look into the iPhone hype and hate on the hater side. It looked too expensive, too fragile, and too flimsy (in battery life) for my needs and preferences. Now I find myself thinking things like, "It's an iPod PLUS a smart phone," "They upgraded the glass and made it tougher," "The battery life is sick compared to other complex handsets."

Basically, I'm sold. I will wait until after Christmas. It'd be nice if the Second Generation iPhone were available by that time.