Cocoa Crusty

Guess what I got a week ago today?!

That’s right, kids, an Apple iPhone! I got an advance on an already existing technology loan at my place of employment (0% for 18 months?! You can’t beat that!) and purchased it last Tuesday evening after work. I wanted to have a good week of experience with the device before I made my announcement and shared my initial thoughts on the phone.

Well, I’ll go ahead and give you my final thoughts on the phone first. This is one impressive piece of hardware paired with an extremely intuitive and beautiful piece of software. The iPhone has met or exceeded every one of my expectations, and for the price, I am grateful! Thanks, Apple, for an impressive Web enabled phone!

The Good:

I’ll start off with the good of the phone, like any respectable reviewer would. Again, let me say that this device is beautiful and it all starts with the design of the hardware. In keeping with the beautiful design of the iPod, the Apple iPhone has a sleek, slim design that has super sexy curves. The phone is not too big to hold up to your dome and using it as a phone or as a “PDA“.

The touchscreen works flawlessly. The screens scroll so smoothly that it makes you want to cry. The soft-keyboard is extremely easy to type on once you realize you can’t use the side of your thumbs like you can on a physical QWERTY keyboard like most smartphones have. You have to use the tips of your thumbs to type, but with the visual response you get when pressing a key, it becomes a natural movement.

The version of OS X that runs on the phone has the same sexy look that you would expect from a Macintosh machine. The icons, backgrounds, menus, etc. all look very “Apple’ish” and are extremely easy to use and understand. The applications that are installed by default on the iPhone are impressive as well. The iPhone version of Google Maps is very nice. It allows you to interface your contacts locations with the map as well as get driving directions to and from locations. The other applications are impressive as well with their Dashboard Widgets look and feel.

And, the big kicker for me is the Safari Web browser that ships on the phone. A majority of the applications on the iPhone are powered by the Safari rendering engine using AJAX. They flow so smoothly and work the way you would expect a Web application to, except you use your finger to maneuver around instead of a mouse. The way you increase and decrease the browser window with two fingers is extremely cool. And, of course, all third-party applications for the iPhone use Safari and an Internet connection so you will spend a majority of your time in Safari when using the iPhone.

So, to wrap up “The Good” in one phrase, “It Flows”. From the main menu screen to the contacts, phone, settings, and basically every screen, the experience just flows seamlessly from one experience to another. Over all, this is the best cell phone I have every used and I am very happy that I finally made the purchase.

The Disappointing:

I wouldn’t say there is anything “bad” about the iPhone, but there are some disappointing aspects. First of all, there is no support or development kit for native third-party applications. This means that all third-party software has to be accessed via the Safari Web browser and the Internet. This in itself is not such a bad thing since the Web browser and Internet capabilities of the phone are better than other cell phones and smartphones on the market today. However, it would be nice to be able to compile and install some native applications on the iPhone, whatever they may be.

There isn’t support for Adobe Flash on the device, as a standalone application, or within Safari. This kind of limits your multimedia experience on the iPhone to movies from your iTunes library or the limited YouTube library available through a preinstalled application on the phone.

You can’t sync the phone with your machine/laptop via Bluetooth. All syncing of music, movies, photos, contacts, and calendar is done through the iTunes software installed on your PC or Mac. This is kind of frustrating because I don’t want to plug my phone up to my machine every time I want to sync. Also, this limits your ability to sync your phone via proximity detection like I used to do with my Nokia E61 (Yeah, she was a good phone…).

Another thing I would have liked to see on the iPhone is a terminal application for SSH’ing into remote *NIX servers or an RDP client for accessing into remote Windows machines or servers. I am sure there are a number of other applications I would like to see on the iPhone, but these two would really get the “I’m an administrator” parts off to a good start.

Conclusion:

I have done a lot of research on the iPhone. Everything in the “disappointing” category I knew about prior to buying the device. I could go on and on about the device, it’s capabilities and it’s limitations, but I feel this is a good stopping point for my public “I have an iPhone” announcement and review. I will be posting some more on this device in the days and weeks ahead, and hope to develop a Web application geared towards the iPhone in the coming months. I’ll keep you posted on my progress with the phone and any newsworthy items I find on the Internet related to the iPhone. Final words: I love my iPhone!

Until next time…