kale (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kalephunk) wrote,@ 2008-07-13 11:48:00 |
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iPhone 3G: First Impressions
So I stood in line at the Apple store and picked one up the other day. 16GB black. I don't know why I got 16GB -- I don't really plan to use it for music. Future expansion, "just in case", I guess. I'm slowly migrating to this new number -- get in contact with me if you need my new phone number.
First, the bad. Not so much "bad", but annoyances/disappointments. The AIM client is shitty and sometimes serves up random mysterious blank IMs. It's also "push", which is good, but it only pushes for about a minute, then times out. I'd really like a Cognet client for the iPhone that I can hook into my Cognet server, which basically proxies the communication. I've been using Cognet on my Sidekick for years for IRC (the Sidekick's AIM app has built-in client side queuing and server-side proxying). This is pretty much the only thing keeping me on the Sidekick anymore.
No SSH/terminal app is disappointing as well. C'mon, Apple! The Loupe is a clever way around the lack of arrow keys for text manipulation, but it only works in certain text fields. The battery indicator is small and doesn't really give me any idea how much capacity I have left. GPS only works outdoors, for the most part, and it doesn't fall back on cell tower triangulation (the older iPhones use this solely). I hate hate hate hate the in-line text autocorrection and there's no way to disable it. There's also some funkiness sometimes with syncing apps, and I still can't figure out how to make a ringtone.
Now, the good!
ITS AN IPHONE.
It's also sleek and smooth and the 3G is actually really really fast. The app store has a ton of apps of varying quality -- I actually like that, it means that you don't have to be a top-notch dev shop to get your app in. Tons of free apps, and free apps with paid counterparts. There are some incredibly clever apps out there (I'm particularly fond of Graffitio and Tap Tap Revenge). Safari is very fast and smooth and easy to use on all web pages I throw at it, Mail is pretty complete, Google Maps is great (though it seems to forget my user-defined pins all the time), the camera is pretty nice, YouTube app is excellent, and the sync with my .mac account and my computer is very nice. Built-in VPN client with support for enterprise RSA authentication is an unexpected (and awesome) surprise.
Things that I wish were better that probably will be in a future update:
I wish it could sync to my computer over bluetooth or wifi. I wish that it could connect to other iTunes shares over Bonjour over the wireless. I wish I had finer control over settings (like, say, turning autocorrect off), and I wish there was an app that showed standard statistics, such as current bitrate, CPU usage, memory consumption, etc. I wish more apps supported screen tilting, like Safari, so I could use the bigger keyboard (faster to type on with thumbs). I wish it supported newer versions of Flash in the browser. I wish there was a way to enable error messages, so if an app crashes I could see why. I wish GPS fell back to cell triangulation if it can't get a lock.
I wish the GPS crosshair, when it zoomed in, said "Enhance". Or maybe not -- I already say it.
All in all, worth it with the assumption more apps will come out and Apple will update the OS and built-ins.
So I stood in line at the Apple store and picked one up the other day. 16GB black. I don't know why I got 16GB -- I don't really plan to use it for music. Future expansion, "just in case", I guess. I'm slowly migrating to this new number -- get in contact with me if you need my new phone number.
First, the bad. Not so much "bad", but annoyances/disappointments. The AIM client is shitty and sometimes serves up random mysterious blank IMs. It's also "push", which is good, but it only pushes for about a minute, then times out. I'd really like a Cognet client for the iPhone that I can hook into my Cognet server, which basically proxies the communication. I've been using Cognet on my Sidekick for years for IRC (the Sidekick's AIM app has built-in client side queuing and server-side proxying). This is pretty much the only thing keeping me on the Sidekick anymore.
No SSH/terminal app is disappointing as well. C'mon, Apple! The Loupe is a clever way around the lack of arrow keys for text manipulation, but it only works in certain text fields. The battery indicator is small and doesn't really give me any idea how much capacity I have left. GPS only works outdoors, for the most part, and it doesn't fall back on cell tower triangulation (the older iPhones use this solely). I hate hate hate hate the in-line text autocorrection and there's no way to disable it. There's also some funkiness sometimes with syncing apps, and I still can't figure out how to make a ringtone.
Now, the good!
ITS AN IPHONE.
It's also sleek and smooth and the 3G is actually really really fast. The app store has a ton of apps of varying quality -- I actually like that, it means that you don't have to be a top-notch dev shop to get your app in. Tons of free apps, and free apps with paid counterparts. There are some incredibly clever apps out there (I'm particularly fond of Graffitio and Tap Tap Revenge). Safari is very fast and smooth and easy to use on all web pages I throw at it, Mail is pretty complete, Google Maps is great (though it seems to forget my user-defined pins all the time), the camera is pretty nice, YouTube app is excellent, and the sync with my .mac account and my computer is very nice. Built-in VPN client with support for enterprise RSA authentication is an unexpected (and awesome) surprise.
Things that I wish were better that probably will be in a future update:
I wish it could sync to my computer over bluetooth or wifi. I wish that it could connect to other iTunes shares over Bonjour over the wireless. I wish I had finer control over settings (like, say, turning autocorrect off), and I wish there was an app that showed standard statistics, such as current bitrate, CPU usage, memory consumption, etc. I wish more apps supported screen tilting, like Safari, so I could use the bigger keyboard (faster to type on with thumbs). I wish it supported newer versions of Flash in the browser. I wish there was a way to enable error messages, so if an app crashes I could see why. I wish GPS fell back to cell triangulation if it can't get a lock.
I wish the GPS crosshair, when it zoomed in, said "Enhance". Or maybe not -- I already say it.
All in all, worth it with the assumption more apps will come out and Apple will update the OS and built-ins.
