The Moses* Phone aka the iPhone 3G

[please note I'm writing this while drinking a 40 oz of OE so if there are typos whatever]

So my contract with T-Mobile ended on August 16th and being the Apple Fan Boi (that's for you Professor) that I am, I waited in line at the Pentagon City Mall Apple Store to get mine. There is a roped off area outside the store where they have you wait in front of the always tempting Sony Style Store. I waited for about 35 minutes inline during which on of the Apple Store employees would check with people waiting inline to make sure they had their shit together, unsurprisingly many didn't. "I need to have a credit card?; I need to know my phone number?; This isn't the line for Sbarro?"

Anyway after 35 minutes of waiting I was invited in, I talked a very nice person who worked at there who got me setup with in 15 minutes, the only delay was my need to look up my T-Mobile (oh how I loved thee, but I'd be remiss to scorn you for your lack of 3G) account number, which I did using the iMac in front of us. I was impressed because the Apple Store employee knew enough to reset Safari after I got my info to ensure that people wouldn't be mucking around in my account later in the day. She told me, kiddingly, that I'd have to come back tomorrow to pick it to which I replied that's cool I'll just wait in the store. Any activation with the help of the Symbol magic handheld thing that they use had me out of there in 10 minutes and told me that it should be ready to get calls within the hour and a day at the most. It took about 20 minutes which I don't consider too bad considering that I switched providers.

So here is my break down:
The Good:
I only carry one nerd device in my pocket on the regular and the wifi option is nice because when I'm at home, the 18th Amendment or the Tune Inn I've got a fast connection.
The interface is mostly intuitive, I'll touch on this in the bad.
The screen is great.
The form factor is right.
The silent mode switch is genius, I've never seen this on a phone before, I didn't realize that it existed on the original one, though it took me a few minutes to figure out what that "button" did.
Everyone is writing apps for this mofo so all of the cool shit you want is there as a first class citizen.
If there is a battery life issue I haven't noticed it yet.
The correcting for fat fingering spelling is goddamn amazing.
**
The killer app though is Safari mobile, this is the first time that I've used a phone browser that didn't h-u-r-t to use. Is it perfect, hell no but like MC Hammer nothing else can touch this.
**

The Bad:
Syncing is slow, but is flawless
I want to use the home button to go back, not to go to the home screen.


The Ugly:
Really no MMS?

[update] I forgot to mention that I named it Blackberry

*Moses because I was raised Jewish and just like Elvis, Jesus don't mean shit to me.

iPhone 3G Anticipation

Though I'm pretty sure the people at my old office had a pool going over how quickly it would take me to buy an iPhone, I've managed to hold out this long. Though the holding out is about to end on August 17th right after my T-Mobile contract ends. I'll be heading to my local Apple store and picking one up.

iPhone/iTouch Goodness

After reading this post about the home screen icons DCDan.com officially supports it.

It's Too Expensive?!?!?

One of the big concepts that are being pushed on the information super driveway by "industry analysts"* is that the iPhone is too expensive and hence no one will pay for it and it will be a flop just like the Newton thus Apple will fail and this will be one of the signs that they are falling apart, and Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against Apple and destroy it.

What they are missing is that the high cost won't be an issue and is part of their branding. Haven't people learned that marketing trumps rational cost nearly every time?

If you want the cheapest MP3 player you don't buy an iPod and after looking over Amazon's best sellers list though it doesn't look like people buy mp3 player based on price, they buy them based on the fact they are iPods.

The iPhone is an extension of this. Based on the price rational why do you think the black MacBook sells at all? Because people want to have the latest toys and show them off. In general if the price is a premium but not outrageously so people will buy it. Think the Passat vs an Audi, or a Camry vs Lexus. The latter are more expensive but essentially the same yet no one predicts the fall of Audi.

Additionally analysts are saying that there are already phone companies in the market and that Apple can't compete. Um again this is probably a testament to how strong the iPod brand is, there used to be a time, in the long ago, before the iPod existed yet there were several companies (Creative and Intel come to mind) that made mp3 players this didn't seem to stop Apple from making a successful entry into the market.

Additionally the iPod doesn't seem as expensive as it is made out to be. First off the latest Blackberry is $249 with a contract. A 4GB iPod nano, which is the same capacity as the the lower end iPhone is $200. So to get the similar functionality you'll need to spend $449. And you'll need to extra pocket space. Seeing as the difference is about $50 I don't see this as being priced to expensive at all. It seems right inline with what you'd expect. There can also be a high cost for the server side software that may be needed with BlackBerry as well.

I can't guarantee the future of the iPhone, but I can promise you that if they don't sell it isn't because they are too expensive.


*I'll save my rant about industry analysts for a later date.