Letters to the Editor
-
finger touch..
I have resisted the iphone for many of your reasons...
But I wanted to share the experience. Having a apple laptop with two finger scrolling, and two finger right click inspire the same thing. Every other track pad is lame afterwards...
-
Tabloid Tech
I can't wait for the next episode of Manjoo's iPhone, in which (a la da monkey's pa) there is a ringtone at midnight. Manjoo isn't sleeping of course (the pea under the mattress), but now he's scared. It's back. It's unlocked. He grabs his high speed network phone to call for help but he's in Europe so it's just a useless piece of crap. Tune in next week when Farhad says, "Everybody else sends me free products to review. Why are you special?"
-
I Expect More From A Tech Writer
Mr. Manjoo;
I don't get it. As a tech writer some of your responsibility is to be the early adopter type who helps us all realize how new technology, with all it's bugs, affects and changes our lives.
You bailed on a very important story that will have substantial effects on how we relate to personal technology and the portable web/phone/etc device. Indeed the very bugs that you think make the iPhone inadequate are part of the story. You even recognized this when you interviewed the hackers who are looking to fix and change the phone, and rightly so.
I think your complaints about the iPhone don't sufficiently explain why, as a tech writer and not just a one of the masses, you would give up on the device.
I won't say that I'll never read your column again or that it makes you an idiot to give such a lame excuse for giving up on a story that you are responsible for covering. I think a lot of readers here are getting overly excited about this.
I will say that the character you present with this post undermines your credibility as a tech journalist. Your reasons for returning the iPhone simply do not resonate with an audience that looks to you for insight on technology and its effect on our culture.
-
Soul of an accountant
To wit: couldn't Mr Manjoo just have taken a business deduction on the phone and the monthly plan?
I have no beef with an irrational response to a technology product - as someone who defaults to iPods over other MP3 players and who winds a mechanical watch before putting it on each morning, I'd be hugely hypocritical if I criticized someone for not strictly "objective" enthusiasm.
In any case, even if the iPhone were a revolution, my cell phone needs are pretty much petit bourgeois. Impressive as the iPhone interface appears to be, it wouldn't be a huge functionality step forward in terms of my likely actual daily use by comparison to my (crappy) Razr and 30GB iPod.
If I were going to shell out $600 for a phone I'd get an unlocked HTC smartphone - far more useful for work, which is 90% of the reason I have a cellphone - and get a cheap small phone for the weekends, when all I want is something I can carry in my pocket to communicate with she who must be obeyed.
-
whyphone
Surfing the web seamlessly has been around for a few years as have phones with friendly, programmable operating systems. In technology terms that means these are ancient history. That basically leaves touch-screen improvements as the main motivator for getting this. Personally, I think this is a phone for those who prefer form over function. It is sleek and good to look at and fun to touch but offers no dramatic new functionality. Apple continues to manipulate those willing to be enamored with gadgetry and reward its customers' loyalty with Big Brother-like proprietary control over its hardware and software in order to jack prices to ridiculous levels.
-
WM5/WM6 instead of iPhone
Any WM5/WM6 ppc can use google and live searches over the air. You didn't need an iPhone to look for the peppercorns. The internet (WWW not WAP) on a phone is nothing new nor unique to the iPhone.
-
farhad really misses the point here
I agree the essay is misleading, since he never intended to keep the phone, but his rationale is silly. If I upgrade my current 3 year old phone to a new device with unlimited data plan, I'd pay the same as the contract on the iPhone. This phone isn't that outrageously expensive -- in the Apple Store lines, plenty of people were calling their loved ones with the past generation of pricy smartphones.
By bailing out after 14 days, Farhad is missing out of the real advantage of this device, the ability to deliver improvements to functionality over software.
While all phones can have software updates, up to now this has been a really difficult process. Using iTunes and Apple's existing infrastructure for pushing out software updates to millions of users on a regular basis, one can take advantage of software fixes without waiting in line at the AT&T store.
And this is perhaps the real revolution that is being missed here -- the iTunes self-activation process essentially makes it unnecessary to endure inattentive, poorly-trained clerks at the AT&T store. If AT&T were to adopt a similar means of activating phones for other devices, they could streamline their retail network while improving service. This device couldn't have been successfully launched by AT&T with the current state of their retail network, and you can believe this successful launch will ripple out to other devices and other carriers. Sure there were initial activation glitches, but could you imagine how painful this would have been if everyone buying the phone had to take it to an AT&T shop for activation?
There are other more subtle ways that Apple is changing business as usual -- most AT&T devices support their storefront MediaMall, and it's not present on the iPhone, to the chagrin of many content providers. It seems that Apple is a bit late to the game here, or thinks that user-generated content will prevail for this phone. However, the fact that they have decoupled this device from the carrier's overpriced, limited, disorganized storefront is a significant shift, even if the phone itself is locked. Content is a huge business for the phone carriers.
No matter what you think about this phone in comparison to other smartphones, it is a remarkable first effort from Apple, and the whole industry should benefit from their fresh take on the device and network services.
Any device of this type entails engineering compromises, but Apple does not make any of these decisions lightly. This is the result of a delicate dance between size, weight, power consumption, and market reality. 3G was the first to go, probably because of power and packaging considerations tempered by the low penetration of 3G service in the US market.
Other missing features, such as voice dialing, likely have been left out for reasons relating to the phone's software architecture and application robustness. Apple has existing voice synthesis and recognition technology, but making it stable in the first version of this phone OS may have been too hard given the release date.
In my book, the most telling event in the lifecycle of this device is going to be that first software update. Will Apple simply patch security holes and fix bugs? Will they add additional features and more customizability? Will they update soon and often? Will the release of Leopard enable new phone features? Will the next revision of iPhone software leverage architectural improvements in the OS X Leopard code base, enabling a stable API for third party development and for the inclusion of more advanced features.
Unfortunately, Farhad Manjoo doesn't think it's worth $300 to know the answers to these questions and share them with his readers. Fortunately there are plenty of technology writers who will pursue this further -- they just aren't on Salon.