Shortly after taking that photo the Apple store closed to transform it into an iPhone 3G store. The first step was the erection of a large black velour curtain of mystery to shroud the store and prevent prying eyes from glimpsing the goodness being assembled inside. Other than the occasionally Apple employee emerging from the curtain to go home and sleep (lucky them) the velour curtain of mystery was the only thing to be seen until 8am graced the Pacific time zone.

Waiting in line
The 12 hours in line actually wasn’t so bad. Much to the horror of the Apple Store the Alderwood Mall Security and Administration announced that folding chairs, sleeping bags, tents, and in general having fun were forbidden on property. They seemed to think that even allowing us to be on the property after the malls 10pm closing time was a special treat and yes, could we ask for another cup of porridge sir?

Aside from having to choose between sitting on the cold outdoor concrete and standing all evening we had a blast. The Gear Live crew came out in force to film the event and do some product giveaways for some iPhone cases and accessories. The night passed relatively quickly bringing us to 8am with a line of 250+ excited people iWaiting for the iPhone 3G.

The curtain drops
The velour curtain of mystery dropped and the doors flung open to an Apple store filled with excited Apple employees clapping and cheering us on. Being first in line provided a larger thrill than I expected – leaving my heart racing as I walked through their gauntlet of proffered high-5’s, cheering iAcolytes, and my own sleep-starved imaginations addition of a glowing visage of his holiness Jobs floating in the middle of the store looking down upon his dedicated flock.

The thrill was unfortunately short lived – the internet had indicated prior to opening that system problems had been making the launch difficult for those in time zones ahead of PST. Those problems had far from been worked out by the time us on the west coast were blessed with the coming of 8am. Due to the glitches it was roughly 45 minutes from the time I entered the store until I had been able to successfully purchased my 16GB white iPhone 3G. Even after the purchase the in store activation failed completely leaving me with a sleek and sexy hunk of plastic, plaintively begging to be plugged into iTunes for activation.

Time passes, the 30 minute drive home ensues…

The first several hours home were bittersweet. On the up side I was home and able to shower and sit on comfortable furniture. On the down side I was iPhone-less. Due to a glitch (which has been dubbed the iPocalypse by our beloved main stream media) everyone transitioning from a 1st generation iPhone to an iPhone 3G had their 1st generation iPhone deactivated during the process, so due to the unavailability of the Apple activation server neither the old nor new iPhone would work as a phone leaving me (and 100’s of thousands of others) phone-less and unable to make or receive calls.

While catching back up on work mail remotely I was forced to repeatedly plug my pearly white new toy into my iMac to wait several minutes for the dreaded timeout dialog to inform me that no, I couldn’t use my new toy, and no I couldn’t have a pony either.

After begging use of a neighbors condo and phone line for a few conference calls my precious toy suddenly popped to life upon one of my connection attempts to iTunes. The server-gerbils must have finally gotten their second wind as my iPhone 3G activated, and the sync process begun to restore all of my settings, applications, and media.

Lunch with a friend ensues during the <1 hour sync…

Finally home, and with a working iPhone 3G in hand the process of playing with my precious new toy could begin. Although a little rough around the edges (more on that in a minute) the experience is overall very positive. The 3G antenna provides fast data – combining the stunning software functionality of the iPhone with WiFi like internet access anywhere in a major city makes for a highly functional and productive experience. The two big new software features – Microsoft Exchange support and the iTunes App Store – add significant functionality and usability for both business and consumer users of the iPhone alike.

Although highly subjective I would venture to say that the iPhone 3G feels faster than the first generation iPhone. I’m unaware of if the processor it utilizes is any faster, or if this is merely a psychosomatic effect, but many tasks seem to execute faster. On the flip side a few of the new features seem to have regressed performance – the contacts application now takes several seconds to load as opposed to the nearly instant launch on my old iPhone. Also in the subjective category the iPhone’s virtual keyboard seems improved, although I would be hard pressed to put my finger on exactly how. The keyboard just seems more accurate and easier to use with the new phone.

Another highly subjective trait of the iPhone 3G is it’s sleekness. While the iPhone 3G is actually a millimeter thicker than it’s 1st generation predecessor it feels significantly slimmer and more comfortable in the hand. Much like it’s big brother the Macbook Air the use of organically curving sides hides it’s true heft and girth from the users perception.

Microsoft Exchange support
Exchange support is baked in to the iPhone 2.0 firmware. This feature is available to first generation iPhones and the iPhone 3G alike. After entering your email address, domain account, and password directly into your iPhone and accepting any domain policies (such as a PIN lock) from the Exchange Server you are set to go. Email, contacts, and calendar updates push to the iPhone from your Exchange Server as advertised keeping any business user in touch with their work. Full Microsoft Office support has also been added allowing the reading and review of all Microsoft Office formats including Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents.

The iTunes App store
The App Store provides the other killer feature – or is that features. While many have decried the iPhone previously for missing various functions those naysayers have been silenced through the ad-hoc addition of functionality. The App Store allows for the browsing, downloading, and updating of applications over WiFi or the cellular network and brings a host of more than 500 new applications to the iPhone. While many of these applications lack the polish of the Apple built applications a few do have that level of sophistication and as time goes on and the iPhone platform gains momentum the signal to noise ratio will surely get better and a plentitude of stunning and functional applications filling any hole left by the Cupertino designers.

Several of the highly polished apps that have impressed me are Twitterrific, Loopt, and Remote. I also downloaded a few games and was impressed by the general level of polish, however as a general rule I don’t engage in mobile gaming so I’m mostly ignoring them for now. I have a few loaded onto my iPhone should I ever find myself with a few spare moments to burn and no productive tasks I can accomplish (unlikely with an iPhone in hand).

Location based services
While the built in A-GPS service was far from my most anticipated feature of the iPhone 3G it’s instantly grown on me. I had thought of the GPS capabilities primarily in turns of mapping and turn by turn directions, however the iPhone 2.0 firmware and the iTunes App Store have proved me wrong: location based services can be so much more.

A rash of location based applications have sprung up, and to my surprise they are all amazingly useful. Loopt provides a service similar to Dodgeball or BrightKite allowing users to check in with their friends and see what’s up but it improves upon it’s predecessors by being entirely automatic. Users can set up contacts and determine what level of location awareness they want to grant to each of these contacts and then view the location of their friends on a Microsoft Virtual Earth powered map. By updating your location without having to search for a location or manually enter one in the use of Loopt can be quick and simple – open the app, check what’s up, and get on with your day.

Other less flashy uses of the location services on the iPhone 3G don’t fail to impress. Even something as simple as a weather location can be improved by automatically knowing where you are. After getting used to weather applications, restaurant review sites, and other miscellaneous applications starting up defaulted to showing me information contextually relevant to my current location I’m struck by how “dumb” the non-location aware web is. Somehow it now seems downright primitive to have to enter my zip code into a web form to view movie times.

The downside to the iPhone 3G
While the App Store, Exchange Support, and location based services are impressive the new iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 firmware still have their less rosy facets. The 2.0 firmware lacks the rock solid stability of the 1.1.4 firmware I had been using previously. My iPhone has randomly rebooted 4 times in the last two days – usually in association with one of the App store downloaded applications. Luckily this is likely just some growing pains with the new 2.0 firmware and hopefully a patch will be delivered soon which resolves the stability issues I’m seeing.

In addition to the crashes the iPhone 3G has a fraction of the battery life that the 1st generation iPhone had. This is undoubtedly the fault of the addition of 3G and GPS. I’ll have a more complete idea of how big the impact is after a few more days of usage, but I certainly have seen a reduction. Yesterday while out and about I was torturing my iPhone with 3G data and GPS usage tacking our groups progress through downtown and Greenlake using the Google Maps application. In less than 2 hours I had lost 60% of my battery life.

I’ll be the first to admit that using both the 3G and GPS radios simultaneously is likely the worst case scenario but it’s frustrating to see the battery drop so quickly given the stellar battery of the 1st generation iPhone. Luckily if it gets to be more of a problem than 3G is worth I can turn off the 3G radio and push mail to theoretically get the same or better battery life that I’m used to in exchange for losing out on the increased speed.

Final thoughts
While Apple and AT&T faltered with a very rough launch with activation server failures the iPhone 3G hardware combined with the iPhone 2.0 software make for a very big change to the mobile market as a whole. Apples vision of the iPhone being the personal computer of tomorrow is starting to show through the smoke and mirrors. The iTunes App Store will allow developers freedom to create amazing new experiences, and the well implemented support for Microsoft Exchange will help the iPhone venture into the enterprise and tap the booming market for business-oriented smartphones.

A special thanks to Brian and Brien for indulging my geeky little psychosis and watching Skype for the night.

While their earbuds are amazingly comfortable and sound great they have severe build quality issues which results in frequent failure. After repairing the headphone sheath as described in the review and then replacing them entirely when they stopped working I have had to replace them two more times directly through the V-Moda warranty program for a total of three replacements in under 9 months.

The first time I replaced them through RMA I was a little irked that the process took almost two weeks. This time around V-Moda has gone silent once I shipped the defective earbuds back to them. UPS has proof that they were delivered and signed for, however V-Moda initially couldn’t find them (and wanted the tracking number again), and now refuses to even respond to emails regarding the warranty program.

It’s sad really – the Vibe Duo’s are the most comfortable, and among the best sounding headphones I’ve ever used. When they work I sing praises to my fellow man about the glory that is the Vibe Duo, but since in the last 9 months since I bought my first pair I’ve been through 3 pairs, and without their delicious sound for more than 6 weeks I can’t honestly recommend anyone purchase them if they in the slightest value reliability or customer service.

I’ve filed an official complaint with the Better Business Bureau to see if that might get me traction on getting my promised replacement pair. The full text of the complaint is below for public record.

Complainant Information
About 3 weeks ago my Vibe Duo earbuds stopped working and I contacted the company asking for a replacement pair. They sent a form letter with a ticket number (Ticket ID: ZWL-207849) and asked that I mail the broken earbuds to their mailing address. (V-Moda, 6464 sunset blvd. suite 500, hollywood ca 90028)

I sent the earbuds back via UPS (tracking number: -tracking number redacted-) and then didn’t hear anything back for 2 weeks. UPS confirms that the package was delivered 2 weeks prior, 2 days after shipment.

I re-contacted them asking for status and they took 3 days to respond and their response was that they needed the tracking number. I sent an email providing the tracking number and have not heard back from them. I have sent them two additional emails asking for status updates and to complete the RMA with no response. Each of my last 3 emails has included all of my contact information as well as the tracking number.

Resolution Sought: I would like the RMA to be completed and to receive the replacement earbuds for the ones sent their way (at their instruction).
Date Problem Started: 05/28/2008
Date of Transaction: 05/28/2008
Amount in Dispute: $110.00
Invoice Number: ZWL-207849
Complaint Type: Refund Promised
Product or Service: V-Moda offers “high end” earbuds.

Update: Mere hours after the posting of this article V-Moda got back to me with status on the warranty replacement and the happy news that they would be shipping the replacement Duos right away. The communication did not mention if the Better Business Bureau or this article had any influence on their response but the timing certainly is suspicious. The note included an apology stating that they had moved offices which had caused delays. While finally getting contact is nice V-Moda’s inability to properly set expectations was inexcusable.

Good customer service does not always mean instant resolution on an issue, but it always means rapidly responding to contact and setting expectations properly. After 9 days of sending mails to V-Moda with no response any customer is going to be frustrated – a frustration which could have simply been avoided with a quick email on day one stating that they had received the communication and would have an official response within two weeks.

In conclusion I can no longer heartily recommend the Vibe Duos to iPhone owners seeking headsets. Don’t get me wrong – I love my Vibe Duos, they sound great and are super comfortable but after 3 failures and such abysmal customer service I’m left with both a sour taste in my mouth and a sadness in my heart that if history is any indication my replacement Duos won’t last longer than 3-4 months .

Then go here to enter the latest Gear Live contest. It might only be a 1st gen iPhone on the eve of the 3G launch, but it’s at the right price: free! There are other prizes too, but who cares: orange creamsicle iPhone!

Getting on the flight was also an interesting experience. I’m not sure if this is normal for international flights but they had a long line of customs agents lining the hallway to the plane as I entered and were pulling every other passenger or so off to ask them conversational questions about their trip and duration. I suspect given the way the conversation happened that they were looking for nervousness or other signs of illicit activity.

While Northwest Airlines is no British Airways or Virgin it does manage to impress with a few amenities. Most notably is the inclusion of standard united states AC power outlets for each seat enabling laptop usage during the entire 12 hour flight without the use of additional batteries or proprietary charging adapters.

Aside from the availability of power (sweet, sweet power) the Airbus plane I’m on features a small screen embedded into the back of every seat. Coupled with a wired remote control in the armrest this screen is theoretically supposed to offer on-demand movies, in-flight information, games, and a variety of ways to part from one’s money. However the particular linux-powered system in my (rather the row of seats I am currently occupying) seems to have some problems as after three hard resets they still can’t get movies working. The attendant offered me 5,000 air miles for my trouble, but as I fly about once a year it wasn’t really worth the trouble of filling out the paperwork to claim them. Poor me.

*** time passes ****

I’m currently hurtling above the Atlantic ocean near Greenland at approximately 580MPH. As such the flight has been blessedly uneventful. The food service is average at best, but not so bad when I factor the fact that it’s being served to me 36,995 feet in the air while hurtling along at nearly the speed of sound.

I’ve been struck by how many male flight attendants there are on this flight. In my past experiences most flight crews have been predominately female – a stark departure from this 2:1 male to female ratio I’m seeing for this one. I wonder if that’s because this is an international flight, because this is a Northwest flight, or if I’m just lucky to get some decent eye candy on the 10 hour leg of my journey.

*** more time passes ***

While whisking along through the air I decided to flip through my download of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow’s latest book. It’s actually a fairly creepy book to read given how close it smacks to the truth. The subject of the book is a kid, barely 17, who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is detailed and questioned for potential involvement in a terrorist act. Having just been questioned needlessly by customs while leaving the country I’m suddenly even more aware at how the United States government has become just a little too Orwellian of late, all in the name of protection.

*** even more time passes ***

Well, Little Brother is done, and an excellent book. Bravo to Cory for writing in a language that the up and coming generation can understand bringing light to an issue that often adults find confusing. I highly recommended reading it – wether from a free download from Cory’s website or by purchasing it from your local retailer (and thus supporting Cory).

On a less related note I’m very glad that this plane has AC outlets. I’m already more than 8 hours into this flight and think that without the digital comfort provided by my laptop in the form of books, movies, and music I would have gone stir crazy by now. As is I think I’m on the verge of stir crazy just based on the fact that I’ve essentially been sitting in the same cramped and uncomfortable seat for 8 hours straight without standing up now. I can’t wait for the flight to land (less than 2 hours now) so I can stretch my legs and get some circulation going again.

*** time passes, but not much ***

Although walking about is discouraged I finally couldn’t take it any more. I managed to do a few laps around the plane (and hit the frighteningly small bathroom). It wasn’t much, but after 8 hours I’m not too picky when it comes to stretching my legs.

I’m now struck by the prevailing fact that I’m further from my home (or my birthplace) than I’ve ever been before. In the grand scheme of things it’s pretty trivial to be 4,037 miles away from Seattle (if the in-seat entertainment unit is to be trusted) given how man is on the verge of exploring the universe and expanding our horizons on a cosmic scale, but it’s still a big deal for me.

I’m very interested to see what my personal take on Europe is going to be. Somehow it now seems strange to only have a single viewpoint on life, to have only seen the American way. From what I’ve heard the rest of the world is a very different place – I’m eager to see how different (and how the same) it really is from the reality I’ve known my whole life.

*** 700 miles remaining to Amsterdam ***

As I’m sure my mother could attest I’m not so good at sitting still. I’m not so good at traveling either. I guess combining the two is one of those little personal tests one must go through to experience the world. Weird thing is that if my 101 goals are to be believed then I’ll be doing this all over to visit Japan, and then a miniature version of this to see the east coast of the United States.

Side note: I wonder what kind of coffee will greet me at the Amsterdam International Airport. Regardless of type, quality, or concentration I can assure you that immediately upon landing coffee will be consumed.

*** 48 minutes remaining to touchdown ***

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How about now? Now? Soon? Are we there yet?

Further side note: The iProduct is ubiquitous. Of the approximately 30 people I can see from my vantage here in the bowels of a giant plane I can count no less than 18 of them using the signature white earbuds. Sadly I myself am in this lot while I wait for my Vibe Duo’s to come back (yet again) from Vibe after their last failure.

*** the second leg ***

I’m currently on the second (and much shorter) leg of my journey. Nate and I made it to Amsterdam and got a chance to stretch our legs and wander about the Amsterdam airport for a few hours. Now that we have boarded our final leg we have less than one hour remaining until we land in Germany.

I’m busy cramming Learn German 101 podcasts trying to brush up my vocabulary to a meager minimum to allow me to get by. Yes – I realize that on the plane to Germany is likely not the best time to be learning German, but really when it comes right down to it I think this falls into the ‘better late than never’ category.

I’m quite looking forward to landing and getting checked in to our hotel. We will be landing at roughly 2pm local time and have the rest of the day free. After a quick shower I’m hoping to get out into Berlin with my camera and get in a little tourist time before the HP PSG event starts and I get sucked into work related stuff.

Right click and ‘Save link as’ to get the full size originals suitable for use on your iPhone.

I primarily use Photoshop for my image editing work and this process will be easy if you have Photoshop and are comfortable using it. It’s a very simple process and could be completed with virtually any image editor, although ones that can read Photoshop (PSD) files will make it easier to import the template discussed below. If you don’t want to spend money on a photo editing application GIMP is a free option that offers a decent interface and lots of tools to experiment with.

The first step of the process lies ahead: selecting the image to use. Ideally images should fit into one of two categories. These images have either a uniform simplicity, or a design flow that works with the iPhones overlaid controls.

The first type of image that works well has a uniformity to it. Because of the user interface controls partially obscuring the locked iPhone wallpaper images that focus on color or texture will work very well for this as obscuring a part of this kind of image does not hide key aesthetic elements. This kind of image is great for capturing a favorite color or surface while not adding distraction to Apple’s clean and minimalistic design.

A simplistic background

The second type of image that works well are images with a central focal point that is well buffered by simplicity. As the top and bottom of the iPhone are obscured by the overlaid controls having an image which can appreciated from the lower than center portion of the viewport on the lock screen, and with a background or less important top and bottom that are not critical to the aesthetic appeal of the image.

When taking photos for use as an iPhone wallpaper consider using a very narrow depth of field to direct interest to the center area of a vertical shot. Alternatively for a bolder look consider incorporating strong design elements such as bright angular sections of color. Remember that although the top and bottom will be obscured the image will still bleed through the overlay and provide some visual impact.

A more visually complicated sweet spot

Once an image is selected I use the iPhone template pictured below to help me compose it for the iPhone. I found this template on the Mac Rumors forum in this thread. Full credit goes to TheSpaz who created the awesome resource and shared it with the world.

The template is free to download and comes in the form of a PSD template with each element set up in a separate layer with the correct opacity. This template makes it easy to drop an image into the background layer and compose it to look its best on the iPhone.

As your source image is likely much larger than 320×480 pixels you will have to transform the image down to size. By using Photoshop’s free transform option on the layer you can adjust both the scaling of the image, as well as drag it around to ensure that the portion of the image you want visible is perfectly framed by the overlays.

The shot being used in this particular tutorial was taken with a Lensbaby, a lens that adds a significant amount of blur and vignetting away from the center of the screen. This effect helps draw the eye into a subject and simplify the background making it ideal for use in creating iPhone wallpapers. If you have an image you really like, but that does not work well with the overlays due to visual distractions consider vignetting the image in photoshop by gently blurring or darkening the top and bottom edges to draw the eye to the center of the composition.

Because the iPhone displays bright colors so well I usually find that bumping up the saturation of an image 4-8% adds a bit of pop to the wallpaper. A slight bit of sharpening with the unsharp mask filter often helps more detailed images retain clarity on the iPhone’s densely packed pixels. Both of these steps also help make the image look it’s best once it is saved out of the Photoshop format and into either a JPEG or PNG image.

Once you are happy with how your image looks within the preview offered by the template you are ready to save the image and put it on your iPhone. For this process you don’t want the templates overlays added so hide all of the overlay layers leaving your resized and cropped photo and any adjustment layers as your final image. From the file menu select ‘Save for Web & Devices’ to compress your final wallpaper down. I usually save my wallpapers as 32bit PNG images, however JPEG format backgrounds will work just as well.

Save the wallpaper with a recognizable name into the location where you have iTunes set to sync photos from. The next time you sync your iPhone the image will be synced into the iPhone’s library. From there you can view the image with the Photos application and then click the export scarab at the bottom of the screen to select that image for use as your wallpaper.

If you are interested in the image above the version saved without the overlays suitable for immediate iPhone use is here. You can also get the original PSD file here including all the layers, adjustments, and overlays used to create this.

That is all.

The article also points out that the iPhone is far from dominant with only 2.2% of the total US cellphone market, although if you ask me that’s a pretty impressive feat having not been on the market a full year and costing $500. I find it interesting that the iPhone beats out all Windows Mobile phones (none of which even show up in the top 25), and is rapidly gaining on RIM’s Blackberry devices.

I just got done blogging the rollout out their new Starbucks WiFi Music Store here in Seattle and I’m aquiver with coffee as a result. This morning I happened to stop into the Starbucks for a latte when I remembered that the new partnership for free iTunes access at Starbucks retail locations was lighting up in Seattle this morning so I whipped out my iPhone to check it out. The new Starbucks review is a good sister article to they soon to be posted in-depth review I did of the new iTunes WiFi Music Store.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me in the morning so I had to come back to review it over lunch about 90 minutes later. Between the quad shot earlier, and a triple over lunch I’m completely wired. *Bzzzt* *Bzzzt* *Bzzzt* *Bzzzzzzt*

Luckily I don’t have anything left on my to-do list for today so I’m pretty much free to lay on my couch watching movies with Skype. Finally getting a long weekend is really helping me feel a lot more relaxed from all the activity at work recently. Now for the rest of The Matrix Revolutions and then perhaps a little Lord of the Rings to continue on with the epic feel.

The WiFi music store lets users purchase songs on-the-go using any WiFi hotspot which essentially puts the entire multi-million track library of iTunes in your pocket – perfect for a quick impulse buy from time to time. It would be perfect for the impulse-heavy consumer like me – if it worked on my iPhone!

I’m having store authorization problems so I can’t actually buy anything right now. It’s rejecting my credentials to the point of locking my account, when I know I’m entering them correctly. I even verified my credentials on a desktop just to make sure I wasn’t having a senior moment.

I wrote up up a more detailed report of my WiFi Music Store experience for Gear Live if you want to know more. For now I’ll have to sulk about with my existing library while on-the-go and be content with the other features released today.

I just posted a couple of great articles to Gear Live on the Apple iPhone. First up is a bit of commentary and a link to the usability study performed by Computerworld which pits Apple’s iPhone, the HTC Touch, and the Nokia N95 against each other in a usability battle royale. Obviously the iPhone scores high marks, but there are some other interesting insights to be garnered from the review relating to how it differs from it’s main competitors in the touch-based phone world.

Next up I posted my in-depth review of the Vaja iVolution Top SP Holster case (featured in the image above) which is my current favorite iPhone accessory. It’s both stylish and protective – a great combination for a sexy device like the iPhone. You can check out the full review here.

“Vaja iVolution Top SP Holster for the iPhone” by sparktography

We’re surveying them in large numbers week in and week out. They’re telling us their EDGE experience is great.

I’m sorry, but I have to call plain and simple bullshit. The newly improved EDGE network is faster than the old one, and makes browsing the web possible on an iPhone, but certainly not “great”. The fantastic iPhone WiFi experience makes up for it, but whenever a hotspot is not handy life on the EDGE network is barely faster than dial-up internet access in a day when modern web content is designed with broadband network connections in mind.

Apple needs to hurry up and drop with the 3G iPhone – the modern capabilities of the device paired with a more modern network connection would make for the true killer phone.

After clicking through an obnoxiously long EULA I was able to click “Create Ringtone” to begin the process.Once clicked the main ringtone authoring pops up. The ringtone authoring interface allows you to select how long you want your ringtone to be (up to a maximum of 30 seconds), and position where you want the start and stop of the ringtone to be within the track. There are also fade-in and fade-out options to help the ringtone sound smoother as it comes to life on your precious, shiny iPhone.

After previewing my ringtone to my hearts content I clicked the “Buy” button and was charged the ass-raping $0.99 for a track I “already owned”. It’s a pity that Apple decided to cash in on the multi-billion dollar a year ringtone market – offering them for free on any track you own would have been a great differentiating feature for the iPhone.

It’s as easy as Steve made it sound in his keynote address – making my ringtone took less than 4 minutes including a fair amount of fussing around with the preview to get it just the way I wanted it. A quick sync later and now my phone erupts into a glorious chorus that’s far more unique and “me” than any of the included by default iPhone ringtone. Hazaa!

Unfortunately a lot of early adopters were a little peeved to have paid a $200 ‘early adopter tax’, but again Steve managed to turn this around and make it into another business gem: in an open letter to iPhone customers he has promised a $100 store credit to all early adopter iPhone purchasers. This move not only appeases the early adopters, but will help capitalize on the iPod/iPhone halo effect (many Mac switchers introduction to the world of Apple has been an iPod) by encouraging more new-to-Apple consumers to spend a little more money. Yes it’s $100 that Apple won’t make in profits, but how much do you want to bet that a majority of these new customers are so impressed with their iPhones that they go the extra mile and put the $100 credit towards a new iMac, Mac Mini, or Macbook and give OS X a spin as well. Given the margins Apple makes on their computers a $100 hit cuts into profits in the short term, but will likely increase profits in the long terms as more and more consumers “join the Mac club” and help grow the Apple user base.

Bravo Steve, bravo!

I just sat down to watch another episode of the Planet Earth on HD-DVD, and reached for my Macbook only to discover its battery was entirely dead. In thinking back I suddenly realized that whereas once I used both my iMac in the bedroom, and the Macbook in the living room on a day to day basis I haven’t actually touched my Macbook in well over a week. Strangely my iPhone is to blame!

Back in my Windows Mobile days I treasured the mobility offered by my cellphone – being able to check my email and do basic web browsing is a modern marvel indeed, but the experience was clearly that of a cell phone – second rate at best when compared to a full blown computer with a big screen and full-blown keyboard. While checking a movie time on the go was possible (and useful) with Windows Mobile and Symbian devices it simple wasn’t the fun, easy experience one looks for in a portable computing experience.

The iPhone makes it easy to browse the full blown web and communicate quickly without getting in my way that it’s overcome the arms reach barrier and become my device of choice for quick internet tasks even with my perfectly serviceable laptop sitting next to me. Since both devices can accomplish the task with similar ease why reach over and open the laptop when the iPhone is already in hand, just begging to be used. The overcoming of the arms reach barrier has reached further than my living room – I now find myself doing almost 50% of my personal communications via my iPhone.

One might say that not reaching for the laptop is the heights (or depths) of laziness, but I’d much rather point the finger at the wonders of engineering that Apple managed to cram into their diminutive ultra-portable computer, the iPhone.

Is the iPhone honeymoon over? It’s more than two months later and I’m still writing blathering blog posts about how great it is, so I guess not!

iPhone – I still love my iPhone! I’m really surprised at how long the honeymoon is lasting – I’ve had my iPhone for about two months now and I still find myself quietly gibbering about how cool it is. Most gadgets have a 2-3 week honeymoon phase with me before I take a flight of fancy to some new toy, and the best of gadgets sometimes make a month – my iPhone has not only blown past that limit, but doubled it. What makes it so worthy of praise I ask myself: a fun to use, well implemented device that does pretty much everything I need it to.

PAX – The Penny Arcade Expo happened this year in the Washington State Convention Center, a big improvement over the overcrowding of last years shoulder to shoulder overly-olfactory cluster of un-bathing gamers. The extra breathing room this year helped make for a more open experience – much easier to get around. When compared to other technology conventions I’ve been to PAX has a certain charm in that it’s much more focused on the consumers (gamers in this case) than the technology. This leads to a more causal vibe than so many other events.

Content gamut aside one of the things that has struck me as odd over my past week of using my iPhone is how differently implemented the YouTube application is on my iPhone versus my AppleTV. They both allow for the browsing of a partial selection of the YouTube library streamed directly from the internet, but they both have some features the other lacks. Here is a breakdown of client-specific features that have puzzled me:

AppleTV:

• On my AppleTV I can sign into my standard YouTube account using my Google credentials.
• Because I can sign into my YouTube account I can rate videos.
• I can save videos to my accounts ‘favorites’ list for later viewing on either the AppleTV or in a web browser.
• Unlink the iPhone there is no way to share videos with friends. Although I understand that there is no built in web browser one would think you could at least sync the recommendation to iTunes and have iTunes send a mail using your default mail client on the desktop PC.

iPhone:

• I can’t sign into my web-based YouTube account.
• There is no way to rate videos, however I can view what others average rating for a video is.
• Because I am not signed in I cannot mark a video as a favorite. There is a bookmarking feature which serves a similar need, however bookmarked videos do not show up in my favorites list on the YouTube website or on my AppleTV.
• I can send links to YouTube videos from the mail client on the iPhone via the ‘Share’ button in the YouTube UI. Sharing is fun and creates a very social experience out of it.

All in all I think YouTube was a great addition to both product offerings, but I’m puzzled as to the disparity in the feature lists. I will be interested to see if future software updates for both platforms bring their feature sets closer together. Google’s “cloud of data” and Apple’s experience in creating engaging and intuitive user interfaces making for a market juggernaut that will be hard to beat.

Now that I’ve spent a full week with the iPhone I wanted to put pen to paper (or should that be fingers to keys) and write a more in depth review than my initial impressions. Needless to say Apple generated a lot of hype with the iPhone and many feared it would flop in the face of near impossible levels of pre-release fanaticism. Thankfully I am glad that after a full weeks usage I can attest: Apple actually pulled it off. They lived up to or exceeded every single promise they made about the iPhone.

My impressions are obviously quite favorable over all, but the iPhone does have a few flaws. Regardless of it’s flaws I think this will be an industry-changing phone and will raise the bars for Microsoft, Symbian, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and other competitors in the mobile marketplace to produce better phones featuring integration, ease of use, and stability all orders of magnitude ahead of what they now offer.

Things Apple got right with the iPhone:
The experience
Using the iPhone is just plain fun. Apple has managed to take something fairly common like a phone and completely revolutionize it. From the simple fades and transitions between modes to the delete animations the whole device feels very modern and high-tech. It’s a thin and highly attractive device that attracts attention and feels a little like something from a few years in the future – particularly compared to the industrial design of its main competitors. It’s a simple interface to learn (more so than any previous OS I’ve used before – mobile or desktop) and has playful feel that just begs to be explored.

The iPhone provides a fun to use and mostly consistent experience end to end. In all previous smart-phones each different feature had a different experience: you could use it as a phone, or as a browser, or as an email client but each different application and experience has a very different feel to it. With the iPhone you don’t use a phone, browser, or email client – you use the iPhone. Everything feels very well integrated, and intermeshed. It does have a bit of a learning curve for the device as a whole, but once you learn it you can have any of it’s features at your fingertips. The closest competitor they have in this space is the consumer-oriented Sidekick from Danger, but the iPhone puts even that to shame.

The screen
The screen on the iPhone is crystal clear and very high resolution. It features a 480×320 screen (more than twice the resolution of your standard 320×240 screen), but at a very high DPI so text, images, and video looks stunningly crisp. The screen has an ambient light sensor so it’s always the perfect brightness for your environment. The brightest setting is stunning and makes the iPhone’s screen completely visible outdoors in bright sunlight – a feat most phones (smart or otherwise) can’t lay a finger on.

The browser
The Safari browser on the iPhone is simply stunning. Not only can it properly render websites that previously been completely impossible to view on mobile phones, but the intelligent zooming, rotating, JavaScript/AJAX support makes the Safari browser the pinnacle of the iPhone’s applications. While viewing a web page simply rotating the iPhone to either side rotates and re-zooms the section you are viewing. A quick double tap on any section of a web page (for instance a column, image, or form) zooms to that section for readability, and then you can either scroll to other sections or double tap again to go back to seeing the entire website. The Safari browser included in the iPhone even has a multi-window feature allowing you to browse multiple websites at the same time, or handle popups if a site requires them (and it blocks the popups you don’t want).

The advanced Javascript and CSS/DOM included in the Safari browser make some amazing applications possible. People have already written browser based interfaces for SSH, IRC, and other chat programs. Obviously a web application can never be quite as integrated as a thick client can be, but this browser proves it’s a fairly minor distinction at this point. I expect to see a large crop of iPhone web applications springing up in the next few months as developers hone their iPhone web development skills.

Mapping by google, interface by Apple
Apple’s much vaunted Google Maps application delivers as promised. The pinch and zoom features are well implemented, although it’s usefulness is limited without some sort of geo-location feature, be it actual GPS or based on cell towers/Wifi access points. One of the ‘hidden gems’ of the Google Maps application is it’s traffic feature – on the way down to my car every morning a quick click into the iPhone’s mapping experience and I can see which of the freeways has the least congestion for my morning commute.

Talking about talking
When it comes to being an actual phone the iPhone delivers above expectations. Sure, I’ve used better ‘dumb’ phones in terms of signal strength or voice quality, but as smart phones goes this is well implemented and very usable as a voice communications device. Conversations are easy to hear for both parties and the interface for dialing is very slick looking. While you can’t type out someone’s name to call them the scroll by letter feature is well implemented and you can set as many contacts as you want to be favorites and show up on a short list of people to call. Since I use my phone to make and receive calls so infrequently I’ve not found this to be a problem.

Messaging
Further on the topic of the iPhone as a phone the new Visual Voicemail feature is stunning. Rather than having to call up my provider and navigate through Byzantine phone menues with a dial-pad AT&T sends the voicemail to my phone using the data network, and I can browse, play, replay, call-back, and delete all without calling my voicemail. The Visual Voicemail feature brings more of an email paradigm to voicemail and makes someone like me who usually HATES voicemail find it pleasant to use and entirely tolerable.

In addition to making voicemail a pleasant experience Apple chose some highly tasteful alerts. When an SMS, calendar alarm, or missed call occurs the lock screen displays a visual history since last unlock on translucent blue pads. Sadly emails (and their subject lines) are not privy to the same unlock screen notifications and must be accessed via the email application.

The mail client is a well implemented piece of software. While it’s still not perfect. It’s better than all mobile email solutions I’ve seen, and a good number of desktop mail clients. It lacks true push capabilities with most email servers making the iPhone not the ideal solution for many enterprise customers, but it more than makes up for it in my book with near perfect IMAP support. I can have it check my inbox regularly (every 15, 30, 90, or 120 minutes) as well as browse my entire IMAP hierarchy and browse my last 10 years of mail, pulling down emails and attachments from the server on demand.

Many of the initial nay-sayers of the iPhone were focusing on it’s virtual keyboard. Having come from several years of QWERTY phones I myself was more than a little worried about this. Luckily Apple pulled it off and I’ve found that after a few days of getting the virtual keyboard into my head I actually like it as much as a physical keyboard. While it lacks tactile feedback it does offer the ability to change the keyboard depending on the task (adding a .com button to the keyboard while in the browser for instance), and it’s predictive text corrects pretty much every ‘fat finger’ mistake I’ve thrown at it. After a while you learn to just trust they keyboard and grind away at typing as fast as you can and magically what you meant to appear on screen does – just be prepared for a couple of days of re-learning the skill of typing on QWERTY thumb boards.

The iPhone as an iPod
The iPod portion of the iPhone is extremely well implemented. It’s more intuitive than even the 5.5G iPods which preceded it. While I barely use Coverflow at home in iTunes I’ve found it to be a very natural way to browse the 20 or so albums that I have selected to bring with me. There are other nice touch based interface tweaks which make selecting music easier, and allows for a ton of eye candy. I have a few minor complaints about the iPod interface, but I’ll leave those for the ‘what Apple missed’ section later in the article.

There are a lot of nice audio touches like slowly fading the music when a call comes in, and pausing the music entirely when you accept the call. When you hang up the music un-pauses and gracefully fades back in. Most alert sounds (new email or a calendar event for instance) are accompanied by the music fading down just slightly to make sure you hear the alert but without jarring you out of your music listening experience. These touches make using the iPhone in a car with an auxiliary input or iPod integration fun and far less jarring or complicated than dealing with a separate iPod and phone.

The iPhone features a standard headset jack so you can theoretically use it with any headphones, not just the manufacturer provided ones like so many phone manufacturers force you to by using a non-standard jack. This let’s the audiophiles of the world ditch the built in earbuds for some high end headphones. Doing this loses out on the built in microphone, but gains a lot of quality. So far the audio quality has been fantastic and even when hooked up to my high-end home stereo system the output sounds great! See the ‘what Apple missed’ section below for some more comments on the headphone jack.

Connectivity
The network for the iPhone is both a good thing and a bad thing. The inclusion of EDGE data (it’s faster than dial up was way back in the day – but not by that much) for getting the internet from ATT&T was a surprise, and makes browsing out on the road somewhat painful. Luckily Apple made up for this by adding a great WiFi implementation. The handoff between WiFi and EDGE is seamless if you have previously approved a wireless access point, and the WiFi power consumption actually appears lower than EDGE to me.

As much as some might gripe about the EDGE data connection it’s obvious that they did it for battery life. 3G networks like AT&T’s HSDPA network use far more power than EDGE modems do and would have significantly reduced the fantastic battery life the iPhone offers. On my old AT&T 8525 (an HTC Hermes) I was lucky to get 12 hours of use out of my phone between the occasional phone call, some web browsing, and a few hundred emails. The iPhone makes it through all that (and a lot more web browsing because the experience is so much better) and still has 40-50% of it’s battery life left at the end of the day. Apple quotes 8 hours of talk time and over 24 hours of music playback – very impressive numbers for any phone.

The camera
The 2 megapixel camera included with the iPhone is definitely a camera phone and can’t hold a finger to a dedicated camera device it still takes some impressive photos. Like all digital cameras it does best in bright, evenly light scenes, but even in unevenly lit scenes (like the shot below) come out looking halfway decent. The iPhone camera falls flat on it’s face in dimly lit scenes though, and produces something that could be considered modern art of sorts: black canvas with slightly less black blobs hovering over it like ethereal souls from our ancestors.

YouTube is nice, although unless you are within range of a WiFi access point be prepared to both wait a long time and get very poor quality video. The fact that the videos are encoded in both EDGE and WiFi friendly versions is a nice touch, but the limited availability of the YouTube library is a bit annoying at times.

And one more thing: syncing
A final slick little touch iPhone has over previous iPods and competing media-centric smart-phones is that you can sync an iPhone to multiple computers at once. For instance I was able to sync my iPhone with a Windows PC running Microsoft Outlook to get my contacts and calendars onto the iPhone, but sync music, podcasts, and video from iTunes on my mac. This is a slick little touch and one that will make it easy for people to keep their contacts at work, and their media collection at home.

Things Apple missed with the iPhone:
No IM client
No instant messaging application. The SMS and email clients are very well implemented (chat bubbles aside in the SMS client) but with todays youth generation ditching email for IM I’m surprised to see it not included at launch. I am guessing that iChat will be one of the earlier software updates – sadly that will likely continue with the chat bubbles, and be AIM only – a tough pill to swallow for a heavy MSN Messenger network user. The good news is that various clever web guru’s are already working on hacking IM, SSH, VNC (done by my uber-geek friend Nate), and IRC onto the iPhone via web interfaces.

No 3rd party applications
No SDK for building full blown iPhone applications for 3rd parties yet. A lot can be done with a Safari web application, but there are a lot of Mac applications that I think could port fairly well to the iPhone – Adium, Ecto, and NetNewsWire to name a few. Hopefully Apple will amend this shortly and release a full blown SDK for the iPhone to the legions of hip cool Mac developers.

iPod niggles
The iPhone features a standard headset jack so you can theoretically use it with the headphones of your choice. The only problem is that the headphone jack is recessed slightly more than normal headphone jacks are so some headphones require an adapter to work properly. I was able to trim down the rubber hump on one of my headphones with a sharp knife, but for my metal tipped Grado SR225’s and Etymotic ER-6’s I’m out of luck until I get my hands on one of the adapters.

Another miss is that while locked in iPod mode the unlock screen fails to show a scrubber (a bar representing the track with a ball on the track to show the current play position), the length of the track, and other information so I see everything about a track without having to unlock the iPhone. It’s nice that the unlock screen shows my album art and the current time, but I’d like to get more information about the track I’m listening to than just the name.

It’s also mildly annoying that while playing audio you can have the scrubber or the rating of the song visible but not both at the same time. I have a large music collection and I’ve been working to slowly rate it all for future use – with the current iPhone music interface it takes several more ‘clicks’ than I would think necessary. These are both such minor gripes that I’m almost certain Apple will address them in a future build of the iPhone software.

More connectivity
The inclusion of slower EDGE data rather than AT&T’s high-speed HSDPA connection. AT&T ramped up their EDGE network for the iPhone at launch to 200kbps, which is 2-3 times faster than dial up, but nothing like the 700-1,000kbps connections I regularly saw with my HTC Hermes on AT&T’s network. I’m listing this as my last “thing Apple missed” because with the seamless transition to wifi, and increased power consumption of HSDPA I think Apple may have made the right decision in the short term – but keep an eye out for a 3G iPhone once the chip-sets become more power-friendly and as battery technology improves.

Conclusion:
My goodness run, don’t walk to buy an iPhone. I bought it with reservations – particularly about the EDGE data, yet everything else about the iPhone makes me feel so warm and gooey inside that I’m keeping the iPhone for sure. The iPhone will revolutionize the mobile industry and for once I’m pretty damn proud to be an early adopter and on the bleeding edge of tomorrow. I can’t wait to see some of the new phones Apples competitors will be coming up with in the next few years, and what kind of long term impact the iPhone will have on the mobile phone market as we know it – consider the bar officially raised!

The iPhone is the first phone I’ve ever used that works as advertised, offers a great mobile web browsing experience, great battery life, and is fun to use. I give it a solid 8 out of 10 Stars of Sparky, and would have given it the 10/10 Stars of Sparky had the iPhone featured a true SDK and high speed data out of the box.

Posted from my iPhone.

Update: Now that I’ve had my iPhone for about 24 hours I’m still very impressed (particularly with the Safari browser experience), but I find myself wishing they had already released the API. A few select features are missing and those could be met (for me at least) by adding an SSH client, Adium, and MP3 ringtone support. Still – big concerns given how impressed I am with the rest of the device and it’s high level of integration of features and ease of use for switching between them.

If only life could be that simple: today I got a notice from a collections agency regarding my “outstanding bill with Verizon”. Not only was the bill ridiculously inflated (I suspect identity theft because they claim the line had active for several months), but I had to spend another hour on the phone with them sorting it out this evening.

Now tomorrow I have to call a different part of Verizon back during normal business hours, then call the collections agency, then call Verizon back to make sure they get all connected up with the collections agency, then call Experian to make sure it won’t affect my credit history. Talk about a ridiculous waste of time because of Verizon’s lack of follow through on an account cancellation and internal buracracy.

End of the story: don’t give Verizon one penny of your money. Be sure to get everything in writing when you cancel your service. Verizon has some very great employees (I spoke with one this evening), but their internal workings are screwed up. They don’t follow through with actions like full account cancellation, and don’t do enough to check the identity of callers.

Update: Even worse – I talked to the collections department at Verizon this morning and they didn’t send me to collections – this was for a land line I had with GTE (who was purchased by Verizon) over 7 years ago. It would appear the collections agency acquired some form debt from GTE as a part of the sale. Now I need to start a formal dispute process in order to get details about what the GTE thing was all about. This is getting more and more silly (and time consuming) by the minute.

Oh look – SHINY!

What can I say – I’m a sucker for a good sexy form factor. Luckily I’m not that much of a sucker and I won’t be keeping it for long. Recently Motorola announced their “Blackberry killer”, the Q. The Q shares a lot of the Blackberries features (nicely implemented scroll wheel, similar form factors) and according to their marketing is being aimed clearly at RIM’s sagging market. Being the true technology wh0re that I am (with a particular weakness for cell phones and their ilk) I had to rush out and buy one – but I’ll be returning it shortly now that I’ve had a chance to see it’s short list pros and rather extensive collection of cons.

Motorola has managed to capture a rather attractive RAZR like form factor in a QWERTY phone device. I have to say that as far as the hardware goes I wouldn’t mind keeping this one slid discreetly into my pocket – except for the fact that it’s sexy form factor is pretty much the only selling point the Q has.

The UI is simply bad – they chose to restrict Windows Mobile 5.0 to a horribly large font (for readability?) and thus sacrifice precious screen real estate that could be used to display more information to the user. The scroll wheel makes it a bit more tolerable due to the ease at which one can scroll through a mail, but it’s still cumbersome and takes at least twice as many “screen-fulls” of information to see the same email on the Q as it would take on my HTC Wizard.

The mail client has some strange restrictions on it which make it almost completely unusable for me. It won’t support automatic syncing of IMAP folders other than the root inbox folder, and won’t let me use IMAP IDLE, or set a polling frequency of less than 15 minutes. In this modern day and age of “now now NOW!” it’s strange to see a company trying to push a phone with an artificial limit on how quickly you can check your mail in it.

Next up is the lack of recent OS updates. Verizon and Motorola decided to ship with the base Windows Mobile 5.0 OS – not the newly released AKU2 with MSFP. AKU2 is the second service pack for the Windows Mobile operating system, and made some astonishing improvements including true push mail (and the Q lacking this really will prevent it from going toe to toe with the Blackberry) and significantly better memory management.

For being pushed as a “All in Wonder” data-centric device the Q manages to completely disappoint. With it’s difficult to navigate UI, and non-poweruser centric mentality it’s most likely not going to end up in the hands of tomorrow burgeoning enterprise customers who will instead be lured away from the HTC Hermes or Palm’s Treo 700w (also made by HTC)

Lastly I was hoping to be blown away with EVDO having come from Cingular’s aging EDGE network. I think the term underwhelmed comes to mind – it’s faster than EDGE, but not by much. For my money I would rather pay half as much for data service through Cingular and get 85% of the throughput.

The moral of this story? Never betray HTC! HTC makes the best Windows Mobile devices on the market (Wizard, Apache, Hermes, and Treo 700w) and knows how to create a truly positive user experience.

Technorati Tags: Cell Phone, Motorola, Microsoft, Technology, Motorola Q, Windows Mobile 5.0, WM5.0, Bad user experience