kirktastic

I’ve had the iPhone for a week and I really like it. In spite of the ATT part. It is great to be able to go to any website and to view my email anytime, anywhere in the version god intended. The pundits say the ATT EDGE data network is too slow. It isn’t too slow, but it is slower than the 3G network that ATT is rolling out. But it isn’t a deal killer. Sites load fast enough and those who don’t usually have mobile versions that take a second to load. But I spend a lot of time in places within a wifi cloud so the speeds are zippy.

The phone part works well. Great voice quality and features. Again, nice to have a 100% copy — complete with multiple phone numbers and addresses for everyone in my Mac’s address book.

The text entry takes some getting used to but the suggested spelling is pretty good. But it is faster than entering text on the multi-tap old phones I’ve had. There’s no IM, but the SMS client acts like IM down to having the same sound effects as iChat. And Katy talked me into Twitter so I can make updates via SMS [although twitter on the iPhone's screen is pretty useful]

The iPod is fucking awesome. Coverflow is a nice way to browse album titles. I only miss the ability to search. iPod does it and it is clunky since you have to spell the words out with the click wheel. But the flick gestures on the iPhone makes it pretty easy to find what you want. The video is pretty great too. The only downside, of course, is capacity. 8GB when you have 40GB of music and 20GB of video makes choosing what I want to hear a challenge.

What does suck is the lack of some things that I’ve had on phones for years. Like MMS, to be able to send multimedia messages to other cellphones. You can get around from that by sending a pic to phonenumber@carrier.com, but still, why leave that out? The camera is sort of basic. There’s a nice shutter visual when you snap the picture, no zoom, no flash, or effects like my K800i had. The Bluetooth can only be used for a headset. No data connection. No moving files between a computer and the phone. There’s no voice dial.

But the positives outweigh the negatives by a country mile. The visuals are Mac OS X complete with transparencies and animations. Stuff on Macs but never on a phone. Stuff that Windows haven’t been able to do until Vista. The difference is you need so much more processor and graphics processor power and Apple figured out how to do it on a phone.

The interactions with the phone change everything. The flicking and pinching gestures to zoom and move around on the screen. Rotating the phone rotates the image to widescreen view. I find myself wanting to just touch and use my Mac like on the phone [and rumor has it, new Macs will have this feature in October].

Also: You’ve noticed I’ve changed the theme again. I also found a plugin that optimizes the site for iPhone. I didn’t do this for you, I did it for me. The site looks fine on iPhone, but there’s a lot of panning and zooming to see it. But if you visit on the iPhone, the posts look a lot like the email client on iPhone. If you’re curious about what I mean, go to an Apple store and type my url into one of the demo units.