06.29.07
Posted in iPhone Preview at 6:28 pm by mc
I changed my mind and went off the the Soutlake, Texas Apple Store today. I got there around 12:35-12:40pm and was around #85 in line. I walked out and was back in my car with an 8 gig iPhone and a case at 6:35. I would suspect there were 150 people in line at 6:00pm.
I suspect anyone who wants an iPhone this weekend will be able to get one. I got to play with the demo in the store and the web browsing is amazing. Working on getting it activated now. My next post should be my first iBlog.
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 7:31 am by mc
In a recent Developer’s Conference Keynote address, Steve Jobs kind of chuckled and encouraged people to buy their iPhones on launch day at AT&T Stores. When I first got swept up in the mania, I never even considered going to an Apple Store. I was buying an AT&T cell phone, I would certainly go to an AT&T Store. Yet it seems now like the Apple Stores are all getting massive inventories. I have heard reports of many Apple Stores getting at least 500 iPhones for sale, and in some cases reports of twice that many. On the other hand I have heard reports of AT&T stores getting anywhere from 5-150 phones.
The problem is if you scout it out, in many cases, AT&T stores have as many people camping out at them as Apple Stores do. So right now it looks like your best bet to get a phone on Friday is at an Apple Store. When I see 8 or 9 people at multiple AT&T locations, and see the same numbers at big Apple Stores, I definitely think the Apple Store is the way to go. Hope I did not give my secret away.
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 7:00 am by mc
Well I could not help myself any longer and decided to drive by the nearest AT&T Store (only about 2 miles away), to see if any lines had started. At first I could not see anything, then I saw a two-man tent with 4 chairs sitting there right outside the store. Behind the one guy with the tent I could see 5 or 6 more people waiting in line. I guess it could be worse, but I am not likely to get inline until this afternoon, so I hope that is good enough.
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 5:39 am by mc
Today is the moment of truth. Are you going to get an iPhone today? I plan on getting one. To be honest, here in Dallas/Fort Worth it has been the raniest June on Record. I hope the skies open up and deluge us all day today. I want people to be discouraged from going out. I have my plan in place, but I am not camping now, and I will not likely go by the AT&T store which is my first choice until mid-to-late afternoon. Will that be too late? Only time will tell.
Personally I like to believe that there will be plenty of phones available for anyone who wants one today. I can have my dreams, can’t I? I said I would have no problem falling back to online ordering tonight, but I think as it stands right now, I would be disappointed if I did not have an iPhone by the end of the day.
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06.28.07
Posted in iPhone Preview at 10:50 am by mc
So far we know that neither of these will be a part of the iPhone, as of right now. However, in the internal AT&T documents, I mentioned it specifically says that MMS and Instant Messages are included in the data plan. This may be a good sign that with a software upgrade these will eventually be available to iPhone users. I do not care that much about MMS, but I would really love to use Instant Messaging on the iPhone over text messaging. I am not really interested in using any of the web-based hacks either. I want a real time IM client that I can use.
Update: Some people have correctly intepreted the clause to be applicable to other phones that might have the iPhone SIM card placed in them. So it is not directly talking about those features for the iPhone but instead that phones that supported those features would have them included in the iPhone Data Plan if you swapped out SIM cards.
I can still hold out hope for a native Instant Messenging Client.
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 10:33 am by mc
I want to get into this issue right now, because a lot of people bashing the iPhone without using it are basing their claims on the speed of the AT&T Edge network. First of all we need to understand that the Edge network is the largest wireless data network in the United States. We also need to understand that it has been undergoing a pretty significant upgrade. We also need to realize that under ideal conditions 3G is not many times faster than Edge, it is a couple of times faster.
All that is irrelevant though, when you factor in how most people will use the iPhone and where they will use the iPhone and in reality the average data thoroughput for the average user will be much higher than any other comparable smartphone. That is Wifi. I don’t know where some of these critics and analysts live, but where I live I have Wifi. So Wifi will always be the order of the day at my house. Now I work at home so that also covers me there. Regardless, I suspect a lot of people will have Wifi access at or near their work. Add in all the other Wifi hotspots that exist, and in some cities where total Wifi is free everywhere, and you have to understand Wifi is the future of portable device communications, not cellular broadband networks. Apple is embracing the future with this, and it will only help to increase the availability of Wifi.
So while those of you who are pining away for 3G and your miniscule battery life, I will be zooming around on Wifi, and for those times when I am in transient or out of a Wifi area, I will use the slightly slower Edge network and not have any problems with it.
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 10:23 am by mc
It was interesting to see on the front page of my local paper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Business Section a big article and picture of the iPhone. A few things caught me right away about the picture though. First of all it only had eleven icons, it was missing the recently revealed YouTube icon, and it also said “Cingular” in the upper-left hand corner, not AT&T. Since both these items have been changed for at least a while now it seems they could have gotten updated images. Doing a quick Google search though, I find many other news sources have been using this older picture to show with recent articles.
I don’t see any straight on images of the iPhone with the updated changes on the Apple site, but I suspect media outlets do have access to newer images from Apple’s PR department, just call it a guess. So why are these media types using old pictures? Probably the same reason why they are going to the same industry pundits and analysts who tend to provide commentary and opinions based on nothing more then conjecture. With the internal headline of “Limitations May Hinder Sales of iPhone” I get to read through a litnany of fancy titles who act like they have actually used the device or have something useful to contribute about it, yet in actuality all I get is a lot of hot air and in some cases bad information.
I boil it down to lazy reporting. They are too lazy to get new images, and they are too lazy to actually do any work for a story, so they e-mail a handful of the same people they always e-mail, put it together and write a story. I probably put my effort into this blog entry then David Wethe put into his Business Page article on the iPhone in the Star-Telegram. You can ask him yourself if you like. Dwethe@star-telegram.com
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 9:21 am by mc
The Boy Genius Report, which has been an excellent source of iPhone information has released this internal document for AT&T detailing their plans and methods for Launch Day for the iPhone. You can check it out Here.
Go Directly to the Key Points PDF
Go Directly to the Entire 65 Page Document in PDF
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06.27.07
Posted in iPhone Preview at 9:21 pm by mc
3 Things You Should Know with Anne P. Mitchell and Bryan McCullogh interview Shawn King of Mac Life about the iPhone. He works closely with David Pogue of the New York Times so got some up-close experience with the phone.
You can listen to it via iTunes here. It is episode 25.
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Posted in iPhone Preview at 10:49 am by mc
Apple has released a demo of their touchscreen keyboard here. Personally I am very interested to see it. I know people who have long double-thumbed it on regular keyboards want to believe there is no way it can be faster, or without tactile feedback as useful, but the demo does point to some interesting tools it uses to help the overall experience.
It is interesting to see someone typing away at lightning speed with both thumbs at the end of the demo. Personally I will wait and see for myself, but considering all the benfefits the device is able to have because it does not have a hardware keyboard, anything that gets this “soft” keyboard in the ballpark will make it more than a worthwhile trade-off.
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