Yes, I know, I owe you the third and final Puppet history post, and I’ve got a few other posts brewing in there, but, well, I just can’t seem to muster up the energy in the hour or two between the girls going to sleep and my own descent into fearful (of waking babies) slumber.
I’ve now had my iPhone for a bit over two weeks, and it seems to be easier to write about others’ gadgets than my own software, so here’s a bit about this one. Note that this isn’t an attempt at a structured review — it’s a conversational, “luke hates stuff” review. I do a much better version in person, so feel free to corner me at the next conference.
Overall, I think I made the right decision. The momentum (and thus the developers, the apps, etc.) is clearly behind the iPhone, but more importantly, my wife can easily use hers while nursing, or sitting with sleeping babies, which turns out to be really important. The fact that the iPhone never requires two hands is critical for her.
See, I think the g1 was actually a better option for me, but the iPhone is a dramatically better option for her, and my geek snobbery loses out to her practicality. It’s also true that the device itself is much better — I can comfortably put it in my pocket, and I find that the soft keyboard is just as good as the g1′s physical keyboard. And all of you crackberry addicts whining about two-thumbed typing, I do it all the time on my iphone and I’m about 10x faster that way, probably about as fast as I was on the g1.
That being said, my main conclusion about the iphone is, “welcome to 1987″. That’s the last year you couldn’t run multiple apps at the same time on the Mac, and this is one of the two main things that sticks out about the iphone for me. That, and the modal notification dialogs.
For those who didn’t suffer through MacOS 7.x and earlier, modal dialogs require your attention and will not go away or let you do anything else until you deal with them. And they suck, horribly. There’s absolutely no excuse for them in a modern operating system, and yet…
Here, on the iPhone, we have an OS that can’t run multiple apps at the same time, and if I get a text message while I’m working, I can’t do a damn thing until I deal with the text. These, combined with the lack of any real task switching (“it’s easy – press home to start all over again!”), mean that you’re pretty much back in the 80s computing experience, except with a touchscreen and the interwebs.
Obviously I’m exaggerating, but it really is ironic that Apple going to have to relearn the MultiFinder and modal dialog lessons all over again. I’m sorry, this push thing just won’t work — even if the technology works, and the devs adopt it, and it scales for ten million poorly written iphone apps, you still have the modal notification dialogs to deal with.
The g1 had this completely licked — it had a single notification space, and you had both non-modal notifications, and something like builtin task-switching because you could go from the different notifications straight to the correct app. Oh, and you could hold down the home key to get a list of the most recent six apps. Crappy task switching, but task switching nonetheless. Whereas the iPhone just says, “hit the home key!”
For those of you saying, “oh, well, sure, maybe for *some* people, but that doesn’t matter to me!”, I have a relatively normal scenario for you. I went for a bike ride the other day, and I chose to involve two apps: I was listening to podcasts, and I was using TrackThing to track my bike ride. Unfortunately, my podcast was 50 minutes, and my ride was an hour and a half. Thus, partway through the ride, my soundtrack ends, and I have to switch apps. Because TrackThing is stupid, I thus lose my current ride state. Actually, in retrospect, I don’t think the state was gone, I think it just looked like it, because it used a stupid snapshot as its startup screen, implying there was no data. The point is, something changes and you have to switch apps, and most of the time you really do have to switch apps, and now you’re stuck. Especially since one of the favorite techniques to get you to pay for an app is to provide storage in the paid version.
But I have a simpler example of how the lack of background apps and the lack of non-modal dialogs suck: Instant messaging. I was an IMing fool on my G1 — it was almost justification for the phone by itself. But I can’t use IM at all on my iphone, because none of the apps can run in the background. And imagine what life would look like if they could: You’d constantly be being interrupted, being forced to deal with each new IM. This problem is exactly why Growl on the Mac is so great: Passive notification but no need to act immediately.
The lack of backgrounding means that the *only* option for IM is a solution from Apple. There’s just no way anyone else can provide anywhere near a sufficient solution. Sure, I can use Meebo or Palringo, which will keep me logged in for a few minutes, but I’ll have to continually switch out of my current app to the IM app (going back to home, then the IM app) to see if there are replies or whatever. Useless.
And the worst thing is, even if Apple does provide a great IM app, it’ll still suck because of the modal notifications. If I’m writing an email or reading an article, I don’t want to deal with the IM that second — I want to deal with it in a couple of minutes, when I’m ready. This is exactly how we’ve all learned to do IM by now, but you can tell the iPhone will never allow it.
And for those of you saying, “oh, well, I don’t use two apps in the same day, and I don’t use IM”, then suck it, because you also can’t use Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Or rather, you can, but you can only use one of them, else you’ll constantly be rotating around each of these apps. I have this list of applications that I just open periodically on my iphone to see if anything new is happening, because they can’t notify me. And for the record, Mail isn’t one of them — I actually don’t want push email, but I need push IM, and I wouldn’t mind some forms of push Twitter and Facebook.
And for those of you saying, “Oh, I use SMS instead of IM”, please, make a single friend in another country, and you’ll be so busy in the second job you’ll need to pay for the text messages that we won’t have to listen to your silliness.
Now that I’ve gotten past the really annoying, in your face, this-is-stupid part of the review, let’s cover a couple of other bits. First, there are some great things about it. The touchscreen, and the keyboard, are great. It’s a device I constantly want to use, want to find a use for.
The app store has clearly inspired people and companies to make apps they wouldn’t have made for any other phone, and it’s very clear that plenty of people are making real money on the apps, which is a great thing. I think Apple’s store and the dev community around it are 90% of what’s great about the iPhone vs. the g1 (the device itself being the other 10%, but that hopefully won’t hold up as more Android phones get released).
I’m a bit shocked how few apps deal with both landscape and portrait mode, and especially shocked that the Home screen doesn’t. In retrospect, the g1 apps, including the main screen, were surprisingly good at this.
I really like how few buttons the iphone has. I like the lock button, the volume buttons, and I *love* the silence switch. Love it. And I love that the touchscreen is used for everything. Except…
Why aren’t there more interesting gestures used on the iPhone? Can you even name a single gesture used other than the flick used to switch albums in the iPod or whatever? Why can’t I use gestures to authenticate? Why aren’t there other gestures (e.g., ones with more than one direction) available for things like app shortcuts, app switching, phone speed dials, or whatever? While Apple is making steady progress in the things you can do with their trackpads (albeit still annoyingly focused on straight lines), the gestures available on the iPhone seem to match their absolute earliest efforts with trackpads.
And that’s mostly it; that’s been my iPhone experience so far. This may seem like an unnecessarily negative review. To some extent, that’s true — I’m a hater and always have been. But at the same time, my stupid Razr four years ago did AIM pretty damn well and it was a total piece of crap (although notifications *were* modal).
To top it all off, literally ever person I’ve ever asked has said that I absolutely must have a case on my iPhone (one Apple employee even implied a case would help me fraudulently convince Apple to replace my iPhone if I broke it), yet the iPhone 3g dock won’t work with any case. Oh, and it would cost me $100 to have a dock that I can plug into the wall ($30 each for the dock and power, $20 for the cable). Considering that the iPhone must be charged every night, this is almost a necessary investment for each of our phones, so my wife and I can easily charge while we sleep. Crazy.
So, we’ve got a phone that is absolutely ground breaking, sets a completely new interface standard, is a great device. And it constantly pisses me off for being not quite there, and it’s especially bad because it brings back all the horrors of really early operating systems. Remember how much you loved having computers that couldn’t do symmetric multiprocessing? Yeah, me neither.
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Re: the multitouch thing; have you seen the gestures in TouchTerm Pro?
Haven't shelled out the cash for it yet (the free version is a good enough client for me), but take a look at the video at :
http://www.jbrink.net/touchterm/tour/intro.html
I believe there are options for running in the background if you jailbreak
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Good article though.
I like my iPhone but I have two words – cut and paste – it's not fucking rocket science Apple. Oh and iPhone Mail should have search. Search is not hard. Really. Easy.
Yeah, but given that the backgrounding isn't designed in, it tends to be really heavyweight — rather than having small daemons in the background that handle notification and data fetching, your only option is to run the whole process in the background.
And, of course, the backgrounding ends up being really clumsy.
Strangely this one doesn't really come up for me. Task switching and the lack of IM seem to be the killers for me.
You're right that there are gestures, but really, the only semi-abnormal one is the two-finger swipe to bring up the kbd. Still, good to see someone's doing something, and it'd be great if there were a consistent gesture to bring up the kbd — too many apps don't make it clear how to do this.
The reason that 3rd party apps can't run background processes is that it's a slippery slope. A few apps running background processes? No problem, so long as they're just sitting around waiting to notify you of some kind of event. But what happens when someone has a dozen apps running in the background? What if they have two dozen? If they allow one app to background, they have to allow all of them. A hardcoded limit on the number of background processes would confuse users (unless someone came up with a really clever UI…), and Apple would be accused of being unfair if they only allowed certain developers to background their apps. (E.g., AIM is allowed to background, but not IndyIM.)
You comment could be directly transplanted to an email thread in 1985 and be just as valid an excuse for not allowing task switching in MacOS 5, and it would be just as wrong.
The OS is less useful without background processes, and there isn't a better solution that I can see. Given Apple's inability to deliver push, they might be starting to agree.
There's just no good excuse for resurrecting limitations we killed more than 20 years ago.
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A hardcoded limit on the number of background processes would confuse users (unless someone came up with a really clever UI…), and Apple would be accused of being unfair if they only allowed certain developers to background their apps.
I think iPhone is the best smart phone these days because of its features, available application, and design. That's why more and more people are switching from their current phone to the iPhone.
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Needing to press “home” and essentially start from the beginning again is terrible in terms of usability. But then again, don't people buy Apple products to be cool, rather than productive?
your review sounds about right, it's a cool piece of tech but still needs some polishing
Quote: “if I get a text message while I’m working, I can’t do a damn thing until I deal with the text-> so you got to read it immediately. Here's another way to continue working every after texting. A flexible and reliable web application is available anywhere in the world and its inexpensive service is a sure hit for people who are always on the go like you. Magic? Yes, its textmagic!
You have said that it is not a review but it looks like a well managed review though. Every single word you have said in this article is true. Iphone has some advantages and disadvantages too. The biggest disadvantage you have mentioned: it is no multiple apps at one moment. But I somehow managed to deal with it and don't keep my attention on it. Of course in the beginning it is hard, but later everything is all right. We have to agree that iPhone has more pros than cons. I would personally say that iPhone is one of the best inventions of all time. I think the strongest thing is apple app store. There are lost of useful and unbelievable apps there and you can install every of them into your iPhone. It is like a paradise. Thanks for the well written post, I will be waiting for more great ones.
I too agree this is inticately done one.
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am using OpenQRM & its so good. I am very ease in operating this.
For those who didn’t suffer through MacOS 7.x and earlier, modal dialogs require your attention and will not go away or let you do anything else until you deal with them. And they suck, horribly. There’s absolutely no excuse for them in a modern operating system, and yet…
I think the g1 was actually a better option for me, but the iPhone is a dramatically better option for her, and my geek snobbery loses out to her practicality. It’s also true that the device itself is much better — I can comfortably put it in my pocket…
The one thing I hate most about the iPhone is the autospeller, is there any way to switch this off?
I’m a bit shocked how few apps deal with both landscape and portrait mode, and especially shocked that the Home screen doesn’t. In retrospect, the g1 apps, including the main screen, were surprisingly good at this.
That Sounds interesting, I agree with you.Please keep at your good work, I would come back often.*
Yes,I agree with you.
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the iphone is surely a wonder of the informatics world. . .
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the first mobile phone was as large as a briefcase and now it is as tiny as a matchbox. . .
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sitting with sleeping babies, which turns out to be really important. The fact that the iPhone never requires two hands is critical for her.
I like my iPhone but I have two words – cut and paste – it's not fucking rocket science Apple. Oh and iPhone Mail should have search. Search is not hard. Really. Easy.
See, I think the g1 was actually a better option for me, but the iPhone is a dramatically better option for her, and my geek snobbery loses out to her practicality. It’s also true that the device itself is much better — I can comfortably put it in my pocket, and I find that the soft keyboard is just as good as the g1’s physical keyboard. And all of you crackberry addicts whining about two-thumbed typing, I do it all the time on my iphone and I’m about 10x faster that way, probably about as fast as I was on the g1.
sitting with sleeping babies, which turns out to be really important. The fact that the iPhone never requires two hands is critical for her.
Yeah, but i think the age of iphones will fall a bit. There in the market so many new phones that are even better then Iphone and also looks great. Such as HTC HD2, Omnia 2 and so. But these is good for us consumers that the market is growing.
I decided to write up my thoughts on the product now that the newness and wow factor have worn off a bit. I see the iPhone as having 5 functions for me. Phone, iPod, Web browser, PDA, and everything else. As a phone, the iPhone has been surprisingly great. This was the part that scared me the most going in and it really has been superb. The reception is as good or better than my Audiovox (which was good by the way.) The visual voice mail is really, really nice. It would be a pain to go back to standard voice mail. The contacts setup is also just fantastic. Also, I just love the headphone click button for answering calls. Just wonderful. I can't say enough good things about the phone part of the product.
Here, on the iPhone, we have an OS that can’t run multiple apps at the same time, and if I get a text message while I’m working, I can’t do a damn thing until I deal with the text.
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the iphoine is so amazing. There are so apps that can run on the iphone now. i am so glad to see it.
University Update – Google – More iPhone Thoughts wrote on July 5, 2007 1:51 PM … I'm really enjoying mine so far, although, has anybody else had problems …
You're right that there are gestures, but really, the only semi-abnormal one is the two-finger swipe to bring up the kbd. Still, good to see someone's doing something, and it'd be great if there were a consistent gesture to bring up the kbd — too many apps don't make it clear how to do this.