Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

show steve the money

With all the hype, one thing is certain: Steve Jobs is making a whole lot of money this weekend.

Friday was the much-ballyhooed launch date for the vaunted Apple iPhone. Rob, Dari and I had some time to kill before our movie, so we walked over to the Apple Store in Clarendon to people-watch and, if possible, see what all the fuss was about. By the time we arrived — 9:30 p.m. or so — the store was busy but not insanely packed (there had been a line to get in earlier in the afternoon) and there were a good number of iPhones out for customers to toy with.

And while I was prepared for a let-down, I was actually pretty impressed with the device. All the commercials have done an excellent job of educating people how to use the device. I was able to pick one up and dive right into exploring the interface. And it was pretty cool.

Web surfing (using the in-store wifi connection) was a pretty smooth experience, and the “pinchy” method of zooming in and out on pages worked like a charm. I was happy that Apple preserved the tabbed browsing functionality on iPhone’s version of Safari, but I was a bit put off by the “mystery meat” way of finding and navigating those tabs.

I also sent myself a text message from the phone. (“Howdy from the iPhone!”) When I replied from my cellphone (“Howdy back!”), it showed the brief text exchange as an IM conversation — really, a wonderful way of putting SMS conversations in context.

I’d also completely forgotten that the device includes a camera, so it was a nice little surprise to stumble upon the feature. Afterward, I realized that I should have tried to send myself the photo I took of Rob playing with an iPhone; alas, I deleted it soon after.

Anyway, even with all my enthusiasm for the device, I’m not getting one anytime soon.

1. Yes, the interface is awesome and it does a lot of cool things. But at the end of the day, it’s a $600 phone.
2. I’d have to change cellphone carriers and lock into a two-year contract. For that price, I could probably buy a pretty cool unlocked phone that I could use with my carrier of choice; that said, it wouldn’t be an iPhone.
3. It’s cool to have “early adopter” status and all, but as a rule of thumb, the first generation of anything new generally has its set of problems. Best to wait for another revision or two, until the bugs are worked out. Just based on my brief interaction with it, I feel like there are some UI issues that still need refining. And perhaps some technical issues as well — the one that Dari was using actually froze up on him.

4. It’s six hundred freaking dollars.

Steve Jobs did end up getting some money from me, though. After our trip to the Apple Store, we went to see Ratatouille, the new Pixar movie about a rat chef in Paris. As per usual with Pixar films, it’s a sweet film, and technically amazing. It’s not as good as The Incredibles (my favorite Pixar movie to date), but it’s still worth a viewing. Also, the short that runs in front of it, Lifted, is pretty funny — a bit of a “one-trick pony,” as Rob pointed out, but then, that’s why it’s a short.