Hands-On, Briefly

Murphy took a look at a friend’s iPhone the day after iDay. Here are some observations from a brief dash through the features:The video is beautiful. Not only that, but the transitions from one feature to another are absolutely seamless. When you rotate from vertical to horizontal the display magically morphs from one view to the other - it’s subtle and quick. The scrolling is smooth. When you get to the end of a page there’s a pleasant bounce rather than an abrupt stop. The resolution is fantastic.

Little things Murphy hadn’t seen before: Like having multiple browser windows arranged side by side, which you can jump between by dragging left or right, much like Cover Flow. And the camera - this was cool. As you rotate the iPhone the image on screen stays still. It’s always right-side up. Very cool. Almost makes up for no video!

A lot of mistakes had to be corrected as Murphy typed, and the suggested word wasn’t always what he was after. But we’re optimistic that practice will make this better for iPhone users. It doesn’t mean much, Murphy finds typing on a Q unbearable because it’s so narrow. He needs a reasonably wide keyboard he can thumb-tap. Not really a complaint. These devices aren’t laptops - so obviously there’s a size / ease-of-use trade off. More importantly, Murphy is thoroughly impressed with what he’s read about the technology and logic built into the keyboard.

The Google maps feature looked good. Murphy tried out the satellite view and was impressed with the image quality. He didn’t try the driving directions.Moving through contacts is smooth and quick. It looks like it would be easy to navigate a long list. Cover Flow was as clear as the demos. But the two finger zoom on pictures and web pages seemed a little awkward. Again, maybe Murphy isn’t coordinated enough to own an iPhone.

It’s surprising that you can’t use the iPhone as a storage device. A story on AppleInsider indicates this could change. Murphy thinks you should be able to download files from a web site, like a zip archive. And there should be some kind of file management interface like Finder. The Appleinsider story is very promising, hopefully there’s some truth to it.

Short wish list: Speed dials would be nice. Songs as ring tones. Murphy really wants third party apps. Skype, Salling Clicker, VNC. An SSH client would be nice too. And Flash!The phone is built on OS X. If Apple’s going to brag about that little nugget the rest of us should be able to take advantage of it.

For tons of users the fact that it doesn’t run SSH means absolutely nothing. To Murphy it’s big. Plenty of users won’t care about some of the stuff Murphy is hoping for. But for many IT professionals the omissions could be a deal breaker.

Bottom line - the iPhone is a beautiful piece of technology. Impressive hardware, well-conceived software, snappy performance. What it does it does well. Better than well. As Walt said, it’s fun to use.Note: That’s not a real iPhone in the picture.

| Permalink