“Some think that the hype surrounding the Apple iPhone started in January of 2007, but that’s not true. The hype started many years ago, perhaps before creating such a device was even a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye. After so many years of rumors about the mythical iPhone, so many fake (or scrapped?) mockups, so many fake (or scrapped) names, and a brief experiment with the now-failed Motorola ROKR, Apple finally went ahead and launched the device that Apple fans have been craving since the beginning of time—or at least since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and killed off the Newton,” Jacqui Cheng, Clint Ecker, and Ken Fisher report for Ars Technica.
“And of course, to do something simultaneously predictable and shocking, the company called the device by its long-rumored, but never-quite-accepted nickname, the ‘iPhone.’ The iPhone is now out and promises to revolutionize the way we use our phones forever. You don’t have to love it; you don’t even have to like it. You will, however, be witness to a great upheaval in the mobile communications business because of it,” Cheng, Ecker, and Fisher report.
Read Ars Technica’s massive, comprehensive review of Apple’s iPhone, which they award a score of “a big, juicy 8” out of 10, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeff” for the heads up.]
“you don’t have to buy it either until it does what most smart phones do?
I’m impressed with this review. 15 pages, many with video. Too bad they tortured the iPhone to death in the end with the stress tests. RIP.
Did Ars ever do as much of a review with any other smartphone?
I don’t give a rat’s pooter what “most smart phones do”. It does what *I* want it to do.
MW: “believe”
MW: “believe”
MW: “believe”
MW: “believe”
I kinda figure it’s like this. The iPhone takes advantage of the 80/20 rule in spades.
20% of the people out there use 80% of the functions of their cell phones.
80% of the people out there use 20% of the functions of their cell phones.
I mean the Nokia n95 has TV OUT. TV OUT?? Most people have this on their computers and iPods and don’t use it.
The iPhone does the 20% better than any other device ever has. Much much better. So 80% of the people are going to be highly satisfied while only 20% of us geek nerd types are going to b&tch; and moan about the lack of capabilities.
While everyone (read RIM) is talking about how Apple has screwed At&t, I firmly believe that AT&T is responsible for lots of the functionality I want missing…
I bet the lack of iChat and Skype for instance is an AT&T thing. The lack of using your iTunes music for Ring tones is an AT&T decision, and so on.
As a demonstration of how screwed up most phones are, over the past few days I’ve worked with about 15 or so people helping them to get their contacts off their old phones and into their iPhones.
Once they were firmly in the iPhone they no longer needed help.
iPhone rules in this respect.
I always thought the mock-up iPhone that looked like an iPod nano would win the final design. Remember that?
Exactly my same feelings too Chrissy.
@ theloniousMac
Great post, and so true.
Like ChrissyOne says, The iPhone “does what I want it to do.”
I agree, but yeesh, come on…
Can’t we have Cut, Copy, and Paste? Is that too “geeky?”
I’m not asking for holographic projections of GPS data here.
It’s not that cut/copy/past are geeky, it’s trying to find a nice way to gesture selection of text or image to be cut or copied.
You don’t want your finger to act exactly like a mouse pointer. I think that’s the main reason for this delay.
It’s not that cut/copy/past are geeky, it’s trying to find a nice way to gesture selection of text or image to be cut or copied.
You don’t want your finger to act exactly like a mouse pointer. I think that’s the main reason for this delay.
It’s not that cut/copy/past are geeky, it’s trying to find a nice way to gesture selection of text or image to be cut or copied.
You don’t want your finger to act exactly like a mouse pointer. I think that’s the main reason for this delay.
It’s not that cut/copy/past are geeky, it’s trying to find a nice way to gesture selection of text or image to be cut or copied.
You don’t want your finger to act exactly like a mouse pointer. I think that’s the main reason for this delay.
They sure got the sucky mail app right. Mail support is the biggest disappointment. When they get that straightened out…
I’m happy I opted for a Matte screen MacBook Pro instead of a iPhone.
>I bet the lack of iChat and Skype for instance is an AT&T thing
Hey, no shit Sherlock – what do you think would happen to their voice subscriptions if everyone could Skype using their “free” data allowance?
>As a demonstration of how screwed up most phones are, over the past few days I’ve worked with about 15 or so people helping them to get their contacts off their old phones and into their iPhones.
What, doesn’t the iPhone just let you copy the contacts off an existing SIM card like any other phone on the market?
I have an iPhone and I love it!! Coolest pocket device ever made. Has anyone started a ‘Features we would like to see in the future’ thread anywhere? I’ll start…
1) GPS (just because it would be so cool combined with the Google Maps feature)
2) iChat
“What, doesn’t the iPhone just let you copy the contacts off an existing SIM card like any other phone on the market?”
that would have been nice if my old phone had any kind of useful contact management at all. Since I am a Mac user, loading my contacts on to my Motorola was a one-way black hole, from which there was no escape. If I entered a new contact in it and pugged it in to my computer, there wasn’t any discernible way to get those new people back into Address Book. Add to that my home phone (a Panasonic wireless gigga thigga majigga) was completely sealed off from the real world for all practical purposes, I was better off to just sit down at my Mac with both these phones, re-type the orphaned contacts into Address Book (one. last. time.) and proceed anew with yummy iPhone syncing goodness.
The SIM thing might have been a problem, but for the fact that, as we all know, Motorola sucks.
For someone that is allegedly reputable for reviewing technology one would thing that for testing the camera (even in this lightweight, 2MP casual scenario) they would take the picture under near-identical circumstances instead of minutes or hours apart, with differing lighting conditions, possibly while driving no less.
That back seat still life clearly involves 3 completely different times as well as possibly different locations. Sloppy.
Weak.
cut copy paste isn’t easy to add to the iPhone, because press and hold shows the magnifying glass.
they could do it by adding a “mode”, but modes are bad, very bad.
Agree with the comments here, esp. theloniousMac. I would even project the 80/20 rule into the next year, i.e. 80 percent of the TRULY useful things people are missing on the iPhone will be there within a year. The other 20 percent may or may not show up. Apple isn’t going to stick things on the iPhone just because it is possible. (Like FM radio on the iPod.)
Other than that most people dissing the iPhone are really missing the forest for the trees. Regardless of the “missing features” there is nothing else like it on the planet. The power of a real OS in the palm of your hand. (Sorry, Spidey) And it’s fun to use to boot.
Like the one blog said, MicroSoft has multi-touch and they came up with a $12,000 coffee table. Wow!