Apple Phone Show Episode 8
It's heeeeeeeeeeeeeere
Run Time: 29:52

Host:
Scott Bourne: Podcastgearguy.com, OnlineMediaTips.com and iLifeZone.com

Special Guests:
Chris Breen: MacWorld Magazine and Playlist Magazine
Andy Ihnatko: Colossal Waste of Bandwidth and The Chicago Sun Times

Wow... It's here... We can finally stop speculating and start observing. Life is good! This episode, we hit on the launch, initial impressions, etc.

Scott's initial impressions? He likes it and he's not apologizing for it (as well you shouldn't, Scott!). He does have some minor quibbles. For example, he'd like to be able to rotate the keyboard iself to make it slightly bigger. He'd also like a slightly better camera in the phone, but overall compared to most other phones, this one is going to handle itself quite well.

And now, Andy Ihnatko!

Andy did indeed get his iPhone. He did so by knocking over women, children, and old ladies. Shame shame, Andy :-) Just kidding, of course. He was, of course, beating off reporters with a stick. Scott got preempted on Fox & Friends. Anyway, some observations from Andy:

1. It's really easy to take a call and hang up a call, including one from your sister.

2. There's going to be a lot of love for the iPhone, but the headphone jack is absolutely maddening (Good Lord, Andy, I'd have to agree with that). Andy is curious as to why Apple would make such a boneheaded move when they paid so much attention to every little detail. Scott got the adapter that's available to remedy the situation. Andy, on the other hand, carved down the plug of his stuff so that it fit in.

3. Overall, it's an impressive product, but the beginning was a bit shaky. Andy was having issues with the keyboard at first. He noticed that his problem is where he was aiming his fingers, so the tip here is aim for the middle of the keys, not the bottom. Secondly, don't go right for thumbs. Thumbs take practice. Andy now types really quickly and is much happier (From Vinny: I do too. It took some adapting but I can already see improvements. My fingers are naturally finding the keys much faster than they were on Friday). Andy likes the way everything comes together on the device and how the overall experience is quite tied together. Scott likes the keyboard also and may actually start texting! The browser is fantastic and functional, and links from e-mail open in Safari. All in all it's something you never would've done before.

Scott wanted sync more than anything else, and everything else is bonus. Andy loves the syncing. He says the only concern is that you have to go through iTunes for everything. For now he hasn't noticed any roadblocks, but it has potential to be a problem. He's looking forward to seeing how everything pans out.

And now the news with Chris Breen!

Obviously we know the topic o' the day here.

THE iPHONE HAS LAUNCHED! Duh!

Chris got one. He stood in line at an AT&T store. He figured that if he went to a small AT&T store he'd have very good luck getting a phone. He was 22nd in line at Watsonville California. At 6:00pm, they announced they have 20 8 gigs and 10 4 gigs. People immediately snapped up the 8's and Chris got a 4.

1. He never realized how much Spam he was getting on one of his accounts. Some kind of spam filtering would be very helpful. In the meantime, he's going to use his G-Mail account just because the spam filtering is quite good. Scott is doing that also because of how good it is. (I do it, also, guys, and I totally agree).

2. Chris misses using his headphones. He was disappointed that the headphone port won't accept regular headphones, but there are adapters out there (see point #2 above). Chris points out that the finest iPod ever made should work with regular headphones. Scott sees a whole bunch of headphones coming out now with better sheaths around the jacks. Chris agrees. Scott is breaking out the Jawbone tomorrow. Stay tuned!

3. Chris put the iPhone in front of his wife who's not a technophile, and she loved it. Coming from a non-geek, this is definitely high-praise.

Chris didn't have any activation problems aside from the fact that he has no coverage at home. Once he was able to get a signal, he activated the iPhone and life was good. Scott points out that credit challenged customers are having lots of problems. Secondly, people porting numbers are a problem. The third class, is the "no frigging idea" class, meaning things are delayed for no reason. Chris notes that the AT&T stores did the activations / credit checks in store, while Apple was just handing out phones and sending people home. Scott points out that his whole time in the store was 2 minutes. There really isn't a reason for that considering you have to do your own activation at home anyway. The overall service was good. Scott said it was the most amazing retail experience ever.

Here's a tip: If you're still having activation issues, take the phone off the cradle, power it off, power it back on, and put it back in the cradle, and see if that helps. It has helped a lot of people.

Overall, Chris likes it a lot more than his last phone. He misses voice dialing, but as he explores the phone he's finding lots of neat features that work better on the iPhone than on other phones. So far as far as interface design and ease of use, it trumps anything on the market.

If you have ideas for the show, you can tag a story on del.icio.us with applephoneshowideas and we'll check that before each episode.

That's all for now... If you have any questions, comments, concerns, tips, etc., let us know at applephoneshow@gmail.com.



Thanks to Apple Phone Show producer Vincent Ferrari for the shownotes!

New Apple Phone Show theme performed and arranged by Scott Bourne.