IPhone Connected

The IPhone has arrived.

Greatly anticipating the arrival of Apple's new smart phone or wiz-phone as some of us like to call them finally arrived on Friday. Local stores began selling the device around early in the evening with somewaht of a wait but not too much.

The lure of dropping $499 on a 4GB IPhone may have been confined to Apples loyal followers, but I found at the Apple Store that there were indeed many new, young, hip Apple lovers that were introduced to Apple as a company via the Ipod. Persoannly, my affection for Apple dates back to the Apple IIe and many in line were not even bron when that computer was on store shelves. To be sure mnay were at the store to see what the fuzz was all about and get a look at the new IPhone and test the hype. Even Store employees seem amazed and at times just giddy over the device that by all purposes was selling itself.

So lets break down the hype. The device itself is "smart" and very fluid once you get used to its functions, quite like learning the Palm for the first time. The phone/ipod is facing great expectations and though the device is cutting edge in alot of ways there are some drawbacks to the intial version:

IPhone is on the AT&T network , you know the old Cingular. Not sure I have forgiven them for taking the Cingular logo off of its Nascar racing team, but nonetheless IPhone calls AT&T home. You will not be able to use IPhone on Sprint, bummer, T-Mobile (does not accept simm cards) or Verizon. Those Blackberry users probably will remain until the end of their contracts before jumping on board with IPhone. Breaking contracts, a cell phone one anyway, is costly. The service is not as of yet on AT&T fast data network either but on AT&T's Edge technology and this first version cannot be upgraded.

Another aspect which struck me was you could not activate the IPhone at the Apple Store itself. You have to connect your phone to ITunes software to get the ball rolling. This really is not a very time consuming process and in fact I saw two buyers doing it at Starbucks later in the evening while I was getting a White Chocolate Mocha. Frankly, I could wait until home.

There is an issue with car adaptors that buyer should be aware of. IPhone will not work on all adapters. It will charge indeed, but will not play music vioa its ipod element in all cars. Apple will surely have to fix this with later releases. The IPhone is fast on the web and can use WIFI wireless networks very efficiently. Not sure how it will work in really populated cities where you bounce from network to network but so far its impressive.

There all alot on interface and functions to get around. Far too many to address here but all in all IPhone is a neat wiz-phone with a clear future. It has some drawbacks but all cutting technology does as first. Its size is no better or worse than that Blackberry or Razor and easily fits in the pocket as well which was a concern. The face also leaves you with the impression that you have to actually take of the thing, unlike most of us with our cell phones that get bounced around, dropped or tossed just about everywhere. This is the first real smart phone to warrant the care and attention of say your laptop, though I am told the device can withstand alot of wear and tear. Not after dropping $499 thank you very much.

Where it ranks in hype one only knows. I do have a feeling it will deliver what it advertises and maybe thats all that matters. I do feel though that this roll-out rates third in my book. I liked the new Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii products ahead of the IPhone, though I know we are talking about entirely different devices.

Apple strikes again with this one. And I can remeber when Apple was be written off trading at below fifteen bucks before the company re-invented itself and so the Apple story continues.