Being both a Mac guy and a human factors\/user interface guy, I\u2019ve had a lot of people ask me about my reactions to MacWorld. Actually, this happens with almost every MacWorld but this time I thought I\u2019d actually blog some of my thoughts on this.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the big announcement was the iPhone. This is an interesting device to be sure, with a high \u201cwow\u201d factor. A big touchscreen with softkeys and multi-finger gesture recognition certainly seems like a better idea than the dumb little keyboards on most \u201csmart\u201d phones today. And the thing is clearly loaded in terms of cool tech like the accelerometer and the skin sensor and such. And the form factor seems about right, too; with all that stuff, I was worried that it would be too thick to really be a good pocket-dweller. With all that, one of the first questions one of my colleagues asked me was \u201cSo, how long after the first ship date will we see you with one of those?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, despite all the coolness\u2014and there\u2019s one heck of a lot of that\u2014there are some issues. I will qualify this with two things: I didn\u2019t watch the keynote very carefully, and I\u2019ve only had a somewhat cursory run over the iPhone web site. <\/p>\n
Now, to the issues: first, Cingular is not presently my provider, I have T-Mobile. T-Mobile\u2019s plans are much better deals than Cingular\u2019s, and I know virtually nobody who\u2019s happy with Cingular\u2019s customer service. I really don\u2019t think it\u2019s worth breaking my contract over it.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, I don\u2019t recall any discussion of battery life. (Am I wrong? Was this mentioned?) Seems like an awful lot of bright, high-rez display… won\u2019t this thing need a recharge every day, maybe twice a day? That might be a limitation.<\/p>\n
Speaking of that bright, high-rez display (160 ppi sounds very slick), I also wonder about keeping it clean and scratch-free. If your fingers will be on it all the time, how do you keep it clean? Some displays are a lot easier to keep skin oil off of than others. And how easily will it scratch? I have a little case for my Nano so I don\u2019t worry to much about that, but this thing is all about the display and I\u2019m not sure whether a case would interfere with the whole multi-tap stuff, and if that sexy display gets scratched easily, that\u2019ll be bad. <\/p>\n
It also wasn\u2019t mentioned (I think) but there\u2019d better be an \u201cairplane mode\u201d where the antenna can be turned off so you can use it as an iPod alone. It would be Very Bad\u2122 if they screwed that up.<\/p>\n
Another concern I have (again, maybe I just missed it) is that I don\u2019t recall any mention of a dock connector. That seems like an oversight. First, I have a hard time believing that syncing over wireless is as fast and reliable as a physically-wired connection. Second, and much more of an obscure concern is the lack of a proper line out. I know, most people won\u2019t care, but for audio geeks like me, that\u2019s a bummer.<\/p>\n
The last thing is that these things are a bit dear for the storage capacity. I\u2019m not really objecting to the price\u2014yes, it\u2019s expensive, but I\u2019d use it a lot, so I would be OK with that\u2014but for $500 I want more than 8Gb. If I want to throw more than one movie on there along with a pile of music, space will be pretty tight. I\u2019d like more like 12Gb for $500. Yeah, I\u2019m a greedy little bastard.<\/p>\n
So,. yeah, when my current T-Mobile contract is up (in 16 months), I\u2019ll probably get one, but I\u2019m not in a big rush. Between now and then they\u2019ll get some of the kinks worked out, probably offer more storage, and if they offered an unlocked one, that\u2019d be even better. I\u2019ll have to see how the early adopters actually like the thing after a few months before I get TOO excited. <\/p>\n
Other reactions… well, AppleTV looks nice. I\u2019m not sure, I don\u2019t have a strong urge to rush out and buy one of those, either, because right now I have a computer hooked up to the HDTV in my living room. Why do I need to shell out another $300 to do what I can already do from that machine, exactly? Of course, for lots of other people\u2014those who don\u2019t want a computer in their living room but do have an HDTV\u2014it seems like a cool toy.<\/p>\n
My other reaction was, to be frank, \u201cthat\u2019s it?\u201d I know the iPhone is a big deal and all, but I was really expecting more. iLife \u201807 at the very least, and I will admit I was really hoping for iWork \u201807 to be released with a spreadsheet, as I\u2019m not especially thrilled with my current spreadsheet options. Excel has a crummy UI in some respects and crashes a lot, Mariner Calc is nice in some ways but has it\u2019s share of issues as well, such as lack of many statistical functions, some bad UI choices of its own\u2014for Alan Kay\u2019s sake, why don\u2019t the row and column of the currently-selected cell highlight so you know where you are?\u2014and I\u2019ve found calculation bugs in it, so I\u2019m not sure I trust it. Am I missing some other great choice here? Anyway, I guess I wasn\u2019t surprised at the lack of Leopard stuff or new quad-core machines or a subnotebook, but the lack of new iLife really surprised me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being both a Mac guy and a human factors\/user interface guy, I\u2019ve had a lot of people ask me about my reactions to MacWorld. Actually, this happens with almost every MacWorld but this time I thought I\u2019d actually blog some of my thoughts on this. Obviously, the big announcement was the iPhone. This is an … Continue reading MacWorld reactions<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}