My iPhone Experience - What do we have here?

Jul 13, 2007 at 9:36 PM
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From left to right, here we go, one-by-one, row-by-row:

SMS (Text) - It is pretty self explanitory. However, the SMS function itself is another re-invent by Apple. The interface is identical to that of iChat (if you have a Mac). When you launch it, you can add a recipient that pulls from your Contact list. Then type as if you were in a Chat session. You send, then wait for the response. IF you get an SMS message, you are notified by a semi-transparent window that pops up where ever you may be informing you of the message. It is subtle. Again the whole interface is just smooth.

Calendar - Again, taking some of the lessons learned from iCal (if you have a Mac). However there are some subtle twists to this interface that make it very pleasant to deal with. The top half of the screen is the calendar, viewable by Month, Week, Day. The bottom half is a daily list of the events of the day. The one cool thing that Apple has done is how you set the time in either a meeting, alarm clock or whatever. No more typing in the numbers. With this thing, Apple developed a rather cool "Slot Machine" type interface where there are 3 wheels. Hour, Minute, AM/PM. You simply spin the wheels to land on the numbers that you want to select. Easy Peezy.

Photos - Basically you have galleries of such to deal with. The pictures taken with the iPhone and the photo galleries that you sync from your computer. This interface is identical to that of the iPod. The only difference is when viewing pictures. First you can take advantage of the motion sensors in the iPhone to view Portrait or Landscape pictures by simply flipping the phone on its side or upright. Viewing photos are even fun. You move from one picture to another either by pressing the left or right arrows on the screen display, or make the controls dissapear and "flick" the pictres from right to left. Then the true thrill.... Zoom. Put your thumb to your forefinger, put them on the photo the spread them apart.... You zoom in! Squeeze your fingers back together again and you zoom out! Again..... Easy Peezy.

Camera - Although, many desire a higher pixel camera and to be honest, I do as well, but hey it serves its purpose. There is room to grow here. Higher pixels, video capability, the possibility is there. Now as with the other bits of the camera, the user experience is simplified and dressed up. When you launch the camera, a full screen closed shutter comes up with a bar at the bottom that has both an icon to the Photos as well as a little camera icon you touch to take the picture. When you do, the shutter closes down as a real camera would.

YouTube - A late addition to pre-rlease, this is your portal to the key filters on YouTube. You can see the YouTube filters for Featured, Most Viewed, Bookmarks, Most Recent, Top Rated and history. Pretty much all you need to become addicted to watching videos all day. The ones you like, you can obviously bookmark. When you select a video, the screen flips horizontal and begins to downloading the video. It of course begins playing while it downloads so no worries. there. From within the video controls on-screen you have the ability to email to someone. When the video is completed, you are flipped back vertical for a summary of the video you just watched with the ability to bookmark or "share" (email). There is one annoying thing. There is a search function. However when I tried to search for one my own videos, I could not find it. There seems to be some "higher" definition video encoding going on with certain videos that are available. ALL videos have tried searching for are just not available. Need to dig more into this one more.

Stocks - a simple widget, in line with the stock widget on a Mac. I didn't think much about it at first, but after the past week I have found myself addicted to this damn thing as I like to check out my watch list of stocks.

Maps - O.k, O.k, not GPS, but cool and functional nonetheless. Google Maps on the iPhone with a twist. Search for an address, business or whatever and little red stick pins begin flying into the map to mark locations. Press on a stick pin and the details about the location appear where you have the option to call, visit the website, bookmark or add to your contacts. In one simple press of the finger. Of course as with Google Maps you can chose Map or Satellite view. There is also the ability to click on a little car icon and it overlays traffic conditions on the map. Another click and you can get a point-to-point listing of directions. Only downside, I suppose.... no GPS. But hey, I haven't needed it so far.

Weather - As with the Stock icon, it is a widget, like on the Mac. It launches and you are presented with the current condtions for your pre-set default location plus the 6 day forecast. One small thing I stumbled across the other day was the ability to add more cities. Not that you will see them all in one screen because you won't. Taking lessons learned from the Photos, with a flick of the finger you wisk away your default city off screen while the next city smoothly flys into fill the screen..... Nice.

Clock - Yes it has what it says, but it is not quite that. The main function is a multi-city clock screen that you configure with the cities that you want. But wait! What is that along the bottom of the screen? Alarm, Stopwatch and Timer? Nice. Each one of the interfaces is smooth, functional, easy both to use as well as on you. Time setting as mentioned earlier uses the "Slot Machine" wheels.

Calculator - It is what it is. A calculator albeit a sexy looking one with a big screen and large buttons.

Notes - Now this one was a mystery to me at first and I will explain why shortly. This comes across at first as a post-it type application. Ruled, Yellow note paper is up and you type away. You can add notes and they fall in as if you were writing on a new page in your note pad. Icons on the bottom allow you to go forward, backward, email the note or trash it.

Settings - This is where you configure all of the settings of the phone. Very simialr to the options you would have on any other phone. The only difference is, you don't need a user's manual to locate how to do something like turn Bluetooth on or off. There are a ton of settings here. But the one that no one has really mentioned is a little setting I discovered where you can configure VPN. Virtual Private Networking is basicall a way to access networks through a firewall. In practice it is like being on the internet and connecting to our work network which would obviously be behind a firewall. You "Tunnel" through the internet/firewall to join the network which is off of the internet. This is yet again a little hint at my predictions posted last August of Apple's slow, silent move into the enterprise.

I want to take one second to go back to the whole Notes bit. You see, I read a comment recently about someone ranting because there was no To Do list on the iPhone! What? No! Impossible! But after checking, nope.... no To Do list! Whatever will I "To Do?" This was crazy and I couldn't imagine Apple would exclude this basic PDA type function. It took me about 20 minutes of mulling through this impossibility when it hit me. THOSE SNEAKY DOGS! Time for another Rik Prediction. The To Dos are there, you just can't see them because they are right in front of your face! The Notes! Huh you say? Think like Apple thinks for a moment. They are always looking out beyond the current release. What is up next in terms of a MAJOR release for Apple? OS X Leopard. The new Operating System for all Mac machines. Again, look at my August 8 post for details on Leopard. But one thing stands out. The new Operating System has a built in service that manages a new To Do capability. Meaning that from anywhere within the Operating System or Applications that use this service, you can create a To Do. But would you want To Dos all over the place? The Service handles that as well by pulling all of the To Dos from across your system conveniently into the Mail application for you manage everything you need to do. These Leopard To Dos look surprisingly identical to the Notes in the iPhone. Put two and two together and you come up with the concept that the notes you create on the phone will sync with the Mac and make available in the new Mail application your notes to mark up content as To Dos! Brilliant! It appears as if I was not the first to see this connection. So that is my prediction. In October, when OS X is released, the iPhone Notes application will become the To Do list on the phone.

That is enough for tonight. In the next edition, I will move into the bottom row of icons. Phone, Email, Safari (browser) and iPod.