Well, I did it. I ordered my iPhone. I am so excited by this product and at the moment though I'm also a little annoyed. I'm not annoyed with Apple at all. They've made a great product. Yes, it is fair to say that this is a first-generation iPhone and so as with all these things, there will be further advancements in each subsequent generation. I'm annoyed by the mainstream press. I hear people saying, "Oh, there's not a "real" keyboard on the iPhone, so you can't type the way you should. Why do we live in a society that is populated by people who insist on injuring themselves by trying to type on devices that are so small and impractical to be used for that purpose? Let me ask you something. Would you consider trying to send a text message on your telephone at home? No, of course not. You'd use your computer. I hear some of you saying, "Yeah, but I need to be able to check my e-mail when I'm not near my computer." Fair enough, but if you can afford the over $5-$600 price tag for an iPhone, you can certainly afford to buy a laptop/notebook. Why do I hate the idea of text messaging on a phone? Here's the thing. As someone who has seen far too often what carpal tunnel and other disfiguring ailments can do, I'm against using any device that will perpetuate that. Speech recognition works! It's real and any notebook that you buy today can run speech recognition software in most cases. If you want to use your cell phone to do text messaging, that's fine. But unless you use something that is speech driven, it's never going to be an ideal experience. It's going to be difficult at times and you will eventually get arthritis or carpal tunnel from doing that! It's that simple. As I've said before, speech recognition is not perfect. But it will learn and adapt with proper use and correction. We really need to stop expecting devices like cell phones in their current form factors to be suitable for e-mail. They're never going to be as nice or as comfortable as a PC or Mac, period.
So what are my expectations for the iPhone? Why am I getting one? It's simple. I have difficulty dialing a regular phone but, I can simply tap on a name and dial the number. That's what's important to me about the iPhone and that alone, could save me from harm when I'm outside. The iPod is also really cool and I hear a lot of people complaining that it doesn't have enough storage capacity. Okay, I will admit that it could be a little bigger when it comes to storage size, but consider that each of my Old Time Radio shows are ripped at 48 kb a second, which is more than adequate for something that was not originally produced in stereo. These files are typically 26 to 29 minutes in length and are between 10 and 15 MB in size, depending on the file format you use. Even audio books are perfectly acceptable at 48 kb a second, which means on a 4 GB iPhone I can dedicate two GB to iPod media and still have plenty of room.
Am I saying that the iPhone is perfect? Of course I'm not saying that. Inevidetably when I get it, I will notice things that I would like to change. Will I be doing any Internet surfing with the iPhone? In a pinch, I suppose I could browse my bookmarks, but there's no way I'll be using the iPhone as an alternative to browsing the web.
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