BrianAndPamela.com

Somethings should write themselves.  They are so easy to talk about, to explain in person but getting them to make sense on the screen is different entirely.  My feelings on the iPhone should have been like that.  I wanted to love it.  I love my iPod, so what's not to like about the wide screen, wi-fi, touch controlled iPod I've been craving mixed with a cell phone?  Well, I'll tell you…

For those of you living under a rock (the iPhone announced story on Digg has received 19,000 diggs at the time of this writing) Apple on Tuesday announced the iPhone, a combination iPod, cell phone and PDA/Palm Top Computer.  The announcement came during one of Steve Jobs most anticipated Mac World Expo Keynote addresses ever.  Amazingly, Jobs spent the majority of his almost two hour keynote demoing the product.  Clearly, Apple is positioning the iPhone as something HUGE and central to their business and cultural model moving forward

As a side note, did anyone else note that for a major keynote, there were a LOT of things missing?  There was nothing actually launched at Mac World.  Nothing even a word about Leopard, no new Macs, no new iLife, iWork, nothing that you could buy right then.  Even the other introduction we were waiting for, iTV (now rechristened Apple TV) won't be ready until February or March.

Enough of that, let's talk iPhone.   First, some specifics: 

• 2.4" x 4.5" x .46" (about 11.5 mm thick) For comparisons sake the iPod video 30GB is 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.43"
• 3.5" 480×320 touchscreen (current iPod video models have a 2.5" screen at 320×240)
• Neat touchscreen too, allowing for "multitouch" gestures and control
• No stylus, interface works with fingers (What about fingerprints and scratches?  this wasn't addressed… )
• No frontal controls except one small command button and the touchscreen
• Supposedly runs an embedded build of OSX
• 4 and 8GB memory
• Really great looking interface
• Built-in Bluetooth and Wi-fi
• GSM and Edge (more on that later)
• Partnerships with Yahoo! Mail and Google Maps
• Integrated accelerometers and proximity sensors
• Ships in June

I want to love this thing!  I want to feel like scrimping and saving from now till June, take on a second job, what ever it takes.  But I don't.

First of all scrimping and saving till June just isn't going to do it.  The 4GB model is $500 and the 8GB is $600.  Yeah. Current cell phone cost: $40, current iPod cost: $250.  That's a $300 convenience and coolness tax.  I'm not sure Americans can be retrained to spend that kind of money on a cell phone no matter how cool it is.  We'll see about that. 

Even if you had the money to drop, you won't be able to buy the phone without selling your soul to Cingular for two years. Cingular has said it won't sell the phone at all without a 2 year agreement.  Here's another of my MAJOR gripes:  CINGULAR?  For Pete's sake, Cingular is the Anti-Apple.  Apple has been all about making things "just work".  There aren't a bunch of hidden charges, etc.  When you buy a Mac there aren't a whole lot of hidden charges.  You might pay for some software, but even those packages (iLife and iWork) are crazy cheap as far as software goes.  Cingular would like to charge you for the privilege of consuming oxygen while you absorb radio signals from their network.  $30 here, $10 there, add $5 for this, $55 for that… it is not hard to drop $150 a month for Cingular service.  While Cingular is by no means the only network that does that, they are as guilty as any other. 

Meanwhile it seems to me Cingular HATES their customers.  At least they drove me away and I've not heard a single good story about the Great Orange Beast that is Cingular.  They made me SO mad, it was worth it to me to pay them their stupid early termination fee so that I could run far and fast. 

Last thing about the selection of Cingular: it's a GSM network.  Here's where I get just a little geeky, so bear with me.  One thing the iPhone is supposed to do is have really cool Internet integration, with Yahoo and Google and a full version of the Safari web browser built in.  GSM network use the EDGE data network, while the other option is CDMA from Verizon and (I think) Sprint which use EVDO for data.  EVDO is MUCH faster than Edge.  I haven't used Edge in a few years, but I used a friend's EVDO phone a few months back for data and it was crazy fast for data.  

The fact that the phone is a GSM phone means there is at least a chance that the device will work on T-Mobile (my carrier) but the entire business model of cell networks in the US is based on artificial restrictions, so I'm not holding out hope.  Did I mention that it's been confirmed that those prices ($500 and $600) are the prices WITH A 2 YEAR CONTRACT?!?!?  Those are the subsidized prices.  It really surprises me that Apple is putting their customers into this system.  They've been tough with other crazy markets before, Steve has a few times told the Music Industry to stuff it when they start trying to make things more difficult on Apple customers. 

In other gripes, what's with the limited capacity?  Four and eight GB, and that's total memory.  Clearly this isn't a device to take all your media with you.  A couple of videos and you're done. 

You know, one thing that would go a long way toward easing these problems would be to release a non-cell phone version.  Just give me the iPod and PDA functionality.  That's all I really wanted anyway… Yeah, I'd love a cell phone with an interface that "just works" but I'm not willing to mortgage my soul for it.  How about it Steve, can I have the iPod I wanted anyway?  Keep your Faustian Cingular bargain, thanks.