get thee thy jesusphone

Ok. It’s time. Go get your iPhone. I don’t get mine ’til late july (we get ours after you get yours – hell, I have the same philosophy in bed, so I can’t argue). And no, I can’t get you one, I can’t get me one, apart from the one-per-employee apple’s handing out as a […]

Ok. It’s time. Go get your iPhone.


Iphonehero20070629

I don’t get mine ’til late july (we get ours after you get yours – hell, I have the same philosophy in bed, so I can’t argue). And no, I can’t get you one, I can’t get me one, apart from the one-per-employee apple’s handing out as a thanks for the incredible amount of work we’ve all been doing on this project.

If you manage to score one, let me know what you think. I still ain’t actually seen one in person, for all the hours I’ve put into getting the chips and boards out.

12 thoughts on “get thee thy jesusphone”

  1. DN, I only do the completely non-glamourous part, like the guy who shovels coal into the steam engine. If I stop, the fires go out, but the glory goes to the other guys.

  2. like the guy who shovels coal into the steam engine. If I stop, the fires go out, but the glory goes to the other guys.

    But you are at your best sweaty and dirty, so it all evens out, right?

    Anyway, I just had to stop by my local mall to spend a stupidly expensive amount of money on fancy stockings for an upcoming affair, and thought out of curiosity I’d walk by the Apple store while I was there to see if the hype about the lines was as big as people were saying. I was there about an hour before closing (8:30 pm), about 2.5 hours after they started selling.

    There were two beefy security guards at the front, and there was a tiny line of people waiting to get into the store–no more than maybe 10 people (although I didn’t realize it was there until after I’d already walked in without waiting and no one said anything). Inside the store there was a second line which I waited in for literally two seconds. I got to the front and the store employee asked “are you ready to buy or do you want a demo?” I thought that was kind of abrupt and obnoxious…he didn’t even know if I was THERE to see the iPhone yet, and you couldn’t get in to see anything in the store untili you checked in with him. Anyway, I said I wanted neither, I just wanted to observe.

    This is not the biggest or most well-equipped of Apple stores so maybe there would have been much bigger lines at the big stores, I don’t know. But anyway, this store had two tables just dedicated to the iPhone, and there were certainly crowds of people trying them and watching other people try them. I couldn’t just get in to test one; none were available. And the people trying them were playing with them for a VERY long time; they didn’t want to let them go. So that may be a good sign.

    But I will note that there were NOT crowds around the cash registers. So I don’t know if that bodes well or not. People may need some testing time to assure themselves it’s a functional piece of equipment before they buy.

    I will say the looks on people’s faces as they tested it appeared to be sheer bliss. No one seemed to be shaking their heads or looking dismissive. Everyone had looks of either deep concentration or ear-to-ear grins. Those with others were animatedly talking and smiling (in multiple languages, in fact–multicultural appeal!)

    Anyway, I didn’t wait around to try one. I can play with it once the crowds die down. I’m not gonna buy one no matter how great it is, because I’m angry Apple didn’t make it multi-carrier. Stupid, stupid mistake. AT&T is a terrible carrier and I won’t buy the iPhone as long as they’re the exclusive carrier.

    But others might not be as picky.

    //end report.

  3. I heard that Apple went to Verizon first and that Verizon turned them down?

    I want one. Badly. I think I’m going to get myself one for Xmas…

    (In my next life…)

  4. Heh! I GOT MINE!!

    … Hmm. Thinking that you had your fingers diddling inside of it is ALMOST as good as thinking of your fingers diddling someplace else!!

    But yea.. Do love it, although I’m real easy to please!

    Good job!

  5. I finally got hands on one of these things saturday at a ‘thank you for all the work’ party they threw for the iPhone team (and wow, what a shindig, I tell ya).

    It’s really a spectacular piece of design; physically, it’s simple, elegant, easy in the hand. But the real magic is in the interface; I’ve never seen anything like it.

    To answer one of the common complaints, the reason apple went with cingular is obvious. There’s no way to pull off a launch like this without a major partnership; apple needed someone to help carry the load of development and test, someone who had the chops to develop new technologies, someone who has the install base and network bandwidth to handle the traffic. While the cellular market is a mess (it needs to go the way of the internet, with shared network and devices that are fully portable), that’s the market we have and Apple can’t re-invent that. What this means is, carriers would be insane to develop what this device needs without a contract. The risk is too great for anyone is the cellular carrier market to absorb on spec.

    You can’t push out *this device* without the cellular technology advances it requires. Otherwise you just have the rokr and we know what a mess that was.

    As to which carrier – well, you have two leading contenders are a lot of smaller niche providers. So it’s pretty obvious what the answer is there. Like with american politics, the two choices stink, so you have to hold your nose and pick the one that seems to stink less. In this case, verizon and cingular each have big problems. cingular is ahead technically and (I think) has deeper pockets now that they’re again part of mainstream ATT. They have vastly better customer service, and far more user-friendly policies (verizon have a closed network and disable any feature of the phones they sell that let you do anything directly phone-computer). Cingular don’t have quite the converage, but they are growing faster and developing a more advanced network.

    It’s a fucking coin flip. They suck exactly the same amount but in different ways.

    Verizon, or so the rumors have it, turned apple down. Who knows why; clearly it was stupid. Rumors also now have it that verizon’s top execs are kicking themselves over this. That left one choice for a company that had the technology and the funds and the network to do what this device needs.

    I don’t think anyone is in love with the single-provider choice (unless they own cingular stock). But there simply isn’t a better choice that would have offered the device Apple has created.

    The interesting thing is to see, in two years, if other carriers have stepped up to provide the services, or if Apple re-ups with Cingular. I’m betting, if the product stays as successful as it looks now (some rumor sites are claiming sale of up to 1/2 million phones over the weekend), that there could be a bidding war with other carriers trying to get a piece.

    (ObDisclaimer: This is all just what’s out there in public; I know *nothing* about this via inside sources. In case anyone from inside is paying attention…)

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