IE is absolutely horrible. The only time I ever use it with pages that insist that I do so. Firefox is teh AWESOME. But I do not agree that IE is representative of Microsoft -- Office is good, and some pieces are great. I adore Outlook, really love Word, and Publisher and Powerpoint are fun.
Outlook is definitely one of Microsoft's better programs, but still has serious security issues. I prefer Thunderbird, and Mail over both.
I don't use Publisher, so I can't say. But with Word and Powerpoint, how often does one use all of their functions? 99% of the time, Word is bloated for what I want to do with it - write a letter, essay, story, notes, etc.
And it's so much easier to create good looking presentation grade material using Pages and Keynote than it is with Word and Powerpoint. An example of Microsoft's lack of taste IMHO: Word Art, Word's drawing tools, Powerpoint's cheesy transition effects.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: Outlook is definitely one of Microsoft's better programs, but still has serious security issues. I prefer Thunderbird, and Mail over both.
I'm not talking about Outlook Express, which I find annoying. I'm talking about Outlook, which does SOOOOOOO much more than just email! (And I'm not just saying that because my dad wrote a book about the previous version.)
And while you may not use most of the features in Word, I'll bet I use many more than you do. And it's a slightly different list than the ones my dad prefers -- because we have that choice.
I happen to think having those choices is a wonderful thing. You don't need 'em. *shrug*
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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On the subject of Outlook (which is an excellent productivity application in combination with Exchange, though finally there are solutions starting to approach their capabilities), apparently the next version of Outlook will use Office's (Word's) HTML rendering engine instead of IE's. Notably what this means is, unless Word's HTML rendering engine takes a quantum leap forward, CSS will not be usable for positioning elements in emails. There're a lot of designers who are not going to be happy.
Word and Powerpoint are definitely high quality applications, though they have a lot of usability bugaboos, partly because its a bigger usability bugaboo to dramatically change things (usually). While there are paradigms in, for instance, Keynote and Pages that are far more usable, overall Keynote and Pages are not as capable, in ways that matter to some people. It would definitely be nice if Word and Powerpoint were to adopt similar capabilities.
A lot of the knocks against Word and Powerpoint are against abuses of Word and Powerpoint -- using either as a layout application, for instance. My personal opinion is that a lot of what is done in some worlds with word should really be done in plain text, partly for security reasons (for instance, its much harder to spread a virus with some plain text in an email rather than an attached word document), but that's my idealism peaking out .
Publisher is a scary story graphic designers tell each other around the campfire .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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A blogger has speculated that there will be 3rd party iPhone software, but that it will be vetted by Apple and sold through the iTunes Store, much as the only 3rd party software for iPods (games) are now.
This seems quite likely, actually. I am less annoyed, though still annoyed, and hope the situation will be loose enough to allow for the applications I am interested in to be developed (I want a chat application and ssh, in particular; I'm amazed iChat isn't included on the list of included apps already).
I'm not the biggest fan of their iPhone Shuffle idea (half in jest though it might be). Speech recognition would be neat though, and they have a point about phasing out SMS.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: JT, They're meant to ridicule the computer, not the person using it. Also, PC users who are perfectly happy with their computing experience are not the target audience. PC users who find their computers frustrating, or want something more user friendly but have never considered switching; they're the target audience.
Thank you. That's true. Sorry to go back into the thread, but this is the heart of it for me, this is the whole thing; I don't care about anything else as much as this. I had a PC for three years, and in that time I spend countless, countless hours trying to fix things and do things and go back and figure things out and solve problems. Whatever the benefit was, I don't know. I've got a mac now, and I don't seem to be spending any time fixing things. Great. If I had to give up my ability to do stuff I didn't ever do anyway, that's cool.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:A blogger has speculated that there will be 3rd party iPhone software, but that it will be vetted by Apple and sold through the iTunes Store, much as the only 3rd party software for iPods (games) are now.
This seems quite likely, actually. I am less annoyed, though still annoyed, and hope the situation will be loose enough to allow for the applications I am interested in to be developed (I want a chat application and ssh, in particular; I'm amazed iChat isn't included on the list of included apps already).
This was my original understanding, and my original comment stands. This will keep me from developing for the thing, so I don't want it.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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And the battery life is like 3 hours? No thanks. And if you lose it you basically lose your whole life. As a wise man once said "With great power comes great responsibility". I believe it was Ghandi. Or was it Yoda?
Posts: 52 | Registered: Nov 2003
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And why would you lose your whole life? It'll sync everything to your mac, just like everything else Apple makes, and like they explicitly state.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Battery Up to 5 hours (Talk / Video / Browsing) Up to 16 hours (Audio playback)
...
Up to 16 hours of battery life refers to music playback. Up to 5 hours of battery life is based on H.264 1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps audio.
posted
That's the Cisco iPhone that FG brought up earlier in the thread.
Anywho, I just found out about the Apple iPhone and I'm tweaking out. I think I'll get one in around September, when some bugs are worked out. I'm excited!
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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This really is going to be the next ipod, isn't it?
"Well, it's Apple, so it has to be the best."
Meanwhile, other manufacturers are offering far more intuitive and feature-packed solutions at a fraction of the cost. This iPhone fad will be no different. LG's first attempt is already putting it to shame.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I stand by my earlier post. I recently upgraded my Siemenns SX-66 to a T-Mobile MDA, and I love it. (I loved my old phone, too.) There is very little--if anything--that iPhone can do that my phone cannot, and my phone cost a lot less.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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The iphone will probably be succesful because it will be a bunch of innovation and interface improvement, packed into a campaign and a design which accomplishes that certain jay-nay-sais-something, that appeal, and holds a dominating share in a market that it is essentially revolutionizing.
That is what it means if you say that it is going to be 'the next ipod.' A smash success from any business angle. It does seem likely, too.
Cost is really the only issue. It's a lot of money to pay for something that is just a drop-in-the-toilet away from being a designer paperweight.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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(Ic, I was gonna get an MDA, too! You and your excellent taste in phones...)
The one thing the iPhone has that no other phone I've seen yet is offering is the voicemail system. The ability to browse your voicemail like a computer folder and manipulate them the same way...oh man, delicious.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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So, someone had to do it. I bought one. Bwahar. Thank my boss for being such a huge iPhone proponent that he offered me a $150 bonus on my next paycheck if I bought one.
Some iPhone plusses:
* Visual voicemail is...yeah. I cannot and will not stop raving about it. All of the web's naysayers who decry the iPhone as a 'retarded smartphone that does nothing new' are effectively forced to eat their words in the face of visual voicemail, period. I would pay an extra $200 for a handset for this feature alone.
* Dual-touch screen is about as you'd expect it: sexy. Quality is significantly better than a video iPod and the surface appears to be more scratch resistant.
* Camera is surprisingly good quality, even in relatively poor light.
* The on-screen keyboard is significantly easier to use than I'd anticipated. At first I was put off by the inaccuracy involved in a touch-screen keyboard: without the feel of the keys beneath my fingers, I'm much more inaccurate. Thankfully, the iPhone is obnoxiously good at figuring out what you meant. I can misspell "head" as "gwwf" and it will correct me. As a result, I actually type faster on the touch screen than I do using a standard qwerty interface - and MUCH faster than I can use handwriting recognition software.
* The integrated version of Google Maps is a godsend.
Some iPhone minuses:
* No voice dial? Are you serious? The iPhone even has a mic!
* No MP3 ringtones, despite being an iPod?
* The headphone jack is designed specifically to make plugging in any normal set of headphones impossible, thereby allowing Apple & their butt buddies Belkin to make and sell a $9.95 adapter, not unlike Nintendo with the GBA.
* The OS and whatnot take up enough space on the unit that my 4 gig is actually a 3.45 gig.
Beyond that, it's exactly what it looks like: standard smartphone features in a UI that many people (myself included) prefer, and others will sneer at.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I remain completely uninterested in the iPhone. It's second-tier technology in a Gucci bathrobe.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Absolutely. But for a lower price than you'd pay for the iPhone, you can get first-tier technology and a more useful form factor.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I got one too, and I agree one hundred percent with your assessment Eros. The iPod functionality, while very pretty and more advanced than anything we've seen in the past, loses some of the convenience that makes an iPod with the lack of a four button wheel. However the integration with the apps on my mac, and within the phone between the internet, mail, and phone applications is nothing short of revolutionary.
Realistically I don't need an iPhone, but I've been saving for one since I heard about it, and I can justify it by saying I'm making the Apple stock I own go up by buying it.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005
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I got an iphone too. In fact, I'm posting on Hatrack using the iPhone right now!
I love the web browsing capabilities. Whatever anyone else may say, I simply don't see other phones working as well online as does my new iphone. For instance, my Treo 680 wouldn't let me post on forums. The phone, maps, voicemail, iPod, and contacts features work excellently. Even surfing the web via EDGE isn't terribly slow (though wifi is much faster) and is a huge improvement over the speed of my old smartphone (which also used EDGE).
OTOH, I find myself missing several key features, such as:
eBook reader - Given the beauty of the interface, the iPhone would be a natural and effective way to read ebook. Apple could even theoretically manage ebook sales through iTunes. But as of now, I can only email myself .txt or .PDF files to be opened as attachments and don't remember places in the document.
MMS - no ability to send/receive multimedia text messages. Hopefully, this feature will be added in a future update.
Video - the excellent camera only takes still shots.
Document Creation - one can only view MS Excel or Word docs, no editing available.
No copy/paste - this is annoying when, say, copying text from a webpage to a memo or contact info would be needed. The lack of copy/paste is particularly odd given that Apple originally innovated this.
No built-in file browser - for saving, opening, editing, or creating documents or files.
No iPhone to iTunes access - you'd think that it would be in Apple's best interest to allow iphone users to download music directly from their store to their phone, but this feature is not available.
Despite the missing features, the iphone is a thrill to use, and many missing features may well be added in a future update. In the meantime, I'm having fun playing with my new toy.
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