NurflugelBlog

The NurflugelBlog is a place where I can vent my spleen about pretty much anything that crosses my mind. Politics, religion, those annoying little indignities we all have to put up with - I have plenty to say about them.

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Sunday, July 13, 2008

The new iPhone!

I had last week off, and spent Friday morning in line at the Apple store in the Washington Square mall. Apple folks were giving out donuts and bottled water. I was perhaps the 100th person in line, and it took about 2 hours to get in. Apparently they were having problems with the activation servers being overloaded.

After turning down Apple Care and other stuff, my old Razr was deactivated and my iPhone was ready to be removed from the shrink wrap.

First impressions:
  • Very nice. GPS is usable, although Apple doesn't give you a moving map directions program (one is coming from a 3rd party vendor).
  • I was somewhat annoyed to find that you can only create custom ringtones from iTunes - and only from things you've purchased from the iTunes store. So much for the 870 CDs I own. The alternative is to buy iLife and use GarageBand, but I'm not really in the mood to spend that much money. There are some companies which offer software to do what I want (I had a bunch of nice ringtones I created for my Razr), I'll have to check them out.
  • Battery life is not as bad as people are claiming, but then again I'm not on the phone all day long. And, if I am, I'll just plug it in and use the headset or speakerphone.
  • No voice dialing. Why isn't this in there yet???
  • Excellent sound quality - best I've ever had in a cell phone.
  • Same with the camera - fantastic quality for a cell phone.
  • Apps - lots of apps, I'm sure more will come. Haven't tried any of the non-free ones yet, but there's some pretty tempting ones out there.
  • Best of all, the "cool" factor - I've got the coolest toy available for the near future, sure to inspire geek-envy in all who see me.