David Pogue gets friendly with the iPhone
Sure it's shiny under glass and on those expertly groomed Keynote slides of Steve's, but David Pogue got a good hour with the iPhone yesterday, and he seems to be a fan. Yeah, Pogue's a bit of an Apple fanboy already, but we still trust him to give this thing a fair shake. Oddly enough, while RIM's stock is taking a nose dive upon the iPhone announcement, David is pretty well convinced that Blackberry-addicts won't be tossing out those QWERTY thumbpads anytime soon, since the lack of tactile typing on the iPhone is less than optimal. Luckily, the typing software does feature some predictive functionality based on which key you "meant" to hit and matching words from a built-in dictionary. As for overall feel, Pogue is pretty hot for this thing, thanks to the thin design and stainless-steel edges. Apparently the screen isn't the total fingerprint magnet you'd expect, since Apple played with the glass a while to get it just right, but you'll still be contributing plenty of smudges to the purty facade, which Pogue says you can just wipe off with a sleeve. Software is a bit of a mixed bag. The browser is currently ultra-sluggish, even during WiFi browsing, but apparently the touch operation is quite slick. The camera operation is fun with that full 3.5-inches of screen to preview your shots, but the refresh is a bit slow -- though some of these slowdowns are being blamed on incomplete software. We'll reserve our own judgment until we get this thing in hand, typing could definitely be a big drawback, but for the most part it looks like Apple's iPhone is almost as much of a winner in person as it is on paper.
