Seattle sounds nice.

And I was always told my comments didn't matter...

It looks potentially very cool. I wonder though how much of the interface is customizable. The interface definitely still needs work. Especially at the beginning of the video, it wasn't clear why the keys had to be used instead of touching the screen.

One of the biggest gripes I can see so far is the reliance on menu. It's one thing that the iPhone manages to get around for the most part (and simply doesn't provide that functionality when it can't...)

The really big win the iPhone still has is that multi-touch is a really big gain. It allows Apple to treat the iPhone as a single surface you can interact with directly. You can used to just flipping through things, sliding things, zooming in, etc. without having to take your eyes away from the screen, or figure out what button to press.

It's certainly to say iPhone is not perfect. Still can't copy and paste with it. But Cocoa is a really great stack to work with. I'm very curious as to how Andriod compares. Is there an emulator for development use? Also, how hard will it be to develop common apps against different HW?

Yeah, a lot of really smart people work on small aspects of these problems. A lot of companies (Toyota, Honda, Sony, iRobot) have put a lot of effort into small things like walking and navigation.

And I'm not saying he's not smart. I'm certainly not saying some intelligent person can't come along and figure out ways to do these things. What I am saying is that it looks like he has a hunk of metal and thats it.

Especially considering he's only been working on it for two years. I'm not even sure if that's realistically enough time to make a fully featured body.

Finally, he's in talks with an Australian company? Does that mean he called them up and told them he had a robot and would they like to buy one? Has he demo'd it at all?

Most importantly, why is this making headlines? Anyone actually bother investigating the feasiblity of this? Any experts? Anything except for what the creator says?

If the iphone doesn't get changed much due to the software updates, then these points all seem fair. However, as an owner of an iPhone, I can say its clearly not finished. The difficulty is, it's like we're all standing around a half-finished picture and try to judge its merit. Are the blank spaces there on purpose?

The iPhone would seem to at least have the hardware to do many tasks it currently cannot. For example, IM, mounting as a HDD, games, etc. Other things, could be fixed via bluetooth (e.g. GPS). While bluetooth GPS doesn't seem great at first, as it requires a whole new device, it does have the advantage that it won't drain your iPhone batteries.

I think some great games could be made for the iPhone, although owning one, I now realize some of my previous ideas of what would work clearly won't. Like the keyboard, you do have the issue that if you dedicate any space to controls, you lose screen real estate. So you have to resign yourself to either making games that work soley on touch, or having a smaller screen.

Sometimes I wish it had a pull out keyboard for the real estate issue, but if you want to do any real typing, you probably want a UMPC instead anyways. I'm still waiting for Apple to make a tablet...

What would make sense is if they released a full tablet. I'd love a tablet, but I have no desire to use a Windows machine. Besides, the Windows tablets I've played around with made it clear the pen mostly just replaced the cursor. I think having a stylus calls for a new way to think about the GUI.

If Apple is ever going to release a tablet, it's sure taking its time, and Jobs seems to have a thing against styli. And considering the Palm first made the stylus stylish, wouldn't it make sense for them to take the next step?

1 Open SDK!
2. Scripting language
3. GPS (I wonder if this can still be implemented due to triangulation from the cell towers?)
4. iChat
5. Bluetooth: HDD, keyboard, GPS (alt to the above)
6. Games
7. More mail features (like deleting several at a time)
8. More apps supporting the rotation of the device
9. Less crashing
10. Allowing adding songs instead of needed to creating a playlist to sync
11. TODO list

Some of these features can be done simply by providing an SDK and scripting language.

I'm fine with EDGE .. when I have enough bars, it's fast enough for me, and I enjoy the long battery life.

Finally, a worthy review of the iPhone. I have one. I love it. But I agree with just about all the downsides you point out.

It covers what I need. I listen to music. I need to find my way around the city sometimes. I like to check my email frequently. And I like to look things up randomly. It does all those things very well. Also, I really like having a long battery.

If you are the type to do heavy browsing on the streets .. then perhaps the Helios Ocean is better for you. Or the Nokia N95 (which is more expensive, but has less battery life). Unless the phone ever allows tethering, which I would desperately like, I see the EDGE as a mostly non-issue. The load times for most things just isn't that long (OMG!! SECONDS!!)

Unlike other companies, I think we can assume Apple will be working on this phone more. There might even be a quite going around from Jobs saying they'll be continuing releasing updates for the next 2 years.

So, maybe they released a product before it was truly ready for the wild .. most of the complaints seem to based on this issue. Should Apple have waited? Don't know. I'm happy I've got mine. It works well enough for me.

One last thing. It's a really important point at the end. Even if the iPhone doesn't cure all your issues, it will hopefully at least bring the end to all the crippled phones we've seen up to this point. Maybe. Verizon just announced they will finally allow email on their phones. But for a $5/month charge. Still a step in the right direction?

The one strange thing about the jazelle being in there, is that I believe Jobs is quoted as saying that the iPhone doesn't support Java because it's too slow. Which I have a hard time believing if it has a dedicated processor. I'm not a big fan of Java, but it's at least a step in the right direction (plus, there's always Jython).

As for the hackability of the iPhone, it will be interesting to see if they use TCE to lock down the iPhone. To my knowledge, they really only have used this is the past to keep people from running OS X on non-apple hardware. Maybe they want to stop people from cloning the iPhone, and stealing the SW?

Nope, unfortunately not. I tried plugging my in, and it says it's not iPhone compatible. I only hope that it's just a matter of them eventually adding support. Of course, the radio control needed a special interface/screen (i.e. they'd need to write another app), so I'm not holding my breath. Which is too bad, since it was somewhat pricey.