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I don't regret being an iPhone early adopter
Do you remember where you were when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone, more than 10 years ago? It's a pretty nerdy thing to admit, but I do. I spent the day glued to my computer, at my desk -- theoretically hard at work. But I was actually devouring Engadget's liveblog, after which I watched and rewatched video of the event so I could see the mythical device in action. And then I spent the next 12 months waiting for my Verizon contract to expire, hating my Moto RAZR the entire freaking time. (No, I wasn't a day-one adopter, but I definitely stopped in an AT&T store to play with their demo phones.) The first iPhone wasn't a world-beater in terms of sales, and many have pointed out that it was the classic "first-gen" Apple product. It lacked important features like 3G connectivity and any third-party apps, you had to hook it up to iTunes to activate it, and it was wildly expensive -- $500 for a paltry 4GB of storage (or $600 for 8GB), and that was with a two-year contract. None of that mattered to me, and that's in large part due to Jobs' presentation, one that's widely considered the best he ever gave. I'd agree with that assessment, because he so clearly outlined the benefits of the iPhone over the phones that most consumers (including me) were using. Some of my colleagues fondly remember the Windows Mobile devices they used before the iPhone and noted how they waited a few years for Apple to fix those first-gen issues before getting on board.
The iPhone doesn't have the power to ruin (or rescue) everything
In five short years, the iPhone has managed to go from being a complete failure with no chance of making a significant impact on the cell phone market to literally ruining our lives. That final conclusion comes via Kevin Roose in a New York Magazine story with the completely un-linkbaitish headline Happy Birthday, iPhone: You're Ruining Everything. Now, I'm usually good at word puzzles, but no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to rearrange the letters "KEVIN ROOSE" to spell "Andy Rooney." Kevin seems to be channeling the late, legendarily curmudgeonly 60 Minutes correspondent. His article amounts to little more than the same arguments that have been made about the Internet, television, the telephone, airline travel, and these darn kids with the baggy pants and their rock & roll music. Roose seems to want the iPhone to get off his lawn. Roose claims that people in his social circle used to read books and had long, meaningful conversations, but now they are "a bunch of panicky, overstimulated, screen-fixated automatons." This is definitely good news to anyone who considers Roose a friend. It's not often you get to know the full, unvarnished truth about what someone thinks of you, but Roose thinks his friends are idiots. So that's nice. Roose asks, "Has [the iPhone] made us happier, more productive, and more creative, like Steve Jobs seemed to promise back in 2007?" You'll notice that Roose said "seemed to promise" rather than "promised" -- probably because he knows that Steve Jobs never promised those things, but he wants to hold Steve Jobs accountable for his own inferences. Apparently Roose has never been exposed to marketing before, so this has taken him completely by surprise. But let's assume that Steve Jobs had made such a promise, either explicitly or implicitly. Has the iPhone made me happier? No. Has the iPhone made me sadder? No. Has the iPhone made me more productive? No. Has the iPhone made me less productive? No. Has the iPhone made me more creative? No. Has the iPhone made me less creative? No. Know why? Because the iPhone is made of glass and plastic and electronics. Am I happier because of my iPhone? Actually, yes. Because I had the iPhone, I joined Twitter. Because I was on Twitter, I met some incredibly cool people, some of whom became really good friends. When I got my 3GS, my wife got my original iPhone, and she started on Twitter too, and she met them too. In fact, at a gathering of Twitter friends in 2009, my wife met someone who worked as a veterinary technician, and decided that she wanted to go back to school. For the past two years, she's been away from home 4-5 days a week for her studies. We kept in contact on our iPhones (thank you, iMessage). She wrote papers on her iPhone. She has apps for looking up drug combinations and treatment guides. She just graduated, with honors. We iMessaged during the ceremony. I took a video of her getting her diploma on my iPhone. I posted pictures to Tumblr to share with our friends. I emailed them to her mom, who viewed them on her iPad. (Her mom, by the way, has always felt intimidated and overwhelmed by computers, but loves her iPad.) This weekend I officiated at a wedding of two friends who met through Tumblr. The wedding was held in the backyard of other friends they had met through Twitter and Tumblr. 99% of those in attendance first knew each other through Twitter or Tumblr. There were a few Droid users (including the bride and groom!) but the rest of us were primarily iPhone users. I put the entire service together on my iPad, and read it off my iPad. The wedding was live-streamed over the Internet via another iPad, which meant that people across the country and indeed the world could watch in real time as their friends got married. Some friends watched on their phones in the car, another watched from an airplane. One watched from her bed because she came down with a fever and didn't want to risk getting anyone sick, but she didn't have to miss the ceremony. Afterwards we had cake, we talked, we danced, we laughed, and yes, sometimes we checked Tumblr and Twitter too. There was a hashtag for wedding related posts. During the reception, I received a text from a friend back in Ohio who told me he had been admitted to the hospital, and was able to exchange a few messages with him. I also heard from some other friends who told us about some weather-related storm damage. I sent off a quick message to my mom (who read it on her iPad) to remind her we were out of town for the weekend so she wouldn't worry about us being without electricity. The iPhone is a tool, like a hammer or a car or a paintbrush or a pen and paper. It won't make you creative. But if you decide that you want to be creative, there are plenty of opportunities be creative with an iPhone. It won't make you happy, but it can help keep you connected to family and friends. It might even help you meet new ones. That's not marketing; that's reporting, because that's exactly what it has done for me. Has it made me "more productive"? Well, let's assume for a minute that we could actually come up with some way to measure that. In the 5 years since I've had an iPhone, there have been countless times when I found myself suddenly "waiting" with unexpected minutes to fill. With my iPhone, I could decide what to do with that time. When talking about the wonderfully awesome Instapaper, Merlin Mann once wrote that when you find yourself with an iPhone and free time, you can "decide to throw birds at pigs" or check Facebook or whatever other fad app is popular. But then he added "Thing is, you could also decide to read. Just for a couple minutes. Maybe more. Maybe less. Who knows. It's your decision." Sometimes when I have those free minutes, I decide to kill zombies with plants. Sometimes I check my email. Sometimes I check Tumblr or Twitter. And sometimes I read Instapaper, or a Kindle book. Each of those options makes me happier than just sitting there waiting for whatever I'm waiting for. Due.app reminds me to take medication every day. I know for a fact that without that reminder, I'll forget to take it. Before I started using Due.app, I was taking both my medications at the same time, because I was afraid I'd forget. Turns out that taking them both at the same time caused some bad side effects which are completely mitigated if I take them at least two hours apart. Now I have two reminders which go off each day, and which keep going off until I take my medication. So my iPhone is helping make me healthier as well. (Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who have used it to track weight loss and food intake.) Roose's argument basically boils down to not liking the way his friends use their iPhones. The problem is that Roose blames this on the iPhone, rather than on his friends. Even worse, he considers his experience and his friends' behavior as normative. So if his friends are mindless drones, then everyone with an iPhone is a mindless drone, and the problem is the iPhone. The end result is pretty much a pile of ridiculous linkbait, which misses the fact that the iPhone has just as much potential to make life better as it does potential to make it worse. The telephone didn't ruin society, nor did recorded music, or the airplane, or any of the other technological advances that have been made. I imagine that if Roose had been friends with the first primitive Homo sapiens who tamed fire, he would have complained that "back before we had fire, everyone used to sleep in a giant pile to keep warm at night. Fire is tearing us apart!" Once you stop blaming technology for people's actions and decisions, you'll probably be able to see a lot more of the positive possibilities. Photo by Alex Proimos | flickr cc
Daily Update for June 29, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
iPhone 5th Anniversary: A video retrospective
Talk about a trip down memory lane! After blogger Mike Grothaus mentioned the low quality of his personal photos of the 2007 launch, I dug around on my iMac and found a video I had created on June 29, 2007 for a new blog I was running at the time. The video ends rather abruptly -- I had to set down the camera to sign for my new iPhone -- but you'll get an idea of what it was like to be in line at the Aspen Grove Apple Store on the day of the iPhone launch. I was quite amazed at how much the Apple Store has changed in five years; no more bookshelves full of boxed software and many more iPhone accessories. The one thing that hasn't changed is the rampant enthusiasm of Apple fans and the hard-working employees at the stores. I think a lot of people saw this as the beginning of something huge, and it's great to see that the iPhone didn't let us down.
iPhone 5th anniversary: I stood in line all day for an iPhone and I also got this lousy t-shirt
Five years ago today, on June 29, 2007, I spent the entire day sitting in front of the Aspen Grove Apple Store in Littleton, Colorado. My mission? To be one of the first people to own an iPhone. I got the iPhone, and also a little souvenir that fortuitously appeared in my dresser this morning. I remember getting to the store shortly after 7 AM and being surprised by the length of the line already. About eighty people had made it into the line ahead of me, so not knowing what Apple's plans were for the new device, I was worried that I wasn't going to get one. I had my trusty Palm Treo 680 with me, and my major concern was that I was going to have to shut down my T-Mobile service. It was hot in the morning, as the front of the store faces east and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Many of us in line became friends as the day wore on, holding places while people skipped away to get food and beverages, go to the bathroom, or just alleviate boredom by going somewhere else. Looking back, Apple wasn't very prepared. Unlike today, when an iPhone line usually means that you're going to get a few free bottles of water and/or a muffin, I don't believe they handed out anything. However, there was a company (FastMac) that apparently saw something in this phone that Apple was creating, and they were handing out the t-shirts you see in the image above. I didn't even remember having that t-shirt, and by some quirk of fate it bubbled up from the depths of a drawer this morning, so I'm wearing it honor of that long, hot day. Did I also get an iPhone? Yes, but 6/29/07 was also the day that another Steve Jobs product -- Pixar's Ratatouille -- came out, and since we had to go stand in line at the theater for that movie, I didn't get to activate my iPhone until the next day. That actually ended up being a blessing in disguise, since Apple and AT&T had some real problems for the first few days getting phones activated. I'm now on my sixth iPhone -- each generation, plus a second iPhone 3GS to replace one that I lost -- and they keep getting lighter, slimmer, and more powerful. I wish I could say the same about myself, as this t-shirt seems a bit tighter than it did five years ago...
iPhone 5th anniversary: How I accidentally became an iPhone user
Five years ago I accidentally became an iPhone user. I had watched the iPhone announcement several months earlier, and thought it looked like an incredible phone. But I wasn't planning to get one because I was a Palm user, and had been a Palm user since my Palm IIIxe. I had a ton of software, and I was heavily into the whole Palm "experience." At the time I was carrying a Treo 650 (which has replaced my Treo 600, which had replaced my Treo 300) and I was fairly happy with it. Sure, it locked up a couple times a day and I had to remove the battery pack to reboot it, but so what? Yes, occasionally (and by "occasionally" I mean "regularly" as in "almost daily") I had to unscrew the top of my stylus to get to the little piece of plastic that I could use to press the reset button. Sure, I carried 2 extra batteries around with me because if it was a busy day I knew I'd need them. But the Treo had all that software... When the iPhone first came out, it had no third-party software. I couldn't imagine giving up all of my software. I had a lot of money invested in Palm software, how could I even consider throwing it all away? Then something unexpected happened: my Treo stopped working. Actually, I shouldn't say that it was unexpected. While it was frustrating, it certainly shouldn't have been unexpected. My Treo 300 had worn out because it wasn't made very well, which is why I bought the Treo 600. I think I went through 2 or 3 Treo 600s before I finally convinced Sprint to replace it with a 650. And now the 650 was starting to act up. The 'e' and the 'w' keys were starting not to respond unless they were pressed really hard, and the touchscreen had to be "recalibrated" every day, or else stylus taps were inaccurate. I finally got fed up and asked Sprint when my contract was going to expire. Answer: July 3rd. I was very excited, not because I could get an iPhone, but because I thought I would be able to get a good price on a new Treo 755p. Sprint was advertising it all over their website for "only" $280 with a 2 year contract. There was just one flaw in my plan: because I was existing customer, I couldn't get the Treo 755p for $280. I could get it for $429. I went around and around with them, trying to get them to see that it was insane to suggest that after 4 years of being a smartphone customer, I was worth less than a new customer. But they refused to budge. I decided to leave Sprint and switch to AT&T/Cingular, but I still wasn't planning to get the iPhone. I was planning to get a "free" Treo 680, but before I did that I did my homework and asked one question which ended up changing everything: Which is more expensive: a free Treo 680 or an iPhone? If it sounds like a trick question, that's because it is. The first trick was that the Treo was only free "after rebate." Still, "free after rebate" sounds a lot cheaper than cheapest iPhone, which sold for $500. But there's another trick: the contract. Both the Treo and the iPhone required a two-year contract. The Treo rebate stipulated that you had to sign up for a contract with unlimited data which cost $40/month for Treo users. However, due to what must have been some amazing negotiations between Apple and AT&T before the deal was announced, unlimited data for the iPhone was only $20/month (the Treo didn't do 3G either, so these were comparable plans). I don't remember that detail getting a lot of attention at the time, but I've always thought that the data plan was one of Apple's greatest accomplishments in bringing the iPhone to the market. It needed unlimited data so you weren't thinking about data usage. And $20 was literally half of what it cost if you were using a different smartphone on the same network (AT&T increased the cost to $30/month when 3G arrived a year later, and took away the 200 included text messages). Now armed with the facts for both the initial cost and the contract costs, it was easy to make a comparison between the iPhone and the Treo. AT&T's lowest voice plan was $40/month for 450 minutes, and that was the same for Treo or iPhone. Add another $40/month for data and the "free after rebate" Treo would have cost a total of $80 per month for 24 months = $1,920. A iPhone would cost $60 per month for 24 months = $1,440. Add $500 for the iPhone itself: $1,940. Not to mention that the iPhone had onboard storage (which, at the time, was really only useful for music, but still, you were also getting a great iPod as part of the iPhone), and the Treo had almost none, so you would need an SD card, which cost about $60 at the time. Over the course of two years, the 8 GB iPhone would cost about $2,040 versus about $2,000 for the Treo. For an extra $1.67 per month, I could get an 8GB iPhone. So I bought an iPhone. I actually bought the iPhone right after launch but then had to leave it in the box for about a week while I waited for my contract to expire with Sprint! Apple dropped the price of the iPhone shortly after launch and gave $100 Apple Store gift cards to early adopters, which made it an even better deal. A friend of mine sent me his $100 Apple Store gift card and said "I'm a Windows guy, I'll never shop at the Apple Store, so I thought you might be able to use this." So I paid $400 for my 8 GB iPhone. Sprint lost me as a customer due to their terrible customer retention policies, but Palm also lost me because my experience with the Treo hardware had also been terrible. They were poorly made of cheap plastic, and did not stand up to use over time. When Apple showed the iPhone without a hardware keyboard, my first reaction was "No keys to stop working!" but the real difference could be felt just by holding the two devices. The Treo felt like a fragile piece of electronics wrapped in plastic. The iPhone felt like something NASA would have built. How long did it take me to realize I had made the right decision? The first time I loaded a web page in "Mobile Safari" and saw how much better it was than the awful web browser on the Treo, I never looked back. Even with no third-party software and extremely limited multitasking, the iPhone was always on a different level than the Treo. Palm CEO Ed Colligan's infamous comment: "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," he said. "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." While Palm struggled to figure out how to make a "decent" phone, Apple had no interest in making anything less than a revolutionary phone. I'm guessing Apple could have released a decent iPhone in 2006, maybe even 2005. But a "decent" phone wasn't enough. So they kept working at it. While Palm released the "decent" Treo 300 and then annual "decent" upgrades, Apple kept working on making the iPhone better and better, until it was ready. Colligan was right, of course, when he said that Apple would not "just walk in." Apple didn't walk in. They stepped over.
iPhone 5th anniversary flashback: Welcome to 2006 and the height of Apple Phone predictions
Happy 5th birthday, iPhone. Looking back, 2006 was an awesome time to be rolling in predictions. The drumroll for the iPhone was steady, furious, and demanding. As the tempo grew as Macworld 2007 grew near, everyone was hoping for something amazing, and Apple delivered. Five years after the device finally debuted, and customers got their hands on this amazing device, we raise a toast to the iPhone. Cheers! Recent Apple patents for phone, PDA, new cube? Here we go with the Apple patent game again, and this time around it looks like we have blasts from the past and the future. Engadget first tracked down a patent filed by Apple yesterday (pictured... More Apple tablet rumors Here's the rumor that won't go away. United States Patent Application #20060026536 (which features the signature of Jonathan Ive) concerns "...Methods and systems for processing touch inputs are... Taiwan manufacturer gets order for Apple "iPhone" handset Hon Hai, aka Foxconn Electronics, won't comment or confirm, but the cat seems to really be out of the bag now. This latest batch of iPhone reports feels like less of a rumor than previous... Also of interest: Rumor: Apple iPhone could be sold unlocked? Rumors: Google and Apple sitting in a tree? iPhone not going to be called iPhone? Concept-iPhone Compendium Would you buy an iPhone? More 'evidence' of a looming iPhone uncovered TUAW predictions for Macworld 07
