Not that *I* do, of course (cough, cough), but I’ve noticed that browsing on the iPhone to be a fairly awesome mobile experience, where, of course, I can literally surf anywhere, and surf real webpages, not the mobile optimized crap that often passes as a “web experience”.

Yesterday, for example, I found myself on my couch surfing on my iPhone (via Safari) while watching TV, while my computer was sitting about 5 feet away from me.  I could have gotten up to use my computer, but the problem is that its facing away from the TV.

Yes, aside from the thought “jeebus, WHEN did you get so colossal lazy?”, the other thought that also popped into my mind was that the browser in the iPhone was perfectly acceptable for recreational surfing.  And it allowed me to surf while doing all kinds of things, including watching TV, without hauling out my laptop *and* a TV tray *and* its electric plug.

(having a baby meant getting rid of that TV tray, as its an object with a high center of gravity, and a high risk of damaging small fleshy things, which would put me at a higher risk of getting personally damaged by my wife)

So, its no surprise when I heard that the iPhone, as a means browse the internet, has actually *doubled* its share of the browsing pie. This isn’t merely mobile browsing, but *all* browsing.  Now, the actual numbers are a lot more humble than what I thought, at about 0.3%, but given the kind of positive experiences I’ve been having I’m not at all surprised.

I do wonder if and when Apple grants people the ability to use the iPhone as a tethering device for laptops, how it might change the uptake for the iPhone as a browsing experience.  Not that its currently being allowed in the States, but apparently, in just another month its coming to Canada. Tell you what: when it does come, I’ll try it and let you know. ;)

So, in light of the new data plan promotion for 3G phones up here in Canada via Rogers (part of our wireless oligopoly), I decided to go full bore and just go for it.  Even though Rogers has extended this “special” rate for data plans for another month or three, it made sense for me.  I have been paying through the nose for a Blackberry data plan that gives me 20MB per month; paying about half that amount for 6 gigabytes per month was a bit of a no-brainer.

Even though I’m a couple months late to the party, here are my thoughts

1. its a magnificent piece of technology. The iPhone has its faults (see below), but its a great piece of hardware.  Silky smooth crystal touch screen.  A nice solid un-plasticky kind of weight.  A user-interface that is slick, easy to read, and otherwise gorgeous.  It has something almost super-naturally tactile about it (given the whole touch-screen thing, that’s the point, I suppose) that makes you want to touch it and hold it all the time.

2. typing is atrocious. In spite of how awesome the UI is, the fact that it is almost 100% touch screen necessitates that the keyboard is also part of the touch screen.  This means, unlike most data phones, there are no keys to provide touch-feed back when you’re typing.  As someone who’s migrated from a Blackberry, this makes typing an atrociously frustrating chore, and although, I admit, I’ve only had it for a couple days, there is just no way I’ll be composing lengthy emails, or blogging for that matter, via iPhone.  Perhaps my fingers are fat and pudgy, but even so, I find myself making far too many unintended keystrokes, even after about 10-15 hours of usage, and I just don’t see it improving.

3. iPhone “apps” are awesome. The iPhone apps store is one slick piece of work.  You browse apps.  You find apps.  You download them directly to your iPhone.  And you have a new app.  I am not planning to jailbreak the phone, and yet, there’s still a ton of stuff available.  Some of it is crap.  Some of it is surprisingly good.  Like, for example, “Epocrates”, which is a program that is popular amongst medical students and physicians, originally developed for the Palm Pilot.  There’s a free iPhone version which is just as good as I remember it (allows you to search a comprehensive drug database, cross reference for adverse events), but given the iPhone’s excellent graphics, also has a “pill display” portion, where you can actually see what pills look like.  This is an application that could have easily sold for bongo bucks — but its free.

4. 3G isn’t as fast as I thought it’d be. Caveat — I live in Toronto, and the 3G coverage is pretty excellent.  I understand that in the states, or, other areas in Canada, the coverage can be quite spotty.  Having said that, sure, the 3G network is meant to be between three and five times as fast as the EDGE network.  But, it doesn’t really feel that fast.  Why is that? Personally, I think its because unlike with the Blackberry I was previously using, which was an EDGE network phone, I was probably browsing mobile-optimized web pages.  With the iPhone 3G, I am browsing web pages — which, perhaps, are three times as heavy, in terms of data size.  Its able to stream video, however, which *is* something to see.

5. battery life sort of sucks. Coupled with the fact that there is no easy way (read: impossible) to change batteries, and the fact that most people will want to use the iPhone as a cool doo-hicky — and not merely a phone — you’ll perhaps find that the length of time your batter lasts is between 3 - 5 hours.  Now, actually, compared to laptop batteries, this isn’t that bad (in my experience), but the problem, as I stated, is that you can’t change the batteries, and furthermore, for most people, they’ll also need the iPhone for one other thing: to make calls.  Yesterday, I nearly ran out of batteries before the end of the day, and it wouldn’t have mattered so much except that I had to make a few unexpected emergency calls.  I was sweating bullets, silently praying that I wouldn’t run out of juice while I was making those calls.

6. The camera is crippled. Displaying photos is nice.  Taking photos, however, sucks.  There’s no zoom.  There’s no flash.  And it suffers mightily from a longish exposure time, requiring your hands to be pretty still to avoid a blur on the photo.  Especially at night.  Having no zoom also sucks, and I didn’t realize how sucky this was until I actually needed it (case in point: I wanted to take a photo of an insect the other day — don’t ask — and I had to get so close to it that I was within eating distance)

While there are a ton of things that could be better (I don’t even want to think about how fragile it is), there’s one unmistakeable thing about the iPhone.  It is an amazingly unique piece of hardware that does some things so well that it makes you forget (most times) about the others.

If you’re Canadian (and by looking at my stats, few of you are, so if you aren’t, move on) you’ve probably heard the growing attention that the iPhone has been getting in advance of its July 11th release.

Most of it being negative, thanks to Rogers’ bald-faced, shamelessly blatant attempt at profiteering, that is, as one glance at their voice and data plans suggest.

I have nothing further to add, actually, other than to say that at times like this, I begin to wish and hope with all my might that companies that happily provide so little and ask for so much, get their delicious comeuppance.

Not just the usual “demand is soft, interest is down, Rogers stock takes a brief dip and everyone moves on”.

No, I mean some sort of catastrophic, humiliating, trip on that step you didn’t see in front of a world-wide audiene, public pie-in-your face, step in a cow-pattie at your wedding kind of comeuppance.

I mean, I don’t think it will actually happen come July 11th, but hey — a man can only hope.

{although some more recent news suggests that perhaps Apple might snub Rogers after all}

The closest thing I’ve come to owning a Mac is through my brother, who purchased a notebook some months ago — but that’s the best thing about being a blogger: its part of our writ to write about things we barely know about.  Anyway, contrary to the motto “it just works”, it just _doesn’t_ work, as he’s had a number of hiccups from time to time.  Admittedly not as severe as the misadventures he had with his Dell or, prior to that, his bargain-basement PC, but it certainly isn’t quite as its billed to be: short of perfect.

Therefore, it was with schadenfreude-like glee that I read about Leopard’s earlier mishaps (although I understand much of it has been patched), and now, Robert Scoble’s own royal frustrations (see Rob Hyndman’s problems with peripherals).

While there are a lot of things that macs in all their incarnations do very well, one thing I cannot abide by is the snobbishness that many Mac-owners take about their platform and hardware of choice.  There’s no question that PC owners do the same, but I think the real issue is that Apple corporate echoes the same kind of childish tropes through its own marketing voice (’it just works’), advertising, and error messages that are coded right into OSX.

On the other hand, I don’t think you will ever hear anyone who is attached to Microsoft ever make smug suggestions that their products are without error …which I take “it just works” to mean.

In a somewhat shocking maneuver, it seems like Rogers, who is the mobile carrier in Canada slated to offer the iPhone when it arrives (my money’s on next year) will, in fact, not be able to ream Canadians as they’re often wont to do, with their astronomical data transfer rates.

I had commented on this discrepancy in a prior post, but its worth mentioning in brief: In the United States, Apple’s iPhone (via AT&T) data package *starts* with unlimited data.  Such a thing doesn’t really exist in Canada, but if it did, would, I’m sure, require you to hand over your first born child, in addition to the mortgage of your house.  In the meantime, we get the privilege of getting 20 megabytes per month for the same price, which really is a pissant sum of data.  If you start out at a lower data package (for the Blackberry, for example), you’ll pay through the nose as you’ll almost certainly go over 1 megabyte simply by checking email and the odd blog page {I speak through experience}.

It turns out that Apple is going to enforce some reasonable standard as it applies to data transfer packages, as it has done in the US, and in the soon-to-be-forthcoming UK and Germany.  And to this I say “bravo”, and “hooray”.

The oligopoly that exists in Canada as it refers to most things, but not limited to mobile carriers, means that the free market determines squat, and everyone gets the benefit of paying higher “we-swear-we’re-not-colluding” prices.

The snarky translation to this is that no one is ever going to make Rogers (or Fido, or Bell, or what have you) charge *less* because there is no real business reason to do so — until now.

So while I’ve been critical of Apple in the past, I am all for a company that improves the lot of consumers everywhere — at least all individuals who have a mobile phone that is.  Because make no mistake: if Rogers is forced to offer a more generous data package, it will necessarily have to start lowering / improving all of its mobile packages across the board, and all of the other mobile carriers will undoubtedly follow suit.

I mean, that would make sense, anyway — but, I’m sure the cynic in all of us (who are familiar with such shennanigans) aren’t quite holding their breath just yet.

You may have heard that Steve Jobs and Apple have discounted the iPhone by $200 yesterday for a multitude of reasons. This move had Wall Street steamed, but it also had some of the faithful feeling … oh, I don’t know — like they were shanked with a sharpened Newton or something. Perhaps it has to do something with being played like iChimps for dancing like monkeys to Steve Jobs siren song.

I understand that technology drops in price. I think its a given these days that technology is somewhat disposable that way. I get it. Most people do. But the question here isn’t one of principle. Its one of scale. How fast things are changing. A slippery slope.

I mean, does it bother me that the rear projection high definition 42″ television that I bought 4 years ago can now be had for less than 1/3 of the price? Of course. But it doesn’t really get me *angry* because its a slow process that happened over a few years time.

But a 33% drop in 66 days?

Come on, man!

That’s approaching new levels of absurdity! Unless, of course, its a tell on behalf of Steve Jobs that he’s not happy with how fast his Jesus phones are moving (or, perhaps not), and not reaching the supposed 3 million units sold in a year.

Maybe.

At any rate, I think the price drop is significant for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that it sets a precedent. A happy precedent for some (the later adopters), and an unhappy for others (extra early adopters). I mean, if this kind of ridiculousness is par for the course, what else can we expect in the future?

$500 drops on the next iMac 6 months after its released? $750 rebates off the next Macbook 3 months after its launched?

Or should we only expect it if sales aren’t quite hitting their targets?

Some people, such as Robert Scoble, don’t really mind that they paid a $200 premium for the geekish privilege of having such a Sacred Object. Which is fine. I think companies like Apple need *more* fans like him, and not less, when Apple pulls stunts like these.  I mean, you have to be “ok” with things even when Apple treats you, its early adopters, and its business partners like chumps.

I mean if it*wasn’t* about the bottom line? Steve Jobs wouldn’t be issuing $100 credits, but full $200 ones.

It could be the overall downward trend in the market.  On the other hand, it could be something like what Sony had to contend with when they first released the PlayStation Portable: awesome technology, beautiful vivid screen.  But, wait a second — what’s wrong with my display?

And in fact, for those not actually owning iPhones, or even keeping up with this kind of stuff, it may surprise to you to know that not only is the iPhone is far from perfect, but there are a small but significant portion of them that are defective.  I’m talking dead pixels, and perhaps more importantly dead zones (i.e. areas that become non-responsive) that have become the stuff of nightmares for the Faithful — and non-Faithful, who merely own shares in Entralled Apple, Inc (yours truly included).

The dead zones and pixels may be the result of Apple purchasing some Finnish technology that may have been defective from the beginning, as an analyst at Nomura International has sussed out.  Basically, its based on some chemical composition that is heat sensitive, and may wear out over time.

Translation?  Apple stock is taking a huge hit — and actually has been doing so since its high on July 28, when Apple announced its earnings for the quarter.  Its down by about $20 since that time, although, perhaps it was temporarily buoyed by the news of the new iMacs.  Unfortunately it looks like brushed aluminum isn’t giving Apple a bullet proof vest when it comes to stock market jitters.

Personally, I think these fears (as with most fears) are a bit unfounded.  After all, with Apple’s history of tech churn, you can bet that if they don’t already have a program in place (albeit an unofficial one) to replace defective iPhones, they will correct it with the next iteration of the iPhone, which I hear is due out in another 10 weeks or so.

(Of course I’m kidding).