Finally, after a wait of a couple of years, I have an iPhone.
When the original phone was announced I was working at IMG, and though none of us knew for sure, we had a fair idea that it was probably our hardware powering the graphics.
The cost to begin with was quite prohibitive, so I had to make do with my ancient Nokia. When the 3G iPhone was announced this year, with GPS and a much cheaper price tag, I could finally justify getting one, so I waited eagerly for the UK release, constantly glaring at my clunky old phone that only did SMS and calls.
It took me a while to get my hands on one. With work, and Mum and Nick over here, it wasn’t really feasible to spend hours waiting in line outside an O2 store. Whenever I was able to make it in to Taunton they’d already sold out, so I had to constantly check their website, hoping that their stock would be replenished when I was able to make a trip in. Finally, last Wednesday, they received a delivery, so I left work early and raced in to pick up my new 16GB phone.
Am I happy? Oh yeah. I love my iPhone and everything it can do. GPS. Google maps. Internet and email everywhere. It really is an incredible machine. I was surprisingly impressed with just how nice the phone sounds when making a call.
But the key to the phone is the internet and all the available applications.
I have a huge number of RSS feeds in NNW on my desktop. Being able to read them in NNW on my phone is amazing. Waiting in line now is actually fun.
I use Twitter a lot, and Twinkle is a great client. I use Twitterific sometimes when I need a certain piece of functionality that Twinkle doesn’t have, but so far Twinkle is faster, smoother, and easier to read.
The iphone isn’t all play though. I’ve started working on my own application, and soon I’m going to begin development on a game. It’s a great device to develop for, and I’m really looking forward to spending some time doing non-Filemaker development, and being able to dust off some OpenGL ES.
I’ve also been playing around with the camera a bit, so expect to see an occasional random photo uploaded to flickr.
If you’re thinking about getting a new phone, please at least consider the iPhone. It’s a game changing device, well worth at least a thought, plus I’d like you to buy my software when I finally release it.
(this post was entirely written on my iPhone)
August 5th, 2008 18:41
grrrr…. even with the lower price, it’s still not in my budget
Seriously, good for you! New dads need to spend some money/attention on themselves too
Hope the boy and Sherry are doing well.
Rob
August 5th, 2008 18:48
It wasn’t really in my price range either.
Hopefully I can write some apps for it though and make my money back on it.
August 6th, 2008 17:39
Hmmmm… I wonder if I could use that line at my house?
Of course, I’d have switch from being an OS admin type to a programmer…. I’ve started learning Visual Basic… but just a little…. hmmmmm ….. problem is, my wife was a programmer for 10 years, so it’s a little difficult to pull the wool over her eyes with this sort of thing LOL
August 6th, 2008 20:40
It’s probably at least worth a try.
Objective-C is fun and not too hard to learn.
Check out some sample sales figures! http://www.tuaw.com/2008/08/06/iphone-dev-tap-tap-tap-releases-sales-figures/
Do you have a Mac to develop on?
August 7th, 2008 03:31
Unfortunately, no. That’s also been on the wish list. Although I make my money in the Microsoft world (job security- it breaks alot and they need guys like me to fix it!), I want a Mac so I can have the 2-platforms to play with at once (Mac and the ‘nix underneath). My MIL gave me her old Blueberry IMac, but even with a memory and hard drive upgrade, I can’t install OS X because it doesn’t have a firewire port, which the OS requires.
And, compared to PC laptops, Macs are a tad more ritzy in price.
So, has Galen played with his shaker rattle yet?
August 7th, 2008 08:50
Ah, that’s a shame.
Don’t forget that you can also run Windows on a Mac via Bootcamp or VMWare Fusion (In bootcamp it runs just as fast as on any machine - I played Portal, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 etc. and they were great on my Macbook Pro. Emulation in VMWare is still pretty great). :>
He likes the shaker. He hasn’t managed to grab it yet - he can manage socks and a few other small things. As soon as he is able to get his hand around it, I don’t think it will be long until he then starts bashing everything in sight.