Living with the iPhone

Yesterday, my friends Max and Zach and I were like the Three Amigos, but instead of sombreros we were armed with our iPhones. And instead of adventures with El Guapo, we were doing battle with AT&T's El EDGE network, the network the iPhone defaults to when it can't connect to an active Wi-Fi connection.

Our brave amigo adventure began when we decided to celebrate the Fourth by heading north of San Francisco to hang out at Stinson Beach. We got our fill of sun, surf and sand. During hours in the sun we got out our iPhones to goof around in a sandy environment. The screens were hot to the touch and managed to take sunscreen-soaked fingers pretty well, and there was no effect on performance from what we could tell. The sand didn't scratch up the screen, nor did any get into the ports or small crevasses on the iPhone's body.

So Max and I took pictures of each other and wanted to e-mail them to our mothers and friends. Because you cannot send mass SMS text messages or send a picture embedded in a text message, the only viable option is to send an actual, swear-to-God e-mail. (Many of my friends, recipients of mass SMS text messages, cheered at that limitation. Apple, will you please issue an update to allow me to send mass text messages again?)

Sending e-mails from the beach ultimately tested AT&T's EDGE network. It's at the continent's edge, quite literally. There is no Wi-Fi network for our iPhones to tap. Each of us have synced our contacts to include e-mail addresses, and each of us uses Gmail and our e-mails are sent through Gmail.

So our experience? The sun was pretty intense, so the shadows and the contrast levels really tested the camera's limitations. The pictures turned out fine, but were a bit shadow-heavy (we look "swarthy," according to some). But the EDGE network proved to be hot and cold. One message flew away and the EDGE network proved to be surprisingly fast. But at another point, we got the message "unable to send, cannot connect" and a copy of the e-mail was placed in an outbox queue. (On a separate bike ride it took three hours for my e-mail message to go through, and that only happened after the iPhone found my native W-iFi network!)

Ultimately, it's pretty cool that the phone could take a pretty good picture and e-mail it to loved ones, especially from the beach. The EDGE network is spotty. But if you live somewhere like San Francisco where Google plans to blanket free Wi-Fi to the whole city, or where the iPhone will find every Wi-Fi network around it, and where unsecured Wi-Fi networks are pretty common, then the EDGE issues should be neutralized.

My friend Chad, a techie and savvy lawyer at a tech firm, and I had lunch today where we spent more time pawing at my iPhone than catching up. He said to me that he's been reading blog after blog, review after review and lusting after one of these puppies. Apparently, there are now outages of the 8 gig, which validated my 10-hour wait, in some part.

Anyway, in the midst of sitting at a street cafe on Belden Lane on a sunny day in San Francisco we were more focused on the hot little item in our hands than the hot weather here. But we paused for a moment to reflect on how successful Apple has been at creating such hype, buzz and popular attention for the iPhone.

We had to think long and hard as to the last time as when popular media and imagination was captured with a mere product launch. Cabbage Patch Kids? Beanie Babies? No, the last time, we agreed, was probably the launch of Windows 95. It's pretty funny because, as Mac-philes will note, Macs had a great graphical OS for some time already. To me, the iPhone is the difference between having a DOS-based user interface and suddenly fast-forwarding to Mac OS X. That leap also happens to be the difference between my Razr and the iPhone. Hence the paradigm-shift comparison.

But we mused that the iPhone launch is somewhat more social than that for Win95. Sure, you have to bring an iPhone home to activate it, but it is inherently a mobile device, unlike an OS, which was inherently stationary. The iPhone is to be pulled out at dinner parties, lunches and on the bus. Will it become ubiquitous as an Evian bottle? What's keeping it from this level of usage, at least today, is the price. As such, the iPhone may well assume its place as a yuppie/guppie status-symbol accessory that just happens to have the functionality of no other device up to this point. The first must-have of the 21st century? Perhaps, but how cliche.

So in our excitement with the iPhone my friends and I all picked the "strum" ringtone on the iPhone. It's sunny, happy and seems to sound the best on the iPhone speakers. I think it's appealing to us since it sounds like the ads. With that, it's pretty confusing when our iPhones ring. A typical conversation: "Is it yours?" "No, it's my phone," followed by, "Oh, wait, no it really is my phone!" We're such geeks.

You can see where confusion lies. But this highlights the limited choice of the ringtones currently available on the iPhone.

Apple has said that customizable ringtones are coming "very soon." You would think that with, oh say 4 gigs or even 8 gigs of music that maybe just one of those music files could be devoted to a ringtone, or that some of those gigabytes could be devoted to a wider variety of ringtones.

From a lawyer's perspective I'm sure there are copyright issues with using a regular old music file as a ringtone as it would likely constitute a "performance" under the Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act, but still, we can dream and Apple can license.

Apart from that, another feature that I'd like to see an update is assigning ringtones to a particular contact. Sure, you can set your phone so that when "Johnny Appleseed" calls the "harp" ringtone sounds while John Q. Public's calls sound the "strum." But what if you don't want to answer Johnny's call because he's an ex? (Or Joanna Appleseed) What if you wanted to silent him (or her) both in terms of ringtone and otherwise. Unlike my old Motorola Razr, you can't do this on the iPhone - yet. The capability of NOT hearing from someone when they call (but hearing others) should be an option because I think we've all wished that when an ex (or a boss other undesirable) calls that we don't want to call divert them to voicemail as they'll be able to tell. Somehow the "strum" with all its sunny and happy appeal wouldn't be so fitting for these folks and I think we'd rather not know that they called. Perhaps the "alarm" ringtone would be, but then you'd still know it was them.

Kevin Ho has no business relations, investments or affiliations with subjects he covers.