Richard’s Notes

Apple Store, Soho, New York. Gary, Anne and I spent yesterday in New York and of course, had to stop in at the Soho Apple store to check out the iPhone (among other things).

No, I don’t have one yet nor do I plan to buy one any time soon. Yes, I think it’s one of the greatest devices I’ve ever seen, bar none. I thought this before getting my hands on one but after one minute of moving around the UI I knew Apple had a huge hit on their hands. This thing really works and works well. It is a joy to use.

I ran Safari and was immediately on the web, just like any Macintosh in an open wifi situation. I used the on-screen keyboard to type in the URL for my photo site and made one mistake, fixed it, and got to the site. Elapsed time: 20 seconds. The on-screen keypad will take maybe a minute to get used to. Non-issue.

It brought the site up faster than this 1.6 ghz MacBook Pro. I’m not kidding. The screen is fantastic and photographs look deep and rich on it (all the blur and bokeh comes through just the way you want).

Push the home button and you’re back in the launcher/finder, press Safari again and here you are.

I’ve read that many folks are buying iPhones and immediately deactivating the cell phone plan and just using them as small tablet computers. Why not, you have wifi, a browser, lots of great apps… it’s a mini Mac.

As soon as there’s a model with either more flash memory or a 40 gig hard disk sans-phone (HD and phone would kill battery) I’m on board, phone or not. This thing is the ultimate iPod/mini Mac computer and the phone is only a small piece of what makes it great.

Turn the iPhone sideways and the screen rotates, automagically, smoothly, beautifully.