iPhone 3G and MobileMe: Our Thoughts and Yours

[Poosc]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced several new Apple products and developments today—most notably, what we can expect from the iPhone 2.0 firmware, the new .Mac replacement MobileMe, and, of course, the new 3G iPhone. Now that we've all had a little time to digest what we saw, we're taking a look at what these announcements actually mean for you, the end user. We'll give you our snap judgment on each announcement and ask for the same from you.
The $199 3G iPhone


Love:

• Lower Price: This was the announcement that got everyone all atwitter: 3G, 8GB iPhones for just $199. Considering that I bought my 8GB iPhone less than one year ago for the low-low price of just $600 (I had to, I was writing an iPhone book), this is a big step towards affordability land for folks who've been craving an iPhone but couldn't stomach the price. Keep in mind that the 8GB iPod touch is currently selling for $299, so that means barring any price slashes from Apple, you can now purchase an iPhone for less than an iPod touch. Likewise, the 16GB iPhone is now selling for $299 versus the $399 16GB iPod touch.
• The catch, naturally, is that with the iPhone you've got to pay at least $60/month for your cell phone plan from AT&T (a number that I'm pulling from current iPhone plans—who knows if AT&T will up their charges for significantly quicker 3G data network).
• GPS: Apart from the price drop and the faster 3G network, the best feature in the new 3G iPhone is, without a doubt, the inclusion of GPS. We've already shown you how a location-aware device will change your life, and the addition of GPS to the iPhone will only take this to more exciting heights. And, of course, live turn-by-turn directions (which better be included, though we haven't seen proof) are fantastic. The 3G iPhones will be in stores on July 11th.
  Hate:
  • Camera: No improvements on the 2.0 megapixel camera, which is currently below par among the iPhone's competition.
  • Headphone Jack: The new headphone jack is not recessed so you no longer need to buy special headphones to fit your iPhone. This would be a good thing, if the recessed jack weren't such a stupid design move in the first place. You can't fix a mistake and call it a feature.
  • Improved Audio: The iPhone's speaker is abysmally quiet, making a speaker phone conversation almost impossible. Jobs says the audio is improved, but made no specific mention of the speaker phone, so we'll see. This is still a big question mark.Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
• The iPhone 2.0 Firmware
  
  
• Love:
  • Push Notifications for Third-Party Apps: The new iPhone 2.0 firmware, set to release in July with the 3G iPhone, promises a slew of new features for iPhone users, most notably through the App Store. (Is it just me, or does the App Store look strangely ugly in the screenshots?) Probably the biggest concern for those paying attention to the iPhone SDK the last few months has been that Apple doesn't allow third-party programs to run in the background to conserve battery, among other things. The problem with this is that, if you'd installed an instant-messaging application, for example, you wouldn't be able to receive updates when a new IM was sent your way unless you always had your IM app open. Apple came up with a solution to this problem by offering developers to send push notifications to any user's iPhone through their network, so that even if your application isn't running, you're still receiving updates as if it were. This is pretty ingenious, and although it's not going to be available until September, it's got all kinds of promise.
  • Apart from that, the folks at Apple showed off a lot of games and other applications that don't necessarily have all that much utility for the productivity set. (What percentage of the world's population does Apple think are M.D.'s? Seems like every iPhone-related keynote is showing us how doctors can use their iPhones.) If you can't wait until July for third-party apps on your iPhone, check out the apps we think are worth jailbreaking for and then take a few seconds to jailbreak your iPhone.
    Hate: Steve Jobs made a point to repeat that they've added everything that everyone wanted them to add to the iPhone. Well, *ahem*, although they added lots of features that everyone is excited to have, a lot of the added features were unexpected. What they did not add that everyone really wanted:
    • MMS Messaging: There is absolutely nothing as tedious as viewing an MMS message sent to the iPhone. You get a text message directing you to AT&T's lame MMS site (viewmymessage.com), but you have no link to get there directly from the MMS, so you have to type it in manually. Then you have to enter a username and password in a form to access your message. They're too long to memorize easily, so you have to switch back and forth between the text message and the browser to fill it in. In short, for all practical purposes you cannot view MMS messages on your iPhone at all—you need to find a desktop browser. On top of that, the ViewMyMessage site is insufferably slow. Guess we nobody wanted MMS, though. Photo by telethon.
    • Note-Syncing: The biggest waste on the iPhone is that the Notes application is completely standalone. It won't sync with anything, which means you're left with all sorts of buckets that don't sync up. When Apple released Leopard they included a Notes feature in many of their productivity apps (like Mail and iCal) that share the exact same styling as Notes on the iPhone, but they don't talk to the iPhone at all. In addition, the new MobileMe (see more on it below), which syncs virtually all of your iPhone's productivity apps, has no love for Notes, despite the fact that this is the app that one would imagine should be easiest to sync.
    • Wireless Sync: MobileMe will introduce wireless syncing of your data for a price, but we still aren't seeing any Wi-Fi sync of your iTunes music—the one feature that Microsoft's Zune has up on its Apple counterpart. At least Linux users have iPhone-to-iTunes wireless sync figured out. Thanks go to Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done for this
    
    

[poopy2177]

my friend has 1 and says its cool.faster serfing