Jeremey's Weblog

iPhone Headset

So the iPhone headset came out last Monday, and I'd been given a gift card to the Apple store for my b-day. Thus on Tuesday, after I discovered it was out, I ran over to see if they actually had any. They didn't have them out, so I asked Jack (manager dude, good guy) if they had them and he said they had three, not enough to even put them out yet. So I bought one, of course.

What was compelling to me about the iPhone headset (vs. others) was the integration. The headset comes with a shared charging dock, shared travel charger, and the process of pairing and charging is so integrated, it's beautiful. The other feature for me was the size, the iPhone headset is tiny.

Audio

So now that I've been using it for almost a week, here's what I think. The audio quality is excellent, more enjoyable than being on the actual iPhone, IMO, and no-one thus far has said "are you on a headset?" I've called a couple people specifically to ask how it sounded and all comments were positive. The sound was noticeably better than I remember on my Jabra (BT250V), but it's been a while since I used it, so it's not a fair comparison.

Form Factor

The form factor and weight are great, you can comfortably wear the thing and forget it's there. One consequence of the design is that it may or may not stay precisely put in your ear (i.e. aimed perfectly at your mouth). I was worried about this, if the mic positioning was critical, but so far it hasn't seemed to have mattered at all, in which case as long as the thing is in your ear and not pointed backwards, it's fine. But it can't be long before someone markets an add-on that loops over the back of your ear.

It definitely feels like it's just sitting in your ear, rather than clamped on like most. That's a little disconcerting at first, but I did a fair bit of sideways head wiggling and it didn't budge, so I'm more confident in it now. I wouldn't wear it bungee jumping though.

One nice side effect of the design is that it's trivial to hand to someone else. Last night I was talking to my boys and when I was done I just handed the headset to my wife. No complicated extracting of the thing off your ear.

The one button is nicely placed on rear of the device (i.e. on the end opposite the mic and charging contacts). I always had trouble finding the Jabra button, but you can't miss this one.

Battery and Range

The battery life could definitely be better, but it hasn't been an issue for me because I charge it when I charge my iPhone... since the chargers are so conveniently married, this is a no-brainer.

I was pleasantly surprised with the range... it's far better than with my Jabra (though this could be a property of the phone as much as the headset, so YMMV). It's very easy to sit across the room from the phone (without large obstacles) and have a call. Yesterday, I answered the door to our hotel room while on a call, and the phone was on the far end of the desk at the opposite end of the room. I began to get a few static blips, but it was still usable. I'm guessing it was almost 30ft. So range in the clear seems outstanding. It doesn't like obstacles nearly as much, of course, in particular my head, so it's definitely worth keeping the phone and the headset on roughly the same side of you if you're going to be any distance away.

Features

The headset's primary features are size, weight, integration, and audio (IMO). It is not laden with dialing features, but that's to be expected since neither is the iPhone. For example iPhone doesn't do voice dialing... but the headset would give it a nice platform where that would make sense, so it's unfortunate they didn't do that. Although, in reality, I never ever used voice dialing when I had it. It never worked very well in the moments where it would've been really useful (noisy road, etc.).

The one missing dialing feature is a redial, that would've been very nice to have, and seems like it would've been an easy one given that the headset has a button for which there is little use when you're not on or receiving a call. But I didn't bring the manual with me on our trip (we left the day after I got it), so it's possible I just missed it.

In Closing

All in all, I like it very much. I find it very comfortable to wear and very enjoyable to talk on. I wore it for a long meeting and it was fabulous. I'm not a wear-it-on-my-head-24-hours-a-day kinda guy, so being able to take it on and off trivially is important to me, and the Jabra lacked in that department. In particular, it's a very good match for the iPhone, because of the integration and matching feature sets (or lack thereof). I'm not sure non-iPhone users would be as happy with it because it may not have dialing features they would want. But the size and weight might make it worth looking at anyway.

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Do I Still Like My iPhone? - Terry White

Terry White has a great post about his experience with the iPhone after a week, which very much mirrors my own experience with it.

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iPhone Tip: Ta-da List

Ta-da List has an iPhone version... it's a great (and very simple) to-do list app, and the iPhone version just slims down the pages so they function like an iPhone app. I used it for several things today... very cool.

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iPhone

I bought an iPhone on Sunday (well, actually two... my wife has put up with my hand-me-downs for a long time). It's easily the best experience of using an electronic device I've ever had. It just works, and so simply and elegantly that it throws into sharp relief the pain of the interfaces I've been accustomed to. It's very hard to write a "review" of it, actually, as if to compare it to anything else. There just isn't anything else for me.

That's not to say I don't have a feature wishlist. There are things I would like to see added, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with anything I'd like to see changed.

One of the things Apple has done in the iPhone is fix a bunch of little things that have been broken in mobile phones for so long that we hardly notice anymore. For instance, I always had to have three entries in my contacts for my in-laws (or any other family with a home number and a couple mobiles). One entry for the mom, one for the dad, and one for the house. Then I had to decide what to name the house number, and then which did I want to call, and if I look up the mom, but wanted to dial the house, I have to go back, etc.

The iPhone handles this perfectly, exactly as I would like but never knew... I have two entries, one for the mom and one for the dad, and both have the home number on it. I can go to either person in contacts to dial the house, I don't have to remember what I happened to call the separate house number entry. Even better, when someone from the house calls, the caller ID shows up as "Firstname or Firstname Lastname". The iPhone saw that two entries had that number, noticed that the last names were the same, and displayed the best description based on that. VERY cool.

It's little details like that that make the iPhone so much better. I don't really care about some of the esoteric mobile phone features out there if someone can build me a phone that just works immensely better. Of course, the iPhone has a lot of features... the web browser is amazing, as are the Google maps. Text messaging (SMS) is the best ever and I would use it constantly if I could. Mail is a joy to use, it's simple, intuitive, and beautiful, totally the opposite experience from email on either the E61 or the N800.

The clock is fantastic. It's probably weird to rave about the clock, but it really is good. It has a world clock, which is good for me b/c I need to know the time in Finland fairly regularly. It has a very simple countdown timer, which I've used several times already for things like spending 15 minutes on dishes. It has a stopwatch, which will be handy for timing the contractions for baby #3 (due in Oct). But best is the alarm clock... you can add any number of alarms, and after they go off, they switch to being "off". If you want to use the same alarm again tomorrow, you just turn it on. I'm sure it has automatic daily alarms, etc., but for me this is exactly what I want. I hardly ever get up at the same time from day to day, but I usually get up with an alarm. On all my Nokias, alarms go away once they've fired. So I have to set it again. And again. And again. And... so on.

So... typing. I was expecting this to be the hard part, but in fact it's very usable. I've had the thing for less than a week and I can type 36wpm with one finger (see the iPhone typing test). The dictionary and prediction engine is incredibly good. I never type apostrophes for contractions, I never capitalize people's names, and I rarely type the correct words and yet I can type 36wpm with perfect accuracy, including basic punctuation (period and question mark), and all of that (capitalization, contractions, etc.) is done for me. Very impressive.

Typing works best for me when I pretty much ignore what I'm actually typing. It's more like brute force whack-a-mole than typing. I mash away at it, hitting in the general vicinity of the intended letters, and the phone figures it out. Sweet.

A few more very nice (and welcome) features (aka fixes to stupid phone designs): one tiny physical switch to turn the ringer off, one small physical button to put the screen to sleep, the phone appears to use EDGE when the screen is asleep and WiFi only when it's awake and being actively used (this will save a ton of battery life), the in-call controls are brilliant (mute, swap, 3-way, etc.), the voicemail system is managed entirely on the device (no calling in), including setting the greeting, etc.

Of course, the UI itself is gorgeous and incredibly well-designed, and the eye candy effects (rubber banding in particular) serve real purpose by convincing your brain that the moving screen is something physical it can manipulate.

Obviously, I love it. Oh, and the iPod part is amazing. I almost forget it's an iPod, even though I use it often.

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Latte Art Revisited

I visited Intelligentsia while in Chicago, and they didn't disappoint with the latte art. Here are a couple lattes I had. The butterfly began as a free-poured heart and was then tweaked with the tip of a milk thermometer. The bottom design was a free pour.

I'm impressed with the butterfly, it's beautiful, but what really impresses me is the free poured art (I have another one that is probably better that I haven't uploaded yet). By free pour, I mean the design was created entirely by pouring milk into the espresso.

We need some of this in Houston. Please. Intelligentsia does consumer and wholesale training... maybe some cafe will take it upon themselves to step up their game and learn to do this stuff (and to make great coffee, which I've yet to find in Houston). Intelligentsia's lattes so thoroughly blow anything I've had here out of the water that it isn't even worth discussing, except to say that there's a whole world of espresso that this city doesn't experience. Sigh.

iPhone First Impressions

I didn't buy one (yet), but I did play with one in the store for about an hour. I used it on WiFi, I used it on EDGE, I used every app, etc. I gotta say, it's an amazing device. The UI is exactly as it is in the demos and commercials. Just as fast, responsive, crisp, and gorgeous. The touch screen is far and away the best I've used... there isn't the characteristic mushiness to the touch (I think due to the glass instead of the normal plastic), sliding your finger across it (a motion used often on the iPhone) is smooth and quick.

The main impression I have from it is just "of course, this is how it should be". As has been noted over and over, there aren't dramatic new features here, instead there's a dramatically improved experience. Everything on the phone is very intuitive, or in a few cases, requires learning one new idea (e.g. deleting things just requires a quick slide of the finger and a confirmation in place). The device can be operated completely by a very small set of finger motions.

The animation in the UI isn't just eye candy, it really lends an intuitiveness that would not be there otherwise. One of the best "features" of the whole device is the rubber-banded scrolling. It's a very "real" interface, the fact that it's all pixels fades out of memory very quickly. Scrolling off the edge of a list or a web page gives you a very real feeling of resistance, and then when you let off it snaps into place.

Flipping through photos, or album art, or the weather for different cities, or each of the various web pages that are currently open (which is done soooo right) is all very intuitive and consistent. The experience is so good it's almost underwhelming because it just works.

I'm a little confused by the reaction of some that it isn't worth the money. I think it's cheap... it's a complete reinvention of the mobile device... $500? That's cheap. I could sell my E61 on ebay for almost that. It's frustrating that so much of the technology world is wrapped up in features and bells and whistles and they completely miss the fact that most of this stuff is absurdly hard to use and built on antiquated thinking.

Yay, iPhone... I'm sure it's not perfect... typing takes some getting used to, though it was still very usable, and the correction/suggestion engine is fantastic. It doesn't have Flash in the browser yet. I wish it could do landscape-mode in all apps, or at least landscape-mode typing in all apps (this does work in Safari).

But overall, it really is revolutionary. It's easy/fun/enjoyable to use, very intuitive, very personal. The contrast between the iPhone and my E61 is a joke. I don't know why anyone would buy any other phone, unless they just can't get iPhone coverage or need a specialized app (e.g. Blackberry email service or direct Exchange syncing).

Note to Exchange admins: enable IMAP, buy SSL-VPN with IMAP/SMTP proxy, make iPhone users happy. :)

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Washable Mouse

Next time you go to wash your mouse in the kitchen sink, you'll think back to this post and beat yourself up for not buying the Belkin waterproof mouse. Forget the iPhone, this is where it's at.