iPhone (originally posted June 29, 2007)

I had a feeling that the Apple store in Edison, NJ wasn't going to see nearly the frenzy of the stores in New York. I guess it's confirmation that I live in a swamp.

I entered the mall around 9:50pm and could hear my footfalls in the hallway leading to the Apple store. When I passed the ATT store, there were maybe 7 people in there. There was a rent-a-cop at the door to the Apple store but there was really no need at that hour (I'm guessing it was a little more lively earlier in the evening). There were perhaps 25 people or so in the store. Roughly half of them were playing with the iPhone displays up front and the other half were actually interested in other stuff elsewhere in the store. I was able to make a phone call (called Rich), check the internet, send him a text message, etc. As I suspected - cool little gadget but I'll wait for the follow-up/upgrade. There's no java or flash in the browser, which means there are many, many sites you will not be able to get to and that damned phantom keyboard is annoying as hell to maneuver.

It took me a good 10 minutes to send a one line text message cuz I kept hitting the neighboring keys to the key I was aiming for. Plus, the comma and period are located in a separate "mode". You basically have to switch out of ABC mode to get to the period. When you're typing text and want to put a period on a sentence, it's TEDIOUS to have to switch, punctuate and then switch again!! And, you must switch again if you want numbers. Also, when typing in my husband's phone number on the number pad (which is much bigger than the alpha pad and should, in theory, make it easier to get to each number without fail) I again, had to re-enter his digits several times because it would give me a 0 when I wanted a 9 or a 2 when I wanted a 3. It was really annoying. Perhaps the unit I was using had a problem because too many hands played with it that day. But, then again, it was 10pm and people had only been playing with it since 6pm. Kinda made me wary.

Oh yea... I can wait on this one. No annoying $500 phone for me.