Here are a few more thoughts regarding the iPhone

1) After successfully syncing my two IMAP accounts via iTunes I decided to add one of my Gmail ones (my domain mail hosted via Google Apps).  That seemed to cause the syncing to hang.  I’ve disabled syncing mail accounts for now and it works fine.

2) For some reason, iTunes always needs to sync 11 of my songs everytime I connect.  Maybe those are 11 I played and it is syncing the last played and other meta info?  Not sure if it is doing that or syning those 11 songs again with the device for some reason.

3)  The lack of customization is a real downer.  The last 10 phones I’ve owned, I’ve sent the CTU ringtone via bluetooth and used that as my ringtone.  No ringtone customization allowed on the iPhone.  I hope they change that or I won’t recognize my own phone ringing.

4) Same issue for wallpaper.  The only way I can see to send a new wallpaper for the phone is to a) take the picture from the phone, or b) sync it from iPhoto.  I really don’t want to store photos on this phone, so I have iPhoto sync disabled.  Even if I send the photo to myself in email, the phone offers no way to save it.

5)  This over simplified interface and lack of customization is going to really frustrate the high end users that like to tweak things.  I am sure it will keep the phone very stable, but there will certainly be very few ways to make your phone “unique”.

6)  SMS messaging works like a charm.  Like using iChat

7) After just a few hours of typing, I am willing to declare that if I can get IMAP folder support working, I will get rid of my blackberry.

Things I miss about the N95?

1)  Customization!

2)  Streaming audio.  I love streaming the BBC over wifi on this device.

3) The camera.  The N95 camera is far superior to the iPhone.

4)  SIP VOIP calls. Nice option when you are on wifi.

Of course, I still own and will use the N95 in some capacity.

After the trauma of waiting in-line at the AT&T store, I was finally able to get my hands on an iPhone at the Apple store 15 miles away.  First reactions:

1)  The screen is breathtaking.  I’ve never seen a screen like it on a mobile device.

2)  Interface is everything I expected.   Apple has rewritten interface design with the engineering in the iPhone.  They haven’t complete solved the mobile phone interface problem, but they’ve come close.

3)  Touch typing.  No issue for me.  Not as natural as a tactile keyboard like a blackberry, but it works well enough for me.  Keep in mind I use a zero-touch keyboard interface as my primary keyboard, so I am more comfortable with that aspect than the average user.

4)  iPod interface is beautiful.  Basically, everything you see on the commercials is real.  The screen rotates smoothly when you hold it in landscape mode.  Coverflow and scrolling are smooth and very nicely done.

5)  Email -  One of my mail accounts is working perfectly.  The other (with a lot of IMAP sub mailboxes) is not working as my subfolders are not showing up on the phone. To my surprise syncing your mail settings is an option in iTunes, so it pulled mail the minute I unplugged it.  I will continue to work on the IMAP issue and am hopeful there is a mail prefix setting or something I can change to get it working.  Deleting an email has the coolest visual effect I’ve seen on a phone.
6)  Web - Very nice.  Real web sites display well.  Lack of flash is understandable.  Lack of Java is annoying as it renders useless several sites for me.  I’d like to see both get added in a software update.

7)  Maps - Pretty cool, but not a feature I expect to use a lot.

8)  Video - works perfectly.

9)  uTube - nicely implemented.

10)  Visual voicemail - requires blowing your current voicemail box away (no big deal for me).  Interestingly, your personal greeting is recorded on the phone and then uploaded to the server.  The greeting recorder application makes me think Apple could easily add a voice memo recorder to this device, something I would welcome.  Also, the AT&T visual voicemail server seemed to be very overwhelmed for the first 30 minutes I tried and could not successfully connect.

11)  Quirks?  My music/iPod application stopped playing (and appeared to crash in the background) twice while browsing the web.  Something that definitely needs to be fixed if that is a bug.

12)  Interface - I’ve got to plug the interface again.  What a great user experience.  Application presentation (mail, web, etc) seems almost perfect.

That’s it for now.  More later as I play with the device more.

AT&T needs to work on their concept of “customer service”.  Customer service requires communication.  Letting 120 people wait in line for an iPhone when you know you only have 15 to sell is borderline criminal.  Quite honestly, they are lucky they did not have a riot at the location I was at.  The crowd repeatedly asked them for insight into what their stock was so that they could adjust their plans if necessary.  The AT&T store consistently refused to provide any sort of input, not even anything as casual as “me might be able to service 10% of this line”.

I do not understand the requirement for secrecy and I don’t know what they accomplished other than pissing 105 people off.  I know I certainly will never visit that AT&T store again and I have already told several neighbors to boycott it.  The Ashburn, VA store also managed to service 15 customers in 1 hour!  An amazingly incompetent feat.

So I made the trek to the Apple store after calling them and being told “the line is moving fast and we have plenty of phones”.  Upon arriving, it was two minutes until I had my iPhone in hand.  They were selling 15 phones a minute at the Apple store.

I realize a lot of the issue is AT&T not having adequate stock, but that is no excuse for their miserable communication and disrespect for their customers.  I’ll drive out of my way to not patronize that store as a result.

See HERE and HERE.

With any luck, I’ll be swapping out my Nokia N95 with an iPhone tomorrow.  Rather than fight the mass crowds at the Apple store, I am likely to just hit the local AT&T store.  I have some trepidation as the store seems very unprepared for the launch.  As of today, the store I plan on going to had no protocol for how they would handle lines, whether they would hand out vouchers (so people don’t stay in line with no chance of an iPhone), and how existing customers can transfer their accounts.  The focus really seems to be on getting new customers, which is a shame given I have been with AT&T (then Cingular, now AT&T again) for about 8 years.

Having used the N95 for several months, here are some more thoughts about the phone:

1)  Bluetooth with my car, computer and headsets still works flawlessly.  Something I hope the iPhone will match.

2)  The media player is frustratingly slow and the quality is good, but not excellent.

3)  Moving songs over via USB is the worst experience I have had on a portable device.  If I try and move more than 4 songs, the device hangs and I must go delete the empty files off the device’s SD card and start again.  After each file transfer it resets, requiring me to browse back to my music director in Finder every time.  As a result, it took me 45 minutes to move 1.5g of music the other day.  Completely unacceptable.

4) Accessing WAPs is tolerable, but not a friendly experience.  To date, I’ve still never gotten it on a WPA2 network.

5)  The web browser is basically useless.  The only site I use it for is mobile bloglines.

6)  The phone quality is excellent.  Best signal and voice quality of any phone I have ever used.

Now that the reviews of the iPhone are rolling in, I am excited to check it out.  Of the “missing” features, everyone is complaining about, the only thing I really expect to miss is the lack of a chat application.  I am hoping that Meebo will work, but the watered down Safari browser may not be able to handle it.

Dan Verton’s Homeland Defense Weekly interviewed some of the leadership team at Total Intel during our open house this week and the result has been posted as a podcast and webcast on the PodTech Network. Link—>