We’ve installed a new feature here at I and B. Now you’ll be able to follow along with two frustrated Apple iPhone users (2nd generation even) as we drop calls, have apps crash, and have to do hard resets like we are running Windows 95. Speaking of which, check out what Jonathan Golob of ‘The Stranger’ had to say:
The iPhone crashes. A lot.
Calls drop all the time. Safari, the Apple web browser, crashes continually. Woe on you if you navigate a partially-loaded page (fed up with the abysmally slow AT&T network). The mail app creaks when opening, often leaving you with a blank white unresponsive screen. The SMS program occasionally refuses to open.
Owning an iPhone–even the second-generation iPhone–is much like fighting through Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape 3.0 on Windows ’95. When it works, you get a clear sense that this is the new way of doing things. Through the grime of incompetent implementation can be seen glances of what could, and likely will, be.
Apple maintains control over most every aspect of their hardware and they currently have the luxury of telling the unruly kids who don’t want to play by their rules to take a hike. Now, I’m not the Apple expert between the two Jason’s, but I know when a product isn’t living up to the hype, expectations, and reputation the company set for it. Maybe it was the public that brought on this unobtainable level of perfection, but for whatever reason it exists it might be time for Apple to try to fix the problem.
In the time being we’ve put up a new widget that we’ll update for every hard reset we have to do as well as what I call ‘the black screen of death’. Windows users might be familiar with ‘the blue screen of death’. Well, to all those Windows diehards who like to mock Mac users, here you go. When an app fails on the iPhone the first thing that happens is your screen goes black, then anywhere from 1 second to a minute or two your main icons re-appear like an annoying magic trick you can’t avoid.
I, like Jason T, and Jonathan Golob see the great potential in this phone. When the phone works as a phone, and when applications don’t crash it’s pretty much the greatest device out there. However, given the fact that it does crash so much and it drops calls like its going out of style the idea of waiting until the iPhone ’98 platform comes out might not be the worst idea ever. I’m not saying don’t get the iPhone if you want it, but know that you are getting the latest and greatest and there are going to be pitfalls and practical issues that come with it. Now, if Apple, or from what I hear AT&T, could get its act together and focus on fixing these issues we can feel like we are using OS X and not Windows ’95.
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