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June 8, 2007

iphone

iPhone experience has to be A+ at Apple Stores

Posted Jun. 8, ’07, 4:57 PM PT by Thomas Gagnon-van Leeuwen
Category | iPhone

iphoneready.jpg

Come June 29th, Apple wants to present potential iPhone customers with a top-notch experience. According to ifoAppleStore, Apple stores are preparing for the big day in a big way:

While details aren’t clear, tipsters say the stores are now being wired with cellular repeaters to insure perfect reception for demo iPhones, so potential customers will have a perfect experience. It’s also rumored that sales transactions will involve some measure of innovation, perhaps involving customer interaction with the Internet, intended to speed up and streamline the traditionally long purchase and registration process.
If those “tipsters” are right—it’s only an if—wiring the store with new gear is quite an impressive behind-the-scenes renovation on Apple’s part. Hopefully, the iPhone will still work outside the stores as well as it does inside them. Time will tell.

[via Infinite Loop]


10 Comments

Andre Da Costa said:

For a Rev A product its surprising that Apple is putting so much faith in it expecting so many users will be out in droves June 29 to get one.

Its cool no doubt, but I'm definitely waiting until until Rev 3 ('09) and the price drops and its fully supported by my carrier Digicel or Cable & Wireless (preferably Digicel).

June 8, 2007 9:35 PM
spiderbat said:

For what concerns me, I will happily buy an iPhone when:
- its memory is boosted to ≥ 50GB
- I will be able to develop my own applications for it
- I will be allowed to put my present sim into it and pay only for the calls I'll do, without being tied to a contract with periodical fees.
- last but not least: there is a facility to disable every cellular phone activity while other functions are enabled (I'd guess this works even in rev. A).
But I fear I'll have to wait for rev. Z...

June 10, 2007 2:53 AM
George said:

I think there are going to be a lot of iPhone buyers who are disappointed with the internet/web experience once they walk out of the Apple Store/AT&T Store's wi-fi range and find themselves using the EDGE network at its average 40-80kb/s speeds which will make my cable internet's rather paltry 3Mb/s look like a speed demon. I'd like to see how well all that Google Maps interactivity really fares on EDGE. I'm guessing not very well. I'm sure the in-store experience will be great but I'd suggest any would-be customers tell the sales person to disable the wi-fi for a real-world EDGE network experience.

June 10, 2007 9:25 AM
jayH said:

if my current cingular service is anything to go by, as soon as people leave the apple store they will have to fight for signal... even in downtown areas like downtown boston... so yeah... let's see..

June 10, 2007 9:43 AM
Andre Da Costa said:

Spiderbat, it seems the iPhone does have a replaceable Sim Tray according to a report on Macrumors:
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/06/08/apples-iphone-specs-and-requirements/

Also download speed info is here too:
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/06/09/iphone-download-benchmark-and-browser-updated/

157K/second (1262 kbps) to download a 1024 kilobyte file.

As you noted, better Flash memory size would appreciated, for it to be the best iPod, I would recommend a bare minimum of 32 GBs. But of course, that would cost Apple a pretty penny.

June 10, 2007 10:52 AM
kdo said:

wow some of you are pretty harsh. first off, its a GSM phone, so there HAS TO BE a sim card slot for it to work AT ALL. now you need to bear in mind that apple and AT&T have a 5 year exclusivity deal with each other and from Jobs' comments at D, it sounds like as long as AT&T goes along with what he wants, its not unlikely at all that he could extend the exclusivity deal beyond 5 years. Jobs hinted at being very appreciative towards AT&T for taking a gamble on apple and that he would not forget it.

That being said, i'm sure it won't be long before someone is able unlock the iPhone, but i'm sure it will have limited functionality (like no visual voicemail, etc.), so i'm sure you could fork over an easy $800-900 for an unlocked iPhone in no time to be able to use it with any other GSM providers (the only other big one in the US is T-Mobile, but there are a few smaller ones too).

you DON'T think that there will be people lining up for the iPhone on june 29th? wake up and smell the plastic. i guarantee you there will be lines outside of every apple store when they open up and i wouldn't doubt that most (if not all) apple stores will sell out initially. actually, i'd be surprised if they DIDN'T sellout. who cares if its a Rev. A product? if there's something wrong with it, does apple not fix it? thats not going to deter too many people. just those who feel like they need to justify not having the money to shell out $500-600 for freakin phone.

i don't care as much about the fact that it doesn't have a true 3G data connection. it matters more to me that it DOES have WiFi though, because the majority of the places where i would use it for longer than a minute, guess what, they have WiFi available! and if you've ever really tried sprints or verizon's 3G data, you've found that the speeds they advertise are nowhere near real-world speeds that you actually get, so 3G as a wireless technology has a long way to go.

these things will be FLYING off the shelves on june 29th, i guarantee you. not to mention that probably 10-25% of the sales will most likely be to people who intend to do nothing but unlock them and resell them on ebay, just like a PS3, Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360 when they all came out (minus the unlocking part of course).

June 10, 2007 4:33 PM
spiderbat said:

kdo wrote: "wow some of you are pretty harsh. first off, its a GSM phone, so there HAS TO BE a sim card slot for it to work AT ALL".
I didn't write to criticize the iPhone as it is or to forecast its commercial failure, but to look at it from my personal point of view, which, perhaps, is shared by other Apple customers. Simply stated, the present incarnation of the iPhone is centered upon its cellular phone features: what I need from a cellular phone is just the ability to place plain vanilla calls (as a matter of fact, my cellular phone sits in my bag, always off, to be used only in case of emergency or absolute need). Therefore, the present iPhone is just not for me. At the same time, some features of the iPhone are, IMHO, very promising for a good PDA and I'll be happy to buy a future Apple PDA that exploited them.
If it had the ability to work with my present cellular sim, without a contract that forces me to pay a monthly fee even if I don't make any call, well, It would spare me some weight and space in the bag.

June 11, 2007 4:18 AM
George said:

I fully expect people to be lined up for the iPhone when it launches. I'm actually tempted to grab one myself (I'm not willing to wait in line though), more for its other functions than the internet (but it adds to the incentive). And if you live in a major metropolitan area you may easily be able to bounce between wi-fi hotspots and have fairly speedy internet access, but for most people they're going to be sitting on the EDGE networks much slower speeds. The fact that all of the stores are basically being set up to ensure that the iPhone is absolutely NOT demo'ed on that network seems quite misleading. Out in the wild, people ARE going to be disappointed that their internet experience doesn't match the in-store demo.

It should be noted that the download speeds mentioned in the MacRumors article are believed to be over wi-fi, and not EDGE. Just so that's clear.

If I wanted to be harsh about the iPhone, I'd ask what the spinning beach will look like and how will one force quit Safari when it decides to stop responding? Or mention the joys of watching Safari vanish when it hits a non-Safari-friendly web page.

June 11, 2007 4:49 AM
kdo said:

spiderbat wrote: "If it had the ability to work with my present cellular sim, without a contract that forces me to pay a monthly fee even if I don't make any call, well, It would spare me some weight and space in the bag."

again, like i mentioned before, there's no reason for us to believe that you won't be able to do this (just as long as your current cellular sim is a GSM provider, if its not then you'll be waiting a long, long time). how? via ebay (or similar) who buy an iPhone, unlock it and then resell it at a premium. there has already been eBay auctions for unlocked iPhones (pre-order auctions basically) that don't come with any contract strings attached. so whats the catch? you pay a pretty premium for it. expect to pay $200+ extra over the regular iPhone price to get an unlocked one with no contract requirements whatsoever. whether thats worth it to you or not is a personal matter. but because its a GSM phone, i don't doubt in the least that it will happen and it won't take long.

June 11, 2007 11:04 PM
James said:

I just hope Apple has designed some way for the surface of the phone not to get severely scratched like my ipod screen.

June 12, 2007 6:57 PM

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