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June 22, 2007

iphone

Things we didn’t know: iPhone guided tour impressions

Posted Jun. 22, ’07, 10:59 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | iPhone

iPhone GuyApple’s posted a twenty-minute guided tour of iPhone features on its website. A lot of what it shows we’ve seen before, but there are definitely some things that we haven’t. While watching, I jotted down some notes about the video and what we now know.

Oh, and the host of this tour, whose name is apparently “Bob,” looks like Stephen Colbert as interpreted by Steve Jobs. I note that he’s married. Good for Bob.

Conspiracy theorists unite: the time on the iPhone remains 9:42AM throughout the entire demonstration. One hopes the final shipping version has a working clock. The date has been updated to June 29th, meaning that this whole thing was recorded in the future (thanks, Time Machine!).

I noticed that when talking about adding a new contact, Bob glosses over “adding in new information.” My guess is because syncing is way more efficient than adding all those details with the keyboard. Though, to be fair, the iPhone’s keyboard is probably easier than using the numeric keypad on my current phone.

I wonder, if when rotating the iPhone to landscape mode; does it matter if you turn it clockwise or counterclockwise? A silly question to answer when we get hands on!

The bar in the bottom of iPod mode (with Playlists, Artists, Songs, etc) is fully editable. Like with OS X’s Dock and sidebar, it’s all managed via drag-and-drop, so you if you prefer to have Podcasts on the bar, you can do that.

This is the most information we’ve seen on the iPhone’s new wired headphones. The squeezable control recognizes click and double click (used to advanced songs). That makes one handed operation usable, though not quite to the level of the current iPod.

According to Bob, while Google is the default search engine in Safari, you can set it up to use Yahoo as well. So there’s no exclusive deal there.

To answer a long-standing question: the mail app includes built-in PDF, JPG, Word, and Excel viewers, all of which you can navigate with the standard drag and pinch moves.

A neat little use of gestures that we hadn’t seen before; in a list (like Favorites) you can swipe across tan item to bring up the delete button.

I notice that both the Weather and Stocks widgets feature a prominent Yahoo icon. In Stocks, it’s definitely pulling from Yahoo! Financial, but the Weather widget also shows the The Weather Channel, so I’m not sure exactly what Yahoo’s part in it is.

Another gesture we haven’t seen before: to zoom out of a map, tap once with two fingers. Interesting, but not unexpected; that’s the point of multi-touch, after all.

Putting a rest to the GPS and location-finding theories, they show that on maps you have to enter your starting address, however you can use bookmarks.

The maps app features turn-by-turn instructions. Very nice.

Settings. We haven’t seen any of this before. You can turn off network features to use on airplane, change ringtones, adjust email preferences, and more.

Airplane mode; slide to activate. No radio signals emitted, and a little airplane icon shows up in the top left.

Preloaded with ringtones. Doesn’t look like there’s an option to add your own though (what of the ringtones tab in iTunes?).

There’re probably a few other details in there that I missed, but those were the most interesting things to grab my attention.


6 Comments

MIchael Mistretta said:

Also, under the "Settings" section, we saw that their was a vibrate feature.

June 22, 2007 11:28 AM
Walt said:

I got the email and headed home for lunch. I downloaded the movie (around 174MB), made an espresso (melikes mecoffee), sat down with said espresso and biscotti, and proceeded to watch the entire video.

I'm like a crack addict, hanging on every word and image (except the YouTube part - I skipped that for more important info). My eyes glazed over. Drool, speckled with dark espresso and biscotti crumbs ran down my chin. My son ran into his room and locked the door. I don’t think he’s ever seen me quite like that. Note to self, apologize later to him and give him the “drug use is bad” speech.

That was a nice unexpected present from Apple. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and suspect that I’ll wear the proverbial tape out watching it over and over and over….

Note: Totally missing from the demo was the calendar application. Hmmmm. Maybe it gets its own video?

June 22, 2007 11:43 AM
Mehdi Abedanzadeh said:

the video was a little too long, don't u think so guys?

June 22, 2007 12:38 PM
Joe said:

Also with the Maps app, it gives up to date details on traffic. Using a color code, such as green is all moving and yellow and red that there are delays.

June 22, 2007 2:09 PM
Sunshein said:

I'm surprised the video did not cover the camera. Is it any different than other phone cameras?

June 22, 2007 5:07 PM
Brian said:

I wonder if in a future update if Apple could enable third party GPS devices to interact with the Google map feature. It would be cool, and not unprecedented since this is possible on Palm and Windows Mobile phones.

I was also disappointed that there is no iChat. Seems like something that would really clinch this thing as THE internet communicator. Especially if in addition to .Mac, AIM and Jabber if it could do Yahoo and MSN chats.

Also, we've heard that they are bundling push mail from Yahoo. I wish they'd do that with .Mac. Push mail arrives instantly as opposed to POP3 or IMAP where the client (in this case, the iPhone) draws it down at regular intervals.

And it seems incredibly silly to sync my phone to my address book and bookmarks, etc. if I have .Mac and iSynch set up. I hope they make that transparent. Is it just me or does anyone else think they need to iRethink the iTunes name. Maybe it should be iMedia or iStuff. It's music, movies, tv shows, audio books, and now contacts, photos, bookmarks, and who knows what else.

June 23, 2007 4:11 AM

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