We performed an iPhone autopsy at Wired News on Friday night. Don’t worry, it’s on Conde Nast’s tab.
Breaking it open was pretty daunting. The iPhone is near impregnable. But we sank a few beers and soon the knife was out.
We learned a few valuable lessons about taking it apart — like don’t drink beer. It’s all detailed here.
The iPhone is gadget heaven. It really does restore your sense of childlike wonder. I’ve had a blast all weekend running my greasy finger over its glassy surface.
It’s a Crackberry for the masses. Finally, mobile email, messaging and web browsing is fun and easy — how did it take so long?
I’ve had a Treo and cell phone email for years, but never, ever used them — they’re a mess. Now I’m an iPhone text addict — a 41-year-old acting like a teenager.
I bought one on Friday and have been out around town with my kids all weekend. The little angels monopolized it, surfing the web and watching YouTube. They figured it out immediately. I showed them one thing — how to use your fingers to shrink and zoom — that was it. I took some calls, surfed the web and sent some email.
I found it’s not all roses — there’s serious issues using it for work — but in general, we’re true believers.
The Good and The Bad after the jump. Plus camera phone samples.
I’m watching the iPhone lines get longer and longer while I’m shackled to my desk all day. I’ll be lucky if I get out of here late afternoon. I’ll probably head to a mall in South San Francisco in the vain hope it’ll be less of a zoo than downtown San Francisco.
Who else is stuck at work?
Christopher Null has created a special drink to loosen your wallet before buying an iPhone.
Any doubts about laying out thousands for the iPhone will magically melt away after three stiff Appletinis.
2 oz. Vodka
1/2 oz. Apple Pucker Schnapps
1/2 oz. Goldschlager
1/4 oz. Cointreau (or Triple Sec)
Photo of Greg Packer, first in line at Apple’s 5th Ave. store, from Wikipedia.
People think Apple users are all black-turtleneck wearing graphic artists who wear poncy designer glasses, but look at the mixed bunch lining up in NYC for an iPhone.
There’s a Air Force vet, a hair stylist, and a guard at the UN, according to a list drawn up by one of the waiters:
1. Greg Packer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Packer)
2. David Clayman (Future Inforte – CHICAGO SAP Consultant)
3. Jessica Rodriguez (Whipsmart woman with wicked soundbites
4. Rebecca Boorsma (Hair stylist)
5. Anthony Cardozo (Air Force Vet, Arabic Speaker, Purple Heart)
6. Kai Pauli (Security Guard at UN, German Speaker)
7. Benjamin Sherman (Unknown)
8. Vincent Nguyen (Entrepreneur, myitablet.com)
9. Damian Charles (High school student)
10. Mark Conn (Watch him wink!)
At Apple’s town hall meeting today, an employees asked Steve Jobs why the iPhone is being released at 6PM on Friday?
Jobs said Apple didn’t want people to have to take off from work, so they scheduled the launch after hours.
More on the all-staff meeting at Ars Technica.
Unconfirmed rumor — I’m getting word that all Apple employees are getting an iPhone from father Steve at the company gathering now under way.
Update — employees are getting them at the end of July.
Further Update: The free iPhone is only for full-time employees that have worked there for a year or more — and it’s the 8-Gigger.
Steve Jobs is so stoked about the iPhone launch on Friday, he’s giving a rare company-wide pep talk at Apple HQ on Thursday. As far as I know, he’s not held one of these since the early days of returning to the company in 1997.
From: Steve Jobs
Date: June 27, 2007 1:47:55 PM PDT
To: XXXXXX
Subject: Town Hall Meeting TomorrowTeam,
We’re launching the most revolutionary and exciting product in Apple’s history this Friday. And given Apple’s legacy of breakthrough products, that’s saying a lot.
I’d like to get together and share my thoughts about this amazing moment for our company. So please join me for a company-wide communications meeting tomorrow, Thursday, at 11:00AM in Town Hall.
This meeting will also be broadcast to other Apple campus locations. Please check XXXXXX for details.
See you there,
Steve
Photo: David Phillips/Columbia News Service. “Greg Packer stood in line for eight hours before meeting Brandy, the pop singer.”
There’s more fascinating detail on Greg Packer at Wikipedia:
“Greg Packer (born December 18, 1963), an American highway maintenance worker from Huntington, New York, has been quoted in more than 100 articles and television broadcasts as a member of the public (that is, a person on the street rather than a newsmaker or expert).
Packer’s status as a frequent interviewee came about due to his hobby of attending public appearances of celebrities and other media events and being first in line on such occasions. He has consequently had the opportunity to meet people including Mariah Carey, Garth Brooks, Dennis Rodman, and Ringo Starr, as well as at least three presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.”
Even columnist Ann Coulter has sussed him out. After Packer was widely quoted in a NYT piece about fans of Hilary Clinton, Coulter went investigating. She found:
It was easy for the Times to spell Packer’s name right because he is apparently the entire media’s designated “man on the street” for all articles ever written. He has appeared in news stories more than 100 times as a random member of the public. Packer was quoted on his reaction to military strikes against Iraq; he was quoted at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Veterans Day Parade. He was quoted at not one — but two — New Year’s Eve celebrations at Times Square. He was quoted at the opening of a new “Star Wars” movie, at the opening of an H&M clothing store on Fifth Avenue and at the opening of the viewing stand at Ground Zero. He has been quoted at Yankees games, Mets games, Jets games — even getting tickets for the Brooklyn Cyclones. He was quoted at a Clinton fund-raiser at Alec Baldwin’s house in the Hamptons and the pope’s visit to Giants stadium.
And as a result of the column, Packer got his own profile in the Times: “Long Island Everyman Masters the Sound Bite.”
Greg Packer, the first guy in line for an iPhone at Apple’s 5th Ave. store, is a seasoned, professional line sitter with years of experience.
Packer was first in line at Ground Zero, the first to sign NYC’s Princess Di condolence book and slept in the snow in Washington to see GW Bush after his inauguration.
If there’s any kind of event in New York that requires lining up, Packer is there, reported the Columbia News Service in 2002.
“Packer has made obsessions out of being first in line and of being in the company of celebrities,” the news service wrote.
“This is what I like doing,” he said. “You only live once, you might as well make the most of it.”
From the Urban Dictionary:
1. iPerbole
The hype surrounding any product Apple unveils.
Claims that the iPhone will change the world are all part of the iPerbole surrounding the cultish company.
by Mark Hengel Crestwood, Kentucky Jan 14, 2007
The iPod’s scroll wheel is doomed. Multitouch is such a compelling user experience, it must supplant the scroll wheel. Writes Newsweek’s Steven Levy in one of the first reviews of the iPhone:
Also, the new way of navigating–swiping down your song list or fast-browsing by skimming your finger on a vertically arranged alphabet on the right of the screen–is a superior interface.
I can’t see Apple selling another large-capacity iPod with the old scroll wheel interface. Everyone is going to want multitouch, and maybe soon Apple will have the economies of scale to put it on a sub-$400 device. I doubt the nano will go multitouch, but it’s the beginning of the end for the wheel.
Photo by AFP. Greg Packer, first in line for an iPhone at Apple’s 5th Ave. store.
iPhone waiters are coming out of the woodwork: there’s dozens now advertising on San Franciso’s Craigslist.
The competition is driving down prices. There’s several advertising for $100 or less.
There’s one guy who wants $500 — but says he’ll deliver.
There’s some new kinds of ads also.
There’s a couple of lonely weirdoes advertising for instant friends to hang out with during the long wait in line (one’s mentions his sexuality, but assures it’s platonic). An unspecified media company is looking for reporters to do man-on-the-street interviews.
And another company claiming to be Apple is looking for people to hand out flyers. But the ad has typos, which makes one suspect it’s actually the Musty Chiffon Strip Club.
One of the infamous iPhone waiters at Apple’s 5th Ave. store has gone home to New Jersey for some shut eye, he writes on his blog.
In addition, Vicarious Music, the blog that first spotted the pair, reports that the line has now grown to five, but both chairs at the front of the line are empty.
Suspicious. Will the others hold their spots for the next three days?
An enterprising New Yorker has a small office for rent right above an AT&T store on 34th Street. The lease is very short. It expires on Friday, the day the iPhone goes on sale. It’s being offered as the perfect place to camp out for an iPhone.
The ad reads:
“small office space available. short term rental next week. directly above att 34th street store in manhattan. if you are camping out for the Iphone this is the place to hang out. limited number of spots available. bathroom and coffee. spots wont last! directly above main door to att. one flight up!”
We’re trying out a new “beta” redesign here at Cult of Mac by the genius graphic designer Rob Beschizza, who is also a Wired News contributo.
The site may be slow for a few days and there may be glitches. Please us know if there’s any problems in the comments below. Please also leave your general feedback.
– Graphics are not final; big files might make for longer download
times or poor performance on slow machines.
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detection is coming.
It seems there’s more people looking for iPhone waiters on Craigslist than waiters available to wait.
In New York especially, waiters are in high demand. One particularly desperate guy wants his waiter to start camping out on Wed night — 60 hours before the iPhone goes on sale. (“I need an iPhone. Like, really need an iPhone.”)
But here’s the really galling part. He wants waiters with experience! “Interested applicants should have experience waiting in line,” the ad says.
The full desperate text:
Updated: Get Paid To Wait In Line… For An iPhone (Midtown)
“Ok, so here’s the deal. I need an iPhone. Like, really need an iPhone. It’s so bad, I’ve taken to carrying around my paper cut-out just to get used to the size. ANYWAY, I’m looking for 1 or 2 industrious folks to setup camp outside the 5th Avenue Apple Store 6:00am, Wednesday the 27th until 6:00pm on Friday the 29th. That’s 60 hours of chilling and doing nothing… and getting paid. Or maybe getting your very own iPhone if we can buy more than 1! Interested applicants should have experience waiting in line. You are responsible for any supplies, food, etc. that you may need during your stay. If you want to be considered for this rather bizarre, very odd, and slightly fun assignment, please get in touch right away…”
Meanwhile, in L.A, waiters must be reliable and focused; in San Francisco, creeps and criminals need not apply; and in NYC, security in apparently not an issue.
More ads after the jump…
Apple has become the third largest music retailer in the U.S., besting Amazon in fourth, according to the latest quarterly survey by NPD Group.
Apple now has a 10 percent market share behind Wal-Mart (15.8 percent) and Best Buy (13.8).
Previously in fifth place, Apple leapt over Target and Amazon.
NPD said Apple benefitted from sales of iPods over the holidays, and a slowdown in CD sales. Year-on0year, CD sales are down by 20 percent in the first quarter, according ot Nielsen Soundscan.
Apple and Amazon are the only companies in the top 10 that sell digital downloads.
Pic by ShadowzBlog
There are waiters advertising on Craigslist these days — iPhone waiters, that is.
Several people are advertising on Craigslist their willingness to line up for others for an iPhone later this week — for a fee, of course. The going rate is about $250 a day — 6AM to 6PM, when the device goes on sale.
Some have suggested this service will be performed by desperate homeless people, but a quick survey of the ads suggests that unemployed clowns make up the ranks of iPhone waiters.
“3 clowns, unemployed and hungry, willing to wait in line for three separate individuals, 250 a pop, guaranteeing you get yourselves that tasty little iPhone,” says a San Francisco ad: iPhone Professional Waiters – $250 (downtown / civic / van ness)
The same clowns, or perhaps stunt doubles, are willing to wait in line in New York:
“2 clowns, unemployed and hungry, willing to wait in line for two separate individuals, 250 a pop, guaranteeing you get yourselves that tasty little iPhone on June 29th! email me asap, I will spend all day and night that day and bring it to you!” — Need an iPhone? I’ll WAIT ON LINE FOR YOU for TWO ppl! – $250 (Upper West Side)
Here’s a few more:
New York
WHO NEEDS AN APPLE IPHONE
Student willing to stand in line overnight for iPhone release. Will either buy and deliver or hold spot in line .
Danville, Calif.
YOU WANT AN IPHONE I WANT TO STAND IN LINE
Los Angeles
Professional line waiters near Pasadena! Guaranteed to get an iPhone on the 29th. Multiple waiters available upon request. For more info email me.
and another:
Will Stand In Line For a IPhone for peole who can’t
Originally uploaded by zeronine.
There’s a slick iPhone ad shot in New York City at iPhoneNewYorkCity.com. It’s clearly made by pros — there was a casting call in April — but there’s no info on the ad’s site except the creators’ names: Alec Sutherland, Anthony Hechanova, Todd DosSantos and Shane Annas.
Reminds me of George Master’s unofficial iPod ad.
Delicious Library 2, which has a snazzy new UI based on Core Animation, wins an Apple’s 2007 Design Award for Best Leopard Application. Still no screenshots of it though.
For discussion of Core Animation and how it might change interfaces, see here: Kiss Boring Interfaces Goodbye With Apple’s New Animated OS.
The other winners are:
Best Mac OS X User Experience: Coda. Panic.
Best Mac OS X Developer Tool: CSSEdit 2.5. MacRabbit.
Best Mac OS X Game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade 2.0. Blizzard Entertainment .
Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution: Papers 1.0. Alexander Griekspoor and Tom Groothuis.
Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget: BART Widget 1.0. Bret Victor.
Best Mac OS X Student Product: Picturesque 1.0. Zac Cohen.
It’s a beautiful sunny morning here in San Francisco, and Wired News will be liveblogging Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. We have reporters. We have cameras, and we have press passes. Check it out here at 10 AM. Don’t forget to refresh.
I predict Steve Jobs will introduce a multitouch mousepad at WWDC tomorrow morning — and that finger input will be one of the “top secret” features of Leopard.
The multitouch pad will look like a standard mousepad, but it’ll be finger sensitive, like the touchpads on most notebooks. But instead of one finger, it’ll be sensitive to multi-finger gestures and commands, like the iPhone.
The pad will completely replace the mouse, allowing users to control the Mac with their fingers — moving the cursor, selecting files and double clicking with a quick double tap of the index finger.
The pad will also respond to a whole new vocabulary of gestures, like Mouse Gestures in Firefox, which execute common commands (backwards, forwards, reload) with a sweep of the mouse. Using your fingers, you’ll open files by twisting to the left, as though turning an imaginary dial. Twist your fingers to the right to close the file.
The pad will be USB powered, and will have “soft buttons” for common commands like cut and paste, and delete.
Jobs will unveil multitouch at WWDC to give Mac programmers time to incorporate gesture commands into their software before Leopard’s release in October.
Of course, this is pure speculation. I’ve no evidence whatsoever this is going to happen. I’ve no idea if it’s even realistic. Can developers incorporate an entirely new UI into their software in a few months? Will people even want it? Don’t forget, the QWERTY keyboard is still around. People don’t like whacky new interfaces.
Still, Jobs made a big deal of the multitouch finger interface of the iPhone, proclaiming it the third great “revolutionary” interface after the mouse and the scroll wheel. It seems natural we should be using our fingers to interact with computers.
Others are doing it. Microsoft has it’s Surface table, and I saw a new HP TouchSmart PC at the weekend, which is controlled by a large touch screen. A woman was playing Solitaire on the screen with her fingers, and it worked really well. I was quite impressed.
Apple is already making moves towards gesture interfaces. The touchpads on MacBooks support two finger scrolling. And there’s the iPhone.
Part of the iPhone’s multitouch interface is based on the work of two University of Delaware professors, John Elias and Wayne Westerman. Elias and Westerman owned a company called FingerWorks that sold a multitouch Touchstream keyboard and an iGesture Numeric Keypad, which worked like the multitouch mousepad described above.
Apple bought FingerWorks in early 2005, along with the professors’ patents, which look like an entire platform for finger-based interfaces.
For one thing, using your finger seems to help with RSI, according to FingerWorks’ testimonials:
“I’ve been a LP user for about 8 months. It’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me in the world of computers. I’m a mechanical engineer and I use it for 2D and 3D CAD drafting, as well as ‘normal’ office type use. Also, I’m a Linux and Windows user, and I love how it works easily in both environments.
I have RSI in both my left and right forearms and wrists. Since using the Touchstream, I’ve reduced pain considerably, and I am able to do work with much less pain.”
BBC News: “A video has appeared on the internet showing the first pictures of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston since his abduction in Gaza on 12 March.
It is said to have been posted by the Army of Islam, the group that says it is holding the reporter.
In the video, Mr Johnston says he is in good health and that his captors have treated him well.”
This is great news. I hope to God he’s released without harm.
