Immediately after Apple dropped the price of the 8 GB iPhone by $200 (from the outrageously overpriced $600 to the only somewhat overpriced $400), Glenna and I went out and purchased a couple.
What kept me from buying before were what I saw as an extraordinarily high price (which Apple has, to a great degree, remedied) and the lack of support for 3rd party software - which I’ve gone into some detail about in the past.
Well, not long after its release some enterprising people were able to gain access to the iPhone and now there is a relatively straightforward way in which to put 3rd party software onto it. While most of what has been released so far is of limited value, more and more software is being released daily (you can even install an Apache web server and Perl onto it, which completely blows my mind). Better yet, there are some indications that Apple really doesn’t mind - even going so far as to say that they have no intention of intentionally breaking 3rd party software installed on iPhones.
This gives me some hope that they will be offering up an official SDK and 3rd party support some time in the not-too-distant future.
As for the phone itself: It’s really nice.
The user interface is far more intuitive and enjoyable to use than anything I’ve ever seen in a cell phone to date, and clearly lives up to Apple’s reputation in that regard. Unlike my old Treo or RAZR everything is just about where I would expect it to be and works well. Some features - such as visual voice mail - are so obvious that it’s hard to believe it has taken this long for it to make it into the market.
That said, it also lacks a lot of functionality that phones in this price range - or even that of phones that are far less expensive. I understand and agree with Apple’s “less is more” philosophy of minimalism, but there are some places where it seems that they cut a little too close to the bone.
Some of this, I hope (and believe) will be solved over time as Apple updates the iPhone software. It’s definitely a v1.0 product and everything that entails (except that, for me at least, it has been perfectly stable). Some of these functionality holes are those that would be best addressed by 3rd party developers, though, so I hope that Apple reconsiders their currently exclusive policy.
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On a vaguely related note, in a post today John Gruber dissects Apple’s recent inclusion of ringtone purchasing in iTunes, exposing it for the blatant money-grab that it is. I pretty much agree with him on the matter - it’s really quite disappointing that Apple has chosen to force people to pay for 30 second snippets of songs that they already own.
