iPhone Day, Take 2
Well, I don't think anyone will say that today was a day marked with an eerily smooth product launch, unlike last year's iPhone launch, but despite Apple's troubles with activations and the continuing pains in the switch from .Mac to MobileMe, I think this day has been successful. I was able to easily bring my iPhone (first generation) up to iPhone OS 2.0 and so far I am pleased as punch.
Why? Well, first off, the new push service seems to work really well. After the upgrade, suddenly my .Mac — excuse me, MobileMe — address is fully push enabled, vibrating my phone whenever a new message comes in, not when I check my mail. We'll see what that does to battery life; if it hurts it too badly, I'll turn off push.
But, I'm also excited after playing with some of the new App Store apps. Apple's Remote is pretty nifty for controlling iTunes, and I think it will come in handy in the future for uses I haven't quite imagined yet. Perhaps more exciting was Shazam, which can listen to a song from the radio, computer, TV, etc., and identify it. For the moment at least, it is free, and is relatively accurate. It has not falsely identified a single song, and has only come up with a blank on a few hard songs, Rusted Root's “Beautiful People” and the live recording of Evanescence's “Imaginary,” and one easy song, Sixpence's “Million Parachutes.” I tried a bunch of other music, from big and small names, and even some stuff from the Music Choice channels on TV, and it managed to correctly identify those and provide helpful links related to them. Check it out.
I'm actually looking at the iPhone for my wife - primarily because it has GPS. All the other features are nice, too.
I'm wondering what a simple plan will cost me, tho. I like to keep the total family communications bill under 200 bucks.
Even though Apple is careful not to use the term, it's really a full fledged PDA now. Better than any smart phone or PDA I've used in the past — and the quality of early software in the App Store encourages me.
The cheapest you will get away with is the cost of a line + $30 for iPhone data, is my understanding. In a family plan, that could put the total line cost as low as $40, assuming that line was a $10/month additional line.
Of course, if you can find a first generation iPhone (perhaps possible on eBay, and likely for cheap, if you find it), it will be only $20 for data.