[vip_students] One Guy's Thoughts on the iPhone 4 (Please Read)
- From: <paul.traynor@xxxxxxx>
- To: <vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:16:49 +0100
Hi All,
The below article is for anyone who is considering purchasing an IPhone now
or in the future. I think it is well worth reading it as it describes the
pros and cons of making a purchase of such a device as the IPhone and maybe
it will help in your decision.
The IPhone is not for everyone and it is worth doing a little research about
it first.
Paul.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Mosen" <jmosen@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <blindphones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2010 3:32 AM
Subject: One Guy's Thoughts on the iPhone 4
For the last 10 days, I've been evaluating an iPhone 4, running iOS 4.1.
I've been asked by a few people if I would make some notes, and make those
available when my evaluation was complete, which I am happy to do. In this
document, I have tried to review objectively. I've have seen a lot of people
gushing over their iPhones, and some trashing them, but that really doesn't
help people trying to evaluate whether to get one or not. So I have done my
best to discuss things I really like, and things that in this one person's
opinion could do with improvement. I'd like to thank subscribers to the
Viphone list, and too many individuals to name who have helped me out on
Twitter and Skype. The enthusiasm with which everyone has shared their
knowledge has been wonderful and infectious.
One question I've been asked repeatedly during the last couple of weeks, is
"why are you evaluating an iPhone, I thought you were
anti-Apple/Anti-iPhone"? This question reflects the somewhat tribal way some
others think about technology, and they think that others must view it the
same way. Personally, I don't have the luxury of being anti any device or
company. If I personally choose not to use something, it's because it
doesn't meet my needs.
When the iPhone 3GS was released last year, I said then that we should take
our hats off to Apple for putting a full screen reader in the phone.
However, I was concerned about the efficiency of the touch interface, and I
was also sceptical about how many third party apps would run on the device.
Frankly, I was also concerned about whether Apple would do just enough to
get people off their cases with respect to iPhone accessibility, then leave
the product alone.
I'll return to the efficiency of data input later. But there is absolutely
no question that I was simply wrong on the question of third party apps, and
my cynicism about development of accessibility of the device was unfounded.
Much has changed for the better even in the last five months since I
evaluated an iPod Touch, let alone in the last year.
There are many sighted users who choose not to use iOS devices, and I think
irrespective of blindness, I would have been one of them. As I said when I
evaluated, and ultimately returned, the previous generation of the iPod
Touch prior to the release of iOS4, I find the walled garden approach of
Apple quite constraining. I enjoy being able to connect my device and copy
files to it via USB. Yes, there's an app for that, but a user shouldn't need
to jump through so many hoops to get simple tasks done. During my evaluation
period of the iPhone for example, I used a great little recorder app, Voxie,
who have to resort to building a web server into their app, just so you can
get content you've created off the device.
Coming from a Nokia background, the Apple insistence on one way to do things
is quite a culture shock. If I want to get music into he N86, which has 40GB
of storage in total when the 32GB MicroSD card is taken into account, I have
a number of options. My favourite, for very big transfers, is just to place
the MicroSD card in my laptop and transfer files over using Windows
Explorer, then put the card back in the phone. Nokia then imports the new
material into its library, using ID3 and other tag information to build a
library that is easily searchable based on artist, genre or album. I can
also use PC Suite to transfer the content via USB, and indeed the N86 has a
mode making the phone appear as a drive in Windows Explorer. Finally, I have
software that makes the phone appear on my network, so when using the phone
I can play content from any other device on the network, and also transfer
content from any device on the network to the Nokia. So there are many
choices, and I like that freedom. Surely it wouldn't be hard for Apple to
monitor a designated folder for new music that might be copied through any
number of methods, and import it into the database when the new files are
detected.
Apple's stranglehold over the apps that will and won't be accepted is also
an issue for me. The Google Voice issue, now apparently resolved, is the
most prominent case in point, but there are many other examples. You can't,
for example, get an app that emulates a wireless hotspot for your phone as
you can on Symbian, unless you jail break. While jail breaking's legal
status has now been clarified, some reviews I've read indicate that jail
breaking may have a negative impact on some official apps.
Until iOS4, it wasn't possible to have apps such as Skype and VOIP programs
running in the background. This is so fundamental to my day to day work that
it made iPhone a non-starter.
So those were some of my concerns that meant I had not yet jumped on the
bandwagon. It wasn't about the manufacturer, in fact my first ever computer
was an Apple so I have been a customer of theirs before. It was about
genuine productivity, functionality, and philosophical concerns. But Apple
is catching up, and of course leading in some critical areas, so it was time
to take another look. My initial intention was to try another iPod Touch,
but I am a fan of convergence, and decided that I would really use the
device if it were also my phone. Based on a risk free, no questions asked,
right of return policy, I got myself an iPhone 4, and resolved that no
matter how tempting, I wouldn't touch my Symbian device during the
evaluation period. It was going to be a paradigm shift, but if I used the
Symbian device is a kind of crutch, it wouldn't be a fair evaluation. When I
make references to Symbian in this document, it is firstly because it's the
OS I have used on my phones for the majority of the last seven years, and
also because it still remains the world's leading mobile operating system.
While waiting for my phone to be shipped to me, and being the documentation
nerd I am, I decided to read the entire accessible version of the manual
online. On the plus side, the manual had already been updated to reflect
IOS4.1 changes. On the negative side, the pages gave a 404 in my browser of
choice, Internet Explorer. I was able to obtain a well marked up PDF file,
but I think manufacturers need to ensure that such content is available for
people using any popular browser. The manual is well written, and it is nice
to have clear text labels describing what to do, rather than the use of
graphics that keep you guessing at critical parts of the documentation.
Of course, as many before me have observed, the contrast between setting
your iPhone up and, say, setting up a Symbian phone when you're blind is
stark. An expert Symbian user can do it without sighted assistance, but you
truly are flying blind. There is no speech feedback during the set-up of
your third party access solution as say there is when you install a screen
reader in Windows. If a version of your phone's firmware does the smallest
thing different since the last update, you may find yourself using some
choice language as you wonder what on earth has happened to the steps you
carefully memorized. Getting the iPhone talking is fairly easily done. I say
fairly easily because the iPhone will not let you activate without a SIM
installed. My iPhone was shipped to me, and I wanted to plug it in and
activate it before going to my carrier's store to get my SIM exchanged for a
microsim. Presently, microsims are only used in Apple devices, although it
is fairly simple to get an adapter so you can use your SIM in other devices,
much like a microSD to SD adapter. iTunes told me that unless I had a SIM in
the phone, I couldn't activate it, so, off I went to my carrier's store to
do the swap. I asked the guy at the store to insert the SIM for me, although
I've since learned that this is really a snap to do, and he then activated
the phone in iTunes. I was then able to tell him to go into Settings,
General, Accessibility, Voiceover, and enable it for me, so I walked out of
the store with a talking phone that was fully up and running. With a SIM in
the phone, it would have been equally easy to get the phone home and enable
it in iTunes 10.
As I said when evaluating the iPod touch, the Weather and Youtube apps on
the first page of the default home screen are great for getting started.
It's so easy to get your current weather conditions and practice the basic
gestures there, and almost as easy to get video streaming out of your
device. It is slick, and easily gets you hooked with its elegance and
simplicity.
There has been plenty of material written about the gesture-based navigation
on the iPhone and similar devices. Much of it is excellent and there's not
much I can add. Perhaps the one thing I can comment on is how it works from
the perspective of an efficiency nut. In some respects, it is not as
efficient as, say, assigning your most frequently used applications to a
button in Symbian, yet in some scenarios, it is way more efficient than
using arrow keys. This is because rather than down-arrowing through a list
of choices until you get to the one you want, you can touch roughly where
you know the icon for your app to be. You can also reorganize your home
screens so the apps you use most frequently are on page one. Further
improving efficiency is the use of folders, introduced to iPhone 4.
I am a very frequent smart phone user who pushes my devices to the max, and
have been able to use the T9 predictive texting system as fast as some
people can type. There have been a number of improvements in iOS4 which have
assisted to some degree. Touch typing is a new method of entering text, and
the more you practice, the better you get at understanding the physical
dimensions of the keyboard so you more often get the right key the first
time. If you miss, keep your finger on the screen where the virtual keyboard
appears, and drag until you find the letter you want, then take your finger
off the screen. I don't think even a conventional small keyboard on
smartphones is as fast as T9 in the hands of a capable user, so this form of
input certainly never can be. But it's about trade-offs, a point I'll come
back to at the end of this review.
A solona screen protector can also help speed up data input. Mine arrived on
the day I was completing this review, but initial tests show that the
minimalist one, with dots on the F and J, a dot on the 5 and dots on a few
important keys, really help with orientation and speed. They fit snugly onto
the screen of the phone and don't seem to interfere with gestures.
It is frustrating to those of us who care about punctuation, that to enter a
simple comma, you have to invoke another screen of symbols. The same is true
of an apostrophe, although if you write out a word without an apostrophe
that clearly needs one, the auto-correction facility will handle that for
you.
The spell checker, while taking a little getting used to, is very nice to
have on a device like an iPhone.
Another thing that Windows users will have to get their head around, is the
insertion point concept, and the way this is verbalised by Voiceover. I
personally don't think there is much point wishing iOS was like Windows, it
isn't Windows and things are done differently. But it took me quite a bit of
usage, moving around by character and word, until the way the insertion
pointer works felt natural and didn't mess up my editing big time. Be
patient with it, it can be gotten used to.
For making calls, and controlling some iPod functions, voice commands are
available, and all in all, they work well. I hope these might be extended in
future, so that you can launch applications with them too.
For serious data entry, iOS4 introduced support for Bluetooth keyboards,
something that was not an option when the 3GS was released, and therefore
one of the major concerns I raised. If you're on a bus trying to get your
email done, or sitting in a cafe with some time to kill, it's not a big deal
to pull out a Bluetooth keyboard. With the right keyboard, you can easily
exceed the speed of a T9 user. I tried using the thinkOutside Stowaway
keyboard, which is foldable and quite cute, but found I had issues making
the devices see one another easily after the phone or keyboard went to
sleep. The Apple Wireless keyboard is totally impressive in this regard. It
isn't foldable, so you need to carry it around perhaps in a briefcase or
backpack, but it is a lovely keyboard to type on and I found myself flying
with it. Best of all, iPhone and the keyboard see each other without any
hassle after each device has been sleeping. I do hope to find something
foldable in time that gives me such good results.
While the Bluetooth keyboard support was a very important step, in iOS4, you
had to take your hand off the keyboard to perform screen reader functions on
the phone. This has now been addressed in 4.1, where screen reader commands
are available from the keyboard. It was this innovation that finally
encouraged me to take another look. This obviously makes a big productivity
difference, although there are times, believe it or not, when working with
the touch screen is simply more efficient, for example arrowing to a button
some distance away, versus tapping it on the screen because you know exactly
where it is.
There are some functions which at this time you can't perform from the
keyboard, such as the double tap and hold gesture.
Hopefully power keyboard users, both blind and sighted alike, will request
more hotkeys in applications in future. For example, it would be nice to be
able to press control+R to reply to an email message. Keyboard support is
still fairly new, so I'd like to think this is something that will evolve
over time, adding to the efficiency of use.
One thing I find disappointing is the lack of official documentation from
Apple on the details of keyboard and Braille support. In the end, you can
press keys to find out what they do, and that's what the blind community has
done. Blind people tend to be quite enthusiastic about their iOS devices,
and there are many great resources where this sort of information is
collected. Still, as the manufacturer of the product, it is incumbent upon
Apple to document features thoroughly.
Support for Braille displays was introduced to iOS4. During my evaluation
period, I used a Focus 40 Blue. Paring the two devices was very
straightforward. Like most Bluetooth pairing processes, the opportunity to
enter a code is fairly short, so it's important to be ready to enter that
PIN as soon as you're prompted for it. The one major concern I have with the
Braille support relates to contracted input. If you start typing the word
Jonathan for example, and you pause after the J for a couple of seconds, iOS
back translates the word to "just". Similarly, if you make a mistake and
insert a single letter in the middle of the word to correct it, that single
letter is also back translated. Some have suggested this is a feature, but
I'm afraid this has bug written all over it to me. It is true you can work
around it by using letter signs appropriately, but I can see no practical
benefit to this at all. If you want the word just rather than J, you'd
simply press space, rather than wait the time for it to be back translated
and then press space. Given how responsive Apple have been to user feedback,
here's hoping this one might be squashed in iOS4.2 due in November.
Other than that, the Braille support is fantastic. With an input-capable
Braille display, you have both Braille output, and a Braille Bluetooth
keyboard.
So, you have your on screen keyboard, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a Braille
display, what do you do with them? Well, text messaging is of course a core
feature of any smartphone. I'm very impressed with the threaded text
messaging on the iPhone. I've heard some former Symbian users saying they
don't like it, but to me, the trick is to get used to not expecting to
delete messages on your phone. The iPhone wants to manage things its own way
in many situations, and I've found the trick is to just not fight it unless
you feel very strongly about something. Texting on the iPhone is like using
instant messaging. You can send a text, wait for the response and have that
response automatically spoken. Of course text messaging isn't always
intended to be that way. For example you may text your spouse telling them
that you're going to be home late, then a couple of days later, send another
text asking about the milk. But it is easy to get to the end of the thread.
Just get to the bottom of the screen using a four-finger flick down. For a
while, I was hesitant to do too much texting, and even now, it's more
arduous than using T9, if you don't have a qwerty keyboard to hand. But with
touch typing, it is tolerable for me given the other benefits of the device.
Your mileage, as they say, may vary depending on how you weight various
factors.
It may sound old fashioned, but one of the things I also do with my
smartphone is.make and receive phone calls. When Voiceover is running,
tilting the phone a little away from your face puts the phone into
speakerphone, so you can enter digits on the keypad. The proximity sensor
that determines when to activate the speakerphone is extremely sensitive on
the iPhone 4. Apparently it is less sensitive after the 4.1 update, I have
no experience of it in previous releases, but frankly, it drives me crazy.
Frequently in a moving vehicle, you go over a bump, and your caller is
unceremoniously placed on speaker. I wear hearing aids, so most of the time
have a cable that connects between my phone and my hearing aids. This is
effectively using a headset, and this makes the problem go away. Another
work-around is to turn Voiceover off when you're on a call. You can set up
the phone so that a three finger tap of the home button disables Voiceover,
another three finger tap re-enables it.
Using IVR systems, such as telephone banking, really takes practice. And if
privacy is a concern, that is to say you don't want your bank balance heard
on the bus, then a headset is a must here too.
iPhone works with a range or corded and Bluetooth headsets. It does not,
however, work with Phonak Smartlink, a system designed for hearing impaired
people. The two devices simply refuse to pair.
The email support on iPhone really is quite spectacular, complete with
threaded email. This is to say messages with the same subject are grouped
together, and can be deleted at once. Your email account details are synced
between Microsoft Outlook and the iPhone. All you have to do is supply the
password. The email messages themselves are however not synced between
Microsoft Outlook and the iPhone, but personally in the age of Imap, I don't
consider this much of an issue.
With VPN, Microsoft Exchange support, support for many popular free email
services, and Apple's MobileMe which I've not played with at all, the email
really is very good. Plus, you can read many files attached to email
messages including Word documents and PowerPoint presentations.
One thing that impresses me very much about the iPhone is it's sensible
cross-linking of data. For example, if the email client recognizes that
references is being made to a specific date, that date is a hyperlink.
Double tapping it will take you into creating a new event for that date.
Similarly, from within the contacts, you can text and call someone from a
person's contact record.
I did not find browsing the web as efficient with the iPhone as I do with
the N86. Speeds were about comparable once images are turned off on the N86.
You then need to adjust the virtual dial to select the element by which you
wish to navigate, rotating through a number of options including links,
headings, visited links, form controls etc. There are also Braille and
keyboard commands to rotate through the settings, then other commands to
move by your selected unit. With Talks, all of these options are available
from the keyboard or number pad with a key press. Pressing H gets me to the
next heading, n to non-linked text. With keyboard support now a reality, in
theory this might be possible when a keyboard is active.
I did not find a way to search for a particular word on the page with
iPhone.
The browser supports tabbed browsing, and that's a very big plus.
Adding pages you visit regularly to one's home screen is easy, making it a
snap to get to sites like your local newspaper, or aggregate sites like NFB
Newsline.
Speaking of Newsline, it was while browsing the web that I came across a
serious bug. Because my home region is New Zealand, the Karen voice, which
is actually Australian but the closest voice to us they have, is selected.
This is very clear and sounds better than any other mobile device
implementation I have heard. In this part of the world, the date format is
dd/mm/yy. So 15 September would be written as 15/09/10. iPhone's regional
settings reflect this format. When I visited the NFB Newsline site to read
my favourite publications, the date, understandably given that I was on a US
site, was written in US format. So newspapers for the 8th of September were
written as 09/08. the iPod read this as "the 9th of August". So this gave me
totally inaccurate information about the date of the publication I was
accessing. I think the trick here is not to be too clever, and to simply
read what is on the screen rather than to attempt to expand the date and
give erroneous results.
The iPhone supports both WiFi and 3G. While newer Symbian phones have
endeavoured to emulate the iPhone experience, where the phone connects to
WiFi if that is available, and to 3G if it is not, the Symbian experience is
hit and miss. Some older S60 applications do not support the concept of
"destinations", so they require you to change your preferred access point
manually. With iPhone, it just works without fuss. If WiFi is on, available
and known, it uses it. If it isn't available, it uses 3G. If it is available
but not known, it asks if you want to connect.
Now, let me turn to the matter of apps, both those on the device as it
ships, and apps you can install. One of the things that has become an
increasing source of concern to me, is the number of apps shipping on the
firmware of Nokia phones which have become inaccessible. For some time, I
was unable to use the built-in email client on the N86 at all. It is useable
now, but hardly elegant. This is in no way a criticism of the screen reader
developers for that platform, who have done a wonderful job of providing
access to Symbian. The reality is that Nokia is failing to act responsibly
when it comes to accessibility. Everything that ships with the iPhone talks.
Even the level meter in the voice notes application is readable, and it is
simple to record something while on the move and email it to TWAudio. I have
absolutely no objection to paying for a third party screen reader if it
allows me maximum productivity. But if Nokia are going to leave the
development of screen readers to third parties, the least they can do is
firstly ensure that their own apps are accessible, and secondly that a
solid, robust, documented, promoted and understood framework exists for
application developers to work within. They also need to make sure that PC
companion software is totally screen reader friendly.
There is a handful of very good third party apps for Symbian, but the
reality is that more apps are inaccessible than accessible. Too often, the
question for Symbian screen reader users is, "is there an app in this
particular category that is accessible", whereas iPhone users are asking,
"which of a number of accessible apps in this category is best". Twitter
clients are a case in point. There is Jibjib, a java-based app that works OK
with Symbian screen readers, and one native Symbian app, TweetS60, which is
accessible. Within a couple of days, I had found Echofon, Twitterific, the
official Twitter app, Tweetlist, and others, all of which were accessible.
And sadly, many app developers are now passing Symbian by altogether. The
times are too frequent in recent months where I've seen developers releasing
apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android, and just ignoring Symbian. Dropbox
is a case in point, and Audible's is way out of date. There's no official
4Square app for Symbian either, although some would consider that an
advantage.
There are so many really cool apps out there for iPhone. One of our national
TV networks has an app which gives me easy access to their news content. A
number of free apps help me locate points of interest close by, while
another lets me look for restaurants by my location and even shows me
reviews and menus for those restaurants all on the phone. Skype on the
iPhone is remarkably clear, albeit a massive battery drainer if you leave it
running in the background. In fact Skype sounds better on my iPhone than it
does using the built-in microphone of my laptop. I can see who is calling me
on Skype for iPhone, something I couldn't do on Symbian.
You can dictate text messages and tweets with the free Dragon Dictation app
although that isn't available in all stores. Vlingo is also available, but
despite purchasing it, I have had frequent errors with it contacting its
servers. Dragon Dictation however is remarkably accurate.
There are numerous apps for listening to Internet radio, Ootunes is one I
particularly like since you can record streams right to your iPhone, and the
directory is comprehensive. You can even set up your own server for
streaming your music to your iPhone from home, although I've yet to test
this to see if it is accessible.
My iPhone is my home phone thanks to the Bria SIP program. This works very
well indeed over WiFi as well as 3G, so I can take my home phone number with
me wherever I am. The caveat at this point is that leaving Bria on in the
background makes the phone incredibly sluggish to the point that typing is a
frustration. Counterpath, the developers of Bria, say they've heard this
from others and hope to work on it. Latency on VOIP is noticeably better
with the iPhone than it is with Nokia's built-in SIP support, a feature
Nokia have been crippling progressively over time.
Dropbox has become a big part of my computing life, and the iPhone Dropbox
app is brilliant. It is easy to stream a media file in your Dropbox, view a
document, and manage files.
The oMoby application for iPhone is a piece of technology that literally had
me saying wow and laughing with amazement. This uses object recognition
technology to identify things. When that fails, it reverts to crowd sourcing
to get the answer. We've used it in the kitchen to accurately identify a
range of things, and I am told in the US it is great for identifying money.
Colour detectors are also available.
I have tried one OCR app on the device which I found totally unimpressive.
At this stage, I think it is fair to say there is nothing on iPhone that is
in the same league as KNFB Reader Mobile on the N86. That is unfortunate,
but with the number of blind people now using iPhones, and the 5MP camera in
iPhone 4, I would expect this situation to change sooner rather than later.
Apple's own Remote app allows you to control an iTunes library on another
PC, or an Apple TV. This is really fantastic. We have an FM transmitter
connected to our PC, and the remote app works over the same WiFi network on
which the PC running the iTunes library you want to control is located. So I
can be playing music over any FM radio in the house, and simply using my
iPhone, change what's being played.
There are a number of RSS readers available, and even a third party
podcatcher. The podcatcher was particularly important to me, since the Nokia
Podcast client, again a feature that is missing from some of Nokia's newer
offerings, has served me well. One advantage of syncing between iTunes and
the iPhone for podcasts, is that your place is remembered on both your PC
and your iPhone. So if you haven't quite finished listening to a podcast
when you're out and about, you can hear the rest of it when you're back at
your PC. The ability to adjust the speed of playback is also welcome. A down
side however is that you can't download podcasts over the air on your phone
unless you already have some episodes of the podcast on the phone itself.
The Podcaster app takes care of that, and in fact is better in some respects
than its Nokia Equivalent. For example, you can stream podcasts if you want
to hear them right away, no need to wait to download them.
IM+ will be a name familiar to vintage Symbian users, since there used to be
a version of this unified messaging client that was accessible. The iPhone
version is excellent, and offers an efficient unified messaging experience.
Oh, and yes, there are games, some of them very good, and very addictive. My
favourite game to date is Zany Touch, a Bopit style game that is a lot of
fun to play.
These are just some of the apps I have installed on the iPhone after 10
short days, there are many others that are accessible and useful. The busy
and exciting world of apps on the iPhone reminds me of the glory days of DOS
shareware. There is a lot to download and evaluate, and a surprising number
of useful free apps.
And for Symbian users who have never tried the iPhone app experience, here's
the thing. It is just pure elegance itself. Let's contrast the experience of
downloading a Symbian app with downloading an iOS app. A Symbian user first
needs to find the app they want. The Nokia Ovi Store is seeking to emulate
the success of Apple's App Store by providing a one stop shop for all Nokia
apps. However, app developers are not required to play, and some still
don't. Further, the Ovi Store app on Nokia phones is at this time completely
screen reader inaccessible. Some have had success with the Ovi Store
website, both on the phone and the PC, but others have not. If you choose to
browse for an app on your PC, a link for the app, if you get as far as
managing to purchase it, will be texted to your phone. You then have to wait
for the text to arrive, open the message, click on the link, sign in, and
then download the app to your phone. You'll then be taken through the series
of install screens until the app is at last on your phone.
I mentioned at the beginning of this review that one of the annoyances about
the iPhone for me was Apple's stranglehold over apps. Yet it is also one of
its biggest strengths. iPhone users can purchase all apps from the one
place. The experience purchasing on the PC and the phone is accessible. Once
you make the purchase, it is just so simple. No install screens to worry
about, no manually installing. If you purchase the app on your PC, the app
appears on your phone the next time you sync with iTunes. If you purchase on
the phone, it just installs itself, and you are taken to the page of the
home screen where the installation is taking place so you can monitor it in
real time if you want to. It is a truly beautiful thing.
Keeping track of your updates is a snap. Once you've purchased the app, you
will be told whenever a new version of your app is available. And because
the purchases are tied to your iTunes account, not to the serial number of
your phone, if you replace or update your phone, or if you own an iPhone and
iPod Touch, you don't need to repurchase your apps for different devices.
For me, the richness of choice in apps, the significant number that are
accessible, and the elegance of the way apps are handled is just so well
done, that it makes up for most other annoyances.
Obviously with an iPhone, you also have an iPod. To manage your iPod, you
really need iTunes. Purchasing music is possible over the phone, and it can
be quite fun browsing the iTunes Store in a café and previewing new artists
and albums.
I've spent a lot of time customizing my phones over the years, and now have
quite a collection of ring tones. Nokia phones let you use any media the
phone supports as a ring tone, nothing could be simpler. It's far from that
simple with the iPhone. First, you have to create a compatible AAC version
of the ring tone, then rename it with an m4R extension and make sure that
you import them into the iTunes Library. So far so good. But then I hit a
problem I still haven't been able to overcome. I have a very large music
collection, and it's impossible to get it all onto a 32GB iPhone. For this
reason, I chose to manage music manually. It's a big job, because I have to
choose every song that I want to copy over to the iPhone, but the results
are well worth it in the end. As far as I can tell, there appears to be a
bug when you choose to manage music manually, that affects ring tones.
Although iTunes doesn't say so by way of the prompt, when you choose to
manage music manually, you also choose to manage ring tones manually. If you
try to sync ring tones, you are told that all the data on your iPhone
pertaining to music and movies will be lost. No problem you'd think, just
copy the ring tones from the ringtones list in iTunes to the iPhone. This is
how it works when managing music manually is selected, but the copy option
is greyed out when you are in the ringtones folder, and manually dragging
with the mouse appears not to work either. A Google has revealed others are
having this issue too. Bottom line is that I still haven't found a way to
get my own ringtones onto the device, and I refuse to hand over control of
what goes on the iPhone to iTunes.
Another remarkable omission that is apparently about to be resolves is that
you can't set your own SMS notification sound. It is said that in iOS4.2,
you will not only be able to do that, but also you'll be able to set an SMS
tone per contact.
I also find myself very much missing the FM radio. When I have said this to
people, they've told me that you can listen to most stations online anyway,
but for me, that doesn't make up for its absence. As I said earlier, we use
an FM transmitter at home to broadcast music around the house, but we also
use it to broadcast TV shows and movies we are watching, for my benefit. My
hearing impairment means that sometimes, I miss out on bits of dialogue if
I'm not listening directly, say through headphones. I always have my phone
with me, so the FM radio in the phone was an easy way for me to hear what
was going on through our media center, without having to have any additional
device with me. That is something I have lost with iPhone. There are all
kinds of rumours about an FM radio chip actually being present on the
device. Who knows if that's true. What is true is that the end user has no
access to it today. It is a very low cost thing to implement, and it is
unfortunate, particularly given that an FM radio is present on the Nano.
I can't resist adding a humorous observation. One of the benefits guide dog
handlers talk about, is that their dog is an ice breaker. People are
interested in the dog, so they come and say hello. Well, if you're not a dog
person but you want to meet more people, get an iPhone. It is remarkable how
many people have come and talked to me on busses about what I'm doing with
that iPhone, asking me how I am using it when there are hardly any buttons
on it. Oh and they are also perplexed by the fact that they can't see
anything on the screen thanks to screen curtain, a great feature for blind
users that stops prying eyes seeing what you're doing on your phone.
In the end then, what does all this mean? It means that if you pick up an
iPhone and expect to do things the way you did them in Symbian, you're going
to get frustrated. The paradigm, the user interface, is very different. Some
of the things you get done a certain way on Symbian, you can get done, but
in a very different way. Other things will take longer, and again I come
back to unaided data entry. For me. The number pad will always be king here
for small devices. So people have to make a decision about what's important
to them. For some, there is a principle they think is important, about
taking a phone out of its box and having it talk. For others, it's the apps.
For others, its productivity with the basic functions at all costs. If
you're in this latter category, then having to carry a Bluetooth keyboard
with you for serious data entry is a sacrifice you may not be prepared to
make. If you want a simple phone where you can easily make and receive
calls, where it's easy to interact with IVR services, then the iPhone may be
overkill for you.
If you want a phone that offers a powerful screen reader, if you want your
phone to be smart and run a wide range of applications, if you view your
phone is a mini computer that happens to make phone calls as well, then I'd
suggest that right now, the iPhone is hard to beat. I fear that Symbian has
become a graveyard in terms of commitment to accessibility, and accessible
application development. Android has promise, and it will be interesting to
see what difference if any Code Factory's entry into the Android space will
make, but all that I've read indicates that the experience is not there yet,
that you cannot pick from a wide array of third party apps and just have
them talk.
I still believe Android is one to watch, and I also think that there are
risks in Apple's strategy of not licensing their OS to other equipment
manufacturers. If we could have iOS running on a phone with a slide out
keyboard or even a number pad, I'd be thrilled. The plethora of Android
devices is one of its big strengths. But just as I rejected the iPhone as a
tool I could use last year, we have to base our decisions on the market as
it is today. Multitasking, Braille, keyboard support, touch typing and other
features in the last year as made iPhone a viable choice for my particular
kind of use, and in the end, that's all this document is, a summary of one
guy's impressions of the iPhone. Am I keeping it? Yes, I am. No device is
perfect, but for my kind of use, on balance I feel this is the best there is
for me at this time.
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- » [vip_students] One Guy's Thoughts on the iPhone 4 (Please Read) - paul.traynor
