iPhone: Keep Waiting

Andy Kim — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:16:50 -0700

A lot has been said about the iPhone's $200 price drop but my favorite reaction is from Steve Gehrman, the guy behind Path Finder at Cocoatech:

You might be tempted to buy an iPhone now that they are "cheap". But, don't be fooled! Jobs lowered the price to clear out inventory before Apple releases the 3G iPhone.

Who's going to buy a slow 2G iPhone once the 3G is announced? Apples got to get rid of them now while they still have a chance. Apple's smart, they will announce the 3G iPhone the day they have sold the last 2G phone. :) Don't be a sucker.

Keep waiting.

I'm not sure if he's being serious or just sarcastic, but amidst all the outcry over the price drop, that was just unexpected and it had me chuckling.

On a side note, I hear that Cocoatech is looking for a marketing/web person.

Link to Steve's Blog Post

iPhone Video Tour

Andy Kim — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:41:10 -0700

I haven't had any real interest in getting an iPhone, but after watching the iPhone Guided Tour, I am pretty much sold. The amount of polish that went into this thing is just amazing. The animation effects are done in good taste and result in a certain fluidity that is mesmerizing (am I too much of a UI geek?). I did worry a little that Core Animation will make a lot of developers put in unnecessary and cheesy animation effects into their apps, but now I can at least hope that they will follow the example set by iPhone; I know I will be. I mean, I can almost forgive Apple for not having the secret feature in Leopard now.

My self-imposed rule about not buying first generation hardware (Apple or otherwise, even cars) will have to be broken this time.

As a developer and user interface designer—after having watched the video 2 times—what impressed me the most were the new gestures revealed to us for the first time:

Flick right to delete

Instead of having to get into the edit mode just to delete an email, you can flick to the right with your finger on a row to reveal the delete button for the row. It's not something that's immediately obvious or discoverable, but it is ingenious nonetheless and analogous to dragging icons off the dock. It turns a 3 tap process into a "flick and tap". Yes, saving a tap is very important. I can see this being or becoming the standard delete gesture in the iPhone.

Tap with two fingers to zoom out

I only saw this in the Google Maps section, but I hope that it's used everywhere. It's better than the double tap for two reasons: 1) there is no confusion about zooming-in or zomming-out: The two finger tap will always zoom-out and 2) you save a tap. I'm wondering if there is a three finger tap that will zoom out two levels at once.

Now, the thing that I care about the most is whether I can accept these gestures in my own web application. The flick gesture might be possible with some pain, but I doubt that the two finger tap will be.

Apple, if you are reading, give us the SDK!