After waiting about six months to get the iPhone, I'll say this, I'm not disappointed. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than any handheld phone/pda I've owned in the past? Yes. I'll break this review into the following sections; Starting out with the iPhone, General overview, and then my likes and dislikes.

Starting Out with the iPhone

Unboxing

It's the typical Apple product packaging. A very high quality, sleek black box with silver lettering and a photo of the iPhone on top. It's small. You kind of wonder if you're just getting an iPhone. Opening the box, the iPhone is cradled in a plastic piece, suspended over the small instruction manual, polishing cloth, ear buds, USB synch cable, and power brick. I must admit that when I open an Apple product, there's a rush of excitement just from the design, aesthetics, and pure marketing behind the package design.

Setup

Once you've downloaded and installed iTunes 7.3 to your Mac or PC, you're ready to go. Simply connect the iPhone, and iTunes walks you through setup and activation with AT&T. I've heard some rumblings of people having activation nightmares, but for me it was simple. In like 3 minutes I was setup and ready to go. I tested my iPhone by calling from our land line, it worked like a charm. Big props to AT&T and Apple on this, no muss and fuss of having to sit in an AT&T store while some new employee struggled with their 'system' and tried to up sell me on services I don't want or need. The only thing I had to add to my existing plan was a $20 monthly charge for unlimited internet/data access. Big props again to AT&T and Apple, as they could have charged more... people would have paid.

Initial Use

The iPhone just works. The first thing you notice is the lack of physical buttons. The only buttons in fact are a volume up/down rocker switch on the side, silence switch for the ringtone and alerts (why don't all phones have this???), a sleep/wake switch at the top of the phone, and the 'Home' button on the bottom center of the screen. The rest of the user interface and interaction occurs on the glorious 3.5" LCD display. When a call comes in, a giant green button below the caller ID allows you to "Answer Call" or you can pawn it off to your voicemail. I can't say enough about how much I like the minimalist implementation of physical buttons, again, it just works out well. The device is sleek, stylish, and more functional than any phone/handheld I've owned to date.

Email, iPod, Safari, Phone & Networking

Email

I am not using Yahoo's push email. I decided that this is something very likely to come to Gmail soon, and decided to route all my mail through Gmail. The iPhone's native email application works with Gmail, Yahoo, .Mac, and AOL. If you have not seen email on this device, I'll just have to say it's as close to a desktop email client that I've seen so far on a handheld. It's beautiful. I have my email set to check every 15 minutes, and while it's not PUSH, it's certainly good enough for me. I'm able to retrieve my mail anywhere now and respond in seconds, now I know why people with BlackBerrys are running around with their heads down all the time.

iPod

Music
Certainly, one of the biggest reasons to own this device is the iPod functionality. The best iPod they've ever made is Steve Jobs' claim, and I'd say I pretty much agree. The iPod works the same way you're used to, but now instead of cycling through a list of artists, we have coverflow. Coverflow is a graphical representation of the album covers in a horizontal scrolling list. Just swipe your finger across the screen in either direction, and you have a fluid scrolling list of albums. Click an album, and it rotates to the back side, showing you all the songs, click a song, and you're listening to it. Forget to plug the headphones in? It will play your music over the integrated speaker, while it's no concert experience, it does sound decent. I like the speaker because I like to show someone a song, or comedian, and don't really want them grabbing my earbuds and using them. The speaker makes it easy to share quick one-off things. You're able to list music, by song, artists, composer, etc. But one thing that is lacking is a search capability like they introduced last year, while not a big deal that it's missing, it would be nice to have. I'd venture to guess we'll get it in a software update some time soon.

Video
Video is simply amazing on this device. I downloaded the latest version of Videora (FREE), they already have built in support for converting ripped DVDs to iPhone format. The 3.5" diagonal screen does video proud. I've ripped two movies so far, The Bourne Identity, and Fight Club. They both look amazing. The perfect thing while waiting in the airport, or sitting and killing time somewhere. The screen is bright, so bright in fact, that I've set mine to about 30% brightness and have found that it is perfectly adequate for watching movies and TV shows. 

Safari

The safari web browser does a great job. The best browser I've seen on a mobile device. Browsing the web is not something you'll probably want to do for hours on end, but if you need to pay a bill, get movie times, or locate a phone number it works slick. The browser allows you to enter any address on the web, and it will load the entire page as it was meant to be seen. No stacked mobile versions here. You can zoom to any section by double tapping or doing the 'squeeze' technique with your thumb and forefinger. The fonts are sharp and crisp, easy to read. I've been able to use the iGoogle page, Windows Live Mail mobile version, MSN Messenger Mobile beta, and a ton of other sites. It's so nice to be able to browse wherever and whenever you want to. One downer is that there is no support for Macromedia's flash, but I suspect this will be available in a software update soon as well.

Phone

The phone call quality is great so far. I have not had a single dropped call nor one where either party had trouble hearing each other.  On a device that has no keys, the phone is a few clicks away. Some people have been frustrated by this, but I'm not having a problem with it. You can make calls one of several ways: favorites, this is a list of your most used numbers you can setup and configure, recent call activity, missed, received, and calls that you've made, the keypad, or via the contacts. All ways work equally well. The contacts synch from Outlook or Outlook express without a hitch. The phone has some cool features that other phones don't have a first glance. The ability to easily put someone on hold, if you're talking on the phone and a call comes in the screen will give the option to put the current caller on hold, and answer the incoming call. Once you have a person on hold, and an active call, you can easily swap between parties or even merge the two calls together, brilliant.

Networking

The iPhone supports two types of networking, traditional Wifi over B and G networks, and EDGE data connectivity over AT&T's cellular network. Speed-wise you see the best performance on Wifi networks. The iPhone will remember networks that you've joined previously and automatically connect to them when you're in range. The speeds you see depend on the Wifi setup, but rival the same speeds you would see with desktop or laptop connectivity, it's fast.

The EDGE networking initially took a lot of flack, especially from Apple haters. 3G is undoubtedly faster than EDGE however the EDGE networking uses less battery life. A day before iPhone launch, AT&T flipped the switch on 50 million dollars of improvements to the EDGE network. I see anywhere between 180kbps all the way up to the 300s, it's faster than dial up, but it's not DSL or cable. The good thing is that it works great with email and browsing. Given the choice of Wifi or EDGE, I'd always pick Wifi, but EDGE is not a bad as people were saying.

Likes and Dislikes

Conclusion

Although I was honestly a fan from day one, that being the day Jobs pulled it out of his pocket, I love this thing. There are some other annoyances, but some of them can be fixed via software updates. The user interface is truly revolutionary, things just work like you think they should. Transitions, visual effects, and multi-touch are a beautiful marriage of hardware and software that all work together like a well oiled machine. The learning curve is small, the wow factor is big. I can't wait to see the developments over the next few years.

 It's kind of funny, I went to the AT&T store a week prior to launch, I wanted to make sure I was eligible to upgrade, etc. etec. The gal convinced me to agree to a new 2 year contract right then, gave me a Samsung flip phone, and told me to bring the 'free' phone in and exchange it for the iPhone. I said sure, didn't really understand why, but she swore it would make the process easier. So on launch day, when I got the iPhone, I tried to exchange the free phone, the guy laughed and said, just keep it. So now that free phone is on ebay, with over 14 people watching it. I should get at least $70 for it, a nice way to offset a small portion of the cost of the iPhone. I also sold my old Sony Ericson phone, I paid $99 for it just over two years ago, it sold on ebay for $89 plus shipping!

A recent post at Engadet entitled "AT&T customers seeing sudden boost in EDGE speeds?"

Someone in New York noticed significantly greater speeds on the AT & T Edge cellular network. Speeds of up to 200 KB sec.

This is awesome news, as one of the biggest complaints about the iPhone to date is the AT & T Edge data access.

Let's hope this kind of performance sticks!

I'm proud to say it looks like I'll finish in the top 10 for the month of June. If I can, I'll be awarded a free month pass for August (I already paid for July) and entrance to an invite only tournament for cash/prizes.

The invite only tournament will have sixty or so players, and pay in the thousands to first place. Wish me luck!

The cool thing, is the higher up you finish, the more chips you start out with in the big tournament. So with only three days left, there are only 3 or 4 people within striking distance of me. So, if they do well, I should still finish in the top 10. It's been a lot of fun, and I encourage you all to come check out the National Poker Challenge.

I love the fact that you're judged on the 10 games you play. It puts everyone on a level field. Unlike the other league that I played in, this league sets that limit.

The number in parenthesis (10) is the number of games that a person has played in a month.

I'm sometimes criticized by my wife that I don't get out and do new things. I'm always dinking with the computer, the xbox, or something in our garage or house. So Saturday my daughter and I took an introduction to rock climbing course at our local gym. It was a lot of fun. We even went back again the next day to partake some more. I think this is something I'll try to do with my daughter at least once or twice per week. She kicked my butt at it, almost making it to the top of the 30ft. wall her second day. I made it up about 15ft or so, even though I was on a different course, I think she'd still rub my face in it. :)

 The picture at the right is Katherine about 2/3 up the wall, and the club instructor literally climbed up in 10 seconds to coach her to go up higher. It was amazing to watch. With the instructor up there, she was able to make it about 3 moves from the top!

Where's the pictures of me? You don't want to see that. My kid looks like a pro compared to me on that wall. Maybe someday I'll post a pic of myself. :)

This was one of the first movie parodies that MTV put together, it's in the spirit of "Se7en" [Seven].

Apple released an informative 20 minute video (make sure you have a good connection, it's 175MB) of the features of the new iPhone. All I can say is that I want one even more now! It looks like no device you've ever seen before, and it's apparent that Apple has put a ton of research into the user interface. The video covers the phone, ipod, and most of the internet features.

It even dipped into a bit of the settings screens that have not been public until today.

I'm just worried that getting one on launch day is going to be more difficult than Apple or AT&T realize. I think I'm going to hire a kid to stand in line for me.

Yeah, I know... I have a problem. ;)

So if you're away from your music, or just looking for a change... check out Pandora. It's awesome, you can start by choosing a song, artist, or genre, and they will play songs based on the type of music you like. I created a 'station' called "Green Day Radio". Since I'm such a huge Green Day fan, it's fun to hear other artists (as well as Green Day) that have similar sounds.  If you're not digging the track they are playing, skip to the next. Very cool, and very good sound quality considering it's all streaming over the internet through your browser.

You can see some of the other stations I created below: U2 Radio, Barenaked Ladies Radio, The Crystal Method Radio, Galvanize (Chemical Brothers) Radio, and of course the Green Day one. Very cool site. It's kind of creepy how good of a job they do of matching other artists to the stuff you like.

I just checked and this works in Safari! With an unlimited data plan, it will be interesting to see how this is going to work on the iPhone.

I just downloaded the (free) Opera Mini ver. 4.0 Beta. Just direct your mobile device to http://opera.mini.com/beta/

There are various options to get the download on to your device. Once you've installed it, it will go through, run some tests and determine how your mobile device accesses the Internet. I really think Opera has figured out the mobile stuff better than anyone else, we have yet to see how it will work on the iPhone, but Opera's implementation is similar from what I've seen from iPhone's Safari so far.

You can enter an address and a full version of the page is pulled down to your mobile device, you can then move a small box around to areas you'd like to zoom in on. You can click links, and use most sites just as you would from your desktop. I've already noticed that YouTube does not work in the Opera Mini, but even if it did, I can't imagine wanting to use it, or wait for video to download.

It will let you bookmark your favorite sites, so you don't have to type them in every time. Another thing that is nice is that it keeps a history of the sites you have visited, so if you didn't bookmark it, and you have not browsed a bunch, you should be able to quickly find other sites you've visited.

When I initially set mine up, I got a message about a failure to connect. I closed the application and had to launch it a few more times before it finally got through it's setup, but hey, it's a BETA right?

For the die hard RSS person, Opera Mini will even handle RSS feeds. It's a very nice browser, and I'd bet you that it's better than anything that is on your mobile device today. Check it out.

I thought that this was hilarious:

But seriously, Apple announced the actual battery statistics for the iPhone.

Now I realize that these are probably the BEST circumstances for battery life, like if you were in a vacuum in space? But, it's encouraging to see that it will have a decent amount of battery life.

Standby time 250 hours.
Audio play back 24 hours.
Talk time of 8 hours.
Video play back of 7 hours.
Internet usage of 6 hours.

The screen is also going to be comprised of some form of glass surface, rather than plastic. This will hopefully be a good thing to prevent scratching and provide better clarity.

AT&T Stores will be closing @ 4:30 PM until 6:00 PM on the 29th of this month to prepare for the rush of people going to purchase a phone. They plan to stay open till very late in the evening to support the demand. We'll just hope that they have enough phones to go around.

I'm planning to go to the store around 3:00 ish... if there is a HUGE line, I'll be leaving, if not, I'll probably wait the three hours.

For a few years prior to this post, I had played in a poker league called The Northwest Poker League. It was a great league when it first started. People respected the game, generally played well, and were enjoyable to be around. As word spread like wildfire there was this poker league you could play in that was free, the league began to fracture. You'd get the drunk person (as most venues were in pubs or taverns) that would sit down at the table and play terribly, and be belligerent and irritating.

The Northwest Poker League accrued around 6000 players, and decided there name "Northwest Poker League" was too short minded, they needed to be able to expand. So they renamed themselves "The Great American Poker Tour". Kind of a stupid name, but from that point on things just got worse. Their business model relied on bringing players into 'venues' (bars, restaurants, night clubs, etc.) so they would purchase food and drinks. I always would buy a drink, or a meal, or something to support the league, but most people did not. It's a tough business model, they're offering a free service with very high operating costs. Generally each venue had 2 poker tables, 2 dealers, and an investment of 5-6 to pay those dealers.  I know some venues paid upwards of $250 a night to have the league operate from their location.

The Great American Poker Tour (GAPT) began to experience a mass exodus of sponsors. Venues could not justify the expense. And despite the weekly emails from the founders BEGGING people to buy food and drinks, the league went from 12 or so venues to 5 ish. I finally got fed up with seeing the familiar faces of people that would not pay anything to play. I stopped going. Hence no real poker posts on the blog for quite a while.

Well, there's a new league in town and they are doing SEVERAL things I tried to get the GAPT league to do. Here's a breakdown of how the new National Poker Challenge league (NPCPoker) is doing that I think is GREAT for the game, and for the league.

• NPC Poker has rented a physical place and it's a dedicated poker room. (NO GAMBLING is going on here, and it's all legal) This solves the problem of being reliant on a retail establishment to cover the expense of having the league operate out of it.
• NPC Poker is NON SMOKING. This is so huge, most of the venues I played from previously allowed smoking. That was another reason I quit playing. Even with the retail non-smoking bill that's coming up for vote, it's still nice to be able to go home smelling like I did when I arrived.
• NPC Poker limits the amount of games you can play for one of their leagues. Thus a player can only play 10 games per month and are not able to skew their stats by playing more frequently. Unlike the GAPT where players can play every night of the month (almost) just showing up and signing in, these players have an edge on someone who plays a few times per week, no matter how crappy the play.
• NPC Poker has multiple leagues and ways to play.
• NPC Poker has other games than just Hold' Em.
• NPC Poker allows you to schedule your games weeks in advance, and you can show up minutes before the game starts. GAPT required you to show up almost 45 minutes prior to the game starting, (in order to get you to buy food and drinks supposedly). This was time generally sitting in the smoky environment just 'waiting'.
• NPC Poker charges a monthly fee to play. Looking at their fee schedule it may seem expensive, but if you play well, and finish high, there is a lot of money to be won. If people feel like they have something at stake, they're generally going to play tighter, and potentially give off more tells about their game.
• NPC Poker encourages people to respect the game and play well

So I've played two games so far, finishing 3, and 1st respectively. It's been refreshing because I've actually been able to bluff, steal pots, and play good poker. Unlike the GAPT, where people were just looking to suck out on you, the people at NPC have something at stake and something to strive towards.

After talking with the four guys that started this league, I've come to find out they are all ex-airline pilots from Northwest Airlines. They pretty much got dropped from NW after the whole 9/11 thing, and they've been looking for their calling. This seems to be it. NPC Poker started in Nashville, TN. The Bloom brothers (the owners) have bought a franchise right from the NPC parent organization in Nashville. You'll soon see many other cities coming in the future.

I read a book called "Poker as Life: 101 Lessons from the World's Greatest Game"; on page one it says, "If there is nothing at stake, there is no point." Amen.