Z/Web

Today I went to my aunt and uncle’s for a July 4th party. It was a whirlwind, though I did manage to find some time to eat. With seconds of arriving my uncle had let the word get out that I possessed an iPhone and suddenly I was mobbed. I must have done a dozen demos of the thing. There were several Mac folks in the crowd (I only knew a few people at the party) and that was cool, though one guy had just renewed his Sprint contract and thus is locked out from an iPhone (his family gets a huge Sprint discount via work). It was interesting seeing the reactions of people to the iPhone. Amazement was pretty consistent, along with little joys and delights when people discovered things like automatic rotation detection or pinch photo-resizing. The virtual keyboard was somewhat problematic, but interestingly, it was mostly so for experienced phone users: newbies went slowly and cautiously, tapping with one finger, and had few problems. I didn’t really take a survey of who was rushing out to get one, but everyone was pleased to see it and impressed. My mom had hers and was showing off her pictures from her trip to Togo to anyone who asked. It was impressive to see how she got long with such a new device. She asked me for a help a couple times, but mostly she was able to figure out how to use it just fine. Quite an excellent way to sell the thing, if you ask me!