The new Apple iPhone has several advantages, including a GPS and 3G capacity. However, the iPhone is far from perfect, and still has some disadvantages. Learn more about pros and cons of the new iPhone in our HowStuffWorks article, 'How the iPhone Works.'
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there, welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulett. I'm an editor here at how Stuff Works. And with me today is Jonathan Strickland. I'm a writer that he thank you. Yeah, I was gonna mention that, I'm sure you were along with along with mentioning that I should mention that there's been a new product from Apple or you know, brand new generation of the product maybe right. Oh, that's right. It's the thing that's been in the news that you can't avoid no matter what. Oh yeah, that yeah, well, yes, it's the three G I phone. It's the it's the second generation of iPhone. It's called three G. What's up with that? Well, the three G isn't about generation. It's about the three G phone network. It's the third generation phone network, which is much faster than the edge network that most phones are using in the United States. UM and the iPhone one point out if you will, right, that was that that ran on a second generation UH network as well, so the new one can run on three G. Which sounds great, except that, UM, there's one kind of small drawback for the for people in the US, UH, the three G network isn't very big. It actually only covers some pretty major metropolitan areas and anyone else you're still stuck using the older networks because they're just there's no infrastructure there. Right. But the phone also has other things. It's got GPS, which the old iPhone did not have, So now you've got a GPS system. UM. It can't run in the background because it drains battery life, so it only runs in short burst. But you still got it. So no turn by turn instructions or anything, but you you at least know where you are now. That's true. That's true. That's very useful. UM. The iPhone. Also, the new iPhone also has UH the advantage of having iPhone two point oh software installed right at the store at the point of sale, which they used to update the original iPhone users. They send it out to them over the network. UM, so they have been gradually updating to that, and that gives them a new UH slate of software applications designed by third party developers, so that that gives them a whole lot of options that they didn't have in the original iPhone, and it's a huge deal because Apple tends to be very much in house, so to open up this sort of thing to other developers is pretty big. Although we also have to mention these applications can't run in the background on the iPhone that's still locked away. So let's say you have an instant messaging program application on your new iPhone. If you were to go and use something else, you wouldn't continue to get updates from your instant messenger until you went back to that program directly brought it back to the front of your of the operating system essentially, and then it would update. So there's some you know, little drawbacks there, but that's not the big big story about the whole update issue, is it. No? No, I'm sure I'm sure that that You also mean the mobile me because you know you've got pushed the email, now, you've got the ability to back up with the calendar. I mean, you know you've got that in the new software and the faster network. What could possibly go wrong? Right? Yeah? I mean, if you're going to have all these updates happen at the same time, there's that's got to be a smooth sale all the way down, right, Well, and unless you're a customer of the original iPhone waiting for your software download or it uh you know, bricks your phone, or you know, you're waiting in a very very very very long line to get your three G I phone at the Apple store, and it's taking a long time to upgrade or actually activate your phone because you had to activate in the store instead of the way they did it with the first one, right, Apple kind of wanted to make sure people weren't going to just purchase phones and sell them on eBay or jail break their phones neatly. Uh didn't work so well that there's been reports that the three G I phone has already been jailbroken. But that meant that if something went wrong, it went wrong for a lot of people, and that's exactly what happened. UM services were down for days. The mobile Meat service was down for at least five days from what I read UM you know activations. There were people still waiting in long lines Monday morning after the Friday release the iPhone at the Apple stores nationwide. So for those of you who don't have an iPhone and didn't try to up upgrade your your software. Just imagine having a cell phone and being told there's this new update that will make your cell phone much more powerful and and have a lot more functionality. And then you start the update, and then it it fails, and now you can't use your phone at all because the old software has gone, the new software is not there, and now you just have a paper weight until they fix whatever the them is. That's kind of what happened. A lot of people think Apple should apologize, but I'm not sure certain that they will. Know I have I'm firmly of the belief that Apple fanboys will take whatever Apple dishes out. Well, that is, that is very probable, since they have such a sexy product on their hands. Yes, well, whoa hold on there. You know, the funny thing about doing technology podcasts is that things change very rapidly. And only a few hours after we recorded this podcast, Apple issued an apology for their mobile me service outage, proving us completely and utterly wrong. However, the Apple fans did respond with thank you sir. May I have another and now back to your regularly scheduled podcast already in progress. If you'd like to learn more, we have an article called how the iPhone works, and that's available today at how stuff works dot com. Thanks for listening. For more on this and thousands of other topics, ho stof works dot com. Well us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you