On iPhones

Posted Tue May 18, 2010 in

iPhone 3GMy news crawler popped an entry to this article about why iPhone owners love their iPhones. This prompted me to think about what it is about my iPhone that I like, and also what it is about my iPhone that I dislike.

I owned a Blackberry before I bought my first iPhone. I loved much about the Blackberry (AKA Crackberry), especially because it was easy to do email on it. I used it a lot for email and it excelled at that part of my work. But, it did not play well with my Macs and required use of a third-party software to keep my phone and my computer synchronized, which was important to me for managing my contacts and calendars.

When Apple announced the iPhone, I was ecstatic because I knew that synchronization would no longer be an issue. I bought my iPhone as soon as I could and am not sorry I use the technology. No, it isn’t the best technology and it doesn’t do everything the best of all possibilities. But, like the P-51 Mustang, it does everything well — good enough to make it an excellent machine.

In short, what I like about my iPhone is:

  1. It’s form factor is about right,
  2. It does most of what I want to do with a smartphone,
  3. It is easy to use,
  4. Call quality is more than adequate,
  5. It was easy to pair my Bluetooth headset to it,
  6. It has lots of software available for it,
  7. It easily synchronizes with my MacBook Pro,
  8. It looks good.

What I don’t like about my iPhone is:

  1. Being stuck with AT&T’s poor coverage in my area,
  2. Some settings are not easily reached without a lot of clicks.

I’m now using my third iPhone — an iPhone 3GS. If Apple upgrades the system this summer (maybe?), I don’t think I will be buying an upgrade this year. I think a better tool will be an iPad instead of an improved iPhone, at least for me. My current version does about everything I want to do. I jailbroke my device so I could add a few things to it that it lacked. Those things are the Springboard Settings program (SBSettings), the five-column tweak, and the five-column dock tweak. I also added Winterboard to my software so I could use custom themes on the desktop.

I have applications that help me manage my work and play. I use Evernote a lot. I use a task manager called Things to implement by GTD system. I have applications to identify music, edit my images (iPhoneography is fascinating), find news of interest, and a lot of other things. My iPhone is basically working the way I want it to, with one exception. That exception is tethering. For some reason, AT&T has not enabled tethering yet, preferring to sell me yet another data plan for my computer.

Shame on you, AT&T. I don’t want a lot of bandwidth for my computer, just enough for some light surfing and handling my email.

If it wasn’t for the issues I have with service, particularly at my house, I would be a very satisfied iPhone/AT&T user. As it is, I’m a happy iPhone user who wishes AT&T could get its act together. My iPhone is working the way I want and doesn’t get in the way of what I want to do. What more can I ask of my technology than that?