Mar 09 2008
iPhone Day Four
I’ve been using my iPhone for about four days now and I mostly like it. I’ve had some frustrations but since I realised that the iPhone is intended to be a read only device I’ve started getting on better with it. At first I was amazed that I couldn’t save any content from the web such as images. Then I found the same problem with email in that there seems to be no way to properly interact with attachments. It doesn’t support any kind of storage capabilities when plugged into the USB port. Even the bluetooth is crippled to only pair with headphones – no file transfer either way.
In fact the only way to get stuff onto the device seems to be via iTunes. I run Ubuntu but iTunes only supports OSX and Windows. I had to boot into Windows to register the phone but I don’t plan to switch my OS just to get music onto my iPhone.
So, in terms of the traditional PDA/smartphone function the iPhone scores a big fat raspberry! But the iPhone isn’t a traditional PDA – it very well connected to the Internet. It switches between cellular data and wi-fi transparently and reliably. The iPhone version of GMail works superbly, as does Google Calendar and Google Docs. They really are beautiful on the iPhone. The built in Google Maps application is awe inspiring! In fact I’ve fallen in love with Google all over again. I’ve even signed up to Google Apps for iandavis.com so from now on all my personal email is going to be managed by Google plus I get calendar, docs and sites for free too. Best of all I can access all of it from both my desktop and my phone. I’m out of the iPhone jail and I’ve even removed the built in email and calendar from the front screen.
The other application worth raving about is the BBC’s iPlayer which now has an iPhone version. It’s truly amazing quality even if it only works over wi-fi.
There are a couple of implications to all this. One is that O2 aren’t going to see much revenue from me. They give you unlimited data transfers hoping to make it up with text and voice. I haven’t made a call on it yet and will probably only make one or two a week. Plus I only ever use SMS to let my wife know which train I’m on. I use twitter and email for everything else which I can do for free now.
The other implication is that Apple had better look over their shoulder at Google and Android. The iPhone is a sublime piece of engineering and usability but the siloed approach is so 1997. Google have online apps that are more open and even more functional than the built in apps ( e.g. Reading office docs). Android as a platform is almost certainly going to allow a festival of iPhone-alikes to emerge all with Google’s killer apps built in. Apple’s only differentiatior is iTunes. How long before Google sets its sights there too I wonder?
(written on my iPhone which explains why there are no links – I need multiple windows or a clipboard!)
3 Responses to “iPhone Day Four”
It’s interesting, isn’t it. It’s almost as if Apple decided to ignore what a smartphone ought to be, and designed the best device they could. This means that people (like me) who hate smartphones, actually like it. And that’s a very Apple thing to do.
I personally am quite surprised by the things it doesn’t do. But then again, I’m even more surprised by the things it can do. We found our way around Stratford with my wife’s iPhone, using Google maps. And that that point I suddenly realised the point – it was probably the first useful, usable mobile device that could answer the question “Where am I?”
To sum up – if you’re the kind of person who wants to run Ubuntu, and who cares about fil systems and access protocols, and who loves RDF and what it can do for data access – iPhone 1.x probably isn’t for you. But for someone like my wife, who wants to do Internet banking from the sofa, and who wants a music player too, but doesn’t want to carry too many devices, it’s perfect, and she loves it.
Of course, we need to thank those people, because iPhone 2.0 will (apparently) be awesome, and the people who bought iPhone 1.x have paid for it!
If the software development is as good as it seems, I may have to get one too!
I believe Wine support for iTunes syncing is on it’s way very soon, if it doesn’t work already…
I really fancied an iPhone till i played with one at the Mac store in B-Ham. Now I can’t decide whether they’re amazing or just a little too small. I can’t believe how easy it was to use the touch screen, but it still made mistakes I wouldn’t make on a k3yboard… The picture was amazing, and the multi-touch is… surprisingly easy to use and difficult to fault in any way. (After leaving all the display models set to my home page, I discovered that the iPod Touch does mostly the same things if you don’t need network coverage…)
Google apps is brilliant. I’ve been using it for a few months and found it easy (Just like Gmail etc…) and I can now sync calendars with users on my domain: that is, with my wife
Hope you enjoy it and find it as useful as I have… they keep giving me more free stuff like Pages (for WYSIWYG editing) and IMAP which is an added bonus!
Cheers,
-Z