Five More Gripes About My iPhone
In the past week I’ve found myself spending a little too much time after work on my AT&T customer page (now that I’m, regrettably, an AT&T customer) wondering if there’s a handset I’d like more than my iPhone — even if I have to pay to upgrade. (Or, once selected, I might surf to eBay for a new solution…perhaps a Palm Centro?) Not that I actively dislike the iPhone — there’s a lot to like, such as Safari, SMS, iCal integration and visual voicemail — but there’s still some stuff that keeps iPhone from being the killer deal that it really should be.
It’s almost bad enough that it might be worth parting with if something better comes along.
Of course, I probably wouldn’t gripe as much if AT&T’s network didn’t suck so bad in my neighborhood. The fact that 50-75% of the time I can’t use my phone as a phone probably makes me more willing to criticize other features that I could live without. (But, frankly, even when the AT&T signal is good, I still seem to get a lot of drop-out from the iPhone>)
Still, beyond signal and service there are some flaws Apple needs to address. Arguing from the specific to the theoretical, those include:
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iPhone: Not a Great Phone
Yes, it took me forever to finally make the leap to an iPhone but, now that I’ve been up and running with my iPhone for a few weeks, and I’ve got to say that I’m a little underwhelmed. Switching from a Blackberry has been interesting on two fronts.
First, I can totally see why Apple has announced a push strategy that goes along with the Me.com announcement — having to wait for your e-mail to download very much blows when you’re used to just looking down and seeing e-mail on your Blackberry instantly. I’m excited about the Me.com upgrade, since I already pay an arm-and-a-leg for my less-than-useful Mac.com account, but ONLY if the service will transparently allow me to send e-mail from my other accounts — I need it to work like Gmail in the respect that it seems that e-mail is coming from my jacksonfreepress.com account even if I’m using Apple Mail. If not, then it’s straight-up no dice on Me.com, because I can’t answer my work mail using an @me.com address.
Second, my main complaint about the iPhone might just be the carrier — AT&T is simply not as good as Alltel, my previous carrier, in this area. I’ve gone back to the days of hunting around in the room for a signal — something that I haven’t had to think about for years using my Alltel phones, whether regular clamshells or Blackberrys. Ms. D’s Treo is the same way — signal problems are very rare.
Since I’ve gone to the slick, swanky iPhone, I’ve had a LOT of trouble making actual phone calls. In my house, the signal only works well closer to a front window; in our office suite, I’ve found a better signal in the sales cubicles than in my own office. That just ain’t right.
Solution? I’m concerned that I’ll need to quickly make the decision to move to something else — back to Alltel, ideally, with, perhaps a Treo 755p. That’s not my greatest desire, since I like synching contacts and addresses with my iPhone — as a diehard Mac user, even in business, the iPhone excels on that front. Or, I could sit around and wait for AT&T to improve in my area, or I can hold on and hope that the 3G iPhone is better on actually being a phone.
We shall see!
Great Piece on ‘iPhone 2.0′ Dominance
I just stumbled on CounterNotions, where the author has a compelling piece on iPhone 2.0 and whether or not there’s another player in the market that can take it on.
I, personally, am watching this whole iPhone thing closely…although I swore months ago I wouldn’t go in for an iPhone, I ended up buying one one eBay somewhat accidentally (long story, but a I got a great price), but I haven’t yet activated it. Not sure what I was waiting for…but I’m getting closer.
Word of native iChat clients is helping me make that decision; I’m not a huge iChat user, but being able to bring up folks back in the office using iChat has proven very handy when I’ve had the capability in the past. (It was a feature that I found compelling about the T-Mobile SideKick, for instance.) I may be an iPhone user yet…
Now Apple TV has a Killer App
In what appears to be a direct response to my multiple blog entries on the topic, Apple announced yesterday that it will update Apple TV so that it can directly access the iTunes Store for rentals, videos and songs was music to my ears, since I’d been calling for that behavior for some time, as noted here and here.
Watch the guided tour and then sit back and realize something. You page through films, choose one to rent, then you rent it. Then you watch it. On your TV. That’s it. It works.
That, my friends, is a killer app.
Oh, plus, you can buy TV shows, play podcasts, play your music collection, buy more music…Apple TV just became the heart of your media center. (If you could rip movies to MPEG-4 from DVD that would take this thing even further. The drag-able movies from new DVDs will be the next best thing.) Apple TV can replace your music channels on digital cable or satellite — in fact, it can replace your CD player or iPod dock device altogether. Internet radio. It’s all there.
Once I’m allowed to buy an HDTV (ahem…Ms. D?) this will revolutionize how *I* watch TV. I imagine others will agree.
Now if only they would make it so that you can purchase football and baseball games without the damn commercials…
Numbers…Cool Little App
I just got a copy of iWork 08 in the office today and decided to install it during some downtime this afternoon. I had to write a short piece for the paper and thought it’d be fun to do it in Pages.
So, I did. Worked fine, although I was a bit dismayed to find the Word Count (a vital feature for newspaper writing) in the Inspector window instead of in the Status Bar at the bottom of the window.
Otherwise, no complaints.
Then I played with Numbers. I’ve never been much of a spreadsheet guy, although I do use them when I can’t avoid them. (That seems to be more often than not with the Film Society, not with the JFP where most of the financials are done in MYOB AccountEdge. But, I digress.)
What impressed me immediately was the graphical nature of Numbers, which made working with the spreadsheets I needed to create (a very small budget and then a list of our film society’s board members — I was filling out a grant application) fun to do. I got through those two sheets and decided to play with the templates.
While they’re cute and fun, I tired of the built-in Numbers templates quickly. So, I decided that I yearned (yearned!) for others. I found my way to Numbers Templates, a fun little site where people are posting a variety of different templates for Numbers. The programming for these things can get pretty sophisticated and, even more to the point, the sheets created tend to be attractive and fun to work with.
Like FileMaker, Final Cut, and Keynote before it, Numbers may be the “killer implementation” of an app for creative Mac users because it focused on both the mundane and the aesthetic. Suffice to say that I’m going to continue surfing for spreadsheet templates to play with — and that’s not the sort of thing I would have said, er, yesterday.
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