iPhone Review

So there’s a new iPhone in the house. Not surprising, given that I’m somewhat of an Apple fanboy and gadget freak in general. What is surprising is that it’s not mine; it’s Tara’s. Tara is anything but a gadget freak. She has little patience for the often obtuse interfaces that most electronic gadgets offer. So Apple scored a hit with the iPhone – they sold one to a technophobe. (Probably hundreds of thousands to lots of technophobes, really…)

She’s had the phone for almost a month now, and here are some of her thoughts on the phone…

What She Likes

• Easy access to things. Tara is a very visual person and she’s able to understand the iPhone interface easily. That hasn’t been true for any of the phones she’s used in the past.
• Cover art on music. What can we say. It’s fun. Oh, and did I say something about Tara being a visual person? Finding music by looking at the cover art Just Works for her. But… she would never have cover art on her music without my help. (Realistically, she probably wouldn’t have an MP3 collection to put on the phone in the first place.) As she says, “It’s good to have a techie husband.” Note that this has now increased the pressure on me to go find the cover art for the 5000 or so songs that don’t have it yet.
• Visual voice mail. It’s very easy to use. She’s never liked voice mail on any phone (land line or cell phone) before.
• YouTube. She’s never watched YouTube before. Now she’s addicted.
• Flicking to scroll things, especially the calendar and timer gadgets.
• Fun ring tones. She’s using the Old Telephone sound. (Did I say something about not liking technology?)
• Map service & restaurant finder.
• Automatically fading the music on an incoming call.

What She Doesn’t Like

• She isn’t aware that she’s missed calls, voice mails, or e-mails. Some kind of audio ping or something would help.
• The battery life is weak. if she forgets to charge it each night, making it through the second day is dicey. She doesn’t use the iPod much for fear of running down the battery prematurely.
• The weather gadget is lacking. She would like more detail. We think you should be able to click on a day and get a more detailed forecast for that day.
• She’d like to customize the front menu. (Remove some items; add others.)

What I’m Waiting For

So, you might reasonably say, that’s great, Eric, why don’t you have one?

• BlueTooth. Yes, the phone has BlueTooth, but it doesn’t do much with it, really. Why can’t it provide internet for my laptop? Why can’t it sync music and data over the air? What is this “cable” thing of which you speak?
• GPS. The Google Maps are nice, but why should we have to enter our current location to get driving directions?
• Independent sync with .Mac / Google Calendar. The phone has its own network connection. It has Mac OS X on it, which presumably means it has Core Data and Sync Services installed. Why can’t it just hook up with network services on its own? For that matter, why can’t its calendar app subscribe to webcal URLs?
• True third-party apps. At least put the !@#($ web apps into the main menu screen.
• Faster wireless. The EDGE network service is noticeably slower than the the EVDO card I use in my laptop.
• Custom ring tones (i.e. snippets of my MP3s).
• AIM/Jabber chat.
• A decent shared notebook service. I’d like something like PackRat on the iPhone.
• VPN at least for work e-mail, etc.