Master Dilettante

I’ve been the proud, delighted owner of my 16MB white iPhone 3G for a week now. I love it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its drawbacks. And I find that many of my complaints are around the absence of functionality I had on my BlackBerry Pearl. Following my first impressions, here’s what Apple could do that would make me say, “What BlackBerry?”

Must Have:

• Improve the battery life. The battery life is so bad that I find myself now becoming accustomed to charging my iPhone throughout the day. Granted, my usage is high. I ran the unit several times until it shut down to maximize battery life as an Apple Genius recommended. But any handheld communications-organization device needs to be able to run from the time I wake until the time I sleep. End of story.
• To-Do List/Notes Sync. I used Notes and the To-Do List (the “NextAction” add-on) extensively on my BlackBerry, and they integrated beautifully with Outlook, including Outlook Exchange Web mail. Now, I remain in a quandary as to what to do with the iPhone. I’m looking at Evernote, EasyTask Manager and OmniFocus as replacements (I’m a partial GTD adherent), but none solve all of the problems I have. (More on GTD applications to come).
• Copy/Cut-Paste. It’s beyond my understanding why this is not available.
• More Robust Email. The litany of issues is too long to enumerate. BlackBerry is way better, period. This is essential if Apple wants to steal share in the enterprise market.
• Voice Dialing. Especially in California, where headsets are now required by law when driving, easy dialing while in the car is essential. Favorites, Recents, Contacts — all of these are too difficult to use when driving. I’ve tried the SpeechCloud Voice Dialer application and it (1) isn’t a dialer - it’s a voice recognition lookup tool and (2) it doesn’t work well. In 4-5 tries, it never found the name I was seeking, and I then uninstalled it. In general, contact and phone number lookup on the iPhone require too many keystrokes, and the ease of use of the basic phone function is less than ideal.
• Overall Stability. My iPhone crashes. Not infrequently. Usually when flipping among applications. An open platform is great. It’s got to be more stable that this.

Nice to Have:

• IR Beam. Remember the Palm V? I do. I’d love better capability to transmit data from phone-to-phone.
• Video Recording. This isn’t that important to me, but I look forward to the day.

I’m still a satisifed promoter of the iPhone and look forward to future improvements. It’s been a week, and I’m still having fun.

After 6 hours spent at 6 different retail locations over 3 days from Southern to Northern California, I finally have my iPhone 3G!

I switched from my BlackBerry Pearl once Apple removed my primary barrier to adoption — lack of push email and calendar — and I am overlooking the challenging keyboard and lack of notes/to-do list sync.

I’ll miss the dedicated convenience of my Pearl, but “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”* between me and my iPhone.

The good:

• It’s cool and gorgeously, super sexy.
• The usability, both setup and ongoing use, is extremely good.
• The open platform and applications significantly increase the utility.
• 3G is pretty darn quick.
• The GPS is sweet. I could drive around all day just watching my car on the map. (Dork, I know)
• I do love it and am having a ton of fun.

The bad:

• On balance, I still believe Apple botched the launch weekend. Even aside from the long queues and the likely artificially suppressed inventory at AT&T stores, Apple made two critical mistakes: (1) Apple should have been better prepared for the server traffic from the iPhone 2.0 software upgrades and new 3G purchases. Apple now has placed itself in a position where it is offering mission-critical services to individuals and businesses. Effective outages (from bricked phones) and activation slownesses of the lengths experienced Friday are inexcusable and unforgivable. (2) Requiring that users with corporate accounts or discounts activate only at AT&T stores resulted in horrible customer experiences and undermines Apple’s entire strategy of acquiring business users. Business users require convenience, and the need to go to an AT&T store was decidedly inconvenient.
• Battery life on 3G is atrociously bad. I had a full overnight charge, started using the iPhone at 7:00 a.m., and my battery already is 30% drained. Granted, I’m using the thing a ton and haven’t optimized power consumption yet, but still . . . it needs to make it easily on one charge from the time I wake until the time I sleep.
• As with all things Apple, when things go wrong, you have few options and much frustration. Ringtones purchased on iTunes wouldn’t play at first. I’m frequently prompted to re-enter my iTunes password. A song spontaneously started playing this morning. Once I synced with my Outlook calendar through Exchange, I found that I have two calendars, including one that contains events from four years ago. The device has rebooted spontaneously a few times. It’s frozen a couple times inexplicably. In all these cases, your options and explanations and guidance from Apple are few.
• The touchscreen is great, but I have a hard time believing a touchscreen keyboard will ever be as good as a keyboard with tactile buttons.

Tips:

• The solution for freezing in some cases is to soft reset the device by simultaneously pressing and holding the power/sleep and home buttons for 30 seconds.
• I’ve found that the MacRumors Forums contain a wealth of information on troubleshooting. Just about every problem I’ve encountered, someone else encountered first.
• Apple’s site has a helpful page on battery optimization, although many of the suggestions are to disable the core functions that make the 3G worth getting.

On balance, I’m loving my new toy. Just remember: The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

* Humphrey Bogart’s “Jack” in “Casablanca”

I’m thinking about it. Thinking about it hard. And I don’t know that I’ll have the strength to resist my consumer impulse.

I’ve loved my BlackBerry Pearl and its predecessors over the past few years. I love the synchronization with my work Outlook; I use email and text messaging constantly, the phone, notes, the to-do list, the camera, Google maps, a stopwatch/timer application, the alarm, the calculator, even the slow browser. The usability is great. I love the SureType input system. I love the size and the weight. It’s wonderfully functional.

Last year, I switched from PC to Mac for the first time in my life. I was already an iPod user and an iTunes Store buyer. With PCs, I was becoming fatigued with degrading performance over time and mysterious program crashes. Apple’s advertising campaigns slowly and surely were winning me over — a case where TV advertising worked. While I’ve always appreciated the apparent relative simplicity Apple offers, truly, it’s the coolness factor that tipped me towards Apple.

After a year with my iMac, I’m still puzzled by its inexplicable slowness in Web browsing at times, frustrated with how iPhoto handles file organization and at a loss whenever a program hangs. But, on balance, I’m happy with the switch.

Should I adopt the iPhone, too? What’s been holding me back and might continue to give me pause:

• The keyboard sucks! I’ve talked to numerous iPhone users who all assure me that I’ll “get used to it,” that “it learns” and that they love it. But I’ve used it half a dozen times now, and I miss letters more than I hit them. For me, a BlackBerry user, the keyboard falls far, far short of my expectations. With Palm’s handwritten entry system, I recall becoming very proficient in it in less than a day. I’m skeptical about my ability to adapt to the iPhone keyboard, and I do enough inputting on my handhelds to need an efficient mechanism.
• Equivalently slow Web access. With the first generation iPhone, I didn’t think the Web access would be appreciably faster than on my BlackBerry over the EDGE network. With 3G, this new iPhone promises much more speed.
• I use Outlook notes and an add-on to-do list extensively and rely on the synchronization between my BlackBerry and my desktop. My understanding is that even with the new iPhone, the real-time synchronization will be lacking. If I switch, I’ll be banking on the development of applications with better synchronization with the new Microsoft Exhange integration.
• That Exchange integration is key. I depend on email getting pushed to my handheld and wouldn’t consider adopting the iPhone if it were still pulling email. I also rely on my calendar being manageable from either handheld or desktop. With the Exchange integration, however, these, my most significant concerns, are eliminated.

The new iPhone is now the shinier, newer object, and I hear it calling to me. We’re counting down to the release date on July 11, and I’m betting I’ll have a new iPhone soon after that!

Apparently, I am on a geek gadget spending spree. Enter Research in Motion’s Blackberry 8100c Pearl. The Pearl has been reviewed by others ad nauseam, so I will provide only brief (for me) impressions here.

• The size and form factor finally bring a Blackberry device on par with other mobile phones. The marketing collateral refers to the Pearl as the “Smallest, Smartest, Most Stylish Blackberry Ever,” and I have to agree. Specifically, its dimensions are 4.0″ x 2.0″ x 0.6″. Yummy. I am determined to carry only one handheld communications device, and the Pearl makes this easier than ever.
• The Pearl uses the SureType word recognition feature employed by other Blackberry candy-bar-shaped devices, so if you hated SureType on those, you’ll hate it on the Pearl, too. I’ve become adept at it and more than willingly to trade off small size over a full keyboard.
• Yes, it takes time to get accustomed to using the trackball. As with any mouse or trackball or other pointing device, precision usage is difficult. I’m now used to it. The one permanent drawback: With the trackwheel on the 7100c or the 7130g, I could select text or multiple emails with one hand (by depressing the <alt> key and then turning the trackwheel); with the trackball, I now need to use two.
• The camera is of mediocre quality. The primary deficiency I find is that it takes effort to stabilize the camera for a non-blurry image. Also, on the few occasions I don’t lock the phone, I’ve taken pictures inadvertently due to the placement of the camera button on the side. I have some great shots of the inside of my pocket. Despite these drawbacks, I’m just happy it has a working camera.
• Last, I love that I can now assign pictures and ringtones to each of my family members and friends. My friends thought this was ridiculous to want at first but now are titillated when their songs play when they call.

Overall, despite any drawbacks, I love the Pearl and hope you don’t get one, so I’ll feel that more special.