Apple iPhone — Great or Overrated?
dan tynan on Jul 14 2008 at 6:14 am | Filed under: Apple, Quizzes, Uncategorized, iPhone
So the iPhone 2.0 has finally arrived last Friday, and what a friggin’ disaster it was. Apple’s servers were totally overwhelmed with traffic from people trying to activate their new phones, as well as those trying to download software from the iTunes AppStore and upgrade their iPhone 1.0 firmware. A total screaming c******f**k ensued, which sucked up most of the day. Nice work, Apple.
Thus inspiring this week’s quiz. What do you think of the iPhone? Vote early and often, and feel free to comment below.
Still trying to fill in the blanks on that curse word…hmmm…
hint: first word is ‘cluster’.
dt
I picked-up an iPhone 3G on Friday morning. Thankfully, my cell provider (Fido in Canada) has a 15 day no-questions asked satisfaction guarantee, and it’s going back to them this morning as soon as it has completed it “reset” routine to wipe my personal data off of it. I was thinking of migrating over from my Blackberry, but all it took was one weekend to convince me that the iPhone is over-hyped and overrated, at least as far as my needs go.
I agree that anything involving web browsing or web-based apps is far superior on an iPhone, but when it comes to basic email, Blackberry is the hands-down winner. And I do not like the touch-screen keyboard. It just doesn’t feel right and doesn’t work very well for most people with normal size fingers.
The calendar function doesn’t sync easily with Google calender, and there’s no Task Management application.
I also find that it takes too many strokes to navigate around the screen, the number of apps available isn’t that wonderful, you need to spend money on a decent case to protect it, the screen is constantly dirty with finger prints just from regular use, and the battery just sucks big time — it it at half-power after several hours use.
I also find the iPod function to be less useful than my existing iPod Nano (old generation). For instance, on my old Nano, I can simply reach in my pocket and change the volume of a song, skip forward or back, or pause the thing without even having to look at it. That’s simply impossible to do on an iPhone.
Finally, the entire unit is just too damned heavy to carry around. So it’s back to the Fido store with the iPhone and my Blackberry will remain my unit of choice. It isn’t as pretty, and certainly isn’t as trendy, but man, it works! It does exactly what I want it to do without compromising other features that are important to me.
There are a few other “negatives” about iPhone that I forgot to post…
- Does not have a basic “cut and paste” function — not very useful for anything related to text handling.
- Does not have voice-dialing. This one really is annoying, especially to those of us who live in jurisdictions where there are laws against using a cell-phone in a car without a headset or Bluetooth device (headset or speaker system). On my Blackberry, I can use voice-dialing to have the unit look-up and dial a phone number without having to touch the device. Can’t do that on an iPhone. You have to actually pick it up, search for a contact (or use the Favorites) then touch it, choose “unit, Bluetooth device or speak phone” and then it will dial through the Bluetooth device. This is VERY dangerous when driving.
- Does not have a basic “backspace” key. Yeah, Yeah, I know about that magnifying glass thing allows you to accurately place the cursor - it just isn’t very efficient.
- No way to add shortcut keys or other entries to the built-in “dictionary”. On my Blackberry, I can set up a shortcut so that when I type “n” it replaces it with “and”, or “tksa”, it replaces it with “Thanks, Alan” (complete with carriage return.) This speeds up typing on the Blackberry to a degree that is not possible with the iPhone. iPhone’s dictionary also forces the user to continually glance up at the screen. I don’t have to do this with my Blackberry. (see below).
- No predefined “macro” keys on the iPhone. On my Blackberry, I can use a shortcut to have it insert my cell phone number, date etc into an email.
- No spell check on the iPhone. (see above). You can “train” its dictionary, but I prefer to type away on my Blackberry and spell check an email or note when I’m done. I find this much faster.
- No visible or audible indication that there is new email unless I turn on the iPhone (or wake it up). Blackberry allows users to configure one or both of these options.
Alan