So I’ve now had my iPhone for about a week, so it’s time to start talking about it. Because that’s what you do when you buy Apple products, don’chano?

What I Like

  • Apple has always been the king of the user interface, and this is no exception. The navigation of the phone is extremely intuitive, and for the most part things are where you expect to find them. I probably spent the first hour just jumping from app to app and being really happy with how everything looks, how responsive it is, and how easy everything is to use.
  • The switching of my number from T-Mobile to AT&T was painless and quick. When we left the Apple Store, they told me I could make outbound calls right away, but it might take up to six hours before I could receive calls. We drove home to pick up Larissa’s mom and go to breakfast at J. Christopher’s. While we were placing our order, I got a text message from AT&T telling me that the port was complete. After the horror story that was eloren‘s iPhone adventure, this was a very pleasant surprise. (I admit I feel a little bit guilty, as T-mobile has offered me very good service over the years and I had no complaints with them to speak of. But that’s the nature of the exclusive hardware contracts, I suppose.)
  • There is a Pandora Radio app for the iPhone. This delights me.
  • It makes a perfect good iPod. Since my iPod recently took a swim in the washing machine and didn’t survive the experience, it was nice to have my podcasts back in the car.
  • The App Store is full of many free, if often pointless, little utilities. It also has some useful ones, like UrbanSpoon, which helps locate nearby restaurants, and Showtimes, which does something similar for nearby movie theatres.
  • I can continue my practice of having pictures of my sweeties as phone wallpaper, which makes me happy every time I turn it on.
  • The web browser looks *fantastic*. Easily the best implementation of a web browser on a phone I’ve ever used. Reading and posting to LJ is extremely easy.
  • The phone is very slim, but it has a nice heft to it. It feels like a substantial object, and not a tiny plastic toy.

What I Don’t Like

  • There is apparently a bug when the most recent version of the iPhone OS and Windows Outlook with syncing. (I had to actually buy a new copy of Outlook, as my previous copy was from 2000 and refused to talk to the phone at all.) If left to sit and peculate, it will eventually finish syncing, but it takes far far longer than it should. This is being widely discussed on the various forums, so it’s obviously a software side problem rather than simply a problem with my setup.
  • With all the apps that are out there, there’s nothing that can be used to cycle the wallpaper at set intervals between a set of defined photos. This seems like it would be pretty basic (I have such an application for my computers.
  • The camera interface is awkward. (This is, to me, a minor gripe, since I don’t particular need a good camera phone. But on the off chance I do use it, it’s a bit clunky.)
  • No IRC client. Really? I’m somewhat stunned by this, honestly. There’s a couple of apps in development that may be solving this soon, but for the moment…c’mon guys, it’s one of the oldest chat protocols on the net. There’s no excuse.
  • No backgrounding. An app is either on or its off. You can’t run, say, AOL Instant Messenger in the background and have it make noise at you when a message comes in. It appears that there’s going to be some mechanism to simulate this with the new “push” features, but for the moment, its either foreground or off.
  • I can’t get the SSH client I purchased to work properly.
  • It seems to be that if you have the headset plugged in, and the phone rings, it only rings in the headset. I find this somewhat peculiar behaviour, since it means I can’t just leave the heatset plugged in and the phone nearby on my desk, because I may not notice it vibrating. (Probably time to replace my bluetooth headset.)

All in all, I’m very pleased with the purchase. What I don’t like are mostly minor gripes, and several of them will probably be solved by future software releases.