iTool
The market was kind to me last week so we embraced our iTool iLives and iBought iPhones.
I had been waiting for the SDK release, and holding out for GPS (”Late this year” according to “My Sources” who are nameless, faceless and possibly clueless) and 3G (more on that) and “Version 2.0 Hardware”, but service through my Blackberry has been so damnably frustrating lately and overpriced all along that I took the first good opportunity and jumped.
So, a few things:
- SDK, SDK, SDK. The first truly great PDA. Please for the love of your stock valuation let us develop apps for this thing without your updates bricking the device. This is the “mobile platform” we’ve been wanting for years. Let us use it.
- AT&T buying Cingular failed to correct the problem of the Edge network (or at least the Edge network here) being absolute garbage. No idea why I was holding out for 3G, as it is unavailable here and they have yet to seem able to reliably deliver more archaic services.
- My Belkin router’s (there’s a mistake I won’t make twice) funny little feature of randomly rendering wifi-to-wan service inoperable for no reason whatsoever does not play well with the iPhone, which seems to lack the capacity to recognize a busted wifi connection.
- I still hate cameras on phones. It’s not (only) that I prefer my bulkier Nikon (I do), but that so far every phone-camera I have used is junk. I guess I need a point-and-shoot if I’m not carrying the “real camera”.
- Great iPod! I think I may come to appreciate the video capabilities while travelling.
- SDK, SDK, SDK. And SDK.
- I wonder if I would rather read ebooks on this than Amazon’s Kindle (which is almost but not quite really nice)?
- The email client frequently refuses to display emails because they are in “some format” that it feels unable to comprehend. May as well brick the device, really. This is the #2 reason I have considered going back to my Blackberry.
- Touch-screen keyboard. The large version is nice, the small version less nice. Apparent inability to switch between them on demand is violently frustrating, and this is the #1 reason I have considered a return to the Blackberry.
- It needs a stylus and handwriting recognition. Fingerprints/smudges get out of control. Or maybe I’m just a greasy iPig.
- Some apps can kick sideways. Some cannot. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but (no offense) that’s the market Apple likes, so it would be grand if we could have some consistency in this area. One would think the “system” applications, at least, would all support this.
- Flash. WMV. Flash. …Flash. You know, I still use lynx for browsing the web, but this is a glaring failure. I continue hoping I am only having a momentary bout of iBraindamage and it is all my fault somehow, but it looks like this really is a major “worm in the Apple” mistake.
Call quality is good. I’m enjoying using the device, but whether I continue to do so apparently depends entirely upon Apple’s attitude toward third party software, which it seems I will need in order to accomplish the sort of things I need to accomplish.