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February 14, 2009
Getting to know the iPhone
Our column in next Thursday's Green Guide deals with the (surprisingly successful) negotiations we've had with Telstra since we bought our new 3G iPhone. They arose from the fact that one - well, at least a slightly dull, somewhat slow one like Bleeding Edge - doesn't realise quite how much an iPhone is likely to change one's usage patterns, until one has actually begun using the thing.
In our view, the iPhone is a completely different electronic animal. It changes the way one communicates, or at least it increases the frequency. We'd be interested in other iPhone users' perspective on this theory.
In the meantime, we've been busily familiarising ourselves with the iPhone's features: the little slide button that mutes it, for instance. The slight parallax error that can make the on-screen keyboard a touch irritating until you get familiar with it.
Bleeding Edge seems to be a two-thumb texter, by the way. A colleague insists on using one thumb. Fortunately, having an iPod Touch gave us a head start there, although it turned out to be a hindrance when we hooked it up to the PC and iTunes asked us if we wanted to restore the settings for the iPod Touch. We foolishly chose "Yes", thinking that was the easiest way to transfer our contacts, calendar and music. How idiotic!
We ended up having to wipe it and start again. This time we used Apple's MobileMe for syncing. MobileMe is, like most things Apple, far too expensive. It's irritating the way Apple sneaks it into your Windows Control Panel if you don't watch their update procedure like a hawk. But it's simple, and just at the minute, simple is awfully attractive.
One of the principal drawbacks of the iPhone is the lack of a simple cut and paste. We've recently installed a wireless burglar alarm system which allows self-monitoring. If there's an "event", the system rings our mobile, allowing us to control it remotely. Because we haven't committed all the codes to memory, we need to have a quick reference, and the obvious place to store it is, of course, on the iPhone. We decided, using the "easy is better" principle, that the solution was to install the iPhone version of Evernote. It automatically syncs your notes with the desktop (Mac or PC) software. While we still use InfoSelect as our main flatfile database, the developer hasn't yet understood that the Palm operating system, which is the only mobile platform he supports, is as good as dead these days, and the price has gone up $50 to $249. That's hard to justify these days. And the iPhone makes Evernote an even more powerful application.
What else do we like about the iPhone, so far? Well, our FastMail IMAP email service works brilliantly. And we love the way it threads SMS conversations - even better than the feature that as much as anything else made us fall in love with the Palm Treo.
We're limited to 150MB of data on the Telstra NextG plan, but after more than a week of usage, we haven't used a single megabyte, thanks to having Wi-Fi pretty well everywhere we've needed to get online so far, including one of our favourite breakfast spots, the Grocery Bar in Fitzroy St.
Posted by cw at February 14, 2009 12:15 PM
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Comments
I have been using my iPhone now since September 08. It is my first PDA and I love it, it is very productive as a business tool.
The best feature for me is the rendering of emails in close approximation to the original formatting. I disliked using Blackberrys in the past because they were hard to read in their ugly font.
I also like the ease of using multiple mail accounts (I have three on the iPhone); the available apps which are very high quality (esp weather and news) and the connectivity by Bluetooth.
Biggest bugbears - battery life is awful (as soon as the next gen comes out I am upgrading), short number of phone rings before it picks up (I can't figure out how to address this in settings), fragility is poor compared to say a Nokia mobile phone, and it is a smidgen too big for recreational/weekend use. Also I don't think the ipod function operates as well as a nano or classic.
Posted by: Mark McKillop at February 14, 2009 02:37 PM
I rang Telstra Mobile and got them to adjust the number of rings to (from memory) 30, which is the maximum, apparently. The default, on Telstra at least, is 15.
Posted by: cw at February 14, 2009 04:59 PM
Hi Charles,
good to see you active on Bleeding Edge again.
I'd like to know more about the "wireless burglar alarm system which allows self-monitoring" that you've installed - a pointer to the website or even a product review?
cheers
Dave
Posted by: Dave at February 14, 2009 06:05 PM
You're so persuasive, Dave. I've posted it.
Posted by: cw at February 14, 2009 06:30 PM
I'm an Apple Apologist, but yes Battery Life is a concern.
WRT Dimensions; it is a bit big, but compared to other Smartphones, it is actually quite small. Compared to other Media Players and Portable Game Consoles it is minute.
WRT The burglar system, it won't take long for someone to create an App or WebApp for the iPhone to solve that little problem… elegantly.
Many people extol the virtues of the Blackberrys Unified Messaging, but like Mark (above) I prefer keeping my accounts separate.
Ironically, before I got an iPhone, I never received MMS. Then suddenly, everyone tried to start sending them to me. Optus drops MMS messages sent to an iPhone account (rather than forward them to an email address, which would make more sense than Web Interfaces), and don't even notify via SMS any more.
Overall, being an Apologist, I just make sure I have a charger wherever I go and remind friends to send MMSs to my email account (yes you can do that with most MMS clients). I'm happy with it.
Posted by: Dan Woods at February 15, 2009 08:52 AM
Charles,
Any word on Infoselect theses days.
It's the reason I haven't fully committed to my Mac just yet.
Thinking about using it with Crossover for Mac.
This seems to be the first mention you've made in a long time.
Are you still in love or not really?
Terry
Posted by: Terry Frankel at April 11, 2009 11:17 PM
Charles - Where is the cheapest place to purchase a prepaid new 32 gig, unlocked iPhone and how much?
I seem to recall a figure of around $837 from one of your recent green guide columns.
Thanks
Lance
Posted by: Lance Daly - Holt at December 17, 2009 02:25 PM