« Casio Pathfinder PAW 1300T7 | Main | WaterField Cargo Messenger Bag »
January 22, 2008
What's wrong with the iPhone
I've just spent a month with a loaned iPhone and have a few thoughts to share. My friend Conrad has written several thousand words on the iPhone elsewhere on this site, so I won't duplicate his excellent work. And I agree with his overall assessment: the iPhone is a wonderful device, skillfully combining a superb mobile phone, a slick web browser, superior email functionality, a powerful personal organizer, and an iPod media player. But as sweet as it is, the iPhone is not all it can be.Where I differ from comrade Conrad's assessment is in the text entry and editing department. The rest of the device is so beautifully crafted that we've all just blindly accepted the QWERTY tap-and-pray text entry it offers. It's a clunky, tedious, and error-prone method for entering anything more than a name and a phone number. I think Apple is so deathly afraid to include anything even remotely like handwriting recognition that they've crippled the iPhone. And to make matters worse, there is no cut and paste function. Come on Apple, this is cut and paste we're talking about, not immersive telepresence. How hard can it be for your army of brilliant software engineers to code that?
And one more thing: the lack of Flash compatibility in the browser is more than annoying, it's almost a deal breaker for me. I don't care about watching videos or playing games, I need the ability to edit Google Docs and use other "Web 2.0" functions. Without Flash, the iPhone is not really a handheld computer at all, but a mere data viewer with a lovely touch interface. Nothing wrong with that -- most folks seems satisfied using their iPhones this way. But I'm an editor, and I need my tools to allow me to edit things.
Don't get the idea that I'm handing in my enthusiasm along with my loaned iPhone this week. On the contrary, I'm buying my own iPhone to replace the loaner as soon as I can. I've grown completely attached to the thing and can't stomach the thought of having to go back to my primitive Motorola RAZR - yuk. I'm an iPhone man now and nothing will change that, but it frustrates me that Apple is hobbling this otherwise fantastic device for...what? Marketing paranoia because of what happened with the Newton MessagePad a decade ago? Petty political jostling with Adobe over Flash? Fears over iPhone cannibalizing MacBook sales if they make it too useful? Are they afraid they'll confuse us if they include too many powerful features?
We'll eventually find out, of course. Until then, count me among the iPhone fanboys not so much for what it is today, but because of its potential. ~David MacNeill
Posted by dtm at January 22, 2008 09:24 PM