An iPhone as a Personal Computer

I have an iPhone. I broke down and bought one. I know, I have caved in to the crowd, but the thing is just so useful and entertaining.

Of course, there are problems with it, like how the master volume affects the ringer volume, or how the messaging system is such a mess, what with having to go into three separate applications to check three separate messaging types, voice, mail, email...

Gripes aside, the quest is to discover if this sort of device is adequate for my normal day-to-day non work-related computing, such as blogging, surfing the web, reading email, watching netflix and playing games.

Games it does, and how. That is perhaps the most entertaining thing it does. If you haven't played games on an iPhone or iPod, go do it and see if you don't enjoy yourself.

Watching netflix it does as well. It gets five or six hours of video in, which is simply spectacular.

With the new email client that puts all my email in one place, I am willing to say it does email well enough.

The test, really, is the lightweight writing, the blogging, my novels and, lately, my resume. That is what I am after right now, and, so far, it is fairly positive.

I don't know why apple has not released pages for the iphone; that would seem to be such a natural thing to do. I am using a Microsoft Word compatible office product, office2, which has a pretty good spreadsheet, and tonight, after I finish getting it squared away, I will start using that to actually write a story. For now, though, I am blogging, and, with the apple bluetooth keyboard, this thing may work well enough for that.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

A week or so on with an iPhone

A few minutes with a screwdriver removing a broken bit of plastic from the Logitech DiNovo Mini has really improved its usefulness. I did have the occasion to type on work's Blackberry Bold, and I miss that keyboard. The iPhone's keyboard is just usable enough for the occasional texting but nothing more. During the day I'm often reaching for the Mini to bang something out, as I'm doing now.

So, I guess I ought to get the complaints about the Mini out of the way first. The tick key, so often used in contractions, is not illuminated, so, in the dark, I have to remember it's fn-/, while dash is fn-o. Oh, and why, oh why, in the name of all that is holy, do they turn the illumination of the regular keys off when you hit backspace? Make a mistake, lose all ability to correct it.

Once again, the Mini is a superior media remote, but is mildly annoying as a portable keyboard. I will have to get a real one at some point.

Back to the iPhone. Having one has changed my habits slightly. For instance, my laptop stays firmly in its bag most nights, as I use my iPhone for most simple computing tasks. Having had a Blackberry, I was already accustomed to reading mail on my mobile device, and the reading of mail is superior on the iPhone, while the managing of messages in general is not. For instance, Apple forwent the nearly universal flashing LED indicator for new messages, with the result that I've missed some important messages by dint of stepping away for a bit or having it in my pocket. I have had to learn to check it often.

Also, the Blackberry puts all messages into the same list so you can see at a glance you have a text message, two emails and a voicemail to deal with, while those are three separate unrelated things on the iPhone. Also, seriously, modal dialogs, now, in the 21st century? Even worse, swiping that evil swipe to unlock thing causes the alerts to go away so you have to wander formlessly looking for what the alert was, instead of being taken right to all your messages, as does the Blackberry.

I guess most iPhone users are constantly attached to their phones by wired headsets, but I hate wired headsets. I will have to figure out some way around the wired headset in the future. Until then, I will miss the occasional annoyance, erm, phone call.

One thing I found out about having a Blackberry is that the excuses went right away. The Blackberry felt smaller and less of a big deal to carry. It wasn't playing music or games, and you never browsed the web with it except in an emergency, so taking it with you was as easy as slipping it into the holster it came with, which automatically put it to sleep and locked its keyboard. That is one trick the iPhone could stand to learn. And, could it kill them to put an alert LED on it?

One more minor gripe about the iPhone is the flaky cover flow in the iPod app. Some times, when I advance to the next tune in shuffle, the cover flow does not update to the new album art. If I let the song finish, it starts updating again. Weird.

Overall, the experience remains positive, but we shall see. So far, the Bold owns the record, as I was mostly happy with it for well over eight months. I already have some major annoyances with this thing, and I haven't been watching much mobile video, one of the major reasons I got it.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I Got an iPhone

I finally replaced my aging and decrepit Blackberry Bold with an iPhone 3gs. I got a refurb unit as I was concerned it would not suit me and the Bold entered nirvana months before cheap upgrade time for me.

So, anyway, first impressions are quite positive. The iPhone edged out the Samsung Captivate as it does the things I want to do now, such as stream hulu and netflix. Right now I am blogging while listening to music, using a logitech DiNovo mini to peck this entry out.

I will have to get a better keyboard and the wired headset is driving me to distraction snagging on everything, and the battery life is fairly poor, but the capability is there, and I keep finding new uses for it. more later when I have a decent keyboard...

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

In Case You Want To Try It, Too

The iMac project got abandoned. I got an ancient notebook for free that is now running Linux itself. However, if you ever want to do it yourself, check out freeNX. I've been using it from my Powerbook 12" to my big Linux box. It works very well.