Kristi and I had fun playing with them in the Apple Store today. I loved the realtime traffic maps (I live by my traffic widget on my commute); she was blown away by the whole thing.

I’ve been looking at some other phones - just to be sure, you know - I liked my Sony Ericsson T630, and there’s some nice new ones that look great and sync with the Macs in my life. It’s clear that the iPhone is head and shoulders above the rest as to the total experience. Feature-set-wise, it’s not at the bleeding edge or anything; there’s other phones that do more - but do so with much more hassle and energy expended. It’s a new device, and it’s not perfect. In particular, I wish for dialing from my computer via Bluetooth, and Microsoft Exchange email (the real thing - not this half-IMAP implementation that the iPhone has). I do have legitimate business requirements that a Blackberry would probably serve better - but that ugly interface… I just can’t get past it, not after the multitouch goodness of this phone.

These are gripes that Apple may fix with the next software update… or, never - no one knows. It’s been out long enough and used by enough people that I think it would be a reliable, productive - and fun - device to use. We’ll see.

Posted in Tools, Toys, and Geekery