An audience of two

Monday October 01, 2007

Best. Video. Ever.
You said it, Apple. Permalink | | | | Comments [0]
Tags: apple different iphone think

Wednesday September 26, 2007

Bitching about my iPhone cont.
Since I'm stuck in bed waiting for a CAT scan, here are some more things that bug me about the iPhone. In all fairness I'm writing this on the iPhone which is way cool.

• Poor mp3 player.
The iPhone calls itself an iPod, not just an mp3 player. But you don't get the reliability or usability of the iPod. If you want to scan through an hour long podcast you don't spin your finger on a dial, there is a way-too-small slider that makes fine tuning impossible. Plus it crashes a lot if you use it while browsing or reading mail.

• No scrollbar
The flick to advance gesture is cute, but when you're viewing a long email or web page there's no easy way to jump to the end.

• Poor calendar handling.
For example Palm lets you create events that repeat on specific days, such as every Mon/Wed/Fri or on the third Tuesday every other month. On the iPhone you have to create separate events. And the alarm options are unnecessarily limited.

• The whole ringtone thing.
You penny-pinching bastards. Users should be able to use any audio file they create as a ringtone without having to pay extra for it. Ben Frank had the great idea of having his mates each record their own ring tone, so his phone would suddenly shout "Hey Ben, it's Michelle!". My Nokia used to shout "Somebody answer the bloody phone".
Thankfully there are smart people out there who created the iPhone Ring Tone Maker but you have to re-run it after every sync, which is lame.

• Inconsistencies in the UI
Some screens rotate, others don't. The magnifying-glass cursor control doesn't always work, eg in the calendar. Hopefully these are just 1.0 problems that will be Fixed In The Next Release.

• The "smart" text entry
Again, it's inconsistent. Sometimes it operates, sometimes not. Sometimes you did miskey, but it only offers one suggestion; if it guesses wrong you can't cycle through alternatives. Sometimes it changes perfectly valid entries; ILL always becomes I'LL even if you're writing I AM ILL. Once you hit DELETE it turns off. Overall it takes a bit of getting used to.

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Tags: iphone