[geeks] iPhone interface

[Michael Parson]

On Sat, 9 May 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>> On May 8, 2009, at 08:50 , Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>> My real frustration is the lack of cut and paste, it precludes a lot
>>> of what I do when I write (links, quote text, trim email responses,
>>> etc.).
>>
>> Well, you don't have long to wait for that fix.
>>
>> I'm on T-Mobile, and have thought about getting an iPhone, but even
>> 3.0 doesn't quite seem to be a "smartphone" yet, but it is much
>> closer.
>>
>> I'll probably end up with a Blackberry, unless I can find a really
>> good price on an iPhone that can be hooked to T-Mobile.
>
> I'm hoping to get a Palm Pre soon.

I've been a long time PDA user, had an Apple Newton MP130, went Palm
with the IIIx, moved to Handspring when they priced the Springboard
phone adaptors for them at $99, then went through a few Treos --
180->600->680.  I really liked them as "smartphone" devices, everything
integrated well, etc.  However, I never liked how they synced with the
Mac.  Even with The MissingSync, it was never 100%, plus a lot of my
customized settings would get lost during a sync (custom ring-tones
associated with people, etc).  The lack of Wi-Fi was annoying, but I
managed to live without it.  Once I got the 680, I was able to set up
it's networking to attempt a BT connection to my Mac first, and if that
failed, it would do an Edge connection, using my data plan.  I thought
it was kind of neat that I could do BT tethering in both directions.

I jumped on the Googlephone/G1 about a month after it came out.  It
still feels a lot like a beta unit, some basic functionality that
Handspring/Palm figured years ago is still lacking on the Android
platform.  I'm hoping that 1.5 'Cupcacke', which is due out any day
now, will address most of it.  I'm really hoping T-Mobile pulls their
head out of their backsides and lets us do tethering w/o having to
jailbreak/root the device.  They let us do tethering with other phones,
what makes this one so special?

I've spent a bit of time around friends with iPhones, and from what I
can tell, the ones that are most impressed with it are the ones for whom
this is their first smartphone/convergence device.  People that came
from other smartphones, be it Palm, Sidekick, or even Windows Mobile,
seem to like it OK, but don't see it as a revolutionary device.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org