When I saw a colleague bring up Google Maps on his iPhone and then surf to a few other sites, I was sold. What a beautiful machine! What a beautiful display! I visualized myself never getting lost again, able to keep up with my e-mail and my research any time and any place. As soon as I got home I bought one. I didn�t even consider the 4GB model, although there were a few left � I wanted that extra storage for all the stuff I wanted to take everywhere with me.
I soon discovered that the iPhone isn�t a very good cell phone. I live in an area with marginal coverage. I get only one or (on a very good day) two bars at home. But the iPhone dropped far more calls than my old Nokia, and would drop any call if I put the phone to my ear. I had to use the speakerphone option or the headset, and I found myself contorting into comical (for observers, at least) positions in a vain attempt to catch enough signal to complete a call. I was surprised to find that I got poor voice quality even when I was out and about and showing five strong bars.
My next disappointment came when I accessed Google Maps while on an urban exploration, expecting to resolve a navigational question in a flash. The snappy response my colleague demonstrated was nowhere to be found! Without a WiFi connection, I was already miles outside of the map�s boundaries by the time it appeared on that gorgeous display. I spent so much time dinking with my iPhone and waiting for it to respond that I might as well have stayed home. I saw very little of the countryside.
When I got home, I thought I�d listen to some music. I hadn�t had a chance to load any of my music, so I just typed (slowly and laboriously) the URL of my favorite Internet radio station. All I got was a tiny icon of a box! Nothing else at all. I did some research and discovered that the iPhone does not support Flash. What? The most graphically-oriented mobile device ever introduced ignores the most common way to deliver graphical content on the Web? Unfathomable! My radio station was programmed in Flash, so I got a little box icon and no tunes.
OK, so I�ll load some of my music from my PC. Plug the iPhone into the USB port and drag my favorite songs over, right? Not a chance! You have to use iTunes. That should be quick and easy � Apple is supposed to be the most intuitive stuff out there. Well, maybe to a long-time Mac user, that program is easy to figure out, but I never did find a way to select multiple songs and port them over. If you want to �synch� your entire library, it looks pretty easy, but mine would have exceeded the iPhone�s capacity. And why would Apple assume that I want exactly the same things in both places? After about a half hour of struggling to grasp the arcane logic and puzzle out the meaning of totally uninformative icons, I figured out how to manually load a single song at a time. I had to wait for that song to finish loading before I could select another. I loaded a few favorites and gave up in disgust.
Somebody tell me, please, why the iPhone, a USB device, does not even show up as a device when you plug it into a PC. Why not let me see that drive as a drive and store whatever I want on it? It is, after all, my 8 GB of mobile drive space � why dictate to me that I can use it only for media imported by iTunes? All that space was completely useless to me unless I wanted to fill it with songs, one�.. at�.. a�. time.
There were things I liked about the iPhone. The camera, and the way photos are stored and viewed � outstanding! The way I could start the iPod feature and have my (very few) tunes with me while I worked around the house. The access to YouTube. I enjoyed those. But c�mon, it�s gotta be at least as good a phone as my old one, and it�s gotta access the Web while away from WiFi points fast enough to be useful. I mean, isn�t that when the iPhone would be most useful? When I have WiFi access, I also usually have my PC. And the iPhone should certainly unwrap that little box and display the Flash content hiding inside.
I gave up. I happily paid the restocking fee to return the iPhone and go back to using my ugly, beat-up, three-year old Nokia that hardly ever drops a call and transmits clear, understandable voice. If I want to surf the Web or get navigational help while I�m out and about, I�ll lug my laptop with a Sprint card. Those options are bulky and certainly not as beautiful, but they work! And if I want to take my tunes with me when I�m away from my laptop, I�ll buy an MP3 player� one made by anyone but Apple!
