10 Reasons I wouldn’t buy an iPhone (yet)
The iPhone has about the sexiest interface I’ve seen on a mobile device, but for my money it’s not there yet. Here are the reasons I will wait before shelling out cold hard cash on an iPhone. Bearing in mind that I’ve been a mac user since 1989 that’s saying something.
1. Bluetooth – Why did Apple cripple the bluetooth functionality to prevent data transfer other than to a bluetooth earpiece for the phone? Some of us want to sync with a PDA or computer. I’ve been using a bluetooth keyboard with an iPaq PDA since 2005 – at the risk of sounding like a Grumpy Old Man (GOM) I’m sorry but I just don’t get the thumb thing – gimme a keyboard!
2. Landscape keyboard – At the moment the only way to get the iPhone keyboard in landscape (eg for google docs email or sms messages) is to get a jailbroken iPhone, install a third-party app – and that’s just so the keyboard will flip around to something that might just be usable. Frankly my Psion 5mx has a better keyboard – and they stopped making those in 2000. With my cludgey fingers the portrait mode is simply not going to do the biz.
3. Mobile Office suite – on my 5 year old PDA I can create, edit and write fully formatted MS Word docs or excel expense sheets (great when traveling) – is it too much to ask that iPhone might just include – at least via third party apps a means to create, edit and save word and excel docs on the move? Not everywhere has wifi (yet) so a means to work off-line would be useful.
4. Removable storage – at some point you might just want to save space and store lesser used apps or bigger files on a micro SD card – it would also mean that with a microSD-SD adapter you could take photos with the digital SLR and then transfer them on the road without having to resort to pulling out the macbook or going back to a desktop machine.
5. Photo editing – on my 5 year old PDA running ppc2003 I have a great little third party app for basic photo editing – resizing, cropping, brightness, contrast, colour balance, file conversion – I have yet to see such an app for the iPhone.
6. Onboard digital video – most other high end phones these days can handle basic video as well as still images from their on-board camera – why not make the coolest phone a genuine video phone – with skype?
7. Skype – Yeah I know Apple has signed deals with 3G networks around the world – but many high end phones these days can also do skype calls when connected to a wifi link. This would save the traveler a LOT of money in international phone calls where that function is available.
8. Sketch application – one for the third party developers – sometimes a diagram can do wonders, but I don’t see any means of doing that with an iPhone. Again my 5 year old PDA can do it.
9. A means of communicating with printers – ok, what about that bluetooth again? Or irda? Or the removable SD card – all of which would mean I could use print on the go without having to go back to a desktop or laptop – why not get rid of the middleware and go direct? That would make life much easier for the traveler who wants to do some quick adjustments to presentation notes, or print out some directions.
10. ABC music reader – that way I can carry my sheet music database and use it as a resource when traveling to folk festivals – and compose on the go. Barfly is great – how about a version for iPhone?
Ok maybe that last is a bit specialised. But you get the idea – Apple could make traveling a WHOLE LOT easier if I could take some basic (nothing an old PDA couldn’t handle) functions on the road and leave the laptop behind – or safely stored at the hotel – so over to you Apple, the competition is incorporating most of these functions already. For now, I’ll stick with a simple phone (sagem) and the old PDA with a bluetooth keyboard and wifi and irda plus removable CF and SD cards.
Cheers
Jerry
