iPhone

I've been needing a new phone ever since I ran my Motorola SLVR through the wash last year. I finally caved last week and preemptively spent Bush's economic stimulus check on an Apple iPhone. If nothing else, it will drastically improve my texting ability. I think that makes me one of the cool kids now.

It's a pretty cool device. I don't like that I'm now paying more for my cell service (since I have to get a data plan), but I must say it's pretty nice to hop on the web with my phone to look something up on the fly. The web browser is decent, and the touch screen has some nice features (like zooming in and out of web pages).

There are certain things Apple does very well. Interface design is one. Packaging is another. Documentation, not so much. There's plenty of stuff online so it's not that big a deal, and I guess it saves some trees.

The iPhone isn't without it's flaws. It is suprisingly not a good iPod. Yeah it plays music and all, but the interface isn't as nice as an actual iPod and I miss being able to surf through tracks without looking at the device. Since the iPhone has a touch screen, there is no click wheel and no tactile feedback. Without the wheel, it's also much more difficult to fast forward through a long (2+ hour) track without jumping all over the place in time.

My biggest pet peeve at this point is the headphone jack. In typical Apple form-over-function fashion, they recessed the headphone jack to make for a cleaner look. Sounds good in theory, but now none of my headphones will actually fit into the recessed port. I wish those damn white ear buds fit my ears, so I could just use them and be done with it. My second (minor) pet peave is that the line-out adapter I built doesn't work with the iPhone. I think I can make some modifications to make it work, but I need to do some experimentation.