As I’ve had more time with my iPhone and have delved much deeper into it’s settings I have noticed a few places where Apple certainly missed the ball. Now, I’m still very happy with my iPhone. It has enabled me to be a lot more mobile and still be responsive to clients and colleagues during my work hours. It has also become invaluable for my personal time, as I think I have shot more video of my son with the iPhone than I have with our Sony HandyCam. The iPhone is just there and I can be shooting video in a matter of seconds…so I do.

D’oh-mo arigato, Mr. Roboto

That’s right. This first shortcoming was easy to avoid. Apple does an exceptional job fretting over the little things. The small details that take a product from good to great. Their user interface details are so well thought out that I can’t believe they missed this one. I cannot play my WiFi networked iPhone’s music over my Airport Express ‘Air Tunes’. How did they miss this??

Every Mac in the house can send it’s iTunes output to my WiFi connected stereo in the living room. And since I see the iPhone more as a Mac than an iPod or even a phone, how do you explain the omission of this feature?

I don’t know, either. Let’s hope iPhone OS 3.1 addresses this.

Lo-Cal…DAV

Okay. I understand that AT&T is using the whole iPhone OS 3.0 thing to push their ‘enterprise data’ package, which is a load of crap, honestly…data is data, what constitutes one packet as being ‘enterprise’ while another is ‘consumer’. But, I get it. AT&T provides the network, so you play by there rules. But iCal on every desktop Mac can do 2-way sync with Google Calendar via CalDAV, why remove that feature from the iPhone version of iCal?

Like I said, I get the Enterprise Data thing. AT&T wants another way to tack on another few bucks per month to the bill. Fine. Google Calendar is not a default setup on the iPhone (or any Mac), and requires additional configuration (and a Google account). That alone should have been enough to say “let’s leave it alone, if they know how to setup Google Calendar let them have full 2-way sync”. The fact that they went out of their way to make it a single direction sync really annoys me.

Of course, a way around this is to setup your Google Calendar on your Mac and sync to the iPhone. Anytime you edit your calendar from iCal on your Mac it will sync. If you need to add an appointment on your iPhone, use the web interface and then open iCal on the iPhone to have it pick up the sync. Voila…a (kludgey) 2 way sync.

Oh, and if you couldn’t tell, I refuse to pay for MobileMe. It provides almost no functionality I really want, other than calendar syncing. I have servers I use for web deployment, ftp, document sharing, et al. I don’t need an overpriced Apple solution that also includes calendar sync. And…I certainly don’t need another email address (I have 10 of those already…at least 10 that I can remember).

i-yi-yi-Photo

So, every time I connect my iPhone to my Mac to sync iPhoto opens and asks to import the same photos it imported last time. What about “I already have those” does iPhoto not understand. Apple needs to set some sort of trigger within the iPhone itself that tells the Mac whether or not there are new photos on the iPhone that need to be synced up. I’m getting tired of iPhoto interrupting me every time I attach my iPhone to my Mac. I keep telling myself that I need to go turn off the ‘auto open iPhoto’ option, but I use that with my cameras all the time and would much rather have Apple step up to the plate and have the iPhone communicate to the Mac whether it needs to launch iPhoto or not.

So, there you have it. 3, admittedly nit-picky, iPhone shortcomings that have been bugging me. None of these are real deal breakers for me, and I know they are all easily addressable in software updates. Apple has made a killer product in the iPhone – I truly see the future of the Mac (and all computing) in this device. I tell everyone who asks about it “the phone part of the iPhone is just a small part of what this thing is all about”, and it’s true. You don’t fully get it (grok it) until you use one for a while.

It has been a week since I finally gave into the allure of Apple’s latest update and went to the local Apple store to purchase an iPhone 3GS. After a week my gut reaction is: how did I ever get along without one of these!

What kept me from upgrading my aging Motorola Razr was the fear that a smart phone would make me too accessible. There would be nowhere to hide when I needed to get away. The reality of the situation is that I now feel a lot more comfortable getting away, knowing I can still be in touch. I also can leave the office when I am expecting an email, knowing that I can get my email on the road (sans laptop) and reply from just about anywhere.

I’m still getting into the whole ‘App’ thing. I installed Facebook and a couple Twitter apps. I even found a cool little metronome (something every musician should have on their iPhone).

So, any purchase that feels like a good idea and seems to be more useful a week after it was purchased is a winner in my book. No buyers regret here.