Oceanside, Nevada

So, iPhone 3G comes this Friday and, yeah, I’m thinking about it quite a bit. Looks like the latest plan is for me to meet up Saturday morning with a good friend who will be purchasing his first iPhone. Feeling a little anxious about that plan, though, since I wants me some 16 gb goodness and I’m starting to worry that they’ll sell out of “the big iPhone” before I get there.

TJ has informed me that I may purchase an iPhone 3G for her since she is now officially not content to merely have Esme handed down. This, of course, causes some additional turmoil: to whom shall Esme go? Flip wants her, to be sure, but Pooh is the older (if not larger child). I’m tempted to make the two of them fight over it. Pooh, of course works out and plays hockey so she’s no stranger to aggression. Flip, on the other hand, is very skinny and everyone knows skinny chicks fight till they’re burger.

But that’s not what I’m thinking about!

No, I’ve been pondering over some of the things about iPhone that continue to irritate me and that I would like to see remedied. First let’s get out of the way:

• No tasks.

• No notes syncing.

Sigh. In the meantime I’ve tried all kinds of alternatives and there’s just no clear winner in the tasks space. I’m hopeful, though, that the 2.0 software update will fix this. As for notes, I’ve been using Evernote and it is pretty damned good. Looking forward to a native client that allows me to have critical notes on the iPhone for those times when I can’t get a net connection—which has been, unfortunately, often lately.

I’m looking for .Mac MobileMe to work more… hell, just more with the iPhone. Mail has been a good thing and I’m really looking forward to all the push stuff coming down the pike but what about iDisk, or, Bob forbid, Back to My Mac? Those would both be simply awesome features. There are numerous services that offer storage in the cloud that’re iPhone accessible (box.com, if I’m not mistaken, even does conversions on the fly to let you see your files). Since I’m already paying for .Mac (Note: MobileMe is a dumb fucking name for a service and I’m just going to continue to call it .Mac, mmm bokay?), I’m really reluctant to pay for an alternative that does something .Mac should already do. It simply boggles the mind that Apple has not put something forth here.

But then, these are the guys who figured we didn’t really need to be able to read and edit notes on our desktops. Again, sigh.

Moving on, I’m gratified to see that iPhone 2.0 will bring iWork compatibility to the iPhone. Hooray! And, just like with Office documents, that support is read-only. Damn.

Look, I understand my phone is not the most desirable way to write up, say, a contract, but I’m not looking to do that. I’m looking at, say, revising a price or correcting a typo, is that so much? Does that mean iWork for iPhone? I’m guessing no, what with all the news and speculation surrounding SproutCore. I’m guessing that Apple will either transition iWork to the cloud or will create a cloud version of iWork. With the rumored web app support coming in a future version of Safari, a cloud version of iWork sounds plausible, particularly if you could work offline. Offline usability has been a big deterrent for me when it comes to considering cloud-based apps.

Uh, what else? I’ve heard some interesting speculation regarding location aware apps. One of the ideas I’ve heard that I find really intriguing will be implemented in the iPhone version of OmniFocus: location aware contexts. I’ve tried GTD and, while I find it appealing, I never seem to be able to look at the tasks I have pending when I’m in a particular context. If OmniFocus could slap me upside the head to remind me to do something because it notices I’m, say, at the Stratosphere, that would be pretty cool and arguably useful.

Specific iPhone native apps I’m looking forward to include: Twitter, Evernote, any chat client that makes it possible for me to save the $20 unlimited SMS fee, 1Password, NetNewsWire, a WP compatible blogging client, a good mileage tracker, and, of course, something that will sync tasks with iCal.

Tags:   Apple · fanboy · gadgets · geek · iPhone · Mac · OS XNo Comments