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.

I’m really hoping for a capable mileage tracking app when the App Store debuts. This one is automatically an also ran.

Via Daring Fireball

The WordPress iPhone plugin has improved mightily since I last tried it. It looks as if I can do pretty much anything I could want, which is a heady thought. The only thing that could be better would be a native client so I could do this without a net connection. Ecto for iPhone would be perfect.

Which brings me to next month. I’m as big an Apple fanboy as you’re likely to find and I have to say, I am thoroughly sick of all the iPhone hype surrounding WWDC. As each day counts down, the thing gets ever more mythical in proportion such that I worry that whatever Steve actually demos (if he demos anything at all) will end up being a huge disappointment. “WHAT?! No nightvision? No wireless DVI? No HD content over Edge? This iPhone sucks!”

Me, all I really want are the App Store and 3G.

A day or so ago, I started having problems with placing calls. Every time I tried to make a call, the first attempt would immediately fail. Second attempts would work though. It was annoying but survivable.

Until I found out that folks trying to call me were going straight to voicemail without ringing the phone. And I wasn’t able to access my voicemail. For someone who lives on his cell phone, this is not good.

So I called AT&T and they put me through to Apple iPhone tech support. After verifying that, yes, I had already done all the recommended basic troubleshooting (restoring the phone, reseating the SIM card), Apple handed me back to AT&T. The AT&T CSR ran through her list of troubleshooting things to do with much clacking of keys and turning off and back on of the phone. She called to verify that, yes, indeed, calls to me were failing straight to voicemail.

Then it was time to talk to the Apple folks again, after which, the consensus was that I needed a new phone. They were kind enough to set up an appointment at the Apple Store for me and away I went. One short wait later, I had a new iPhone that seemed to work. Of course this new phone had not been restored from my backup, so…

I got home and did the aforementioned restore from backup and…. same. damn. thing. Even restored the iPhone without restoring from backup, in effect returning the iPhone to a fresh, out of the box, but activated state. No improvement.

Well, crap.

Another call to AT&T, explain the entire situation again. Talk to Apple again. “Yep, well, there are no network issues reported so the only thing left for it to be is your SIM card. You’ll have to change out the SIM.” So a trip to the AT&T store nets me a new SIM. I get home and throw it in and…

I’m STILL not receiving calls. By this point AT&T customer service is closed for the day so I’m SOL for any further resolution, but really, what else could it be? New phone, new SIM, problem occurs whether my data is synced or not. Esme certainly hasn’t been hacked or jailbroken. I’m no cellphone guru, but, at this point, it’s got to be the network, right?

Wake up this morning and it seems to work just fine.

Argh.

Update: Calls work fine now. Mobile Internet, A.K.A. EDGE connections, are stubbornly not working. Argh again.

I mean, it’s cool that I can view Word and Excel documents but hey, I’m drinking the Kool Aid here: I use Pages!

Let’s have a mobile version of iWork that syncs with my Mac so I can carry files and edit them when I’m out and about. Give me Back to My Mac so I can grab files I haven’t explicitly synced and let iPhone iWork read and edit Office files. Tie it tightly to Mail so i can save attachments, mail and fax with an efax service Oh, and give it a read-only ebook mode. That would be great.

Last night I went searching for a template I like and I think I’m settled on Cutline. Now I’ve got to figure out how to put the spiffy banner Flip made for me back. I spent a couple of hours last night staring at the header code and got nowhere. With great power comes near incomprehensibility, I say.

Also, the iPhone admin plugin doesn’t let you scroll the body of a previously published post which makes it fairly useless for editing after the fact. The moral? Get it right the first time, dummy.