iPhone Diary 7/3

Major geekage slowing down; integrating iPhone into life. Is that good? Or scary?

Irritants:

• The email lack-of-folders thing is a major irritant. Suspect Apple is working on it; lots of people on the forums have complained, but haven't seen word one about a solution yet, and I check in every day.
• One-way calendar connectivity simply bizarre. Can enter calendar items on iPhone and they appear on Outlook; reverse not true. What's up with that?
• Wish platform were open, and could load own apps onto it. Bet money MacOS eReader would work with only minor tweakage.
• Would love to be able to manage calendar, contacts, and so on through iTunes interface; the sooner I can ditch Outlook, the happier I'll be.
• Can't drag-and-drop songs, videos, and whatnot from library to iPhone in iTunes. Why not? Seems weird.
  
• Screen does indeed get gunky fast; have to carry wipe cloth everywhere.
  

Joys:

• Audio connection much better than my old Motorola v180.
• Love being able to pull up contacts list and one-touch dial. Yeah, baby!
• Can't do that two-thumb typing thing, but one-finger typing working well for me for SMS. Email, not so much, but doable for short messages.
• Oh, the screen, the screen! So much better as a movie viewer! So light! So crisp! So easy to use! Automatically bookmarks your place. The portable movie viewer I've longed for! (If only there as an expansion slot . . .)
• The interface is killer. It can't be overstated. You get used to it so fast, you forget how good it is. "Intuitive" is too weak a word. You guess, and you're right almost all the time. It's astounding. (And I'm incredibly hard to please when it comes to software.)
  

Other notes:

• Love how solid the device feels. Doesn't creak, groan, wiggle, or otherwise feel cheap. Buttons are solid. Case is solid. Battery cover is solid. Plastic battery cover on HTC Universal constantly creaking; not a problem on iPhone.
• People who complain about speed of Edge network spoiled beyond belief. People who compare it to "dial-up speed" deluding selves. Am old enough to have seen handsets plugged into audio jacks at 30 baud; these people have no idea what real "dial-up speed" means. If old enough to remember being excited about 1200 baud modems, then you can complain. Yes, 3G faster. Big whoop.
• Still jonesing for games, and eReader. If this thing had games and eReader, I would be in heaven. But it's all software; I hold out hope.
• Handbrake conversion tool produces good output (and I'm very picky), but is a little flakey, and a major CPU hog. Oh well; nothing's perfect.
• Not having stylus is a mixed bag. On one hand: no stylus to lose. On other hand: gunky screen.
• No menus. It takes a little getting used to. Means there's some functionality that seems "missing" (e.g., can't create new mailboxes in the email utility). Is this a bad thing? A good thing? Dunno; but there it is.