Off topic: The iphone and why it must be avoided like the black death

Well I did it. I foolishly listened to the excited childish burbling of all my friends who had bought an iphone 3G and where so excited I actually caught the bug, sold my existing phone contract with a great company that was inexpensive good service and reliable (Telus) and got an expensive program where the service has been dishonest but supported the iphone (Rogers) and failed to notice that none of my friends who had iphones had actually ever had a smart phone before.

To my horror, the iphone does a million useless things and no actual important things anyone actually needs from a portable computer and things that for instance the ITC touch has been doing for years. Examples:

1. The iphone rings so quietly you cannot hear it in most situations if it is in your pocket such as a restaurant on the street or at work anywhere other than a quiet home or office.

2. The iphone has no real GPS. Just some kind of crappy map thing that no one can figure out how to actually navigate with.

3. The iphone does not shoot video just stills which are inferior to the average smart phone.

4. You cannot search emails with your iphone. You would be surprised how often you do that and you dont notice till you are looking for information in an email and you have to scroll through every one of them.

5. You cannot cut and paste which makes the iphone useless for nearly all internet applications.

6. you cannot attach anything to an email. If you want to send a picture (you can only send one per email) you have to do it arse backwards and select the picture then hit send as email. So you cannot add a second picture and build an email around them. Useless to any salespeople who want to send a photo essay of a product or products.

7. The battery life really sucks compared to any other cell phone.

8. the iphone has NO practical voice recognition whatsoever. all apps available for it are worse than scrolling through all your contacts as they need specific one way only training. its much worse than none while MS voice command is instantly usable and operates all programs as well.

9. Blue tooth is utterly pointless. It has blue tooth on it but you cant actually USE it for ANYTHING. You cannot sync with it as you can any HTC phone or other smart phone, you cant send files back and forth between the iphone and the computer. Not pictures not audio not anything.

10. You cant easily make your own ringtones. Apple wants you to BUY songs from them and then BUY the conversion to a ring tone. You could be Mick Jagger and want to use your own new song as a ring tone and you have to get it all through apple. There is a way around all this with Garage Band but it a royal pain in the arse compared to ANY other phone where you can upload an mp3 of whatever you want and select it as a ring tone.

On the up side, it does sound great as a music player. If you do not rely on your phone as an actual communications device then by all means get an iphone and enjoy its entertainment value however I would suggest an ipod and a real phone as the cost of having an iphone is large given what you cannot do with it and consequent lost opportunities.

Now out comes the new iphone 3Gs, one which after much hype looks like it may do nearly as much as a real smart phone. Frankly, I would be tempted to give my money and trust to a company who has been making phones that do these things properly already and have for years. The HTC series of phones do all a smart phone should do more or less reliably but it actually does do cut and paste and all the other things you would expect from a smart phone including decent video and photo and blue tooth exchange. The Blackberry series are a true business machine. All the people I know who actually need real comm systems swear by their blackberries while I so far have only sworn at my iphone.

Ultimately, the iphone 3g is like a brick but with much worse battery life.

Really people, this is a toy. Give your money to a company that actually makes something you need. I now have the new OS 3.0. It does make the iphone suck less but does not address all of these issues by a long shot. This is one of the worst phones on the market of it’s kind.

The above post was written before the OS 3.0 upgrade which addressed one or two issues such as cut and paste but the rest are the same. Ultimatly the iphone 3G with OS3.0 sucks a little bit less. Avoid like the plague. These phones are simply not for anyone who actually relies on it as a business tool.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

4 Replies to “Off topic: The iphone and why it must be avoided like the black death”

  1. well I dunno, but my wife has an iphone and says you are crazy…that the phone in fact does do all the things you say it does not with the exception of video, which the brand new one does. she showed me how too cut and paste, we used the gps in Las vegas last week and got to where we wanted. the directions by the hotel were useless. she has an app to get a ringtone etc.etc./…I ear her ring right now from way across the house, and I am fucking deaf……oh well see you next week.

  2. I don’t use mine for business but there are some things I like about it.

    Free app. called Shazam is quite cool for example. This “listens” to songs and then comes up with the album, artist, youtube clip, discography and more.
    This is great if you are listening to a song and you don’t know what it is.

    I purchased as iTunes ringtone and found it didn’t go under ringtones when syncing. $1.60 for a 40 second sound byte! Last time I’ll ever do that!

    I have successfully made ringtones from my iTunes Library:

    http://www.cnet.com.au/videos/tips-and-tricks/create-free-iphone-ringtones-using-itunes-8-0-22461850.htm?omnRef=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com.au%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dringtones%2Bfor%2Biphone%2Baustralia%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial%26client%3Dfirefox-a

    Just extend the time to 20 seconds and not 15. Seems the phone only rings for 20 seconds.

    The main thing I don’t like about it is with the text messages. One ‘bleep’ and that’s it. If the phone isn’t close by you won’t know till you pick it up.
    My old Motorola Razz beeped until I had seen the message.

    I agree it is a bit of a nuisance not being able to send photos. I have upgraded mine so I might look into that possibility.

    Skype also seems to be ok – so far!
    (Haven’t tried it on overseas contacts).