iPhone agony

The iPhone is very slick and the available features are intuitive and easy to use. It’s an awesome, Internet-enabled, media-playing monster monster of a modern telephone.

Unfortunately, features that aren’t readily apparent just aren’t there. For example, Google Maps recently gained the ability to adjust routes for its directions. Do you want to travel from Evans, GA to St. Matthews, SC without going all the way to Columbia? I can now do that with Safari on my computers by hovering over the route and dragging it — it will helpfully snap the route to the closest roads to your mouse drag. This evening I tried to the same on the iPhone and quickly became frustrated by the touch-based interface. Unlike a full-size computer with a multi-button mouse and a keyboard with several modifier keys, the touch interface gives you very few modifier options. You lack command, alt, and control keys, as well as extra mouse buttons. I didn’t spot a single place in the iPhone interface where a “hover” was used.

My location and lifestyle kick me out of the early adopter crowd. There is no public transportation between my home and my work. My commute takes 12-18 minutes by car and 22-30 minutes by bicycle. If I needed to decide on a local place to get sushi, one of the impressive video iPhone interface demos that was released ahead of the phone itself, well, my town is small enough that I already know all the places that serve sushi.

I applaud the price drop. If I have a few back-to-back business or personal trips in the next several months that will see me traveling to larger markets, I’ll probably go ahead and pick one up. Otherwise, I’ll wait for the next version. I’m looking forward to 3G, bluetooth GPS, more storage capacity, and more flexible mapping options.

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One Response to iPhone agony

  1. frank says:

    Email certificates – how could I forget email certificates? And keychain. Gotta have some Keychain.

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