I am going to lay my cards on the table up front. I love my iPhone. Like many other happy iPhone owners, my iPhone continues to surprise me on a regular basis at how well it meets so many of my needs (and even some wants). I am a Mac user so almost every other smartphone or pda that I have ever owned has needed some third party help to lasso my calendar, address book, and other personal information together across all my digital platforms. I love my Macs but syncing information has been a tough routine to maintain. My Blackberry was perhaps the best device I had prior to the iPhone. However, even after investing in some quality software from Markspace (not cheap) I still had issues and on occasion burned hours trying to make syncing and data consistency work. Enter the iPhone. When Apple released the iPhone (first generation) in late June of 2007, I resisted the lure to succumb to the siren call of the device. I was content with my family mobile phone plan with T-Mobile – it was affordable, their support was superb, and staying with them was the path of least resistance. When Apple release the 3G iPhone in July of 2008, the pull was even stronger, but this time I already had an iPod Touch and I upgraded it to the 2.0 software thinking that would appease my desire to have an iPhone. Finally the realization that simplifying access to my information could finally be achieved with an all-in-one device like the iPhone caused me to make the leap — that and a dead Blackberry. I realized that T-Mobile would not be getting either the Blackberry Storm or Bold any time soon and that now was as good a time as any to make the break and jump to AT&T and a new iPhone. The iPhone continues to help make my life easier with its many features:
- Mail, Contacts, Calendar synchronization via MobileMe – works perfectly for me – enough said
- Excellent MS Exchange support – Now I can natively access my work email and calendar – perfect!
- The iPhone app store – yeah I know, lots of tip calculators and flashlights, but some excellent apps like SplashID, Pandora, MLB At Bat, NetNewsWire, Datacase, and a bunch more.
- Apples Remote app – the solution I have been waiting for to tie my Airtunes locations together from anywhere in the house
- IMAP email integration with my various email accounts. This was the impetous I needed to changeover from Pop3 to IMAP and I love it. I struggled with some of the setup but it keeps getting better and now I feel like I have the ability to roam between computers and my iPhone and manage all of my email accounts successfully.
- The Twitterific and Facebook apps are outstanding. I never used Facebook much before but with the iPhone, I use it quite often now.
I could go on but to wrap up this post, I am a big proponent of the iPhone. My wife keeps using my iPhone and would really like to make the switch sometime soon when her contact with T-Mobile is done. In the meantime, she will be training on an iPod Touch.