I can't bloody stand iphones.
My biggest gripe with them is when people give them to you to and expect you to know how to use it, firstly you have to rest it gently on its back in the palm of your hand 'cos the whole of the front is a touch screen, obviously making sure you don't drop it in the process due to the fact it costs about three hundred and ninety quid.
Then there's a bewildering array of coloured icons to fathom but absolutely NO buttons, and you have bugger all idea not only WHERE to press, but also HOW - you gently touch what you think might be the right icon, and invariably it doesn't respond. Do you have to press it harder? Or what?
But then they take it back off you tutting and it turns out you actually have to slide your finger across it, or do some advanced combination like put both your finger and thumb in the middle of it and move them apart. ::-) ::-) Well, if only I'd have known that. ::-)
Then there's the apps: my issue with iPhone apps is that they make themselves out to be some kind of new technology when they in fact aren't at all.
Most are just a java shell wrapping a browser, with a custom icon.
They are either simple accessors of content on the internet, i.e. basically just an internet browser configured to load a particular site, a feature that a fairly advanced smartphone should have anyway - i.e. not unique to iPhone, or a novelty demonstration of some sensor that the iPhone has got inside it.
These sensors have probably only been included purely to fend off the charge that apps are simple accessors of content on the internet.
It's a bit like 'podcasts', they make out to be some kind of new technology, some advanced protocol - but they're in fact not, all they are is a downloadable mp3. Any fool can bung an mp3 on a website and call it a 'podcast'.
For me, the four reasons I might want a smartphone are: mp3 player, camera, sat nav, and obviously, phone. BUt it's worse at each one than a device dedicated for that purpose. The problem them is they are jack of all trades, master of none.
my mate's got an iPhone and travelling anywhere with him can be infuriating 'cos he tries to use its google maps to navigate us, which admittedly when it works is quite good, as it uses GPS to display a dot representing where you are on a google map, but it relies on a connection to the internet, which to me is a bit unreliable, but he doesn't accept that that renders it unusable as a navigation tool.
For instance,
me: "look it's dropped its connection again, hasn't it? why don't we just use my garmin?"
him: "no it'll be alright soon, we'll be moving into an HSDPA [or whatever] area in a minute, it'll pick up" ::-) ::-)
If you try to use it as an mp3 player, it will run out of batteries within about an hour.
It's camera is pretty piss poor, as well.
Both these pictures were taken out doors on sunny days.
This was taken with an iPhone - grainy and not that well focused
This was taken with a proper camera - good colour definition, reasonably well focused and looks nice.
(I say 'proper' camera, probably not by most of your standards, only a compact and a budget compact at that, but it's a much better picture.)
So why WOULD you have an iPhone? It's not like cameras and mp3 players are massive so it can't be the ease of carrying them around - and a sat nav is in your car anyway. I'm convinced that it's a mixture of fashion, and the desire to experience the novelty of touch-screen technology.
