I Bought An iPhone

I bought an iPhone.

I'm slowly getting over my guilt at giving Apple my money and joining a rather large mass of affluent sheep. But after four versions of the OS they've addressed many of the complaints I had. And at this time it's the phone that does what I want without breaking my bank.

I looked around and AT&T just wasn't carrying hardly any of the windows mobile phones (at this time, leaving AT&T isn't an option). I didn't want to pay twice as much for an older model phone just so I could keep using "Block Recognizer." I even had to do a registry hack to enable it on my last phone so I could see the writing on the wall; and it wasn't written in Graffiti.

Looking around at the Android phones and the iPhones, I really wanted to like the Android phones better. But after trying both out I found the UI on the iPhone to be better. Maybe by the time this phone is ready to be replaced I'll like the Android interface better.

So I made the plunge and got me an iPhone 3gs (8gb). It was only $99 and I'm getting used to the on screen keyboard. I loaded an app that lets me type into a word doc (Quick office) and Stanza and Kindle for ebook reading. I've loaded a few games like pong and tetris and the iPhone version of "I love katamari" but mostly I've been trying to get used to the keyboard for writing on the go.

I've been using Graffiti in one form or another (Palm VII, HP iPaq, Viewsonic CE device and two windows mobile phones) since 2000 and I've gotten very good at it. Long ago I figured out that you can't really use Graffiti in a moving vehicle. But I've been pleasently surprised at how easy it is to type on a moving bus (I'm actually writing all of this on the iPhone on a moving bus).

The other big surprise is how good the camera on the iPhone is. It's not that it has any better resolution but it has much better light gathering. Many of the photos I took with my Windows mobile phone were just dark. I was able to get a couple of good videos with Windows mobile. It will be interesting to see how the iPhone video looks.

I've also been fairly impressed with the app store and the ability to load apps easily directly from a wifi connection -- and how easy it is to connect to a wifi network.

I hope Windows gets its act together and Android continues to improve but for now I'll hang out in the antechamber of the temple of Steve Jobs. I'm just going to drink a little cool-aid and then leave. I promise.