10 Things I Hate About the iPhone
I took delivery of my iPhone in early September, the beginning of a month trying to personally saw me out of the office for long periods and only in contact with the world through my phone. It was a baptism of fire for me and for the device.
You've seen the ads, played with it in phone shops, looked over the shoulders of fellow travelers, from her friend ... great is not it? Or is it?
In this article I will address some of the things about the device that really bothered me. Just a little or a lot. And to keep the celestial karmic balance I have an accompanying article on some of the things about the iPhone that I love. There is enough material for two articles, I assure you!
So here we go, in reverse order, 10 things I hate about the iPhone!
10. Dirty fingers and the onscreen keyboard
IPhone's onscreen keyboard is surprisingly effective and not take long to adjust.
Just remember to wash their hands before doing so, however! This is not just aesthetic: For some reason I manage to leave a sticky mark on his right thumb that attract dust, crumbs, or whatever, right above the delete key. Usually, the crumb of land not only as e-mail ends on page 2 and start to erase the whole message character by character! This is not an exaggeration! It is, however, does not happen every day!
9. External Memory
I went to the end and took the 16 GB iPhone immediately. Do not be disappointed! I've been selective with my music collection and have more or less ripped all my CDs stored on the iPhone. That is 14 GB. That leaves little to the actual data.
For other devices this is usually not a storage problem and is generally non-volatile flash memory of some kind, the size of obeying Moore's law and double its size and speed of every 9 months or less and half into physical size every 2 years or more with a new "mini" or "micro" format. I have not run out of space in a mobile phone or smartphone, including an address book of over 500 names.
The problem with the iPhone is that there is no external memory slot and no way (short of running a welder) to extend the internal memory. A shame. The iPod Touch recently led to a 32 GB and I imagine that the 32GB iPhone is on its way. When that happens the legacy user base will not know what to do next.
8. Battery and Battery
The iPhone is sleek - just an inch thick and seductively smooth with rounded edges. There are a few buttons, no open door approach and break into his pocket and no memory slots filled with lint and dirt.
One reason for the sleek design is that the iPhone lacks a removable battery user. The battery can be changed by a service center, and during the two years I will keep this device I can expect to have to change the battery at least once, but I can not do it myself. Also the battery is surprisingly small - has to be to fit this neat little package.
The price you pay for this is the battery life. The device is now 6 weeks old and have been fully cycled about 5 times (which tend to keep the battery charging, but allow it to run flat at least once a week). If I'm not using the device constantly, testing of the device only twice an hour and answer calls using 3G and Push, you can rely on a full working day from 10 to 12 hours between charges. If you turn on WiFi it is reduced to 6 or 7 hours. If I use the GPS without WiFi, autonomy is reduced to 4 or 5 hours. If I wanted to be very frugal and last a total of 24 hours, I would need to turn both push email and 3G, and reduce the brightness to a minimum.
For some people this is a major problem. For me, as I usually either a PC and can trace a USB cable, or spend the day driving with the iPhone as an iPod connected and charged by the car, which is less of a constraint. But it remains a nuisance. I have not seen an iPhone equivalent of the Dell Latitude "Slice" - a battery of "backpack" for the iPhone that could more than double the range with minimal extra thick, but I guess someone, somewhere, is working on a aftermarket device.
7. Document Management
There is no equivalent of Windows Mobile File Manager or the Mac Finder on the iPhone so there's no way to manipulate file objects on the device.
It is true that the iPhone does a credible job of shielding the need for any manipulation at the file level: For example, the camera has a photo album which is also accessible by other applications that need access to the images ( For example, the application I use to write short articles iBlogger on this site). But there are still times when you need to manipulate objects of the individual files.
One is during installation and configuration to install root certificates for SSL so that the device can talk to an Exchange server: Unless you try the Apple Enterprise Deployment (which locks the device and prevents further configuration changes , so it is not always desirable), the only way to configure the device for Exchange are to establish a temporary IMAP account to download an attachment to be opened, or to create a web page with the root certificate and define the MIME types appropriate web server (I could not get this to work, of course!). How much easier would download the certificate on the device using Windows Explorer (connects to a PC via USB memory devices exposed as a storage device connected) and to open the certificate file from the memory on the iPhone .
The other key need for this functionality is the time to handle attachments in emails. No way to save the attachments or documents attached selectively to a new message or forward.
6. Navigating through e-mail folders
I tend to keep a large amount of emails in my mailbox. How to file once a year, usually toward the end of next year. I am also quite busy and work on a dozen consulting and business development projects at a time. This means two things: a lot of emails, and the need to organize email messages sensibly.
I organize my emails in the trees - consulting projects in separate folders and these folders organized by customer, separate all of the companies I am invested and my personal things. Probably 40 or 50 folders.
Windows Mobile devices that can organize this very clean, with the ability to expand or collapse parts of the tree of folders. The iPhone recognizes the tree, but it gives me no way to collapse the hierarchy. The inbox is always at the top: Spam is always on the bottom. Move junk mail incorrectly means go all the tree, which is a pain, even with the scroll gesture classy film. It clumbsy and unnecessary.
5. Filtering email content offline
The other side of this complexity is to manage the amount of my "online file" to take with me.
There is no need (or space) to take all of me: I'm so used to putting reasonable limits on the section of the mail folder to take with me. Windows Mobile allows me to have 1, 2 or 3 months-mail me to know if I take with me attachments, all e-mail or headers only. You can even select the folders to be taken or left behind. And do not worry if I go and I need to find a critical folder - you can change the parameters and the device will download what you need.
The iPhone is a little less flexible. Do not let me download attachments preventive: it only loads the header of the message and leave behind the attachment unless and until you select the email manually. I can define how many days of email messages that you download from 1 day to 1 month, but beyond that you can not specify a limit. I have a filter on the number of messages in a folder that displays from 25 to 200 messages, but the interaction between this parameter and the term is not entirely clear. If you are a light user this is a minor problem: For an e-mail user heavier, with a complex hieracrchy folder have less control and may have problems with memory management as a result.
4. Message management and exchange
The most serious problem with managing messages on the iPhone is really specific to Microsoft Exchange.
I am an expert user and I really like Microsoft Exchange. It's not just my mail server: Engine is a full cooperation with the group and resource scheduling, address book rich, "to do" lists, daily, stories of contact, etc. I do not use fax and voice mail, however, but that is only a matter of not having done the time to buy the interface box for the plant and turn function. So I'm up there with the other 60% of users mailbox Company that attach to Exchange.
When the iPhone first appeared in the history of exchange interaction was weak. You could do IMAP, but that is only a fraction of the story. No problem, it was not intended main audience of Apple either, but users of the company clearly wanted the iPhone, so Apple went to work.
To be fair to them, Apple has done a lot with the iPhone 3G to improve Exchange's history. Most security protocols exist, including the critical features as remote wipe and SSL, and supports Push. Enterprise deployment is also easy with a dedicated enterprise configuration tool that supports remote device configuration. Unfortunately Apple seems to have stopped half way through the API and a lot of functionality in Exchange overlooked. Some of this, as some data loss of wealth within calendar items and contact do not affect all users equally. Other elements are more critical, however.
The best way to describe this is the way forward emails with attachments. The API allows clients to Exchange to forward the message without the message content is stored locally: You can forward the header and the server is attached attachments and other rich content before sending it. The iPhone does not understand this: You first need to download all messages and attachments from the server for the iPhone, then, be added to the forwarding address and send the entire message back to the server. Move a message from a folder is the same and involves the same telecommunications overload. One annoyance for me, but no more than that: If you are not in a data packet and pay for the MB then you need to be careful with this.
[Another side effect of this is that server-side disclaimers and signatures are placed at the end of the forwarded message, instead of text into a new message.]
3. Read text messages and rich HTML
I love HTML emails. I know it's considered a cardinal sin in some quarters, but as someone once said, if the email was invented after http e-mail have done differently? HTML is ubiquitous, it's clean and it works.
And, of course, is the best mobile Internet device market, the iPhone should be a great HTML email reader, no?
Well, nearly so. That makes some things very well. It is the design, which makes graphics online, it even shows you some background. But what if the text is too wide? That will involve not it? No, it will not. That will shrink the text to fit. It'll make the text very, very small. And you can not cheat by turning the device, so that the display of "greater" and the larger the font, because the mail client is not compatible with the presentation of the landscape (why?).
Of course you can expand, because it is HTML, but then you have to scan the whole line, whizzing across the page until the end of the line, then zoomed back to get the start of the next line. My God!
2. Shifting tasks
The iPhone is a beautiful design, clean. And part of the look fresh, clean from the absence of bad hotkeys action.
The iPhone has only three buttons in the edges of the device: the on / off at the top, volume up / down lever on the side button and mute button only good for switching up the volume. That's it. The single button on the device is the "Home" button on the front below the screen.
The start button will stop any applications that are dedicated to and takes you to the home page of the device - very complete page of the icons that start each application on the device. Good work is nice, because you see a lot of it.
There is no way to go directly to your calendar or address book or e-mail. Apart from the "double click" action (configurable by the user to select favorite phone or iPod controls), the only way to start a task is to return to the home page and again in the desired application. Find an interesting direction in an email to view in Safari? Memorise it or write it, because unless the text has been created as a link that will return to the home page, launch Safari, enter the URL, you realize you have it bad, press the start button again, start e-mail, open the email, find the URL ... and start again.
Or you could select the URL and copy and paste into browser address bar ... except ...
1. How the hell do you cut and paste?
Once Xerox invented the mouse, the graphical user interface and WYSIWYG editing, it was for Apple to take this technology and make it affordable to the Lisa and Mac. And Microsoft to get everywhere, of course.
One of the joys of using a mouse or other pointing device, it gives you a third dimension as you move around the page. You're not limited by line or word or paragraph - you can jump directly to any part of the document. And you can select parts of a document by dragging over a word, line, paragraph, and do something with it. Like cutting. Or copy. Or drag. It's normal. That's what you do. You do not have three hours seminars and training courses on the use of a mouse (or stylus) to identify and select, click and drag. This is shown once the student understands and does.
However, the company that helped mice escape and go into the stores seem to have forgotten everything. Get out your iPhone. Write a sentence. Write another. Oops - that the second sentence would make more sense before the first. I'll cut and paste the phrase. Oh, no no! Because there is no cut and paste on the iPhone. Hear that? No? Well, I'll say it again! No cut and paste into the iPhone.
Google a bit and you'll find dozens of articles on the subject. You will find a surprise, indignation, horror. Even Apple will find mighty gurus wisely explains that it is not necessary to cut and paste, because the iPhone gives you more direct ways of using information such as the linking of URLs, or the detection of phone numbers, or uh, something.
The most likely explanation is that once Apple has decided to do away with the stylus, the gesture of the user interface was to use only two fingers and drag over the page to select the text. But the gesture had been made with excellent zoom emerging movement used in long documents and web pages.
There is a way, however. A very credible proof of concept demonstrations have been on the web that shows as a sharp point and drag with your finger (like the pen selection acting on Windows Mobile) would be viable and not in conflict with any other on-screen action iPhone.
Hopefully the concept of working demos and we cut and paste out in a future release of firmware. Meanwhile, at least twice a day I bet all iPhone users silently curse, shrug and stop writing this memo urgency, and that can not be bothered to write it all over again.
So that's it. Please do not get me wrong, I think the iPhone is a wonderful device, iconic and transformation. As with the Mac, which has changed our perception of what a mobile device should be. Mobile phones and smart phones will never be the same again.
It's just that by its brightness all that is, remains poor. The iPhone is the product of a prolific and brilliant group but very introspective engineers. Left free to innovate unconstrained by any notion of reality or practicality or what the user actually thinks he or she wants, Apple has created a concept device. I am grateful that they have, but I fear it will be to other companies, with a clearer understanding of what the user can use, in particular, what else is making the user to take the iPhone to the next step.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar