Life with an Apple iPhone: Week 4

 

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Posted on 20 Jul 2007 at 22:18

Ian Wrigley rushed out and bought an Apple iPhone on the opening weekend. Over the next few weeks, he'll be sharing the reality of life with Apple's swish new phone.

In this installment, he discusses its so-called limitations and finds two great iPhone apps. Ian is a contributing editor to PC Pro, writing the Open Source column in our Real World Computing section.

First off, I'm happy to report that the protective shield I fitted last week is still on, still working, and still protecting the screen from further scratches.

There were some helpful suggestions in the comments from last week's article, including a couple of people asking whether I'd tried to polish the scratches out - in one case, suggesting using toothpaste.

The answer, to be honest, is no - after having scratched the thing already, I was loathe to do anything that could worsen its condition. And now that the plastic is in place, I don't want to have to unstick it to try anything else. But thanks for the suggestions!

Someone else asked whether there's anything missing from the phone that previous phones I've used. For me, the answer is no - but I know that some people consider it to be missing significant features. Because I can (sadly) no longer consider myself "the yoof of today", I don't text-message that much; the iPhone's text-messaging interface is gorgeous, and looks just like an iChat conversation - so different text message conversations with different people can easily be followed.

But apparently the inability to send the same message to more than one person at once is upsetting some people (and the inability to copy and paste text exacerbates that, as you have to re-type everything to send to a second recipient).

Talking of iChat, there's no built-in IM client. Again, no big deal for me, but for some people it's a huge problem.

Software updates

The upside, though, is that the iPhone is very much controlled by updateable software. The folks at Apple aren't stupid, and I'm sure they're listening to comments from users, so I'd be amazed if things like this aren't addressed in the near future with a software update - something I've never experienced on any previous mobile phone.

And before I finish this week, I must just mention two great pieces of software written for the iPhone. The first is iUI, by Joe Hewitt. It's a complete template for creating websites that mimic the iPhone's interface, and is already saving many developers all sorts of pain and time. Thanks, Joe!

And the second (and I realize that many - perhaps most - readers in the UK won't care in the least about it) is Pickleview , which is a real-time display of baseball games, including its own built-in chat. It's a beautiful little web-based application, and proof that even without access to the iPhone's native API, a little creativity and some crafty JavaScript can work wonders.

Click here to read part 3 of Life with an iPhone