“Look at you. You've turned into one. Now, when I say, put it away now and pay attention to me, will you?” says my long suffering spouse.
The object of my distraction is my new iPhone. I have indeed turned into one of those Mac cultists who are stunned by the capacity of this device to amaze me. Actually, that it's by Apple is only notable in how seamlessly it fits into my new 100% Mac Life. Despite the hoopla and the annoyingly smug adverts it's still an amazing piece of engineering.
I feel like, finally, we're getting that cool Jetson cartoon stuff from the future.
What finally drew me in to drink the kool-aide was the online map capabilities. And that it seemed to have better features than any other phone I was seeing on the market. Walking around in a strange city, how great is it going to be to know how to get where I want to go, I thought, without pulling out the map in my back pocket and looking like a doofus tourist. Now I can stare at my phone and look like a cool doofus tourist.
Then I discovered how easy it was to sync my calendar and my address book. And how it gets my email (though it doesn't let me make mailboxes to sort it, grrrr!--unless I take the next step and use a .mac email as my primary account.). And that cool way of pinching and unpinching your fingers to make a web page change scale, and it's all so sharp and you can actually read stuff on this thing—who knew?
The one thing I may never use it for may be music. I have an iPod on the shelf that I haven't touched in months. It's just not my habit to listen that way. And anyway, Mac earbuds don't fit my small ear canal. I'm physically incapable of using them.
Hahahaha.
(Me, gloat? Never!)
... Though actually on a (slightly) more serious note: I remember when you got your iPod and felt it was totally counterintuitive to use - the exact opposite of how I felt about it (and how I assume many people feel about it, given its popularity as a device).
I find it interesting that you are having the opposite reaction to the iPhone. Is it that the iPhone really is a much better device (more transparent) or has using Mac computers conditioned you to "get" Apple products better?
Posted by: Felicity | February 11, 2008 at 04:10 PM
Actually I think Mac familiarity has conditioned me to the interface conventions, and the iPhone makes sense in a way it wouldn't have 6 months ago.
I just had an interesting experience watching my PC oriented computer guru (he's setting up a VPN tunnel for when I'm on the road) work on the Mac platform. He is annoyed at the way so much is hidden from view, and how much harder that makes his job. And I watched him have the same reaction I still get (because I still do this--it's the most basic of basic PC keyboard conventions) when I punch "Enter" (pardon me, "Return")" to start an application, and it doesn't work.
It's why Robin swears when she tries to use my computer. It really is a new language. She adores her Zune however.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | February 11, 2008 at 04:38 PM
Doug, what email program are you using on the Mac? If you're using Mail, you can create folders there and the iPhone will pick them up. If something else (maybe Entourage), then I don't think you can do what you want.
Posted by: Jeff Carlson | February 13, 2008 at 11:09 AM
I'm just using Apple Mail. You would think that's what the iPhone would do, duplicate my current folders, but that's not the case. But a thorough search on the web seemed to confirm that the only way to get that is through an .mac account.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | February 13, 2008 at 03:18 PM