Right now I am sleep deprived and behind in 3 days of my life. Why? I received an iPhone in the mail. I have been up late night and ignoring all calls except for the ones I make testing new applications and features of my new phone. My imagination is tethered to this device, exploring all possibilities and trying out hundreds of apps, in and out of the app store. I just now recovered and came up for air.
My first impression is that they finally made a phone for me, and I am not talking mobile, I am talking phone since the old black and white Ma Bell rotodialers from the 50’s; this is the first phone that I have enjoyed using. All others were just a pain in my rear and pocket side.
But despite all the great features and functions and the endless numbers of pinball and poker games, I have come to realize one thing: I’ve been de-sized.
De-sized in the computing sense, since I had expected the iPhone to be a mini-laptop, capable of doing everything my MacbookPro can do, only on a smaller screen. This is the result of a year of continuous hype in every form of media, from the Wall Street Journal to my own Junk box that is filled with adverts for iPhone-related accessories.
I expected so much more.
At a minimum, I expected that I would be able to use Bluetooth Elite (BTE) as I have been doing on my Nokia for years. For those that don’t know, Bluetooth Elite software is for computer users who hate phones and are tethered to a laptop. With BTE, you plug your phone into your computer and forget you even own the phone, making and taking all calls through your iMac microphone, and using the enter key to pick up all calls. My computer has been my call center for years now, and I have so so happy not handling a phone, to say, send an SMS or to look up a number.
But all that changed 3 days ago, as the iPhone does not support the needed Bluetooth connections, and I have gone back to an era defined before I was born by Ma Bell herself.
While researching why I had to go backward in time, I discovered that Apple has not opened up the Bluetooth or USB APIs for developers, preventing them from creating such cool apps like BTE, and forcing them to use clunky WiFi pairings for all the connections. This lack of sharing on Apple's part is actually putting the BTE developer out of business, as no one is buying anything but an iPhone these days, despite what the media is telling you. Apple has become a giant tyrant in this regard, and I feel smaller.
Another example of a recent de-sizing happened during my workday today, where I took my laptop and iPhone to my classroom to do a 4-½ hour presentation using the new $.99 Apple Remote app. The Apple Remote turns your Keynote slides automatically, replacing the little white remote that comes with your Macbook.
Only about 3-½ hours into my lecture, Apple Remote stopped working – the battery on the iPhone had gone flat. So I had to resort to awkward walks back and forth to the computer just to flip more slides. De-sized and de-limited was I in the light of the classroom projector.
Further smaller-ized, I am typing this blog post, if you can call it typing, in the Documents-To-Go Word window on my phone. I had always dreamed of a pocket sized writing device, and thought I had one until I actually tried creating a Word file on an iPhone. This will be the last one that I will ever write, until massive improvements are made to the iPhone keyboard. That's just insane!
So there you have it, my first unflattering thoughts on one of the most remarkable devices of our time. I am sure they must have said similar things about Alexander Graham Bell’s invention back in the day.
