I've had my iPhone for almost two weeks now and I absolutely love it. It's the best cell phone I've ever used and the sexiest gadget I've ever owned. But there are a few things about it that really, really suck:
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iTunes
iTunes is the only way to transfer music, photos, movies, or anything else to the phone, and the Windows port of iTunes sucks donkey balls. It's slow, ridiculously unstable, and completely ignores standard Windows UI practices. If it were possible to sync my iPhone by letting Chuck Norris kick me in the crotch, I'd choose the crotch kick over iTunes any day.
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No native IM app
There are a few good Ajax IM apps for the iPhone, but they're all severely limited by the fact that they can't provide audio alerts and only work when Safari is the active application. As soon as you switch to another app, lock the phone, or even look away from the screen, they become useless.
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There's no way to email full-resolution photos
The 2 megapixel camera on the iPhone is decent and certainly usable for casual photoblogging via Flickr, which is something I've been doing for years now. Unfortunately, when you email a photo from the iPhone, it sends a tiny 640x480 version of the photo rather than the 1600x1200 original. There is no way to change this.
This means that in order to get my full-res photos on Flickr, I have to dock the iPhone, copy the photos over to my computer, and upload them to Flickr manually. That's retarded. Even my ancient Nokia 6600 from a few years ago could email full-resolution photos to Flickr.
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The calendar won't sync with iCal feeds
Despite the iPhone's excellent Internet capabilities, the calendar app can't be synced with iCal feeds over the 'net. Just like everything else, the only way to sync the calendar is to dock the phone and fire up iTunes, and even then it will only sync directly with iCal, Entourage, or Outlook.
I primarily use Google Calendar and Windows Calendar (which comes with Vista and happily syncs with Google Calendar) to manage my schedule, but the iPhone won't sync with either of those, even though they're both capable of publishing iCal feeds. On Windows, it will only sync with Outlook, and I don't use Outlook. Lame.
The fact that the calendar app is otherwise very good makes this omission suck even more.
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No Ogg Vorbis support
I know, I know. iPods have never supported Ogg Vorbis, so why should the iPhone? Truth be told, I didn't buy the iPhone for its iPod functionality; I bought it for the phone and Internet functionality. But it's so damn good at playing music that I've stopped using my trusty old iRiver H120.
The only problem is that all the music I've purchased in the last two years is in Ogg Vorbis format, which the H120 supports very well. Now I have to convert all those Oggs to MP3s if I want to listen to them on my iPhone. I'm not sure what Apple has against Ogg, but I sure wish they'd get over it.
It may sound like I hate my iPhone, but I don't. I love it. I want to have like a million of its babies. The fact that I love it in spite of these major drawbacks should tell you something about how awesome it is.
Comments
Word.
I agree on pretty much everything except Ogg (only because I'm an MP3 kind of guy), especially IM and low-res photo email.
My guess would be that since I hear complaints about them most often, IM and full-res photo email are coming with the first software update. Perhaps even iCal feed syncing could make the cut. If not, I'm sure it's also fairly high on the complaint list.
There's an OS X app for accessing the iPhone like a disk called iPhoneDrive ($9.95). I haven't tried it, but I'm sure a Windows-a-like is either out there, or not far behind.
oggs
I cannot hear you preaching above the other sopranos.
I can only hope iPhones lure enough hardcore geeks and open-sourcers that the chorus of ogg-lovers grows and gets their attention.
Neutered iPhone
Yes, I totally agree. But the retardedness goes even further than that. In iTunes they force you to use the sync function. You can no longer just drag the songs and videos you want to it like you could with the original ipod. You also have to fight just to get a ringtone you want. I had to use a program called iTone just to get some good ringtones. They neutered the ability to mount the iphone as a hard drive, They also decided it would be a good idea to have both itunes and iphoto launch every time you connect it to the dock. There is no setting to stop this. I was also dissapointed to learn that if I add widgets or programs to the iphone I would void the warranty.
word
agree with all your points. my wife has windows+itunes+outlook+iphone and that is not as nice as my mac+itunes+ical+addressbook+iphone setup. great device. i really love it. should have listened to you in the beginning before i bought the ipod touch and just went with the iphone!
No title
How about the fact that to find contacts you have to go one by one. this is really bad when you dont know the last name or the first name. any cheap phone will have a search just by typing part of the name.
you can only sycn playlists and if you want to hear the music while the iphone is connected with itunues you can not play the musci from there.
you dont get alarms for birthdays, dont even know why you can get the birthday field in the contacts if it wont give you an alram