iPhone v1.0 GRIPELIST
after i had opened it, synched it and spent about a minute with it, i made a pronouncement: “this is the best piece of technology i have ever owned,” and then i braced myself for laughter from my girlfriend and my buddy who’d spent the previous night in line with me. but they know i’m given to such pronouncements, so they for the most part ignored it. and my love for the iPhone grows deeper with each swipe and tap. but by its second day in my hand, i had begun to compile a little list of its pecadilloes, using the Notes app (which, itself, makes an appearance on my list). this is NOT a list of missing features (eg, GPS, video capture, flash, etc) which have already appeared on everyone else’s list. i have respect for the 1.0 nature of this thing, and that features must be rolled out in controlled doses, for the health of the product’s lifecycle and the acclimation of the user base at large. having preambled, here are some of my gripes:
1) let’s start with the Notes app, because here is where the list began: i can forgive the notepad metaphor. it’s kind of cute and it looks sort of neat when the pages are turned. however — i don’t need to see my thoughts represented by a ridiculous approximation of humanized handwriting - Marker Felt Thin, like someone else out there said, might as well be Comic Sans. i feel like the iPhone, in transcribing my ideas into magic marker, is belittling my mental acuity. i can at least think in Arial bold, if anything.
1a) no synching of Notes. sure i can email them. but that takes them out of their context, and i don’t like that.
2) this one’s out there already, but the ringtones? wow, awful. again, as a firm believer in ‘everything for a reason,’ i can only assume that Apple hopes, by offering us such lame defaults, to force us into the market for their deluxe iTunes-based offerings. if any ONE of the default ringtones were “good enough,” adoption of the ringtone-for-purchase model would be cut in half.
3) the predictive text is pretty damn good. still, i am used to being offered MULTIPLE options for T9’s predictions, not just what the dictionary presumes is the BEST option. it would be nice to be able to cycle to the next pop-up hinted word in the list instead of having the option of only accepting or ignoring the one suggested.
4) this one is quick - i want, compulsively, to play with my iPhone. and this makes me obnoxious to others, especially others without iPhones. therefore, the iPhone makes me obnoxious (yeah, the iPhone and other things).
5) no Preferences within applications. this model doesn’t really make sense to me - all Prefs are accessed through the one Settings area. does this mean that for any new app that’s introduced to the phone, the Settings will have to be expanded to include that app’s Prefs? seems kind of cumbersome for maintenance.
6) no voice recorder. i used this function constantly on my old phone. whether it be an idea for a song, or a spoken idea i couldn’t type out while driving, this was indispensible. Apple has always seemed media creation-centric, not just consumption-centric. and by excluding voice and video recording, they are positioning the iPhone as a media consumption device. which is fine, but maybe uncharacteristic. but not really, since it is a damn iPod.
7) taking a photo with the camera and adding it to a contact is really fluid - it is one of the processes i like to show off to people, but the one step that could use a little help is the crop/scaling. the iPhone tells me only that this is what my photo will look like when someone calls, but then it crops differently for the thumbnail. so when i take pictures and add them as contact photos, i usually just end up guessing where the person’s head would be cropped off and i reposition the image down accordingly. no markers to guide, which is strange.
8) the metaphors are mixed with the placement of Mail in the bottom of the Home screen, and SMS in the top. i know where to find them now, but it is counter-intuitive why they are separated. (or why Safari, iPod, and Phone are singled out as well.)
9) the lack of Copy/Paste functionality is criminal. now, it’s probably that Apple feared the users would become overloaded with gestures to learn, but (as has been suggested in other forums) the magnifying glass would aid in this function. i think that the slickest technique for Copy/Paste would be the following:
- tap and hold to place the magnifying glass cursor at the first desired character, then tap with a second finger, anywhere on the screen (or the thumb if the first finger is at an edge that wouldn’t permit the middle finger — this would trigger “selection mode”
- lift up and tap and hold to place the magnifying glass cursor at the second point (either before or after the first, just as in desktop-based selection) and trigger the end of “selection mode” with another second-finger tap
- this would trigger a pop-up menu of two options: Copy or Clear
- navigate the cursor to another insertion point, use the second finger to tap and hold, which triggers a pop-up of the last few selections copied to the clipboard
- select on item from the clipboard by tapping it and this will Paste the selection into place
10) EXTREME NITPICK HERE: the Home button is an elegant utility, but i wish it didn’t feel so chinsy and clicky - for an elegant and simple button, it sure has a huge audible and tactile footprint.
11) i LOVE the feature that allows you in the Contacts list to drag the scroll bar (as it were) to the desired spot in the alphabet, much like in any desktop-based browser or finder window. Apple should implement this in all windows of the iPhone, rather than making me endlessly swipe swipe swipe in the direction i want to scroll. i can see why they left this out initially - the reverse of directionality is confusing, which is why plug-ins like SmartScroll allow you to reverse the direction of your swipes to match the use of the scroll bar
12) the shutter graphic on the camera. boo. useless (as is the shutter sound effect, Pissing People Off Since 2002!!!).
13) regarding earbuds and phone calls: i claimed (to my enthralled self) a couple of years ago that one of the biggest hidden revolutions of the inevitable iPhone would be in its taking the typically mono telephone conversation to binaural (that is, in both ears, by the same medium as our music - earbuds). therefore, a more immersive experience, preparing us for the day that our telephonic conversations are crystal clear (an eventuality for which we need to be prepared). so this has definitely come to fruition in the iPhone. but the fact that unless my iPhone is in Silent mode, if i get a call, the ringer sounds both in my earbuds and in the speaker - it doesn’t really bother me, it’s just something to watch out for. it’s actually a feature. now i like it.
14) i quickly found myself propagating the Favorite contacts list. then i found myself over-propagating it. and a long shortlist is no shortlist at all - it’s just a confusion of little black letters on a white background. it would be Awesome if my Favorite contacts had their thumbnail images next to them. i already know that my girlfriend’s picture is predominantly green, because she was sitting on the grass with our dog when i took it.
15) when i delete a Note, i get a shrinking/minimize special effect to take it to the trashcan. when i delete an email, same thing. how about some consistency and use the effect in the Safari tabs when i use the little red X to close a tab?
16) as far as i know, there is no way to mass delete emails. and spam was put on this planet for this specific reason - the aesthetic satisfaction of mass deleting email. let’s work on that, Apple!
17) most phones with dedicated keyboards put this (annoying) feature to use by allowing entry of text to filter lists (of contacts and such). in my iPhone’s contacts and bookmarks and such, i would love to have a little keyboard icon to pop-up and allow me to enter the first letters of the name or item i’m searching for. that would be great. thanks.
i’m sure there are more to come, but this is a substantial list. you may agree with some, you may agree with none, you may agree with all. welcome to Costco, i love you.
