In which I discuss and comment upon the new toy.

Really? You paid $400, and you still need to be told this?

The manual includes this: “Do not drop, disassemble, open, crush, bend, deform, puncture, shred, microwave, incinerate, paint, or insert foreign objects into iPhone.”

Finally

The iPhone totally wins on the “speaker, phone, or earbud?” interface mechanism. With the RAZR, I was never sure what would happen if I took a call with Bluetooth on and my headset in range. With the Treo, it was somewhat more predictable, but still a pain to switch during a call. With the 8525, it was back to nightmare mode. The iPhone’s “in a call” menu has a button clearly marked “Output” the brings up a three-item menu. Choose what you want. End of story. WIN.

Free Stuff!

My first iPod, well before the craze took over, was the original 5 gig model with a physical scroll wheel. It came with the a wall-wart, the Firewire charging cable, a dock, and headphones. In the years since, Apple’s trimmed the kit down to just a sync cable and some earbuds, which kind of sucks if you’d prefer to charge by plugging into the wall. The iPhone, though, comes with the whole kit again, which is nice. It means we also now have enough kit that we keep an iPod charging setup in the living room, for Erin’s Nano, plus one at my desk for the iPhone during the day, plus the one that never leaves my briefcase for use when I travel. No forgotten chargers FTW!

MORE free stuff!

I just discovered a polishing/buffing cloth in the box. Nice.

In which we expose our Aaron Sorkin geekery

The iPhone means we can always carry “Shibboleth” with us, which keeps Mrs Heathen happy. “Once More With Feeling,” too, once we get ahold of something to rip it with.

Native Sync Wins

A decade ago, when the first Pilots emerged and before Outlook took over, Palm quickly established itself as the de facto desktop PIM *because* using it was part of what made the Palm so successful. The effortless sync meant you never thought anything of adding an event or address on one device or the other, because you knew the data would flow without any worries about lost or duplicated entries or whatever. It’s great that we can now sync any phone with any desktop, nearly, but the tight coupling of the iPhone and Apple’s native calendar and address book tools means my sync troubleshooting days are over.

The Triumphant Return of HeathenPix

As with the halcyon bygone days of the Treo, the iPhone makes it simple to take quickie phone shots and email ’em to Flickr. Enjoy.