iCaved!

I will hang my head in shame as I have caved and surrendered to the marketing machine that is Apple. They may only have 6 or 7 products, but damn they do them well! It’s kind of like women’s college volleyball – there are only 6 of them on the court, but all six of them look good in those things that pass as shorts! Hmmm, now that we are all a little uncomfortable let’s carry on. As of yesterday, I am a proud, card-carrying member of the iGeek club that insists on putting a lower case “i” in front of everything, having purchased a 16GB iPhone 3G as a replacement for my Blackberry Curve.

You may remember that not too long ago I was praising the Blackberry, thinking that it was the one I wanted back in August. I told myself that it was the email functionality that made it the one for me and work. I think I also told myself that I would not get an iPhone just to be that person with an iPhone because everyone else has one, but now I see why they do. Having the BB Curve for the past two months, I can say that it is a nice phone, but just not right for me. While the email pushing is good, the messages themselves are hard to read due to the small screen and poor formatting. And if I didn’t like the email interface then what was the point of having the Blackberry? The web browser was excruciating to look at, and that was after you brewed a cup of tea waiting for it to load in the first place – an obvious disadvantage of the Curve being an Edge device and not 3G. Add to the email and browsing woes the fact that there are few apps that I found useful and we have a trifecta of non-brilliantness that made it sub-par from my viewpoint. Do I get a cheaper rate for my wireless service then? You would think so, but nope! For the same price I can have the iPhone with the exact same plan. Cue the iPhone…

I am a gadgets guy and so the iPhone is aimed directly at me, and I took one right in the center of the forehead. The device is a beauty, with its perfect size and weight, jaw-dropping screen and intuitive interface. You might as well have a mini-computer in your hand – oh wait, you do! What about the email though? Well, the iPhone can now handle Microsoft Exchange connections and so all is good for most of the emailing I will need for work, and Gmail is built in for my personal needs. No, not those kind of needs! A lot of people go with a Blackberry because of the physical keyboard, citing that it is too difficult with the touchscreen to type. I find the opposite though – I can type faster with the iPhone, and with the auto-correction feature I don’t have to be 100% precise either.

And then there are the apps, and I mean aaaaapps! There are so many to choose from that it can be a little confusing and overwhelming at first. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening logged into the App Store, finding. installing and testing many applications – all of the “free” variety. This is where the iPhone stands above the rest of the crowd and it is why I knew I would love the phone. I haven’t tried any games yet, but here are a few of the applications that I have grabbed and am enjoying already:

• Facebook for iPhone – ummm, pretty self explanatory
• TweetDeck – awesome free Twitter app
• Score Mobile – for all my sports scores on the go
• Time Mobile – articles from Time magazine to read while waiting somewhere
• Run Keeper – everything my Garmin Forerunner does (plus mapping, minus heart rate)
• WeatherEye – weather info and radar whenever you need it
• Lose It – keep track of food and calories in a day (not sure about this one yet)
• Shazam – will listen to a song playing (ie on radio) and give title, artist and info about it

All this to say that I am a convert. I didn’t believe all the hype around the iPhone until I actually got to sit down with one for a while. It is a fantastic piece of gadgetry and would urge anyone thinking of grabbing a Blackberry to see if the iPhone will do what you want. Maybe I had the wrong Blackberry myself – perhaps a Bold would have given me a different impression. Either way, I am happy I made the switch.

Tags: blackberry curve, iPhone, iPhone apps, womens volleyball