I managed to resist the iPhone for about seven months, but on Saturday, I succumbed. It wasn’t just iPhone envy, which I confess to have had since Steve Jobs first debuted it six months before its release. There were a number of reasons I finally bought an iPhone.
(1) Frustrations with the syncing between other smart phones (I’ve tried out two different ones in the past two years) and my iMac. I tried both the software that came with those smart phones and I tried special software that I purchased on my own. Nothing was perfect. Nothing synced them exactly. Getting photos on my phone to show up when someone called was a major pain.
(2) Trouble seeing the small screens/small type/small keyboard. I’m far sighted. I don’t wear my glasses all the time. Often times the phone would ring and I couldn’t see who was calling. And typing names and numbers was impossible without my glasses.
But the kicker was (3) I will be saving $45 a month with the AT&T iPhone plan over the plan I had with Verizon. And even though it will cost me less, I am getting 400 more minutes per month (unused minutes that rollover) and can send picture messages, too. I couldn’t send picture SMS with my old plan. Text only. [Correction: Photos go in email, not SMS.]
The main thing that kept me from moving before now was that I believed the AT&T service in my area wasn’t as good as Verizon. But two local friends who use AT&T convinced me that wasn’t true (and $45 per month less sure made it worth trying the new service). With that last barrier out of my way, I arrived at the AT&T Wireless store on Saturday morning and purchased my new iPhone.
Oh wow! I am so glad I made the switch (and my daughter with young eyes and a Verizon account is glad to get my last smart phone). Syncing is a cinch, which I knew it would be. After all, it is the same Apple OS and the calendar in iPhone matches iCal exactly. No dropped info.
Among the things I love: the last smart phone I used pushed all of my email to my phone (or I could use filters to only push select senders’ emails — a pain in the neck). I didn’t want all of my email pushed to my phone because I am in the office most days. I want the ability to check email when I’m out or when I’m traveling. The iPhone lets me do that. That is huge. I don’t want to have to delete 150 emails per day from my cell phone, emails that I’ve already read on my desktop. Who has time for that?
One plus to waiting seven months is that there have been some updates to the iPhone so probably some glitches have been worked out that I will never experience.
Two days isn’t a lot of time but as of right now, I’m giving this new tool a 9 out of 10. I’d give it a perfect score but I want to leave a little bit of room in case I find something missing that I wish it had.
Oh, it’s fun to get to have special ringtones again without jumping through hoops. When my daughters call, it plays “Butterfly Kisses.” When my best friends call, it plays “You’ve Got a Friend.” For everyone else (at this point), it plays “Rockin’ Robin.” So far only one person has called me, and I was in the kitchen fixing lunch and missed hearing the phone ring in my office. Sigh…
Robin (who became a MacHead in February 2006)
