In the Parlance of Our Times

I've had my iPhone for a week now, but haven't had a lot of time to practice typing. What better way to practice, I thought, than to write up my impressions of the phone using the phone?

So what do I think after a week? I love this thing! It's the best toy I've had in years! And that really gets to the heart of it - this is a toy for consumers, not a business tool. A lot of complaints I see online and in print about the iPhone come down to the fact that it's not a Blackberry with an iPod built in. But it is a great iPod, with amazing video, and it's a cool mobile Internet device, and it also makes phone calls. In that order.

Next time I make a short trip I'll be leaving the laptop home. With the iPhone I can do most of what I use the laptop for when traveling - like checking email, watching videos, browsing the web. Two things it can't do - yet - will keep me lugging the laptop on longer trips for now: video chats and the NYTimes crossword (which requires java).

But it's not all about what the iPhone does and doesn't do, rather it's about how it does what it does. As with other Apple products, a great deal of thought has gone into the user interface. The predictive typing is amazing. I'd estimate that I've typed about ten percent of this entry without error, yet the built in intelligence has correctly guessed what I actually meant to type at least ninety percent of the time. So either it's pretty smart or I'm pretty predictable!