Skip the iAttitude and Wrinkled T-Shirt but Consider the iPhone

For years my most useful gadget was a Palm Pilot. I still have a Pilot and it still works, but modern electronics are, sadly, consumables and inevitably my old Pilot will fail. I investigated what I should buy next and was unimpressed, so I waited. Then my cell phone died. I went all the way to the deep end of the pool and got an iPhone, not the first one, the second one. Not the new plastic back 3G enabled one, either. Sheesh, Apple moves so fast updating hardware that anything you own over a year old is usually the old version.

Like my first Pilot, the iPhone was too expensive. And like my Pilot, it was a paradigm shift and fundamentally changed the way I get stuff done. As a business customer, I understand why people complain about their bill.

It runs OSX, which is a recent flavor of Apple's tweak of Unix, ironically an operating system first compiled by the folks at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1969. In a smart move, AT&T offers business customers flat rate data plans, so I know exactly what my data fee will be no matter how much data I move. If I had to pay by the kilobyte, my phone bill would resemble a car loan. No one should get a pay as you go data plan for an iPhone.

The interface is all about touch, which is a challenge because I am anything but graceful. It turned out the iPhone does what it does quite well, even for a clumsy, fat fingered old man. It also refuses to do anything it would not do well. With few exceptions, I have no problem with that. Doing what you do well and not trying to be all things to all people is something I respect in both people and in gadgets.

It's an always-on 135 gram flash drive computer with a cell phone, an Internet connection everywhere AT&T has one, a wi-fi connection wherever you can find one, music and small screen video, e-mail client and Internet browser, low resolution camera, document viewer, and Google maps. It isn't a laptop. It's not suitable for composing long e-mail or documents. It's just too small.

My eldest son thinks it's stupid. The nicest name he calls it is the iEuphemism. Why would you want to surf the Internet something so small? Just because you can? Actually, yes. Because I can use it for business purposes in situations where I was previously incapable of updating schedules, making reservations, or checking e-mail. It can rotate the screen and zoom impressively, so screen size is not a limitation when you get the hang of it.

The iPhone runs Java but not Flash. Java is efficient. I am writing this in OpenOffice, an open source business productivity suite that runs in Java. Across the table from me as I write this is my 12 year old son marching around a virtual world on the Internet blowing up stuff up in Flash. Flash gobbles up cycles in dual core multi-gigahertz CPUs, so even if it did run on the iPhone, it would probably quickly drain the battery. I don't need giant virtual robots to run my business.

Taking the following steps doubled by iPhone battery life. It has six features that run in the background that drain the battery. Turn them all off for a day, then turn back on one or two features you can't live without and enable the others only when you need them. Here's the list: automatically adjust screen brightness, automatically download e-mail, wi-fi, ask to join wi-fi networks, bluetooth, and spellcheck. Turn your screen brightness down as low as you can comfortably view it indoors and turn it up manually as needed. Monitor the strength of your cell connection because the battery drains more rapidly when there's a weak connection. When you go into in a situation where you don't intend to answer the phone, like a meeting, switch into airplane mode, then switch back out later.

Apple's hands free earbuds are flimsy and the microphone is terrible. It's a first class phone packaged with a junk accessory. The least expensive high quality replacement is a simple three foot cable manufactured by Shure that turns standard earbuds into handsfree gear. It looks stupid when you have the other earbud shoved in your pocket but if looking slick is important to you when you're hands free, you'll have to drop over $100 for a decent bluetooth earpiece. Even the good bluetooth earpieces break easily according to users and let's face it, that flashing thing on the side of your head is the fashion equivalent of a pocket protector. It's functional, but cool it ain't.

You can't buy my iPhone now, you have to buy the new one. Unless you live in one of the few urban areas currently with 3G networks, that's basically a feature you may never use and you'll still be using Edge to surf the Internet, which has been for me adequate for basic surfing and e-mail.

Internet and e-mail security is entirely based on the closed operating system, which is Apple's "trust us" policy. It is the most secure Internet device I have. As far as I know. But security isn't privacy. That isn't Apple's fault. Cellular networks, text messaging, e-mail, and Internet browsing has never enjoyed enough privacy in my opinion.

Unless you have money to burn I couldn't justify buying an iPhone as a toy. I think it does make sense for business. When you live out of a carry-on bag, one gizmo that combines a phone, voicemail, CD and DVD player, books, magazines, calendar, address book, maps, directions, e-mail, and web browser into 135 grams is pretty slick.

If you're into time wasters, you can tap on YouTube. All I have to do to get my 16 year old son to clear out of a room is tap my bookmark to the video Peanut Butter Jelly Time and crank the volume. So it can be used to torture a teenager, too. Which almost justifies the purchase in itself.