The following is a guest post by Vanessa’s conscience.

Hi world, you usually don’t to hear from me, but after being seen at a conference with my new phone, there is a need to set the record straight. In the past I may have said some bad things about the iPhone calling it the “shiny iPhone of uselessness” and labeled it “inferior to my AT&T smartphone“, but … you know … times change … and sometimes a girl can change her mind. Sure the iPhone has its limitations, like no keyboard, but the browsing is unmatched. What good is a keyboard on phone with sub standard display? If you’re thinking about it … it’s OK … come over to the iPhone side we’ll get thru this together …

Ahem. Hey all. It’s Vanessa, taking back my blog. It may in fact be true that more than one person came up to me at SES and said they noticed I had an iPhone. It’s possible someone brought up last year’s SES San Jose when I was photographed in an anti-iPhone competition. And it’s also possible that I talked Michael Gray down from the iPhone ledge last year in a long rant about form vs. function and substance vs. flash. (It’s possible that someone took over my blog to let everyone know the iPhone truth.)

Convergence. And Urbanspoon
I think what finally sold me was the promise of convergence. And the Urban Spoon app. And the addition of 3G.

Pretty doesn’t matter much if it doesn’t work
The iPhone isn’t perfect. It crashes a lot (although less often than my Windows Mobile phone). I downloaded the update, so hopefully that will get better. I’m considering bringing my phone back to an Apple store actually to see if I can swap it for another one, in case mine is extra wonky. It seems to drop calls and freeze far more often than the iPhones of other people I talk to. 5 dropped calls in 15 minutes with full signal strength is a bit much, right?

And almost as irritating are the times when I’m using Google maps when completely lost only to have the maps application crash. Because then I’m just more lost. The other day, I had the added frustration of being lost, being on the phone trying to get directions, and using Google maps, only to have the call drop over and over and the maps app crash again and again. Perhaps Apple is just telling me not to travel.

Application ecosystem
But the iPhone also has a lot to like. It’s easy to install applications, which means there may be some mass adoption, so app developers make money, which could spark the ecosystem and cause more apps to be developed.

I think Apple could be hindering app development by being such a black box though. If too many apps get pulled without explanation, then developers may not want to risk spending resources creating applications they aren’t sure will stay up. Will developers abandon the iPhone platform for Google’s Android once it’s available since Android doesn’t seem to have that risk? Only if the Android phone and supported apps get similar adoption as the iPhone. And I’m just not so sure about that.

The best apps to try, according to Twitter
Speaking of iPhone apps, I twittered the other day asking about people’s favorites. Here are the winners of that very unscientific poll.

• The aformentioned Urban Spoon app: The basic idea is that you shake the phone and the wheels spin and the phone tells you where to eat. Which is cool enough, because how much of our lives are spent trying to figure that out. But you can also lock down one or two of the three options (neighborhood, food type, or price) for more granular choices, and from there, you can get to a restaurant profile that tells you the overall rating, see reviews (both critics and users) and get location and contact information. Just as cool is the “near me” feature, which doesn’t include spinning wheels, but when you’re walking down the street or staying in a hotel with non-existent room service, and you’re really hungry, you can just choose “near me” and it will list what’s available based on your GPS location. Which is way better than wandering aimlessly.
• Facebook: @detlev said he liked Facebook on the iPhone better than in a regular browser. I agree — it’s much more streamlined and not so cluttered.
• Twitter apps: Several people mentioned different Twitter apps they like. I’ve been using Twinkle, but lately I’ve realized it doesn’t show me the latest updates. I’ll get one person’s latest, and then nothing for days. @stewtopia mentioned Twitteriffic, so I might try that next.
• @jasoncrawford suggested Whrrl, which I’m going to check out.
• @nathanbuggia said he likes Dobot Todos, which I had never heard of, and who could use a bit of search strategy help. He’s also a fan of the NY Times app, and the Labyrinth game.
• jheitzeb suggested the White Pages app, which I have used a few times and find to be very slick.
• @natala likes Brain Challenge, although sadly, it crashes my phone, so I can’t try it out.
• @kristyann likes Shazam, which tells you what music you’re listening to. Several people were raving about Shazam at SES San Jose, so I downloaded it to see what I was missing. I like the idea of making a list of songs to buy on iTunes later. Although shouldn’t you be able to buy them at the time? Since you are on the iPhone already after all.
• @andruedwards suggested OmniFocus, but as it’s not free, I need to figure out exactly what it gets me over free organizational software before I take the plunge. I do need better task management, so maybe this is what I need.
• teampoop mentioned Guitar Toolkit, although I think you have to be a guitar player to appreciate it.

But back to the reason for this blog post. Michael Gray wanted to out my hypocritical iPhone ways. (And I came clean in a WebProNews interview the other day!). And according to his Twitter feed today, he’s trying to sync his calendar and contacts to something that just might be Apple-powered. And then I got this suspicious email from him:

“I use Urbanspoon to keep track of my most and least favorite restaurants. If you use Urbanspoon too we can compare notes on the best places to eat.”

Urbanspoon has apparently won him over too. Apple should start sending them royalty checks.

Tags: apple, iphone

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Blog, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.