NY Times op-ed on the hate that dare not text its name: iPhone rejection

I type a little faster on the iphone (gotta take into consideration going back and correcting, or when it corrects a word AFTER you hit the send button on a text...JESUS!)...but the iPhone is much better for long emails. My fingers (thumbs) never get tired, even after five paragraph long emails. Now, my wife's Blackberry Curve wears out my joints after entering in contact info.

Our buyer's real estate office in Ann Arbor recently switched over to iPhones and the agents love them.

In fact, we just started a promotion where we will give home buyers an iPhone when they buy a home. (Limited time offer and all that ....)

The point is, nobody has ever been that excited about any other phone.

I think we are even getting my mother to use one and she is so down on technology that she never even learned how to drive. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, after all, she is my mother and she is almost perfect!)

"Yes, if you're looking for a high-speed texting and email platform because you live your life in text messaging, the iPhone's keyboard will frustrate you..."

What? I type faster on my iPhone than I have ever on any of my former smartphones (Moto Q, Blackberry 8700, Treo 700...) On the iPhone, I max out at 50 WPM, as do many other people. Contrary to common belief, tactile feedback isn't the primary determinant in typing comfort and speed (The storm is one big, tactile button; in my opinion, it defeats the purpose of a TOUCH screen, and makes typing hell). I guess it's practice first, putting your prejudices of touchscreens aside second, and enjoying the experience third.

I just looove it when pretentious columnists (especially for the freakin' NY Times) diss on tech they fail at using. Yeah, it's totally Apple's fault for designing an unusable product, right Ms. Heffernan? I love BlackBerry, I really do. I hope you take yours and write something with it that doesn't waste life and bandwidth. Thanks.

Can I just waste this comment to say:

I HATE BLACKBERRY!

I could rant about its convoluted and unintuitive interface where you have to go through 10,000 steps with pixelated text to do the simplest of tasks (albeit capable of many after you actually find it), but you know... I'll just leave it at this: It's ugly and stupid. So there.

I've never liked Apple's non-computer products. I have loved my MBP (and previously Powerbook) for the last 6 years though and use them everyday for work.

Honestly, I dislike apple's portable products for the same reason others say they like them. Apple decides which small set of features you will have (and granted, implements them well) and then tells you that you don't/won't want anything else.

I've really enjoyed my bluetooth headphones for the last year. iPhone owners may get a chance to try them this June it seems. I enjoy watching Divx encoded movies without having to convert them and load them into iTunes.

Lastly, my only iPod, a mini I received for xmas, sucked. It had a battery life of 1.5 days *while not in use*. My first non-computer Apple experience was charging my iPod for a weekend flight/trip and then firing up the iPod on the Sunday return flight to find that my battery was dead without ever having turned it on once since charging Friday. It was a useless player.

I find that after having the iPhone nearly a year, I type slower now than when I first started. As my typing speed increased, the number of errors that popped up increased. I completely understand the author when he shows that it's missed characters or spaces. The iPhone is just no capable of high speed finger typing, in my opinion.

I'm most likely going to ditch it for a Pre soon.

If you're an idiot, the iPhone's keyboard will frustrate you. Seriously, maybe I'm not the norm, but I type twice as fast on the iPhone then I ever did on the Treo or Sidekick. Not to mention I can type on it with one hand. Never could do that on a physical keyboard.

I just think people aren't letting the software do it's job. They watch each and every letter they type, going back to fix it if it's wrong. Just type the whole sentence out while keeping your eye on the keyboard and most of the time it comes out correct.

I am a total Apple fanboy. So much so, in fact, that I even own an Apple TV. But the combo of the iPhone 3G and AT&T tested my limits, and now my iPhone is an iPod Touch.

Everything else on the iPhone worked great: I could easily text, send and receive email, surf the Web, etc. Phone calls, though, were a disaster. In fact, it was so bad that on a cross-country road trip, I pulled into a Radio Shack in Boulder and purchased a CDMA phone just so I could make calls. It cost me big bucks to leave AT&T, but ending the frustration was worth the money. Meanwhile, I still use my iPhone Touch every day, and still love it.

The connectivity issue is huge. Gave up on voice a long time ago. I'm scared of the day I have to call 911 and it doesn't connect, but I won't be surprised. All those fancy apps are crippled without a network. Need to find a bus in a hurry. Ha right, you have to walk three blacks to get a signal. Need to check a price in a store? Nope. Gotta go outside to get a signal. Need to find your friend on the other side of the loud concert hall? Send up smoke signals cause you sure as hell cant text them.

I am always talking about this cool app or this cool thing I can do with my iphone but attempting to show someone always leads to me saying "but I have no signal right now." So yeah with wifi at home the iphone does all kinds of cool things, but then so does my Mac at home.

Just so ya know I live in downtown San Francisco, not some area on the fringe of ATT coverage.

She is correct, it's not for everyone.

The kid down the street has crashed 2 nice bimmers, because he is a crappy driver. His folks should wake up and get him a Malibu and let it go.

Everything nice is not for everybody.