Aug 17 2008
The iPhone 3G in use
I’ve had the iPhone 3G for about two weeks now, and patterns of use are starting to emerge, apart from the obvious: making calls, sending texts and checking email. Although, even here, buying the phone has led to some changes. For example, I made an effort to rationalise, synchronise and update the contacts in the address books on the two Macs I use regularly.
NetNewsWire sees heavy use on my commute and in any downtime during the day. The associated Newsgator service keeps my read/unread feeds synchronised on two macs and the iPhone. The upside of this is that I’m ready to start work when I get to my desk, aside from getting a coffee that is, whereas previously the first thing I’d do was to scan all of my news feeds. If I come across a story I want to come back to in NetNewsWire, I can’t flag it on the phone, so I’ve been emailing the link to myself, and that seems to work fine.
I’m updating Facebook and Twitter more often than previously, and I’ve even started uploading images to Facebook from the iPhone camera. I have been making a lot of use of Evernote and the camera to photograph the covers of books I want to buy later. Evernote makes the text of the book cover images searchable, but I have created a notebook called ‘Stuff to buy’ that I upload these images to, so they’re all in one place anyway.
It’s not all rosy, though, as I’m damned if I can get OmniFocus desktop and OmniFocus for the iPhone to sync. I did have all of this working through WebDav on the BingoDisk service, but an update a few weeks ago broke it somehow. OmniFocus desktop crashes frequently when syncing or when you run software update and the iPhone app gets locked in a cycle of asking for your login details when you try to sync. The desktop app is still a beta release, so I’ll be patient, but they are clearly having trouble getting this to work with the many and varied WebDav services that are out in the wild.
The lack of cut and paste on the iPhone is a pain. Enough said.
I’ve added a few new apps lately: Pennies, to try and stick to a budget; DataCase, which should have been built into the iPhone software and 1Password. I got 1Password in the MacHeist bundle back in January and never used it, but I put all of my stuff in there recently and have found it a real boon given the number of sites I visit that require login. They’re launching a sync service too, so your passwords can be stored in the cloud, encrypted, and accessible from wherever as well as synchronised between machines. I may have a look at that soon, I’m reviewing all of the various applications and services I use (or subscribe to and don’t use) in an effort to tidy up the worst excesses of my curious mind.
Finally, after much shopping around, I’ve decided to go with Zagg’s invisibleSHIELD for iPhone 3G rather than buy a case for the iPhone. I’ve ordered it already, though I must say I am not looking forward to fitting it to the phone. Still, it comes recommended (and with a discount code from a friend), and the demo video on the product page is impressive. I have two discount codes for this product to share with anyone who wants them, drop me a line and I’ll forward a code to whoever asks first.
Hi John - nice summary. I too have recently got an iPhone 3G, and have had some different experiences. NetNewsWire was slow as a dog for me, and either froze or crashed more times than not. So I’m using Google Reader, which has a nice mobile version. I stuck a link on my front screen, so even though it’s running through Safari, it functions like its own app. And of course, it syncs nicely with the desktop browser version, too.
I had more luck with Omnifocus - one of the webhosts I use (dreamhost.com) offer free WebDAV services to their clients, so I had no bother setting up the online version for syncing.
I’ve also been getting good use out of Pandora and Flytunes (streamed radio service), while Exposure (Flickr app) and the aformentioned Facebook app keep me social.
Hi David, I found a fix to my OmniFocus woes on the OmniGroup forums at the weekend. The app gets stuck on one set of credentials, so you need to attempt a login to a different URL to clear those, then log back in to your own service.
I’ve used Facebook a lot too, and downloaded a Flickr app, although I can’t recall if it was Exposure and I don’t have the phone to hand. I’ve had a few crashes with NetNewsWire too, but nothing like the bad luck it sounds like you’ve had. The crashes seem to happen when the app attempts an update while you are already browsing feeds.
You should see the office here, at last count there are six of us with iPhone 3Gs. Could get interesting at the next night out. Glad my phone is the only white one.