After a couple of days, here are some iPhone impressions, though for deep analysis of each app, I pretty much agree with John Gruber at Daring Fireball (except that I haven’t had any crashes, lockups, or weirdness at all yet).
The user interface is incredibly well-designed, as you’d expect. I keep scrolling through my email just to see the smooth scroll, and the “bounce” effect when you hit the top of the list. Gruber’s right, Helvetica has found its rightful place in the iPhone: normally I dislike too much san-serif text but the gorgeous high-resolution screen makes it work here. Typing does take a bit of getting used to, especially with the keyboard in portrait rather than landscape mode. This is probably my #1 issue: the Mail application doesn’t rotate to landscape mode, which would sure be handy when composing. Reading, I’m less worried about, but when composing, the extra room seems like a no-brainer. I hope this comes in a software update at some point, since it would seem to require no hardware or firmware changes, nor anything on the sync’ing Mac.
Gruber is also completely right: Notes is useless. There’s nothing for the notes to sync to, although to-do items in iCal might be a good start. Speaking of which, to-do items in iCal don’t sync to the Calendar. Apple needs to fix this, and it’s my #2 issue. #3 is probably the uselessness of Notes for any kind of real workflow or to-do list, since the notes don’t make it onto my computer. Nor can I write out a shopping list on my laptop and have it show up as a Note on the iPhone, for use at the store.
Question for Apple: Precisely what were the use cases and scenarios for Notes anyhow?
A minor irritation also comes from the fact that the iPhone is a camera, and Image Capture recognizes it as such when you dock it to the laptop. In my case, Image Capture is designed to open Adobe Lightroom when I connect my “camera.” I finally had to disable this, since I don’t necessarily want Lightroom and iTunes starting up everytime I dock the phone to sync or charge the battery. This likely isn’t an iPhone issue at all, of course, but perhaps Apple might consider having richer preferences in Image Capture on a future release: per-camera settings would be nice. I’d like it if Lightroom were the chosen app when I connect my Nikon D50, and I’d like Image Capture to stay quiet when my iPhone is connected. Others may prefer iPhoto or some other option.
These are minor issues, compared to how terrific the iPhone design and experience have been thus far. Landscape mode for email composition is a big one, and I’m sure Apple will get the message once enough folks start using it. Notes and to-do items seem important as well, and I’d hope these are addressed sooner rather than later. Gruber suggests that the Notes sync issue might be connected with Leopard timing and a system-wide Notes facility in Leopard, so we’ll see.
