By Michael Evans
WHILE waiting for the clutch of announcements this weekend, I've been ruminating on my experience with the iPhone 3G and wondering if I could ever be tempted to try a Pre. I have to ask myself what I don't like about the iPhone. And the answer is not much. In the past I've wrestled with Windows Mobile, Symbian on Sony Ericsson smartphones and, even, the Palm Treo running the old Palm OS. I really hated Windows Mobile for its unreliability, fiddly interface and frequent crashes. In many ways I preferred the Palm OS Treo to the later WinMob Treo.
In contrast, the iPhone has been a revelation and it is my constant companion. It is reliable, intuitive, easy to use. If you overlook the lack of cut-and-paste (to be rectified next Monday) I have been totally happy with the iPhone over the past 11 months. I cannot say this about any previous phone or PDA that I've owned over a number of years. I use my iPhone more for web browsing, email and applications than I do for making phone calls. But even as a phone, the Apple offering is streets ahead of, say, Windows Mobile devices. It just works.
The Apps Store and the thousands of wonderful (and cheap) applications are just icing on the cake as far as I am concerned. Several, such as OmniFocus, Currency, Bloomberg, PocketMoney, Skype and Momo, are my constant daily companions. It is difficult to see how Palm and even RIM with the BlackBerry can ever catch up with Apple in terms of scope, choice and ease of App Store use.
While penning these thoughts I was directed by MacWorld to an excellent article from InfoWorld by Galen Gruman. His detailed analysis, Deathmatch: BlackBerry versus iPhone, does a comprehensive assassination of RIM's still-popular phones. Many of his comments remind me of why I never got past the first post with the BlackBerrys I've tried. Final comment from the article says it all:
"….the BlackBerry is yesterday’s mobile messenger, way past its prime and heading toward retirement. The iPhone is light-years ahead of the BlackBerry on almost every count. RIM should be ashamed."
