24 hours with the iPhone

June 19th saw the worldwide launch of the iPhone 3.0GS. I finally decided to ditch my Blackberry and make the leap, especially as what could arguably described as flaws in the previous versions (cut and paste, uprated camera, faster processor, picture messaging) had now been fixed.

Having made the decision to get one, I joined the que bright and early outside the O2 store in Nottingham.

Tom Peters once said that any business created today should be able to run off a Blackberry. It was with that in mind that I'd always thought that the Blackberry was the tool for business, where as the iPhone was a cool gadget for personal use.

To be honest, having had a Blackberry for so long, I thought the lack of a keyboard with feedback, as opposed to the touch screen would be an issue. It wasn't. I simply connected the iPhone to my MacBook and opened up iTunes and followed the on screen instructions. Simple as that. Downloading apps from the App Store couldn't be easier and there's some great free applications as well. My first download was the dependable Evernote - this is so much better than using it on the Blackberry - and I thought that was great too!!

I've now had it 24 hours. So what do I think? Well it is certainly a cool looking gadget, it's simple to use, use of the web browser is sublime. It's very easy to surf and copy and paste data into other applications such as email. To be honest, I can't understand how the original iPhone manged without this. Some people must be very tolerant!!

So, do I have any gripes? Well, yes, I do. There appears to be no way to add attendees to an apointment in iCal. You can do it on the MacBook. So why can't you do it on the iPhone? Makes no sense to me. This has clearly been an isssue with the iPhone since it was first launched, because when I Googled it, a number of other users have mentioned the same problem. This to me is a big limitation. However, I suppose I'll get used to it.

Having said all that, I do think that this is a serious tool for business, especially those businesses that rely on the web for either updates or processing transactions. If Tom Peters was writing today I'm sure he'd say that any business should be simple enough to work off an iPhone.