iPhone impressions day two:

So... after all the hassle of getting my iPhone activated on day one, here's how cool the iPhone is:

After an afternoon of showing Maggie cool stuff on it, we hopped in the car and drove to the Apple store over in Rockland County and got *her* one, too. Yeah, I've bought and paid for two iPhones already.

...Then we went and saw Ratatouille. Steve Jobs got *paid* by this household this weekend, baby.

There's a lot of stuff that needs tweaking still: this guy seems really bugged... his list of 10 things he hates about the iPhone is really interesting for this reason: I actually agree with almost all of them, but I *love* the gadget anyway. I think it's because I could write a list of twenty or thirty things wrong with every phone I've ever owned or used. And I'm an internet/server/webstuff engineer. It's the stuff the iPhone gets *right* that makes me smile when I use it.

Unlike almost every phone I've ever used, though, I know for a fact that there'll be an update to add and/or fix some of it, and that those updates will be a fairly painless part of a routine sync. This thing is a computer, running software. Ever update the firmware on another cellphone? It's comparatively excruciating.

It really is annoying that I can't copy and paste in emails, or take a photo that's been emailed to me and save it to my on-phone photos (same with photos in Safari).

Many of the gripes about bluetooth, dial-up-networking (DUN), etc. are relieved for me by the fact that I still carry my Treo 650 and my Nokia N800 with me in my briefcase along with my regular iPod, and usually my MacBook pro. (and some Advil for my aching back. And maybe a taser gun, in case you're reading this, and thinking of mugging me.)

The Treo 650 will run whatever Palm or J2ME apps I want, including SSH, and my Nokia N800 runs linux and connects to the Treo, or any wi-fi around.

If you're wondering, I've tested it, and the SIM from my iPhone works just fine in the Treo. (I'm told it won't work the other way around, but my old SIM's disabled now, so I can't test.). This is for voice and data, and my unlimited iPhone data plan is $20, compared to $40 for the treo, so I'm saving $240/year right there.

I note that the iPhone's SIM card is a 3G one. I know that's the same type of card that's in the usb-wireless dongles we use at work to connect a laptop to ATT's network when we're on-call... those things are really zippy, and pretty cheap. I'll try my SIM in one of those next week.

All said, it's a great device. Professionally, and as a user of the thing, I'm really interested to see what gets tweaked in the first couple of software updates.

(Ratatouille is perfect, though. I'd change nothing about that.)