I’m bringing the 30 Days of iPhone to an end without actually doing 30 posts on it. Why? Because there is literally nothing left to say. Here’s what it all comes down to in a nutshell.

In my opinion, the iPhone is great. It’s is beautifully designed, the experience with it has been fantastic, and I couldn’t recommend it higher to people who want an easy to use, elegant mobile computer that also happens to make phone calls.

That’s how I see it.

Yes, there are flaws with the iPhone. It is not perfect. It is not a JesusPhone (a phrase that if Gizmodo doesn’t drop soon, I’m going to be dropping them from my RSS Reader. I’m beyond sick of it.). The iPhone is noteworthy because it is the “Valedictorian of Summer School” in the cell phone world.

There has never been universally renowned cell phone that everyone thought was great…and as far as I can tell, the iPhone is as close as anyone has come yet.

But at this point, if you’re interested in an iPhone at all, the nauseatingly exhaustive coverage on the web has told you everything you need to know. There are review out there that, if printed, are probably small novels on the iPhone….and I think that’s overkill.

Do you want to REALLY know what an iPhone is like?

There is an Apple store or an At&t store near you…and they will gladly let you fondle and caress it until you know 100% for sure that it either is, or isn’t right for you.

If you’re on the fence about it, feel free to wait. A new one will be coming sooner than later. That’s the nature of, not only Apple, but technology in general. If you jump on the band wagon now, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

You know the things that are bugging people. Edge is slow, you can only txt one person at a time, there is no “official” IM client, etc. If those things are deal breakers for you, there is no review in the world that is going to tell you that those features are secretly there, and everyone else has been lying about them. They’re not there. Will they be there in the future? Some of them might be. For me, the IM Client problem is already solved with beejive.

Now, this week is a big week for Macs, and I’m going to focus on that as much as possible, hopefully there will be some interesting and surprising stuff to report on Tuesday. The 30 Days of iPhone coverage is officially at an end, but that doesn’t mean the iPhone isn’t going to be a major factor of Apple Gazette.

I have some iPhone accessory reviews coming up in the near future, and I’ll, of course, be covering any new features, bugs, or applications for it, just like any other Apple product.

The iPhone is here to stay, and I – for one – am glad that it’s here.

So, Apple released an update to the iPhone. At first, it seemed like the update was just a few security issues and bug fixes, but there are also a few minor new features in here that are worth noting.

For example, there is now a BCC option in the mail app. Also, the Passcode options have been updated to give you more time before having to enter it if you choose. Honestly, I don’t plan on using either of these new features any time soon, but it is nice to see some minor updates already making their way to the device.

After using the update for 24 hours I can say that Safari does seem to handle multiple web pages better than it did previously. I’ve also found that it seems to be able to handle playing audio while performing other task’s better…but it’s still not perfect. Crashing can still happen.

It’s nice to see this security update so soon, but I’m still hoping for a more major release in next few months with a few additional features.

You may have noticed I haven’t done these everyday. I decided to wait until I actually had something to write about, rather than just filling this article with pointless junk. So, it’s going to take more than a total of 30 days to get through the whole thing, but I think when we’re done, it will be a better overall look at the iPhone experience.

After getting fed up with Gmail last week, I decided to take a look at .Mac mail, based on reader feedback. I have never really been into the idea of giving Apple $100 dollars a year for the .Mac service, as very little of it appeals to me, but with the “Back to Mac” feature announced at WWDC, the recently upgraded Mail application, and the promise from Jobs to “make up for lost time” with .Mac very soon, I decided to finally give my 60 day trial a shot. At this rate it will expire shortly before Leopard is released, and hopefully we’ll know a little more about what it has to offer, but I can tell you right now, I’m already sold on the mail alone.

.Mac Mail does what Yahoo and Gmail SHOULD do, which is WORK on my iPhone. All three of my inboxes, the iPhone, my Desktop, and the web based Mail are constantly in sync. If I do something to one, all three sync up to create a consistent workflow. Plus, my gmail account is still forwarding to my .Mac mail, and archiving its copies on Google’s servers for me.

As of right now I haven’t given out my new .Mac address to more than handful of people because I didn’t want to give anyone an email address I wasn’t going to keep (I already made that mistake with the Yahoo account), but I have to say that I am loving the email experience with the iPhone now that I’m using .Mac.

At first, I was just happy to have email on my phone…then I got over that and Yahoo and Gmail became terribly frustrating…but now, with .Mac mail I’m back to being very happy with my email experience on my iPhone.

I love my Gmail.

I love my iPhone.

I hate them together.

Half the time I attempt to check my mail it can’t connect to the pop server.   If you set it up through the Gmail button on the iPhone it wants to send you a copy of every email you send from the iPhone.  So if you send an email, you instantly recieve a copy of the email you just sent in your inbox.  That gets annoying and old very fast.

I managed to get around that by setting my  gmail account up as a standard pop3 account, but now I get a copy of every email that I send from my Macbook Pro.  Since I use the Macbook Pro for email more than the iPhone, this has actually turned out to be a worse solution.

On top of that, Gmail doesn’t allow you to make folders.  Gmail uses a label option which works fine in the web based gmail, but on the iPhone that means you can’t have any folders on your Gmail account because there is no way to create them.

Yahoo is no better.  While you don’t get copies of your emails, and you can create folders, Yahoo has a security feature where you have to prove that you’re not a spammer by entering  a code on a regular basis.  If you don’t access the Yahoo account on their website this feature will prevent emails from sending from your iPhone, and you have no way to know that his happening until messages stop being delivered.

I am really at a loss as to what to do about this right now.  The “coolness” of just having rich email on my phone has faded, and now I want it to work smoothly.  I have had my Gmail account for YEARS, though.  In fact, right now my Gmail account is sitting at 2014 MB used.  That’s 69% full.  I don’t really want to get another email address, but I will if that’s what it takes.

What email are you using?  Does it work?

Well, I can certainly say that the “shine” has worn off of my iPhone. What do I mean by that?

Well…I’ve gotten used to having the phone in my pocket now. I don’t stare at it until my eyes hurt anymore, and I’ve stopped sending emails on it when I’m in front of my laptop (you see, it makes more sense to send them from my Macbook, and the “cool” factor of emailing from my iPhone has worn off).

I’m noticing that finger prints are becoming more noticeable. I don’t know if that’s because the weather has changed around here, or if there is a build up of oil on the phone, or if I just started noticing it more. Regardless, I see finger prints on it more prominently than I did 2 weeks ago.

I have also noticed a few habits that I seem to have with the iPhone. For instance, I prefer to talk to people on speaker phone when I can, and I have a tendency to hold the phone out in front of me (ala Captain Kirk on TOS). I don’t really know why, I’m not doing it on purpose. It just seems like the natural way to hold and talk with this device. When that’s not practical, I hold it to my ear like a normal phone, but I find that my arm becomes uncomfortable very quickly. That’s something I never noticed with my other phones, but I don’t know if it’s a direct result of using the iPhone or if I’m just not used to talking on the phone very much.

I guess we must have a really good EDGE connection where I live, because I just don’t find it to be that bad. It’s faster than dial-up, slower than broadband, and perfectly usable here. I have used it in other areas where it gets excruciatingly slow, though, so I understand the complaints from people that live in those areas.

I really haven’t gotten into using it as an iPod. I like having the music in my pocket with me, but I mostly use my iPod with external devices like the XtremeMac Luna, and a car attachment. The car attachment won’t work with the iPhone, and I have the Luna so far away from me in my “office” that it becomes annoying to get up and filter through the emails on it so that their aren’t a few hundred at the end of the day.

To me, the iPhone is poorly named. It doesn’t seem like a phone, and I don’t think of it like a phone. It’s a computer that I can make phone calls with. It’s the best portable device I’ve ever owned, and I can’t wait to see what Apple has in store for us via software updates.

Now that I’ve had a few weeks to play with them, I think it’s time to take a look at the “big four” applications on the iPhone. the Phone App, the Email App, Safari, and the iPod App.

Phone - To me, the Phone App is classic Apple design. Either you’re in love with it, or you despise it. Obviously, I’m a fan of Apple design, so I really like the phone application. It can take up to 4 button presses from the home screen to call a contact, and I can see where that might bother people if they’re using their primary contact lists frequently, but I quickly started using my Favorites and Recent Contacts lists and that reduces it to as little as two button presses.

The only time I miss having a keypad in front of my without having to call it up is when I have to deal with an automated phone system, other than that, I’ve kind of forgotten about the keypad all together.

Visual Voicemail is the kind of thing that I expect all other phones to adopt eventually. It’s just a smarter way to do voicemail, and I’m surprised it’s taken this long for someone to think about it.

Mail - While Mail is probably my most used Application, it is also the one that I think needs the most work. I find it lagging pretty hard when an email conversation has gone on for more than a few back and forth replies, and I really, really, REALLY, want some delete all options. It seems like they focused so much on getting the HTML to look right in the App that they forgot several really important things.

I should be able to save those pictures in all that rich email that I’m getting…but I can’t.

Plus, the darn thing should rotate like Safari, so I can use the much roomier horizontal keyboard…but again, I can’t.

Of everything on the iPhone, it’s Mail 2 that I look forward to the most.

Safari – Ah, Safari, how I love thee. Webpages look beautiful, “tabbed” browsing works wonderfully, and the address bar has enough sense to get the heck out of the way when you need it to. Safari is the second most used App on my iPhone, but it clearly my favorite.

My only real problem with Safari is that I’m finding with increasing frequency that the browser isn’t flipping into landscape mode when I turn it on its side. That could easily be a hardware issue, but it gets annoying non the less.

iPod - I didn’t get the iPhone to be an iPod, and as a result, I haven’t used it like one very often. Not for audio anyway. I have several albums on it, though, and the Cover Flow trick is a fun way to navigate through them, and an excellent way to show the device off.

I use the iPod feature much more for video, and I think it works fantastically. The onscreen controls are snappy and easy to use. I never see fingerprints when I’m watching video, and the screen is so much bigger than a video iPod it’s like having a big screen TV in your hand. I really enjoy the video features, and I love watching podcasts on a nice sized screen with rich color.

So that’s a quick rundown of my feelings on the apps. Of all of them, Mail needs the most help, and I think the iPod is the most polished. Safari could still use some touching up, especially with the rotation issue (and I never have this issue with the iPod features, so I feel it has to be software related…at least partially). I’m sure there are some improvements to the Phone app that could be made as well, but all in all, I’m very satisfied.

The iPhone has some great built-in applications, but the surge of web apps even in these early days, is very interesting. Most of the things calling themselves “Apps” are little more than websites reformatted for the iPhone, but there are a few programs out there that are actually nice iPhone-like applications or interfaces.

Here are 5 of my favorites…

5) hahlo.com - Twitter for the iPhone. Hahlo is very much like Twitteriffic for the iPhone. It has a nice interface that is much more iPhone friendly than the official Twitter site, and it feels like an application when you’re using it. If you’re a fan of Twitter at all, you’ll find this one is a great time waister.

4) MockDock – Mock Dock imitates the look and feel of the actual iPhone desktop, and allows you to customize the applications that you have on it. It basically serves to link to you to those web apps that you’ll be commonly using. It’s nice looking, and has a good interface that almost makes you forget you’re in Safari.

3) JiveTalk – Bar none the best IM client for the iPhone to date. There are others that have a slicker looking interface, but JiveTalk looks like iChat, and allows you to connect to almost every IM client you can think of.

2) gOffice – While gOffice isn’t the only wordprocessor out there for the iPhone, it is the easiest to use that I have tried so far. It’s very basic, and does just what a wordprecessor on a device this size should do. It allows you to easily create documents and email them to yourself for future use. I actually like the look of Notepad on the iPhone itself better, but the major benefit of gOffice is the rotating keyboard of the Safari browser.

1)iNozbe – Nozbe is a web based GTD application (that’s Getting Things Done…if you don’t know what it is, Google it). iNozbie is a version of the software built specifically for the iPhone. If you’re into GTD this is a great way to organize your daily tasks, and you can integrate it with your desktop through their full web client.

So there you have my 5. What about you? Are their any apps you’re using that I didn’t mention here?

This is the “anti-iPhone” day of the series. I am spending today NOT using the iPhone as much as humanly possible.

Why?

I’m trying to find out if my recent chronic eye strain is iPhone related, and thus far, it seems like it is a factor, but not the whole factor, because my head is still hurting today…even being iPhone free.

I don’t know what they’re going to call those of us that are addicted to the device. Blackberry addicts are called “Crackberry Addicts”. Will we just be “iPhone Addicts”? “iPhoneaholics” maybe? “iPhone Drones”?

I don’t know what we’re going to be called…but whatever it is…I am one.

I am having withdrawal symptoms as we speak….

I kind of got off track with the whole Macbook Pro Battery adventure, then yesterday I had the lovely experience of my very first migraine headache.

Good times.

Now, however, it’s time to get back into the swing of things with the 30 Days of iPhone coverage. It never occurred to me when I decided to do 30 Days of iPhone, that the entire world was going to cover the iPhone so extensively. It seems almost asinine to talk about the Calender or the Photos app, or any of the included applications because they have been so extensively covered in so many other places….but today, I am going to briefly give you my opinion of each of the applications on the iPhone, because it seems like this whole series would be pointless if I skipped things just because they are covered elsewhere.

So…here goes…

Text – The Texting app on the iPhone is what the iChat IM application on the iPhone SHOULD be. As an SMS application it’s really not that great because of the lacking SMS features. You can’t send to multiple people at the same time, and you also can’t send any MMS messages. As a chat program it’s great…but I’m not sure that’s a good thing since I don’t have, and don’t want to pay for, unlimited messages.

Calendar – I never used iCal on my Mac. I still don’t. But I use the Calendar program on the iPhone every single day. I’ve started using it just to remind me of little things that I need to do during the day, and I have seen a noticeable jump in my productivity as a result. It’s easy to use, and very helpful. I’m sure this is nothing new to those of you that have used calendar applications on your desktop or other mobile devices, but the iPhone is the first time I’ve had a calendar app that was handy and easy enough to use to implement it into my everyday life.

Photos - I love the photos app. There is no better way to show off the multi-touch features of the iPhone than to flick through your photos and zoom in on something. I have over 400 photos on my iPhone, and I find myself flicking through them when waiting in line or just sitting at the house. It actually makes me want to take more photos than I have been…which leads me to…

Camera - Boy I wish the camera was better. It’s not bad, but it’s not great…and I really wish it was. A few generations from now, I’m sure the camera will be excellent, but the lack of zoom, and the so-so picture quality are really disappointing…especially for a device that is so picture friendly. Still, to do any better on the camera side, I would imagine the iPhone would have to be bulkier than it is, which wouldn’t be good either.

YouTube - It’s YouTube! On your iPhone! eh. I haven’t spent very much time with the YouTube application. I don’t really want YouTube on the phone to begin with, and half of the stuff I search for on the site, isn’t on the iPhone…so I could really do without this application all together. It’s easy enough to use, but the quality of the video is pretty bad. If you spend a lot of time on YouTube, I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. Otherwise, you won’t.

Stocks – It’s a stocks widget. It’s barely what I would call an application, but it works like a widget should. It’s pretty to look at and gives the information it’s supposed to. Nothing really special.

Maps – I love the Maps application. I have found myself using it way more than I thought I would, even to find different restaurants around the town where I live. Having gone into Austin twice in the last month, I have found the maps application very helpful in some situations, and very frustrating when the road I was looking for was so new that Google didn’t have it indexed yet. I also found the live traffic to be very helpful in the city. There is room for improvement, but it’s a great 1.0 application.

Weather – The Weather widget is much faster to use than visiting Weather.com or flipping over to the Weather Channel (which I don’t have, but even if I did, it would still be faster). I find myself using this very frequently. I hope in future versions we can get some more extensive information about the weather, including Noah alerts. There is much more that could be done with this application.

Clock – I don’t know how Apple made setting an Alarm fun…but they did. My iPhone, like my previous cellphone before it, also serves as my alarm clock, so I find myself using this application everyday….and I’m not sure there is much more I could ask for from it. The world clock is also nice to have when you’re trying to find out what time Doctor Who airs in the UK…you know…for fun.

Calculator - The calculator is nice looking. It would be nice to have some sort of audio feedback when pressing the buttons, and I would also like to have the ability to flick over to a paper tape like my calculator on my Mac. A pretty, but basic application.

Notes - l was surprised how much I like Notes. The app is much better random writing than your email or even one of the online wordprocessors. You can touch anywhere on the screen and begin writing, and when you’re finished, you can email the document to yourself for later use. Simple, effective, and very well done. I have to say Notes might end up being my favorite of the applications.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t discuss the big four. Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod. I’ll be discussing them in the near future.

Today I’m going to take a reader’s suggestion, and do a post entirely of the things I dislike about the phone at this point. Later this week, I’ll do another post entirely of praise for the things that I do like about the phone.

Mail – The mail application has a lot of great features to it, but there are some things that are really driving me nuts. One of the main things that I really want to see updated is a “delete all messages” button. I don’t want to hand delete every individual email on in my inbox. Since all of the mail services I have keep an archived copy of my mail on their server, I don’t need need to save very many of my emails on my iPhone. So I want to delete them quickly. Some days I’ll have as many as 48 emails back and forth with one individual, so you can imagine how quickly the inbox will fill up. I want a delete all button.

I would also very much like to have an auto save feature. I have had the Mail app crash on me once or twice (yesterday being what made me decide to write this article), and an auto save feature would help me out quite a bit.

SMS - The lack of being able to send MMS messages doesn’t bother me, but I get that it bothers some people. What does bother me is only being able to select one person at a time to send an SMS message to. While I don’t ever send out mass mailings to my friends and family, sometimes it is nice to send a message once to more than one person. Not having this feature is a glaring error on Apple’s part that I hope to see fixed very soon.

Usage Settings – Speaking of SMS, I don’t like the fact that the Usage Settings don’t tell me how many txts I have used. It tells me the data usage of the EDGE network, battery stats and all of that…but it doesn’t tell me minutes used or txts sent. I would like to have quicker access to that information.

Camera - I don’t like the fact that the camera doesn’t have some kind of zoom. I would have settled for a digital one, but I really want to be able to zoom with the camera.

YouTube - I don’t need it on my iPhone, and I want the icon off of my home page.

No Image Saving - I want to be able to set a wallpaper in Safari. I hate that I have to get on my computer, save the image into iPhoto then sync it with the iPhone just to get the wallpaper I want on the phone.

No Custom Ringtones – I want my Dr. Who ringtone dammit! And NO – I’m not going to use the 23 step hack to do it.

So there you have it…the primary things that urk me about the iPhone.

I still love it, though. Inspite of all this.

I am using my iPhone too much.

I have noticed I’m starting to get some serious eye strain by the end of the day.

I can only conclude that it’s the iPhone, because that’s the only thing that’s really changed in my viewing habits over the last few weeks. It started out as a mild irritation, but over the last few days my eyes have been hurting really bad by the end of the day.

I need to use it less.

but I don’t want to….

This thing has officially become part of my left arm. I’m getting so used to using it, I’ve noticed that I don’ use my Macbook Pro as much as I used to…and that’s a good thing.

I used to keep my Macbook Pro powered up almost 24/7. Why? Mainly so I could check my email and keep my messenger application open to talk with my co-workers. I don’t have to do that anymore.

Now, I can let the Macbook Pro rest and get my email through the iPhone, and my IMing done through http://iphone.beejive.com.

I haven’t had any real problems with scratches yet, but it is a concern. So I contacted the guys at Invisible Shield to see if I could take a look at their screen protectors for the iPhone. I’ve heard good things about Invisible Shield, so I thought they might make a nice addition to the “30 Days” review.

They sent over some of their iPhone screen protectors a few days ago, and I have to say, thus far, I am impressed. They are incredibly durable. I actually messed up installing the screen the first time, and got finger prints all over it, but the screen seems very hard to damage.

We’ll see how it works out over the next 20 days of this ongoing review.

You know, I really thought there would be more to talk about for the 30 Days of iPhone articles. It’s actually getting hard to come up with much to discuss….the thing, for the most part, just works. I’m getting used to having it in my pocket, and I use it constantly. I read an article yesterday that said I was on crack for saying the iPhone is cheap for what you get, because other smartphones have been doing these things for years.

All I can say in response to that is…yeah, they have – but they sucked at it. What makes the iPhone work is not that they’re doing things no one has ever done before. They’re just doing things way better than anyone has done before, and in a way that no one has ever done before. The phone is great. The ipod is great. The Internet device is great. All three products bundled into this little computer in my pocket are heads and shoulders above anything Palm has ever put out.

I get that some people will prefer those other handhelds. That’s fine. I’m glad you like your phone…but you’re in a minority. Whether you like the iPhone or not, most people hate their cellphones. They are hard to use, clunky beasts…and the iPhone isn’t. What it lacks in “little things” (like no MMS messages…to me, I keep thinking….why don’t you just send an email?), it makes up for in the UI and general awesomeness.

So there.

Steve, a regular reader, asked me a week or so back how the iPhone handles pop-up windows. I don’t go to a lot of sites with pop-up windows, but I have noticed that it seems to do a better job of blocking pop-ups and Safari on my Mac. I almost never have to deal wtih a pop-up on the iPhone. If I do, it’s usually a link that I’ve clicked, and it will open in a new page, that becomes the main screen. If I want to go back to what I was doing I just hit the pages button, and flick back over to the other page I was on.

If you have any questions about the iPhone that you’d like answered feel free to email me at the address I give out in the podcast (don’t want to type it here because I like not getting spam), or send something in via the contact form.

So, last night my Mother-In-Law stayed over at our house. She asked me to show her what the iPhone does. I showed her all the features of the phone and what it could do. Then she asked me how much it cost. I told her. Do you know what she said to me?

“Why is it so cheap?”

That really sums up the way I feel about the iPhone too. When you look at everything this mobile computer can do, it really is well worth the money.

And yes, I said mobile computer.

The iPhone does, indeed, make and receive phone calls…and it is called the iPhone (a name I have never liked)…but it IS NOT a smartphone, a cell phone, or any other kind of mobile phone you have ever owned before.

The longer I have it, the more I realize that I’m carrying around a computer that happens to also be my phone. I use it way more for watching video, listening to music, surfing the Internet and getting my email than I do making or receiving phone calls. I’ve gotten to where I prefer to use the iPhone for my email. It’s a simpler interface, that is easy to use, and I can delete whatever I want, knowing full well that Gmail has archived a copy of every email I receive for me, so if I need to have access to it again some day, I will.

I am also surprised at how well some of the web based apps for the iPhone integrate with the look and feel of the phone. That BeeJive app I wrote about yesterday is a perfect example.

If you didn’t know you were using a web app, you’d never be able to tell. When it is engaged, it melds perfectly with Safari too look like a stand alone app. Then all you have to do is hit the “pages” (i.e. tabs) button, and BOOM – you can open another web app or site, and fliip back to the IM client whenever you want.

Do I still think the iPhone needs and SDK?

Yeah…but for now…this’ll do.

Wow…had an interesting little freak out today.

All of the sudden, right after I turned the power on, the iPhone icons started dancing around the screen for a few seconds, then a box came up with red text that said “checking connection…” a progress bar spun for a second, then it went away and everything was fine.

Not real sure what happened there, but I hope it doesn’t happen again.

I also came across a FANTASTIC new IM client today call BeeJive.

http://iphone.beejive.com is the address to the iPhone designed app, and it is great. It looks just like iChat should on the iPhone and even allows for multiple client logins (something iChat doesn’t even do on a Mac).

BeeJive is, hands down, the coolest iPhone App I’ve seen thus far…although I do have to question how these companies are going to make any money…ah well…thoughts for another day…

Does it say something about a device when it is easy enough for a 4 year old to use?

I think it does.

My daughter has been interested in the iPhone since the day I came home with it, and I have let her press a few buttons on it over the course of the last week, but today I let her sit down and see what she could do with it.

She unlocked it, then went straight to the calender application and started counting, pointing to each number on the calender, highlighting it, then saying it aloud. When she had finished that, she decided that she wanted to call her grandmother.

She tapped the green phone, and it happened to be in the “C” on the contact page, which is where her grandmother’s name is. She can’t fully read yet, but she identified the name, touched it, then received confirmation when she saw her grandmother’s picture.

She then touched a phone number and called her grandmother.

When she was finished I told her to press the red button, and she did, to end the call.

I think this is the core reason why the iPhone has been so successful. It’s easy to use…and there aren’t many Phones that can say that.

So, the iPhone is starting to feel normal. Does that make sense? It’s already making the transition from being this super cool gadget that I love, to being this computer I keep in my pocket.

Yesterday my wife was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat. A reader had emailed me a question that I intended to reply to before then, but I had gotten distracted by all the podcasting problems I’d been having. I was sitting in the car when I thought “Crap, I need to email him back!” then I remembered…I have the iPhone in my pocket.

So I pulled the iPhone out, found his email, replied and that was that.

I have also found that I’m finally using iCal (on the iPhone at least) for reminders. I never messed with it on my Mac because I was always away from the computer, but with the iPhone, when I make an appointment, or decide I need to do something later, I just go into iCal and set up a reminder. It’s actually helping me quite a bit with my productivity.

If I have anything negative to say about yesterday it’s that I am noticing software lag. There is no “beach ball” on the iPhone, but maybe there should be, to let me know it’s working and hasn’t just frozen up. It doesn’t happen a lot, and when it does it’s only for a few seconds at a time, but you will notice it if you buy one, so I think it’s worth mentioning.

BTW – I just wanted to thank everyone who has taken our online survey. I’ve been very happy with the response so far, and I appreciate everyone taking the time to do it. If you still haven’t, but would like to, you can Click Here to take the survey.

So guess what I did last night? I manually deleted 1,300 emails off my iPhone.

That was ultimately the only way to get rid of them. I tried to go into Gmail settings and stop them from downloading, but Gmail doesn’t treat the iPhone like it’s a POP3 email client. Emails still appear in my Gmail inbox as unread after I have downloaded them and deleted them from my iPhone. When I use Mail, however, they download. Then, when I return to my Gmail inbox, they have been archived as I have instructed them to do in the Gmail settings.

What prompted this?

Yahoo! Mail is terrible.

I sent several emails yesterday from my iPhone through Yahoo! Mail that were never delivered. I have also had several people tell me they have sent me mail that I haven’t seen (Steve, if you’re reading this, I STILL haven’t received your email). So, I have officially hung up that Yahoo! email address. Four days of not working properly is all I’m willing to give it.

Now that I have cleared out the Gmail inbox, it should be smooth sailing with that address, and all will be well with the world.

Also of note, my love of webcomics has been re-sparked, due in large part to the iPhone. I was looking to bookmark some quick, entertaining content, and was reminded of the webcomics that I used to read daily. Dinosaur Comics, Achewood, American Elf, and Overcompensating are all very surreal, and not for everyone – but if you find them funny, you’ll find them really, REALLY, funny.

Surfing on the iPhone continues to be enjoyable, especially through Wifi. I find myself pulling the iPhone out of my pocket when I want to quickly look something up, instead of going to my laptop or my desktop. It’s just as fast, if not faster, and I actually find the text easier to read (for the most part) on the zoomed in pages on the iPhone.

I’m glad to have this email situation finally solved, and I hope it’s helpful to you when you’re setting your iPhone up.

To you other iPhone users – have you had trouble with Yahoo! Mail? Gmail? Is it just me?

Well, I guess I’m going to have to live without Gmail, because I can’t seem to get it to work right, no matter what I do. It works fine on my notebook, and I even decided to bite the bullet and delete all 1,300 messages last night…but they kept coming back. I would delete one, then it would re-download like I had never deleted it.

I give up.

I’m just going to go with the Yahoo account and have my Gmail forward to that. (which is a nice little trick to make your Gmail PUSH as well)

I have also had some problems with the software slowing down, or being laggy a bit over the last 24 hours. Nothing too troubling or bothersome, but I have had to press the pause button a few times to get it to respond when listening to podcasts.

The battery life is holding strong at 6 hours of mixed playback before hitting the 20% mark. It is also important to mention that I have the display on almost constantly during that time, listening to music and reading and responding to emails.

So far, I am impressed with the battery life of the product.

I also spent a good hour of my day today demoing the iPhone for various people. It’s starting to go from fun to show off, to kind of tiring. I enjoyed showing it to a former boss of mine today, just because he’s been excited about the phone since it’s announcement, and I wanted him to see that it actually works as advertised, but I am getting less enthusiastic about showing it to strangers.

Still, that comes with the territory I suppose. The more Apple fans there are out there, the more readers I’ll have, right?

So I’ve been having email troubles on my iPhone yesterday afternoon and this morning. Turns out I’m not the only one.

In fact, everyone I know (that I’ve asked) are having the same problem with the Yahoo! push email service. Evidently Yahoo makes you enter a code every now and again that lets them know you aren’t a spammer abusing their accounts, but you don’t have an option to do that on the iPhone…so, apparently, when Yahoo! decides you need to enter that code, you have to log onto the Yahoo! Mail site and send an email from there, so that your email will work again on your iPhone…that seemed to work for me, but I don’t have any sort of official confirmation about it.

I just know it’s annoying.

And speaking of annoying email, there is this other little company…maybe you’ve heard of them…Google? Yeah, their gmail is REALLY annoying on POP3 in general, but especially in the iPhone. For whatever reason, no matter what kind of settings I tweak on gmail’s site, it still wants to download every single email I’ve ever sent from my gmail account into my iPhone.

I don’t want any of these 1,300 + emails on my iPhone, but I don’t really know what to do about it.

Regardless, the email experience is kind of getting on my nerves…and I don’t even think it’s the phone’s fault. I think it’s the service providers of the phone. Unfortunately, those are the accounts that I have, and I need to use them. Hopefully a solution will present itself soon.

My family and I took a small trip down to the town where we all grew up (population: 7,000 or so), and I am glad to report that even in the most rural of areas, I was able to connect to the Edge network, and use the Internet. Now, it seemed to me that the further into the rural areas I got, the slower Edge was…I’m not sure if that’s even how Edge works, and I could have been imagining things, but that’s how it appeared.

Still, I was able to look things up online, receive my email, and use Google maps – it was SLOW – but it worked.

This was the first complete charge for the battery, and I was mostly satisfied with the life of the charge. I was heavily using the web, watching video, listening to music, and making calls while demoing the iPhone to my various family members, and the battery hit the 20% mark at 6 hours 23 minutes.

Later that night, I was told by a guy working the window at a Whataburger that he quote: “hated me” because I was using the iPhone while waiting in line.

I think I’m going to be getting a lot of that.

The Line

Things started off well enough. I arrived at the At&t store about 9:15 or so, and there was only one other person there in line. This At&t store had seemingly been forgotten by most other people, as they were all standing in line at another store down the street. So Brad (the first guy in line) and I talked all things Apple and tech for a while, before anyone else showed up. It looked like we were going to be the only ones there for a while, but as the day quickly moved on, the line began to grow, eventually stretching around the building and into the parking lot.

There were a variety of interesting people there, including a minister, a violinist (who had to play at a wedding at 6:30pm that night) and a guy trying to buy as many iPhones as he could to sell on eBay. All nice people, and it made for an interesting wait. The people at the At&t store were friendly too, even bringing us water…of course, they also tried to sell us At&t home phone/cable/internet service…but you had to expect that.

6 o’clock rolled around, and they started letting us in. I bought my iPhone, which At&t was not allowed to open or touch…they weren’t even allowed to take the plastic off the box. They had some trouble with their system, but everything was taken care of quick enough. They had to put the iPhone in an At&t bag, then seal it, before I could leave the store with it…and they also had to go over some policies. One in particular was that if I wanted to “return” it there would be 10% restocking fee. (that’ll be important in a moment).

So, I walked out of the At&t store a happy man.

Then I got home.

The Problem

When I first opened the box, everything looked fine. I turned on the iPhone, and the colors on the main screen looked…ok…but something didn’t seem quite right. I connected the iPhone to my Macbook Pro and very quickly went through the activation process. I had no problems what-so-ever with the initial activation.

After the iPhone was up and running I put a few songs and some video on it, so I could get it ready to review. That’s when I noticed something wasn’t right.

While I was getting my WEP key info my wife commented that the camera on it was terrible, but I didn’t see what she was looking at. After I loaded up an episode of “The Office” it became clear…something was wrong with this thing.

The video looked like it was displaying 256 colors. It looked like an old CGA monitor or a highly compressed Gif. It was terrible. So I got on the phone with Apple Care. 3 hour later…it still didn’t work. While I was on hold with Apple…which was at least an hour of that 3 hours when you added it all up…I called the mobile number of the At&t rep. She told me that there were more 8 gigs coming in at 8 am and she would call me in the morning so I could get a replacement. I was happy with that, and went to sleep only slightly disappointed with the day.

The next morning I get up and there has been no call from the At&t sales rep. So I head to the At&t store, where this sarcastic little punk with a cocky smile and attitude greats me at the door. I explain to him what is wrong with the iPhone, and show him the video issue. He looks at it, chuckles to himself, and says “yeah there’s something wrong with it, but you know we’re going to charge you $60 bucks to restock it…”

I don’t know if it was the fact that At&t wanted to charge me $60 so they could take back a piece of defective merchandise they sold me, or the fact that this little jerk thought it was funny, but the politeness in my voice and the smile on my face was quickly replaced with “No you’re not, you sold me a piece of defective merchandise, and there is absolutely no way I’m going to pay you to take it back.”

His smile and chuckle left his face, and he turned around to get a manager. Then a woman sitting at a desk across the room yelled over, “We can’t replace it without charging the restocking fee.” So I went over to talk to her. She continued, “Who was your sales person?” she asked, “Didn’t she tell you there would be a 10% restocking fee to return it?”

I explained to her that no one said anything about not being able to exchange a defective phone to the store where I bought it. Now, I could go on a rant here about the difference between exchanging a defective piece of merchandise, and returning an unwanted item – but I’ll skip it. The bottom line to you, dear reader, is that you know that if you buy an iPhone from an At&t store, that location is merely a place for you to pick one up. You can’t get any help regarding the iPhone from At&t…it’s all Apple.

The Solution

So, I went home and called Apple. While on hold with Apple Care (about 30 minutes into holding) I decided to call my closest Apple store (a four hour round trip drive from my house), and see if they could help me. They told me they would exchange the iPhone that day if I could come to the store, and that they had plenty of 8gigs in stock.

So the wife and I hoped into the car and headed for the Apple Store.

The funny part is that everything except the video worked fine on the iPhone. So I used the maps to plot our trip to the Apple Store. I used Safari to blog about the days events here on the site, and I used the text messenging to keep some friends updated with what was going on.

I was very pleased with how easy all of those features were to use, and how quickly everything worked on the EDGE network that everyone has been complaining is almost unusable. It worked just fine for me, so fine, in fact, that I had no problem casually surfing the web in the car to find restaurants for dinner that evening.

We arrived at the Apple Store, having tested all of the non video related features of the iPhone. We showed the defective device to an Apple Genius, and were out of there with a new fully functioning iPhone in less than half an hour. I took my Macbook Pro in to test everything out, and was able to sync it there in the store to watch the video and test out the new iPhone before leaving.

The iPhone

So, things turned out well. I now have a new iPhone, and it works amazingly well. What amazed me the most (but probably shouldn’t have) is that it works exactly as advertised. The phone does everything the commercials suggest it can do, and I have no complaints about the device other than the lack of certain features that are common on all phones, and the lack of flash, java, and even some quicktime support in Safari.

I was able to view Quicktime trailers in Safari from Apple’s official site, but not from Revver, which I found disappointing…and of course, the lack of Flash and Java support in Safari is a bummer…BUT…this is the most amazing web experience that you can have on a mobile device like this, and I’m very happy to have it.

I also want more customization. I want to customize ringtones, cusomize which icons are on my home screen, and dammit, I want iChat. Most of these things will be fixed or added with time, though.

As it stands right now, I am extremely impressed with the iPhone. I must admit, though, that I still have “new gadget fever”. Which is exactly why I will be writing about the iPhone everyday for the next 30 Days. Through the “30 Days” series of posts, I should cover every aspect of the iPhone in day-to-day use, so you can get an idea of what it’s like to have one as it the “fever” dies down, and it becomes just another device.

Will it be worth the price?

Right now, I think it will for sure…but we’ll see in 30 Days.

Man, this thing is fantastic…

Day 1 – Discussing initial thoughts, and quality of video content downloaded from iTunes.

Day 2 – More quality…some good, some GREAT…and a tip on how to preview the quality of a show on your AppleTV before you buy.

Day 3 – AppleTV and Podcasts…a match made in Heaven…or California…or somewhere.

Day 4 – How do multi-passes work, and are they worth it?

Day 5 – Nit Picking the Fast Forward feature – and does the AppleTV make you watch LESS television?

Day 6 – Purchasing my first season of a show in iTunes…and there are problems with it.

Day 7 - Let’s talk about AppleTV and streaming across the home network…

Day 8 – Discussion about encoding files for AppleTV begins…

Day 9 – the “joy” of having a new product is starting to wear off…

Day 10 - AppleTV Video Converter Reviewed

Day 11 – Indepth look at quality inconsistency in “The Office” Season 2, and a list of great podcasts to watch.

Day 12 – an upgade to 802.11n is attempted…and fails miserably.

Day 13 - More quality inconsistency, new shows to download, and the horror of waiting 24 hours for water cooler chat.

Day 14 – The AppleTV crashes….

Day 15 – The AppleTV as a music playr and photo viewer discussed…

Day 16 – Visual Hub reviewed.

Day 17 – Problems with syncing discussed…including not being able to delete video off the AppleTV itself.

Day 18 – trouble waiting for content…

Day 19 – More nit-picking about iTunes downloadable content (the only true thing hold the AppleTV back)

Day 20 - Visual Hub review part 2.

Day 21 – Enough talk about what IS in iTunes…let’s talk about what isn’t.

Day 22 – Conflicting feelings about the AppleTV

Day 23 – Reader questions answered.

Day 24 – another minor gripe…

Day 25 - AppleTV vs. Xbox 360

Day 26 – Go from Google Video direct to AppleTV

Day 27 – Making AppleTV and Logitech remotes work together (check the comments on this one)

Day 28 – Predictions for the future of AppleTV.

Day 29 – Adding it up. iTunes dowloads vs. Cable – which is the better deal?

Day 30 – Final thoughts.