Why I Love and Mildly Dislike the iPhone
After 5 months of both using and supporting the iPhone, I can provide additional feedback on the iPhone. As a user, the iPhone is simply an amazing piece of technology which improves every month. If you ask me what features I miss from the Treo - none immediately come to mind. This is surprising considering the Treo arguably had the best Outlook like interface compared to any other smart phone. Even the lack of battery life with the iPhone which was well publicized has not become a major issue for me and not a major hindrance (getting cheap 3rd party 3-in-1 chargers on Amazon is helpful).
Is the iPhone perfect? Absolutley not! In fact, it still does weird things attributed to obvious buggy software. Nothing that a restart will not usually resolve. The most profound impact the iPhone is that it is my “everything device”: web browsing, personal and business e-mail, contact, social media (Facebook), entertainment, dictionary. I have begun testing Skype and other voice-over-wifi apps in an effort to reduce international roaming charges. Talk about the cherry on top (pun intended)! And, Apple continues to develop the O.S. with a major upgrade due in summer with 2009 - an ever evolving feature set.
Now, that’s all fine and dandy for an indivdiual, but what about all of us I.T. dudes and dudettes who have to support this in a business environment? Well, the iPhone requires some additional cycles to support. While I am entirely surprised by additional support required by I.T. staff, I was surprised by the weird software (or perhaps hardware) bugs experienced. How about a phone that rings, but has an entire black screen? How about a phone that continues to loose battery juice? What about the phone that fails to make calls? The good news is that 60+ iPhone uses LOVE their iPhones. Never have I experienced a piece of technology where staff have been so forgiving, and where they are very apprective of the I.T. staff for implementing. I certainly miss the ease of account setup that the Treo offered, but we are no longer required to pay money for a Good Tech server to push and pull e-mail. And, we’ve been fortunate enough to have staff visit the Apple store when their iPhone requires replacement. The Apple staff have been very helpful, and were also fortunate since the nearest Apple store is a few blocks away.
To sum up, I love the iPhone as a consumer, but being responsbile for supporting in the enterprise brings it’s own set of pains. You may be popular for a while (hopefully), but be prepared for additional resources to be spent supporting the iPhone - all of which we have less of today!
One more thought: the iPhone comes with a 1 year warranty. If you plan to support this in the enterprise, consider purchasing an extended warranty from Apple - $69 to cover the 2nd year. It may be cheap insurance.
-Simon
