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iPhone Opinion

Your Take on iPhone OS 3.0

We asked for your comments yesterday and several of you stepped up to the plate and offered what you thought about the newly-released iPhone OS 3.0.

So, without further ado, here we go:

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We asked for your comments yesterday and several of you stepped up to the plate and offered what you thought about the newly-released iPhone OS 3.0.

So, without further ado, here we go:

In general its great!

No one has reported this to my knowledge, but if you have more than one iPhone connected to your MobilMe account and properly enabled, the Where is my iPhone feature shows all of them — a great family feature.

One omission — I can’t find a way to use Where is my iPhone from my iPhone! .. for example, if Dad loses his iPhone during vacation with Mom and the kids; they ought to be able to use their iPhones to log into MobileMe and activate Where is My iPhone to help locate it. However, on Safari if you go to me.com you are not allowed to login, they assume every feature is already available via an app.

Bill Elkus

Dear PowerPage-

Here are my thoughts on iPhone OS 3.0

Love:
Spotlight Search. It’s fast and was my top missing feature in iPhone 1 & 2.

CalDAV server support. Now I can have a joint google calendar for my family that I don’t need elaborate software on the mac with multiple user accounts running to accomplish.

Subscribed Calendars. Now I can have my wife’s iCal calendar visible.

Calendar sync through iTunes: In addition to my MobileMe push calendars I can view US Holidays or Birthdays without having to do any real workarounds (just check a box).

Improved Recents & Voicemail Display: The added line of telephone type or call origin is great (you used to have to tap the arrow to get this info.

Improved Call Log: Tap the arrow on a recent call and you get a list of time & duration (I’m curious how many calls it will keep track of though)

Podcast Chapters. (I don’t think this was there in 2.x, but not every podcast I like uses chapters.) Finally I can jump over the parts I’m not interested in without scrubbing.

Copy and Paste. Works great, is even available in old apps.

Push: I hope to love it but none of my apps are updated for it yet (NetNewsWire I am thinking of you).

Hate:
Search does not include mail body text. I know it would be difficult to include this because they want the ability to search the server past the 25 or 50 messages on my phone, but come on. At least include body text of messages stored on the phone.

CalDAV server setup. Why is this buried in Mail account setup? Once I found it it worked well for the main google calendar, but I really wanted all of my secondary calendars (kids, school, etc.) and that is a royal pain (thank god for copy and paste). I don’t know if it is Google’s setup or that CalDAV is only meant for single calendar support, but this is not for the feint of heart to attempt.

No universal inbox: It’s on my mac, why not an option on the phone.

Can’t manage mail folders. It’s still not a full mail app if I can’t create, edit or delete mail folders.

Can’t fully edit calendar events. Why can’t I change the calendar to which an event is associated? It’s easy on the mac.

Still no Podcast description field access. Please Apple, hardly any podcast puts info in the title, but almost everyone includes a nice description of the contents. Can I please have a way to see this?

Would like to see:
Spotlight third party search ability. It sounds like this is not an open API yet, it would be great if apps could add a spotlight ability, similar to the mac.

Spotlight search of music lyrics. Which song is that again? You know the one, it goes…

Spotlight search of video info. This one is a little strange, when i use the spotlight search screen to look for “pixar” I get nothing, when I search in the iPod, it finds all of the Pixar short films on the iPod as well as two playlists.

Sincerely,
Alex. Thompson
alexwt@mac.com

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